Today, Liège is a city of more than half a million inhabitants in Wallonia (Belgium) and the region’s main economic and cultural centre. Iron and steel foundries, glassworks, coal mines, arms factories and copper refineries operate in Liège.
Mont-Cornillon Abbey is located on a hill in the Liège suburb known as Amercœur. Alongside the male and female monasteries founded in 1124, there was also a hospital for women, which was simultaneously a leper colony.
Orphaned at the Age of Five
Julienne de Cornillon (1193–1258), also known as Mother Julienne du Mont-Cornillon, was an Augustinian nun and prioress of the leper convent.
Little Juliana was orphaned at the age of five. After their parents’ deaths, she and her sister were placed in the care of the monastery at the abbey on Cornillon Hill. Under the care of Sister Sapientia, Juliana and her sister Agnes received a thorough education. The girl proved intelligent and, after milking cows in the cowshed, read extensively and absorbed knowledge easily.
Her proficiency in the Scriptures, in both French and Latin, enabled her to study the works of the Church Fathers, such as St Augustine and St Bernard. It was St Bernard and his works that made the greatest impression on the girl.
She Saw Through Relic Fraudsters
At the age of 14, she entered the order. She also attracted attention through her particular devotion to the Eucharist. Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, a contemporary of Juliana, wrote about this kind of piety:
Among holy women there are some for whom the Eucharist is not only sweet to the heart but also sweet to the lips. There are also those who run to meet the Eucharist and find neither peace nor rest unless they receive communion.
Her biographers emphasise Juliana’s intellectual abilities. Thanks to her intelligence, she was not fooled by fraudsters who persuaded her friend to travel to the Holy Land. The purpose was supposedly to obtain exceptional relics: the column at which Christ had been scourged and the very whip used in the torture.
When her friend was already planning the costly expedition, Juliana, suspecting fraud, advised him against leaving, and her advice proved correct. Later they learned that the column was too large to take to the monastery, while the whip was deemed an object of no value.
She Banned the Nuns from Contact with Men
After Sister Sapientia’s death, Juliana was elected prioress of the monastery, but she was not popular with her subordinates. This was all because of her devotion to a life of chastity.
Her concern for the salvation of the sisters entrusted to her brought her into conflict with them. She ordered the women to break off all contact with men, which did not please them. At first she asked gently, but when the nuns ignored her requests, she rebuked them harshly and compelled them to obey. The sisters openly rebelled against her and did everything, including slander, to strip Juliana of her authority. She managed to retain her position only thanks to the support of the prior of the male order, Father Godfrey.
However, as soon as her patron died, Juliana fell out of favour. She died at the age of 65 after years of poverty and wandering in exile, living like a martyr. It is said that she had herself walled into a cell. Such an attitude won her supporters who believed in her holiness.
Her cult was officially approved by Pope Clement VIII in 1599, an important step in recognising her contributions to the Church. The final confirmation of her holiness was her canonisation, carried out by Pius in 1869, when Juliana of Mont Cornillon was raised to the altars as a saint.
She Saw a Luminous Disc with a Black Spot
Juliana’s mystical experiences began at the age of sixteen, during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and meditation on a passage from the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 28:20). However, the nun revealed the content of these visions to her confessor only in 1230.
In her visions, she reportedly saw a luminous disc resembling the moon, but with a dark spot disrupting its radiance. She interpreted these apparitions as a symbol of the Church, whose perfection was darkened by the lack of a separate feast in honour of the Blessed Sacrament.
Twenty years later, she revealed her visions to a canon of St Martin’s Church in Liège, to whom Juliana had also entrusted this information. The canon’s account was presented to a commission of theologians that included, among others, the archdeacon Jacques Pantaleone di Troyes (the future Urban IV), who established the Feast of Corpus Christi for the entire Church in 1264.