The Showings of Julian of Norwich

Julian was a medieval mystic who wrote down her visions, which she called showings. In this episode,  we talk about her life in context of mysticism and how it fit into the context of Christianity in medieval Europe.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
We are going to talk about a medieval mystic today,
which is a topic we seem to roll around to

(00:21):
about once every three years or so. I um. They
are usually topics that you have selected, like I feel
like it's it's one of those things that your brain
just is, like, I need a little mysticism now sometimes
I do. It's also I took a class in college.
I studied literature in college, and I took a class

(00:42):
that was all about medieval women writers. And it was
about women writing in medieval Europe and then also women
writing in hay On, Japan, which was happening at the
same time. And a lot of the women who were
writing in medieval Europe were, uh were mystics in in
one way, so like that's part of it. Really loved
that class, and I loved so many of the women

(01:02):
writers that I learned about in it. Um. Even though
at this point it's it's starting, it's starting from scratch
with research, Like I don't remember any of the details
from class from oh twenty years ago. Yeah, my brain
can't retain it in any sort of clarity for that long. Yeah,
this this time, we are talking about Julian of Norwich.

(01:23):
And we've talked about other mystics before, like I just said,
there was Marjorie Kemp and Hildegard of bing In. We
haven't really talked about mysticism in general or how that
fits into the context of medieval European history and specifically
Christianity in medieval Europe. So we are going to cover
that context today in addition to talking about Julian and

(01:46):
mysticism is not unique to Christianity or to Europe or
to the medieval period. It's been part of religions around
the world for most of human history, and secular mysticism
exists as well. But when it comes to Chris sent
mysticism in Europe, things really started flourishing in the late
thirteenth and fourteen centuries. These centuries were dangerous and chaotic,

(02:08):
and we are really going to only scratch the surface
in this recap. In thirteen o nine, Pope Clement the
Fifth moved the papal capital from Rome to Avignon in France.
He was escaping political pressures in Rome, and then also
did this to appease King Philip the Fourth of France.
Over the next seven decades, the papacy became increasingly French,

(02:32):
rather than being more Italian as it had been before. Then,
in thirteen seventy seven, Pope Gregory the eleventh moved the
seat of the papacy back to Rome, but his successor,
Urban the sixth, was difficult to work with and but
it heads with the cardinals, so the cardinals elected their
own Pope, Clement the seventh, who returned to Avignon, and

(02:53):
this set off a series of rival popes and anti
popes in what became known as the Great Schism or
Western is Um, which lasted until fourteen seventeen. The Catholic
Church was immensely powerful and religion touched virtually every facet
of people's lives, so all of this upheaval damaged the
church's reputation and spawned all kinds of chaos and uncertainty. Yeah,

(03:16):
we talked about it a little bit more in the
episodes about the Defenistrations of Prague, which involved throwing people
out of windows in thirteen thirty seven, So to rewind
a little bit. Ongoing conflicts between England and France evolved
into the Hundred Years War, and that continued off and
on until fourteen fifty three. So the Hundred Years War

(03:37):
was in a lot of places, overlapping all of this
chaos and the Catholic Church. The war was connected to
disputes over territory and to the line of succession of
King Charles the Fourth of France. He died without an heir,
and then England tried to take control of the French throne.
This war was marked by active battles as well as
lengthy sieges, and it's the war where djod of Arc,

(03:59):
who the French mystic in her own right, came into prominence.
In addition to war and religious upheaval, there was the
Great European Famine, which lasted from thirteen fifteen to thirteen
twenty two, followed by the Black Death, which peaked in
thirteen forty seven. It is impossible to calculate exactly how
many people died as a result of either of these,

(04:20):
but the most common estimates are that the famine killed
about five percent of the population, while the Black Death
killed as much as one third. That is a widely
cited number, but it's also extrapolated from a few specific
cities records and members of the clergy were disproportionately affected
by the Black Deaths since their religious work involved caring

(04:40):
for the sick and the dying, and England specifically experienced
its own problems in addition to all of this, including
massive flooding and thirteen fourteen that helped set off that famine,
and the peasant uprising of thirteen eighty one, which is
also called what Tyler's Rebellion. This rebellion started in East Anglia,
which is whe or Juliane of Norwich lived, and it

