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Born to a prominent merchant family (her father was mayor, alderman of the merchant guild, justice of the peace, and an MP.)
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•Married John Kempe at the age of 20 and bore him 14 children. After one of her pregnancies, she suffered a severe mental illness (now described as post-partum psychosis) that precipitated a spiritual crisis exacerbated by an unsympathetic confessor.
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Cured of her madness by a religious vision and began her painful and difficult transformation from a worldly businesswoman to an iconoclastic mystic.
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•Upset her contemporaries by extracting a pledge of celibacy from her unenthusiastic husband and then attesting to her status as celibate by wearing white. She also became vegetarian, made pilgrimages, conferred with religious authorities, and chastised ecclesiastics of dubious holiness.
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•Most emphatically antagonized her contemporaries by her uncontrollable weeping and “roaring” at holy sites and during mass.
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Inspired by the examples of Bridget of Sweden and Marie d’Oignes, among others, who were married yet saintly. Some of Kempe’s more extreme behaviors echo the actions of mystics like d’Oignies.
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Like those mystics, felt called to record her visions and experiences. Dictated The Book of Margery Kempe (1436-1438) – the first autobiography in English - to two successive hesitant male scribes.