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Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe were both born in the 14th Century and are both considered English mystics and religious writers. Both of them suffered from illnesses, during which they both had visions from Christ. Julian was born in Norwich, England, and in her thirties she suffered from a severe illness. While she was recuperating she argued that she had experienced more than 15 visions of Christ’s passion and of the Virgin Mary. Revelations of Divine Love is the work she authored which recounts these visions. In the work, she explains the Christian mysteries, insight into her own experiences, and the conviction and intelligence of her experiences. She is considered, along with Margery Kempe, as one of the great English mystics, and she lived her final days as a recluse at Saint Julian’s Church in Norwich.

Margery Kempe, on the other hand, married a local official (she was the daughter of the Mayor of Lynn, Norfolk) and had fourteen children. She was afflicted with a mental disorder for six months following the birth of her first child. She claimed that Christ had spoken to her in a vision and she was cured during this illness. Becoming austere and skeptical of any form of pleasure, she became chaste and underwent a succession of trips to the Holy Land, Canterbury and Rome. She was enthusiastic and was often found weeping loudly in church. Her autobiography, The Book of Marge

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on the Virgin’s qualities, even death, are ways to ‘oure self clerely knowing,’” (Thiebaux, 1994: 445). One factor that was unorthodox where Julian’s writings were concerned was of her conception of the Incarnation of Christ as a feminine or female gender. She felt that the mother’s physiological role signified that Christ was more a mother than a father figure when it comes to life, nurturing, death and rebirth. However, the cycle of life and the process from birth, life to death again demonstrates a traditional imagery, even if in Julian’s depiction the cycle is more that of mother, than that of father, where the Incarnation is concerned, “Christ’s motherhood involved enclosure and growth within the womb; the trauma of labor and birth; the suckling of the infant and feeding of the child; the care and education of the older child; the setting of examples and disciplining of the child; the washing, healing, forgiving, and comforting of the child as it matures; and the continual loving, touching, and guiding of the child even to the point of its own death. After death the maternal God restores the child to rebirth and return to the divine womb,” (Thiebaux, 1994: 445). Margery Kempe was not the educated woman that Julian o
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Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)