(05:02):
started as a response to some unpopular laws that had
been passed that year. He's included a poll tax and
the Statute of Laborers. That second statute set a cap
on workers wages because of a labor shortage that followed
the Black Death. Of course, there were plenty of other
things going on as well. In the face of all

(05:22):
this chaos and war and death, many people in Europe
felt like the world was corrupt and out of control,
and that God had turned his back on mankind. Religious
thought and writing were often cynical and focused on the
fear of hell and damnation, and the Church also started
cracking down on heresy. We should also know that there
were definitely people of other religions besides Catholicism in Europe

(05:46):
at this time, but Catholicism was the overwhelming dominating force
in the places that we're talking about. Mysticism was a
response to all of this, and it was essentially the
opposite of that trend toward fear and damnation. It can
be tricky to pin down an exact definition of what
is and isn't mysticism, though in the medieval era, Christian

(06:08):
mystics were all over the place in terms of their
backgrounds and life experiences. They included members of the clergy
and the laity. Some were wealthy and others were poor.
Some were highly educated, and others couldn't read or write.
So each individual mystic might not embody every single hallmark
of mysticism, but they still all fit under that overall umbrella.

(06:30):
As a general rule, Europe's Christian mystics approached God and
religion through love instead of fear. They were devoted to
the humanity of Jesus Christ and to having a personal
relationship with him. They often described some kind of intense
transformative experience in which they were awakened to a sense
of the awe inspiring love of God and Jesus. Many

(06:53):
had visions or revelations in which they viscerally experienced God's
presence and felt personally connected to the deity. Many of
them wrote about or dictated those experiences in the vernacular
rather than informal Latin, even if they had formal training
in Latin. Even though mystics tended to approach religion through love,

(07:13):
it wasn't necessarily a cozy hug fest. Mystics tended to
be outsiders, and they often lived very solitary lives. Mystics
also tended to live in really restrictive ways. The life
of a mystic tended to be filled with penitence and
abstinence and a sense of purification. As examples in previous episodes,
we talked about Marjorie Kemp wearing a hair shirt as

(07:36):
a form of penance and Hildegard of Bingen interpreting serious
illnesses as punishment from God for failing to do what
he had asked of her. Anchor Rights and hermits took
this life of restriction, abstinence, and solitude to an extreme.
Both chose to live in a solitary way, with their
lives devoted to introspection, penitence, and spiritual purification. Hermits typically

(08:00):
lived in remote, undeveloped areas, but had the freedom to
move from one hermitage to another. Anchor rights stayed in
one place, enclosed in a small cell attached to a
church or other religious site. There were two hundred fourteen
documented anchorites and hermits in England and the fourteenth century.
They were thought of as outsiders, but they could also

(08:22):
be sources of counsel and guidance for the communities around them.
They might act as teachers or just sort of spiritual counselors,
and some of those who had been ordained as priests
might also act as confessors. Paul of Thebes is usually
described as the first Christian hermit. He fled religious persecution
in Egypt in about the year to fifty and lived

(08:44):
in a cave in the wilderness. It's not clear who
the first anchor right was, but the practice was being
formalized by the twelfth century. The formal steps to becoming
an anchorite included a religious service with mass and prayers
to the dead. Because after being enclosed the anchor right
was considered dead to the rest of the world. An
anchorites enclosure was called an anchor hold. The recommended size

(09:07):
for an anchor hold was twelve feet or about three
point six meters square, but they really ranged from small
nooks that you could barely turn around into much more
spacious accommodations that might even have multiple rooms or accommodate guests.
Anchorites typically had at least one servant, and some anchor
holds were large enough for the servant to live with

(09:28):
the anchorite while still having the freedom to come and go.
And this might sound like a luxury, but it was
really a necessity. Since you couldn't leave the cell. You
were dependent on someone else to do everything from emptying
the chamber pot to procuring food to replenishing your supply
of menstrual rags. That typical layout of an anchor hold

(09:49):
usually had three windows. One of them faced into the
sanctuary of that adjoining building that the anchor hold was
built into, so the anchorite could observe religious services and
receive communion speak to a confessor. Another was used to
deliver things like food and other supplies, and to allow
the anchorite to act as a teacher or a confessor.
A lot of anchorites also did some kind of work,

