"Kempe describes, in this extract and elsewhere, what could be construed as classic psychotic symptoms; visions, auditory, olfactory and tactile hallucinations, grandiose delusions, self-neglect (Margery’s penances of fasting, being inadequately clothed), social withdrawal (from her family and friends), and feelings of passivity and control. Yet it does not feel like madness. Why not? What Kempe describes to us is a truly embodied spiritual experience. Kempe has no doubt about this, and it is this unshakeable belief that communicates itself down the centuries through the text...the question remains as to how Kempe manages to convey the phenomenological intensity of Margery’s experience twenty or more years after the event? First, Kempe is an expert storyteller, and it is likely that she retold such narratives as discussed here on many occasions to many people, clergy and fellow pilgrims, through oral testimony and public performance. Second, central to the orthodox liturgy, is the conception that devotional words uttered are expressed through the senses. Extreme emotion which, in modern times, is viewed as a sign of mental instability, was a fundamental feature of spirituality, conveying both the seriousness and truth of the religious experience...With this knowledge, when we return to Kempe’s text, we can listen to Margery’s voice within a framework more akin to medieval England than the twentieth century West. Margery’s sensory experiences are not without cultural and historical provenance, rather she draws upon a range of mystical sources grounded in religious and cultural traditions known throughout medieval Europe. Kempe’s embodied descriptions cease to be tactile or olfactory hallucinations or grandiose ideas (marriage to God), but become experiences that result from spiritual passion. As Porter argues “it would serve no purpose to label such exercise of spiritual discipline as a psychiatric disorder” (Porter, 1988: 44). As argued earlier, religiosity was sanity, whereas madness amounted to a refusal to accept the truth that was God. Furthermore, Margery’s experiences are intelligible not only in terms of religious traditions, but also in her terms of her career; Kempe construes Margery as a holy mystic"