Their meditations tended to revolve around Christ’s Passion, and the women’s ability to empathize with his/Mary’s suffering.

•They sought to inject a stronger feminine element into their religious world view, either by androgynizing God or by valorizing the roles of Mary and female saints.

They saw other women as role models and authorities for spiritual experience.

They had a vexed relationship with Church literature & authority since they were often illiterate, unable to write, or unable to read Latin.

They expressed their religious experiences bodily:  through fasting, vegetarianism, special clothes, weeping, roaring, stigmata, headaches, anorexia, hair shirts, self-flagellation, &c.

They made pilgrimages.

They were forced to confront the authority of the Church – in Catherine and Hildegard’s case, they submitted to the Church and received the stamp of approval; Margery Kempe, on the other hand, had to repeatedly defend herself against hostile clerics.