(10:12):
like sewing or copying, and that work would be passed
back and forth through the second window. The third window
was for light, and it had a translucent covering over it,
and sometimes it's covering had two layers with It was
basically a cutout with an opaque layer that created a
shape of a cross in the light. Some anchorites had
a little freedom of movement. The window into the sanctuary

(10:34):
might be more like a door, allowing them to enter
the church at night, and sometimes it was the anchorite's
responsibility to keep the candles lit at night or to
sound the alarm if something went wrong at the church.
The second window might open out into a parlor or
other area where the anchorite could sit and talk to
members the religious or secular community, and some anchor holds

(10:55):
had small garden plots attached, which the anchor right tended
apart for this, though, an anchorite who left their anchor
hold was subject to arrest and potentially damnation. Being an
anchorite was one of the few religious roles that was
open to women. Female Anchorites were often called anchor is is,
and more women than men she used to pursue this

(11:15):
particular life. There were also women who were called vowses,
who lived a very similar life, but did so in
their own homes. A lot of them were widows. Although
male anchorites tended to have been priests, female anchorites and
vowses were often lay people. Being an anchorite was also
one of the few ways that a person could pursue

(11:36):
such a devotedly religious life without having money. Joining a
convent or monastery typically required some kind of dowry, and
in some places this was the case for anchorites as well.
But some anchorites were supported by the church and the
local community, including through the giving of alms and bequests
in people's wills. Julian of Norwich was an anchorite, and

(11:58):
we will talk about her after responsive right. The woman
we knew as Julian of Norwich was born in Norwich,
East Anglia, England, and thirteen forty two. I recognize natives
to that place pronounce it slightly differently in a way

(12:20):
I can't quite replicate, because it ends more like a j.
Norrich was the second largest city in medieval England after London.
It had several schools, multiple monastic communities, and a cathedral
that dated back at least to eleven oh three. This
region prepared students for study at Oxford or Cambridge and
for the priesthood. Norrich had at least fifty Paris churches,

(12:42):
four of them within half a mile of St. Julian's Church,
which is where Julian wasn't closed, and because the Catholic
Church had such a large presence in the city, Norrich
also had a large community of artisans who worked on
church commissions. These included architects, glass workers, still workers, painters, sculptors,
and others. Norwich was also a trading hub with a

(13:05):
thriving merchant and craft community. In other words, it was
a prominent, bustling, and culturally rich city. We don't know
much at all about Julian's life, like literally almost nothing,
but we can draw some conclusions about her growing up
in Norwich. She might not have had a formal education,
but she did grow up in a place that valued education,

(13:26):
which probably influenced her understanding of an approach to the world.
And even if she didn't have much formal religious instruction,
this thriving religious community in Norwich would have trickled into
things like the sermons that she heard during regular church attendance.
She really might have been hearing a wider variety of
more complex and nuanced religious thought than she would have

(13:48):
been if she had grown up in a more remote
area with the same parish priest her whole life. We
also know that Julian lived through all of that upheaval
that we talked about before the break. The Death reached
Norwich at the start of thirteen forty nine when Julian
was seven, killing about a third of its population and
half of its priests. Although the Black Death ended in

(14:10):
thirteen fifties three, plague returned to Norwich twice more before
Julian became an anchoress, first in thirteen sixty one and
then in thirteen sixty nine. And we don't know whether
Julian married or had children, but her religious writing includes
themes of motherhood and mothering that we're going to talk
about more in a little bit, and it's possible that
if she did have children, that they may have died

(14:32):
in one of these plagues or from some other cause.
Julian wrote that in her girlhood she prayed for three things.
One was that she wanted to understand the passion of
Christ too. She wanted to experience a physical illness that
was so serious that she and everyone in her life
would think she was dying. This illness would let her

(14:52):
suffer along with Christ, and the severity of this illness
would let her be purged and then come back to
God with the life of worship. The third thing that
she prayed for was that she wanted what she described
as three wounds to be made deeper in her life
and the words of Grace Warwick, who edited Julian's work
in nineteen o one, these wounds were quote, contrition inside

(15:14):
of sin, compassion inside of sorrow, and longing after God.
When she was in her own words thirty and a half,
Julian became very ill, so sick that she and everyone
around her did think that she was dying. This illness
lasted for seven days, and on the fourth day she
was given last rites. The seventh day of this illness

