Eleanor Myerson

Why must medieval mysticism be treated as a malady?

Hetta Howes describes Margery Kempe’s mystical transformation as an ‘illness… remarkably like post-natal depression’ – perhaps in a bid to make medieval life more ‘relatable’

From The Book of Margery Kempe, the autobiography of the English Christian mystic dictated to different amanuenses and thought to have been completed in 1438. Credit: Alamy
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  • Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women

    Hetta Howes

    Bloomsbury Continuum, pp. 320, £25

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