skirting heresy the life and times of margery kempe

Kempe was an orthodox Catholic and, like other medieval mystics, believed that she was summoned to a 'greater intimacy with Christ' as a result of multiple visions and experiences she had as an adult. A letter survives from Gdańsk which identifies the name of her eldest son as John and gives a reason for his visit to Lynn in 1431. Margery and John had at least fourteen children. At around twenty years of age, Kempe married John Kempe, who became a town official in 1394. As one would expect, Kempe appears to have been taught the Pater Noster (the Lord's Prayer), Ave Maria, the Ten Commandments, and other 'virtues, vices, and articles of faith'. As an adult, a priest read to her 'works of religious devotion' in English, which suggests that she might have been unable to read them herself, although she seems to have learned various texts by heart. No records remain of any formal education that Kempe may have received. Kempe's kinsman Robert Brunham, possibly her brother, became a Member of Parliament for Lynn in 14. By 1340 he had joined the Parliament of Lynn. The first record of her Brunham family is a mention of her grandfather, Ralph de Brunham, in 1320 in the Red Register of Lynn.

Her father, John Brunham, was a merchant in Lynn, mayor of the town and Member of Parliament. She was born Margery Burnham or Brunham around 1373 in Bishop's Lynn (now King's Lynn), Norfolk, England. She is honoured in the Anglican Communion, but has not been canonised as a Catholic saint. Her book chronicles Kempe's domestic tribulations, her extensive pilgrimages to holy sites in Europe and the Holy Land, as well as her mystical conversations with God. 1373 – after 1438) was an English Christian mystic, known for writing through dictation The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language.

Skirting heresy the life and times of margery kempe