Thanks to Otfried for asking me to be a part of you.
I took early retirement to enter an Anglican convent in England, so deeply
into editing Julian of Norwich that I felt impelled to live, not just study
her. But then my convent decided to go into retirement and I was out in the
cold, with just books and computer left, not even my cloak! So I fled to
Italy to carry on with editing Julian, my co-editor being Sister Anna Maria
Reynolds, C.P., in Ireland, who had edited the texts excellently for her
Leeds University theses in war-time conditions but not published them then.
We are publishing the edition to subscribers, giving the three manuscript
versions, letter by letter, line by line, folio by folio, in three volumes,
as they are in Westminster, Paris, and Amherst Manuscripts, with variants,
and with facing page translations, with explanatory notes. Thus all the
versions can be easily compared, for instance, the hazel nut passages. It's
a labour of love, without money. The edition is typeset with Nota Bene and
includes the manuscripts' capitals, rubrications, engrossings, marginalia,
and rulings. There is as well a Julian Library Portfolio which includes
transcriptions of Julian-related manuscripts to which one may likewise
subscribe. Plus an imminent Julian Website for contemplatives and scholars.
Before Julian, my work was on St Birgitta, before St Birgitta, Brunetto
Latino, before Brunetto Latino, Dante, Chaucer and Langland, and on the side
monastic liturgical drama as influenced by the plays of Terence. My Ph.D.
was from University of California, Berkeley, I taught at Quincy University,
Princeton University, University of Colorado, Boulder, at the last being
Professor and Director, Medieval Studies. Am still saying the Sarum Offices,
living as a hermit, and joying in Florence. I walk down to Settignano
through olive groves, seeing Santa Maria del Fiore, now seven hundred years
old, below me:
`Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,
umile e alta piu` che creatura,
termine fisso d'etterno consiglio,
tu se` colei che l'umana natura
nobilitasti si`, che'l suo fattore
non disdegno` di farsi sua fattura.'
Dante, `Paradiso' XXXIII.1-6
Hermit of the Holy Family
Julia Bolton Holloway, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita
presso Nencetti
via del Partigiano 16
Montebeni
50061 FIESOLE
ITALY
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