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Several important medieval contemplative texts translated or written in Middle English, Medieval English, show great similarities the one to the other. It is possible they owe their format in our English to a Norwich Benedictine, Adam Easton, O.S.B., who became a Cardinal and who knew Birgitta of Sweden, her daughter Catherine of Sweden, also Catherine of Siena, in Italy, and our Julian of Norwich, in England. Birgitta, Widow and mother of eight children, died in 1373, was canonized in 1391, and proclaimed Co-Patron of Europe, 1999; Catherine of Siena, Virgin, died in 1380, was canonized in 1461, was proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1970, Co-Patron of Europe, 1999; Julian's sainthood is by popular acclamation. Linking these women also are Alfonso of Jaén, Birgitta's editor, appointed at her death to be Catherine's spiritual director, and William Flete, the English Augustinian Hermit, who is quoted in Julian of Norwich and who became Catherine of Siena's spiritual director. The texts in question are the Cloud of Unknowing and its related texts of spiritual direction and discernment of spirits, Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love, in the Paris and Sloane Manuscripts, Birgitta of Sweden's Liber Celestis, translated from Latin into Middle English, and the translation of St Catherine of Siena's Dialogo from Italian into English as The Orcherd of Syon.

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