Margery Kempe, Mystic
9 November -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of any Saint, page 513
Margery Kempe was born in Lynne in Norfolk in the late
fourteenth century, a contemporary of Julian of Norwich.
She received many visions, several of them of the holy
family, one of the most regular being of the crucifixion.
She also had conversations with the saints. She was much
sought after as a visionary, was endlessly in trouble with
the Church, rebuked by the Archbishop and was more than once
imprisoned. Following the messages in her visions, she
undertook pilgrimages to many holy places, including
Walsingham, Canterbury, Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem,
often setting out penniless. She was blessed with the gift
of tears and seems to have been favoured with singular signs
of Christ's love, whereby for long periods she enjoyed
consciousness of a close communion with him and developed a
strong compassion for the sins of the world. Her
autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe, recounts her
remarkable life. She died towards the middle of the
fifteenth century.