Margery Kempe and English Mysticism .... on the wireless today

This is one I enjoyed listening to, and of course learned a lot about the Middle Ages, the status of women in Medieval society,and the ferment of religious ideas period before the Reformation. 

A page from Margery Kempe's autobiography

It is one of the repeated episodes from BBC Radio 4's In Our Time series.*  

"Margery Kempe (1373-1438) produced an account of her extraordinary life in a book she dictated, 'The Book of Margery Kempe."'

She went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Rome and Santiago de Compostela, purchasing indulgences on her way, met with the anchoress Julian of Norwich and is honoured by the Church of England each 9th November. 

She sometimes doubted the authenticity of her mystical conversations with God, as did the authorities who saw her devotional sobbing, wailing and convulsions as a sign of insanity and dissoluteness. 

Her Book was lost for centuries, before emerging in a private library in 1934.

This In Our Time episode was first broadcast in June 2016. 

With Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, Katherine Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield and Anthony Bale, Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Location; Radio 4

Pictures; The only known copy of the mystic, Margery Kempe's autobiography, telling of her life and travels in England and on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostela. The original was dictated by her to a priest of Lynn and this is probably a copy made from the original, perhaps under Margery's supervision. Courtesy British Library

*Margery Kempe and English Mysticism, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4,     https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07cyfkg