Background
She was the daughter of a prosperous burgess of King's Lynn (Norfolk)
(The story of the eventful and controversial life of Marge...)
The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary is the earliest surviving autobiography in English. Here Kempe (c.1373 c.1440) recounts in vivid, unembarrassed detail the madness that followed the birth of the first of her fourteen children, the failure of her brewery business, her dramatic call to the spiritual life, her visions and uncontrollable tears, the struggle to convert her husband to a vow of chastity and her pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land. Margery Kempe could not read or write, and dictated her remarkable story late in life. It remains an extraordinary record of human faith and a portrait of a medieval woman of unforgettable character and courage.
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She was the daughter of a prosperous burgess of King's Lynn (Norfolk)
After the birth of her first child, Kempe suffered a spiritual crisis and was subsequently redeemed by a vision of Christ.
An illiterate woman, she believed that she had been restored from insanity by the appearance to her of Christ in human form.
Subsequently, she claimed to have contracted a spiritual marriage with God.
She was a prominent and controversial figure in her own day, but her influence did not long survive her death, which took place about 1440.
Her devotion manifested itself in excessive lamentation, for which she was ridiculed and imprisoned, and even denounced as a heretic, ‘for some said that she had a devil within her’.
Her story inspired admiration and pity for all she suffered in her search for God.
(The story of the eventful and controversial life of Marge...)