N Cards

Question 1

Julian of Norwich (1342-1413)

Answer 1

Julian of Norwich (1342-1413) is considered to be one of the greatest English mystics . Little is known of her life aside from her writings. Even her name is uncertain, the name “Julian” coming from the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, where she occupied a cell adjoining the church as an anchoress . At the age of thirty, suffering from a severe illness and believing she was on her deathbed, Julian had a series of intense visions. These visions would twenty years later be the source of her major work, called Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love (circa 1393 ). This is believed to be the first book written by a woman in the English language.

Question 2

John Henry, Cardinal Newman

Answer 2

Newman was widely considered the best writer of prose in his day, as Stephen Daedulus in A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man argues to his peers.

Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Latin, “A defence of one’s life”) is the classic defence of the religious opinions of John Henry Newman, published in 1864 in response to what he saw as an unwarranted attack on Roman Catholic doctrine by Charles Kingsley.

The Idea of a University — As the title suggests, in this work Newman addresses the idea of the universityas “the high protecting power of all knowledge and science, of fact and principle, of inquiry and discovery of experiment and speculation.”