Julian was an Anchoress. It is fairly certain that she was not a nun. An anchoress was a person called to a solitary life, but one that was not cut-off from the world, but one anchored in it. Her life was one of prayer and contemplation, a life highly thought of by people of the time. Her 14th Century blockbuster The Revelations Of Divine Love made her the first woman to write a book in the English language (that we know of).