“At church, the liturgy was recited in Latin, and in the marketplace, many of the merchants spoke French. But together, arm in arm, avoiding puddles, Julian and her mother spoke English. English was a more carnal language than French or Latin, a language of the earth and of the body. Because it came from the countryside and from the people, some thought it impoverished and inadequate for expressing abstract thought. . . . For Julian, English was primarily the language of home. With the currents of Danish, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, French, and Latin, this homespun English had never been formalized into a language of power. It had no set spellings or grammatical certainties. It was a language in use for practical purposes, constantly adapted to individual needs and contexts. . . . In other words, English was the language of the ‘lowly and simple things.’ For Julian, these limits eventually became a gift; in English she found a language that could exude both intimacy and power, a language in which the rules were not so well established that they couldn’t be broken” (Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, 12-13).