A medieval spirituality

AN EXPLORER’S GUIDE TO JULIAN OF
NORWICH
By Veronica Mary Rolf
IVP Academic. 240 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 0 830 850 884

Reading medieval texts has never been easy for evangelicals. The advocacy of certain theological positions – transubstantiation, the exaltation of the Virgin Mary, the works-oriented view of salvation, papal authoritarianism – by medieval authors makes many evangelicals cringe and write off the entire medieval world as an era of church history best forgot.

But it was a long era – at least 800 years if one dates the beginning of the Middle Ages to the rise of Islam, which destroyed the world of Late Antiquity.