Mackenzie beautifully handles Julian’s early difficulties in her isolation, and also the reasons why she chooses it. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. I even, in my misguided youth, took part in a couple of pilgrimages to Walsingham, carrying a 10ft wooden cross on foot from Nottingham through Holy Week, sleeping on church hall floors and spending the evenings singing bawdy songs and drinking too much beer. Book Review: For Thy Great Pain have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie (Bloomsbury, published 19/1/2023) Mother Julian with her pet cat (yes, this is explicitly allowed to an anchoress! As the child of two psychiatric nurses I certainly noticed how so many seriously unwell people, including many of my parents’ patients were drawn to the more Gothic aspects of Catholic practice – songs about sheltering in the wounds of Christ, being bathed in blood and so forth.

She tries to reassure him that God loves him, but when he asks her how she knows, she cannot dare to tell the origin of her confidence – that she herself has “seen God in all things”. One woman, secure in the source of her visions, hid her visions and one, plagued with doubt, risked everything to share her messages from God. Both women felt the burning need to record their experiences, which were in both cases visions of Christ – Revelations of Divine Love in the case of Julian, and an ongoing personal relationship with Jesus: being present at the crucifixion, receiving direct advice and counsel, physical affection, and, indeed, sexual intimacy in the case of Marjory Kempe.Due religiose sensibili ed estreme che trovano finalmente il loro spazio in "Abbi pietà del mio piccolo dolore". Sensual, vivid and humane, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain cracks history open to reveal the lives of two extraordinary women. Can it be that Marjory – a woman who married a man she didn’t much like, who suffered from post-partum psychosis at least twice, treated by shackling her to her bed away from her child – found some sort of comfort and nurture in her visions that were simply not available to her in real life?

The painting is of the ‘shewings’ or revelatory visions experienced by the mystic Julian of Norwich.The actual encounter between the two is attested to in Kempe’s own account, written via dictation - see below. I love that MacKenzie’s book has changed that, following the evolution of these two very different women from girlhood through to older age, drawing them inexorably closer with gentle and clear-eyed understanding. Welcome to our review blog, Everybody's Reviewing, which is run in conjunction with Everybody's Reading Festival in Leicester. It was after this that Jesus Christ appeared, sitting on the edge of my bed, very handsome and clad in a mantle of purple silk.

By two remarkable women, one saintly, one very human indeed, whose voices somehow speak to us across the empty centuries of history, remarkably, frustratingly and inspirationally. I attempted to give an account of Julian’s social context, her life and the book she famously wrote, the first ever recorded by a woman. MacKenzie engages with them on their own terms, as two women trying to resolve the conflict between authority and experience. What creatur that hath thes tokenys he muste stedfastlych belevyn that the Holy Gost dwellyth in hys sowle. Margery’s loneliness and vulnerability come into relief as she struggles with the lack of power and authority that all women suffered during the period, her obedience to men expected in both church and family.

The devotion of Kempe and Mother Julian is intense and personal, and is in both cases under the scrutiny and criticism of male authorities. It was immuration, in a room ten by six by eight by six paces in size, where she had died to the world. The Jesus who appeared to Marjory Kempe told her to stop cutting her flesh as he didn’t want this from her.

I teach creative writing and offer one-to-one creative mentoring – see my ‘Teaching’ page for more information and do get in touch via the Contact form if you’re interested in working with me. There was a respect and sensitivity to the historical facts but a clever, lyrical exploration of the two.

In "Abbi pietà del mio piccolo dolore", Victoria MacKenzie dà spazio a entrambi gli aspetti -quello cristiano e quello umano- di due donne che vissero nell'Inghilterra quattrocentesca: Margery Kempe e Julian di Norwich. The challenges that they face as women in a culture where only male priest were expected to preach, and visions of God were played down, are brought out powerfully. Some of the most extraordinary passages in the novel describe Julian’s surrender to the limits of her cell, the infinite-external giving way to the infinite-internal.