(15:36):
was either May eight or thirteen, thirteen seventy three. This
date discrepancy is because in surviving copies of the manuscript
there are two different sets of Roman numerals. One says
that this happened on May the v I I I,
and the other says that it happened on May the
x I I I. Her curate had brought a crucifix

(15:58):
for her to look at in her last hours. On
the seventh day of her illness, at about four in
the morning, Julian's mother, thinking that she had died, bent
over to close her eyes, and in that moment Julian
started experiencing a series of fifteen religious visions that went
on until about nine am the following night, when it
was clear that she was not dying. She had a

(16:21):
sixteenth vision that confirmed what she had seen before. Not
long afterward, Julian documented what she had seen, either by
writing it down or by dictating it to an amanuensis.
She described herself as quote a simple creature that could
know no letter, which suggests that she dictated her account.
But at the same time, her later writing reveals a

(16:41):
complex understanding of various aspects of theology, something that it
would have been really difficult for her to attain without
knowing how to read. So it's possible that that quote
no no letter meant that she didn't know Latin, not
that she couldn't read or write English, or it's possible
that she didn't know how to read when she first
experienced these visions, but that she learned how to read later.

(17:04):
There's also a note at the end of one of
the surviving manuscripts that that references a scribe who had
written it down, but that was probably a scribe who
copied the manuscript, not like the scribe who was literally
writing it with her at the time. At some point
after she experienced these visions, Julian was enclosed as an

(17:25):
anchorite at the church of St Julian and Consfort in Norwich.
According to Bloomfield's History of Norfolk, which was written in
the eighteenth century, quote in the east part of the
churchyard stood an anchorage in which an anchor's or recluse
dwelt until the dissolution, when the house was demolished, though
the foundations may still be seen in thirteen ninety three.

(17:46):
Lady Julian, the anchors here, was a strict recluse and
had two servants to attend her in her old age.
This woman was in these days esteemed as one of
the greatest holiness. The history goes on to name for
other anchorses who followed Julian at the church, with the
first one starting in fourteen seventy two. The first contemporaneous

(18:08):
reference we have to her as an anchor righte dates
back to thirteen ninety four, although she was probably enclosed
well before that. Although Norwich had an extensive religious and
spiritual community, there were no recorded anchor rights in the
city before Julian. Most sources conclude that she took the
name Julian, naming herself after the church where she was enclosed.

(18:30):
Although it was typical for people who became monks and
nuns to leave their given name behind and take the
name of a saint, which still happens today, there weren't
many other documented cases of people doing the same thing
when they were enclosed as an anchor right, So Julian
really may have been named Julian from birth. It was
not an uncommon name for women at the time. It

(18:50):
was essentially another spelling of Jillian. Or she might have
become a nun at some point and taken the name
of St. Julian when she did that before she became
an anchor, right That's really speculation, though there's not documentation
that she had ever been a nun. About twenty years
after writing this first account of her visions, Julian wrote
a much longer one, about six times as long as

(19:13):
that first document. She went into each vision in much
more detail and into how she now understood them after
twenty years of inward reflection and study, and she had
finished this longer document by about thirteen nineties three. Beyond that,
we just don't have a lot of documentation. Even in
this account of her visions, she doesn't talk about herself
much at all, so what we have to piece together

(19:36):
comes from other people's accounts. Marjorie Kemp, who we talked
about in a previous episode, visited Julian in about fourteen thirteen,
and Marjorie referred to Julian as Dame, which was a
title that was commonly used for nuns. Some sources pointed
this as evidence that Julian did become a nun before
she became an anchor, right but it does appear that

(19:57):
Marjorie is the only person who refers to her this way.
Most of the rest of the details we have about
Julian come from other people's wills. People came to her
throughout her time as an anchor righte for help and guidance,
and several of them remembered her in their will. We
know she had at least two servants during her lifetime
because someone left each of the money. Isabelle Uffered, who

(20:18):
was the Countess of Suffolk, left Julian twenty shillings and
her will in fourteen sixteen, along with making other bequests.
This was the last person to specifically name Julian in
their will, but some other people left bequests to an
anchors at St. Julian's, not naming the name. The anchorss
by name. Then that went on until fourteen twenty nine.

