Kempe, Margery
Kempe, Margery ( c. 1373 – c. 1439 ),a mystic, daughter of John Brunham who was once mayor of King's Lynn in Norfolk. She married John Kempe of Lynn c. 1393 . She gave up married life to devote herself to religion and she travelled widely on pilgrimage: to Jerusalem, Rome, Compostela, and Wilsnack in Poland. She dictated, probably in the 1420s, her Book of Margery Kempe which recounts with great vividness her visions and experiencess of a more general kind: her temptations to lechery, her travels, and her trial for heresy. Though the work is not a strictly mystical text (like The Cloud of Unknowing ), it is a vigorous and readable piece of early autobiography with considerable appeal. Ed. S. B. Meech and E. H. Allen (EETS os 212, 1940 ).
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