MARGERY KEMPE 1373 - 1440

Before the 14th century few people were literate as education was kept for the men in monasteries and at the universities. When town life developed and education began to involve women, mystics and articulate women were easier to find. Three who were known about already were highborn Queen Margaret of Scotland, Abbess Hildegard of Bingen and Prioress Christina of Markyate. These ladies and other mystics sometimes took a prominent part in movements of the time and they were known as visionaries who were taken very seriously. Two English ones were Julian of Norwich, who was little known in her lifetime, and Margery Kempe, who was known. Margery was very different from the others. She was not virgin, widowed, highborn, or in contact with the important people of the day. We also know about her through her autobiography. She was the daughter of John Burnham, mayor of Lynn several times, and she married John Kempe in 1393. After 14 children and a serious breakdown she went on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. She was quite open in her book about her temporary madness and the criticism or support she got from the clergy. Margery was very devout and sincere and sought union with Christ and His sufferings. In 1413 she and her husband took a vow of chastity. Margery went on a number of arduous pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Compostela, Italy, Norway and Danzig. Her book "The Book of Margery Kempe" was dictated to 2 clerks between 1432 and 1436 and includes her visions. Here is an extract from her book; she always refers to herself in the third person;

This creature had divers tokens in her bodily hearing. One was a kind of sound as if it had been a pair of bellows blowing in her ear. She being startled thereat, was warned in her soul to have no fear, for it was the sound of the Holy Ghost, and then our Lord turned that sound into the voice of a dove, and then he turned it into the voice of a little bird which is called a redbreast that songfull merrily oftentimes in her right ear