Mysticism, Madness, & Medieval Women Who Spoke to God | Sue Niebrzydowski

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In this episode we talk to Professor Sue Niebrzydowski (Bangor) about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe—two women who claimed to experience intense visions of the divine, but whose lives could not have been more different. Julian's visions drove her into intense isolation as an anchorite—and Margery Kempe's threw her out into the world, to travel, preached, and openly shar her experiences.

The hidden world of anchorites and medieval solitude

Public vs private expressions of faith

Mysticism, madness, and medieval psychology

How society judged female visionaries

The origins of some of the earliest writing by women in English

How people distinguished God visions from Devil visions from mental illness