(20:40):
Since Bloomfield's History of Norfolk says that the next anchors
after Julian came in fourteen seventy two, it's possible that
these unnamed anchoresses were Julian and that she was still
living as late as fourteen twenty nine. And after the break,
we're going to talk about all those visions that we've
been referencing and their influence on Christianity. While Julian herself

(21:08):
called her visions showings, usually with an E instead of
an O and show her book is often published under
the name Revelations of Divine Love because the overarching theme
of these visions, it's all about the love of God
and loving God. It begins quote, this is a revelation
of love that Jesus Christ are endless bliss made in

(21:28):
sixteen showings or revelations, particular, in a simple conversational style,
she walks through her series of visions. Along the way,
she documents her understanding of God's love for mankind and
various elements of theology. In her relating her first revelation,
she writes, quote, I saw that He is unto us
everything that is good and comfortable for us. He is

(21:50):
our clothing that for love wrapith us class with us
and all encloses us for tender love that he may
never leave us, being to us all thing that is
good as to mine understanding. Her tone is very comforting
and reassuring, and stresses over and over that God loves
all of his creations. She frames this as a comfort

(22:13):
that she needed to receive from God, and now that
she has, she's sharing it with the rest of the world.
The visions began with Julian looking at a crucifix on
what she believed was her deathbed, and many of the
earliest showings are related to the crucifixion of Jesus and
specifically what was happening to him on the cross. The
visions themselves are not necessarily comforting. Many of them are

(22:36):
focused on wounds, suffering, and pain. Julian described an early
showing of the blood coming out from under Jesus's crown
of thorns as quote quick and lifelike and horrifying and dreadful,
sweet and lovely. But no matter how graphic the descriptions
are of Jesus on the cross, each one circles back
to Julian, gaining a deeper knowledge of the scope and

(22:58):
breadth of divine love. Of Julian's accounts of the earliest
showings mainly involved the vision itself and her understanding of
what the vision means. Sometimes God or Jesus speaks to
her or asks her a question which she answers, and
at first these are pretty straightforward. So Jesus asks art
thou well pleased that I suffered for thee and Julian answers, yeah,

(23:21):
good Lord, I thank THEE, yea good lord, blessed? Mayst
thou be? Or God asks wilt thou see her, referring
to the Virgin Mary before showing Julian a vision of
the Virgin Mary, but in later visions, Julian becomes more
active and starts asking direct questions about religious issues. Revelation

(23:42):
begins quote after this, the Lord brought to my mind
the longing that I had to him afore. And I
saw that nothing leaded me but sin. And so I
looked generally upon us all, and we thought, if sin
had not been we should all have been clean and
like to our Lord as he made us. This is
the essentially asking why God didn't just use his power

(24:02):
to prevent sin in the first place, leaving mankind pure
rather than in a state of suffering, basically preventing all
these problems. Jesus answers Julian with the most famous line
from her showings, quote it behooved that there should be sin,
but all shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well. Revelation continues

(24:26):
on from this, largely as a meditation on the idea
of all shall be well. In her Showings, Julian also
writes about Jesus in a way that probably would have
been considered heretical if it had gotten wider recognition. While
she was alive, that has happened in more recent years
as well. While reflecting on her first fourteen visions, Julian

(24:46):
meditates on the idea of God and Jesus as a mother.
Quote the mother may give her child suck of her milk,
But our precious Mother, Jesus, he may feed us with himself,
and do with it full courteously and full tenderly, with
the blessed sacrament that is precious food of my life,
And with all the sweet sacraments. He sustaineth us full,

(25:07):
mercifully and graciously. She later goes on to say, quote
this fair, lovely word mother, it is so sweet and
so close in nature to itself, that it may not
verily be said of none but him and to her,
that is very mother, of him and of all, to
the property of motherhood belongeth natural love, wisdom, and knowing.

