Catherine of Siena

When Florence was placed under an interdict by the pope Catherine went to Avignon, France, to bring back the pope to Italy and to promote a crusade.

Her writings, known as the 'Dialogo', record her ecstatic experiences and illustrate her doctrine of the 'inner cell' of the knowledge of God and of the self into which she withdrew.

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Brigitta
Gudmarsson 1303-73
Swedish Nun

Mother to eight children and widowed. At the age of 41, she started a monastery, made long pilgrimages, founded a hospice and gathered disciples.

At her death the Brigittine Order had 80 convents across Europe.

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Margery Kempe
c. 1373-c. 1440
English Mystic

Married at 20, she bears 14 children before beginning a series of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Germany, and Spain.

Margery was an illiterate laywoman turned religious enthusiast who became prone to fits of crying and screaming during religious services. At about the age 60, she dictated her spiritual autobiography to two scribes. 'The Book of Margery Kempe' is the earliest known autobiography in English.

Accused by her contemporaries of fraud and heresy, Margery Kempe also had admirers, even among clergy, who defended her visions as genuine signals from God.

More about Margery Kempe

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Mary Ward
1585-1645
English Educator




Mary Ward rejected the intellectual narrowness of convent life and founded an order to educate women.

In 1621 the English Catholic leaders appealed to Pope Gregory XV to order the dissolution of the group, on the grounds that women were unsuited to pastoral work and that their visits to people's homes would cause scandal.

When Mary continued with her work she was excommunicated as a heretic, but in 1877, with papal permission, her institute became the template for modern Catholic Women's Institues.

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