  Following ideas introduced by Beardon-Minda and by Baribeau-Rivard-Wegert in
the context of the Schwarz-Pick lemma, we use the iterated hyperbolic
difference quotients to prove a multipoint Julia lemma. As applications, we
give a sharp estimate from below of the angular derivative at a boundary point,
generalizing results due to Osserman, Mercer and others; and we prove a
generalization to multiple fixed points of an interesting estimate due to Cowen
and Pommerenke. These applications show that iterated hyperbolic difference
quotients and multipoint Julia lemmas can be useful tools for exploring in a
systematic way the influence of higher order derivatives on the boundary
behaviour of holomorphic self-maps of the unit disk.