(25:29):
And it is good for though it be so that
our body forth bringing be but little, low and simple,
and regard of our spiritual forthbringing, yet it is He
that do with it in the creatures, by whom that
is done. Julian's fifteenth revelation is one of closure. She
writes about how the whole time she was receiving these visions,

(25:50):
she hoped that she would quote be delivered of this
world and of this life. But in this last revelation
she has shown how being removed from pain and want
is a reward word for patients in abiding by God's will.
She later says, quote, and in this he brought to
mind the property of a glad giver. A glad giver
taketh but little heed of the thing that he giveth,

(26:12):
but all his desire and all his intent is to
please him and solace him to whom he giveth it.
And if the receiver take the gift highly and thankfully,
then the courteous giver setteth at not all his cost
and all his travail, for joy and delight, that he
hath pleased and solaced him that he loveth. And then
after this God leaves her with the thought quote, what

(26:34):
should it then aggrieve thee to suffer? A while? Said,
it is my will and my worship. Julian had her
sixteenth vision the following night, as she was beginning to
recover and her life was no longer in danger. She
writes of this one as gaining insight into her own soul.
But in it she is also visited by Satan, who
she calls the fiend. She thinks to herself, quote, thou

(26:58):
hast now great business to thee in the faith, for
that thou shouldst not be taken of the enemy. Wouldst
thou now from this time evermore, be so busy to
keep THEE from sin? This were a good and a
sovereign occupation. Julian's book ends with several chapters of her
personal understanding of all these visions, and by her book
I mean the longer version of all of this. It

(27:20):
wraps up with her overall sense of the whole of
them being quote, wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in
this thing? Learn it well? Love was his meaning? Who
showed it the love? What showed he the love? Wherefore
showed it he? For love? Hold THEE therein, and thou
shalt learn, and no more in the same, But thou

(27:41):
shalt never know nor learn therein other thing? Without end.
Thus was I learned that love was our Lord's meaning.
We know that Julian viewed this whole experience as a
gift from God that she then went on to share
with others, and unlike many of the other books written
by Anchorites, and hermits. During this time, she seems to
have meant her work for everyone, not just for other

(28:04):
solitary religious people, and this was remarkable. Julian wrote surely
confidently and authoritatively about religion when that really wasn't considered
to be women's domain, and she did it for ordinary people,
not only for her own religious circle. She also did
not shy away from material that could have led to

(28:24):
her being condemned for heresy. Yeah, there were other women
anchorites who were writing things that were sort of meant
as guides for other people like themselves, so sort of
a guide of how to be an Anchorite or theological
uh questions for for other Anchorites. But she really seems
to want this to be a work for everyone. And

(28:46):
we know that people were talking to and learning from
Julian while she lived, but it doesn't appear that many
people were really reading her work until much later. Some
of this is because of attitudes in England and the
decades after her death. So in Fort, you know, one
while she was still living, King Henry the fourth ordered
for heretics to be burned, and that included anyone found

(29:06):
with heretical books, which Julian's showings could have been The
oldest surviving copy of the short version of her account
dates back to the fifteenth century. There are three handwritten
manuscripts dating back to the seventeenth century. The first time
it was printed was in sixteen seventy, almost three hundred
years after that first religious experience, and it probably came

(29:27):
from a sixteen fifty manuscript. The first people who wrote
about reading Julian's work were three Benedictines from England who
had been exiled to France. That happened in the seventeenth century.
The Church of St. Julian was largely destroyed on June seven,
nineteen forty two, when it was bombed during World War two.
By then it was affiliated with the Church of England

(29:48):
rather than the Catholic Church. The structure was rebuilt in
the nineteen fifties, and at that time the site of
the former anchorites cell was turned into a shrine to Julian.
All that that shrine is probably larger than the actual
anchor hold was. Had history played out differently, Julian of
Norwich and several of her contemporary English mystics might have
been canonized, but the Protestant Reformation began about one years

(30:12):
after her death in England split away from the Catholic Church. Today,
she has an unofficial feast day in the Catholic calendar.
It's on May thirteenth, while the Anglican, Episcopal and Lutheran
churches listed as May eight. She has become a symbol
of comfort and hope in the centuries since she lived.
The Order of Julian of Norwich was established within the

(30:33):
Episcopalian Church in That's Julian of Norwich. Her life was
so strange, especially to a modern I, because she was
in this anchor hold for us lengthy amount of it
as far as we know. And at the same time,
like her writing is just so comforting, just over and

(30:58):
over and over, and it's like and but God loves
all of his creatures and it's great. Um. It's sort
of her whole underlying tone throughout all of it. Do
you have a little bit of a listener mail? Yes,
I do have some listener mail. This is from Aubrey.
Aubrey says, Dear Tracy and Holly. I recently finished listening
to the back catalog of episodes of stuff you missed

