'A merowr amongys hem': An examination of female piety in the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Norwich

This thesis analyzes female piety in the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-centuries (c. 1370-1430) in England focusing on the area around Norwich. Of particular interest, for the purpose of this study, was the piety of the laity in Norwich as expressed by the large number of hermits and anchorites in the area, as well as a community of religious lay women that resembled the Beguine movement on the Continent. In this area mystical writings, particularly by female authors appeared, and the Lollard movement, which accorded women spiritual authority, flourished. Norwich, in this period, functioned as a location in which many different religious movements appeared. In this sense, Norwich was not representative of the spiritual movements found in the rest of England. The extremes between the two social tensions, that of increased lay piety through mysticism and the fear generated by the Lollard heresy, can be examined through The Book of Margery Kempe and the Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31 (Norman P. Tanner, editor). (Abstract shortened by UMI.).