Before Julian passed from the sunny lawns and meadows of Carrow, along the road by the river and up the lane to the left by the gardens and orchards of the Conisford of that day, to the little Churchyard house that would hide so much from her eyes of outward beauty, and yet leave so much in its changeful perpetual quietude around her (great skies overhead like the ample heavenly garments of her vision "blue as azure most deep and fair"; little Speedwell's blue by the crannied wall of the Churchyard—Veronika, true Image, like the Saint's "Holy Vernacle at Rome") her vow[1] might be: "I offering yield myself to the divine Goodness[2] for service, in the order of anchorites: and I promise to continue in the service of God after the rule of that order, by divine grace and the counsel of the Church: and to shew canonical obedience to my ghostly fathers."
The only reference that Julian makes to the life dedicated more especially to Contemplation is where she is speaking, as if from experience, of the temptation to despair because of falling oftentimes into the same sins, "especially into sloth and losing of time. For that is the beginning of sin, as to my sight,—and especially to the creatures that have given themselves to serve our Lord with inward beholding of His blessed Goodness."[3]
- ↑ Manuale ad usum insignis ecclesie Sarisburiensis (ed. of 1555), fo. lxix. Servitium includendorum,
- ↑ "pietaiis."
- ↑ The sins that Julian mentions, "despair or doubtful dread," "sloth and losing of time," "unskilful [unpractical, unreasoning] heaviness and vain sorrow," seem to be all akin to that dreaded sin, besetting particularly the Contemplative life, Accidia. See Ancren Riwle p. 287.