(31:18):
in history class, and now I'm sad that I have
to wait impatiently for new episodes. Thank you for keeping
me company through many boring hours of work. I feel
like we're friends, but not in a creepy way. I
know we're really not friends. I love that sentence. I
wanted to write you today because of something I just
learned that I find really exciting and fascinating. I think
Holly particular might be interested. Last week I visited a

(31:40):
small museum in Saratoga County, New York, and had the
opportunity to chat with one of the museum's researchers. The
museum includes local archives, and I was looking for information
on my historic home. I happened to mention some of
the odd things I found while renovating, such as a
child sized, possibly nineteenth century, leather shoe in case in
horse hair plaster in a wall. I imagined that a

(32:04):
frustrated plasterer with tiny feet had kicked the wall while
it was drying, and then, unable to free the shoe,
had plastered over it. But the researcher, whose name is Anne,
had a different take. Was a concealed garment. She explained
that concealing a garment in a wall or chimney to
ward off evil was a tradition brought to the US
by the British. She said that often a child's outgrown
shoe would be used if there were no younger siblings

(32:26):
to inherit it. Not knowing any better, I removed the
shoe from my wall last year, and I now opened
my home to invasion by evil spirits, Live and learn.
I thought this would be a fun episode suggestion, or
that you might enjoy reading about it. Here's a link
to an article I found. Thanks for being awesome, Aubrey.
Thank you for this note. Aubrey. This Uh, this actually
came in a while ago. Uh that it came in

(32:47):
about six weeks ago, and it caused me confusion because
I had this moment where I was like, I remember
talking about this on the show, though I felt like
Holly and I had this whole conversation of about putting
shoes in walls and about which is getting stuck in
the shoes because they can't go backwards, and and I said,
which would have to fight me because she's taking my shoe?

(33:10):
You did say that, um, And then I eventually realized
there is a thing that happens every year here in
uh in Boston, in a couple of places besides Boston
called History Camp that is sort of an unconference where
people basically volunteer their time to deliver papers and um,

(33:30):
it's a cool opportunity to go and learn bits of
things about lots of different aspects of history. And there
I saw a whole panel that was about concealed garments
and walls and witch markings on walls and all of that,
uh stuff related to belief in the supernatural um in
colonial and afterward New England. And I sort of conflated

(33:54):
that whole experience with our podcast and made it into
something we had talked about. No, no, what we did
talk about it because I hadn't did. We talked about
it during a live show. Okay, Um, you are not crazy.
I mean you maybe, but this isn't the proof. Um,
I'm not a medical professional who concern these things. Uh. Yeah,

(34:15):
we have talked about it, and I think that made
it onto the show because I vaguely recall another listener
mail or someone commenting about, um me fighting a witch. Um.
But we have talked about it. Although it wasn't the
subject of a show, it came up during a live show. Okay,
I really like I had this whole thing where I
was searching our website and I was searching my folder

(34:38):
full of old episode scripts, and I was racking my
brain like I remember talking about this, when was it.
I'm glad to know now that that was a real
conversation and not just a total fabrication of my mind
being like this thing unrelated to the show. Now, all
of you listeners have heard me work through my own memory, uh,

(35:02):
which I wish was still as sharp as it was
when I was twenty. I mean, I can't remember anything,
so you'll get except I remember that conversation because I
said I would fight a witch from my shoe. You did,
you did. So. Thank you Aubrey for helping me rekindle
that memory. Thank you Holly also for helping me. Together.

(35:25):
We'll figure it. Between the two of us. We can
assemble memory. We can. We can. We'll probably get helpful
email emails from people who either have heard this on
the podcast or we're at the live show that we're
talking about, uh, and they'll be like, oh, yeah, anyway,
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast. We love to get email. We

(35:47):
do read them all. We are not great at answering them,
but we do read them all. We are a history
podcast that how Stuff Works dot com. We are also
all over social media at missed in History. That's where
you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and winter and you
can come to our website, which is a missing history
dot com. You can find show notes to all the
episodes Holly and I have ever done. Today's show notes

(36:07):
includes links to the entire text of Julian's book, and
you can subscribe to our show on the I heart
radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for

(36:29):
my heart Radio, visit the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.