Margery Kempe was known for religious fervour, and a list in the manuscript of her pioneering autobiography has been analysed as a prescribed cure for her fits

It is a case that has intrigued historians, psychiatrists and theologians for the last 80 years, but an academic has found what may be the oldest known attempt to diagnose Margery Kempe’s erratic religious behaviour. A recipe for medicinal sweets, written 600 years ago in the back of the medieval mystic’s memoir, has been deciphered by Dr Laura Kalas Williams – and the Exeter University-based researcher is convinced that it reveals an attempt to prescribe a cure for Kempe’s notorious fits of devotion.

Though the recipe, written in the final portfolio of the 1438 manuscript, has long been known to scholars, it had hitherto proved impossible to read. Dr Andrea Clarke, the British Library’s lead curator of medieval and early modern manuscripts, suggested multispectral-imaging technology be used to reveal its secrets. Kalas Williams and two colleagues, Professor Eddie Jones and Professor Daniel Wakelin, were then able to decipher the ingredients and discovered it was a cure for “flux”, defined in the Medieval English Dictionary as “a pathological flowing of blood, excretions or discharges from any part of the body, or dysentery”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The recipe translates as containing: ‘Sugar with aniseed, fennel seed, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger [to make the] confection and to [then] beat them together in a mortar and heat them in the manner of food and drinks and dry first and last eat.’ Photograph: Board of the British Library, Dr Andrea Clarke and Christina Duffy

Kalas Williams said she was convinced the recipe was a response to the mystic’s various bouts of illness as well as her copious crying. “I don’t think [the recipe] has been written there randomly,” the academic said. “The book tells us that at one point, she suffered a terrible episode of flux (probably dysentery) and was given extreme unction, thinking she was going to die, so the presence of this recipe at the end seems more than a coincidence.”

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A middle-class mother of 14, Kempe lived in Norfolk from about 1373 to 1440. After the birth of her children, she took a vow of chastity, and for the rest of her life undertook pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, Italy and Germany.

Described by Kalas Williams as “the Marmite of medieval mystics”, she was infamous for “loud cries and boisterous weeping” in church and dramatic displays of religious devotion, which included mystical visions that placed her at the heart of the action during the nativity and crucifixion. They also made her as many enemies during her lifetime as they did followers; she was arrested for heresy and narrowly missed being burned at the stake.

Kalas Williams admitted her thesis was controversial. Scholars have speculated about the significance of the recipe since the manuscript was rediscovered in 1934. Though medieval books often feature arbitrary jottings because parchment was expensive, no other random notes appear in the manuscript, which was dictated by the mystic between 1436 and 1440, initially to her son. “There are many other annotations in the book, but all of these directly engage with the words on the page, in dialogue with the content,” the academic said. “This makes it improbable that the recipe is a random, thoughtless, annotation.”

The original manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe. It is thought to have been finished and bound between 1442 and 1450. Photograph: Board of the British Library, Dr Andrea Clarke and Christina Duffy

Initially, the recipe was thought to be for a drink to cure the flux, but the thermal imaging revealed it to be “dragges” – herbal sweets used to refresh the palate and cure a variety of ills. The ingredients – sugar, aniseed, fennel seed, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger – were luxuries at the time.

The manuscript, which is the only surviving copy of the memoir, thought to be the oldest autobiography by a woman in the English language, has proved controversial since it was rediscovered in the 1930s. Many attempts have been made to explain Kempe’s profuse weeping, collapsing and roaring while under the influence of her visions. As well as epilepsy, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, it has been posited that the mystic suffered postpartum depression, as her first extreme religious experiences and “demonic torment” followed her first difficult pregnancy.

Kalas Williams dismissed attempts at diagnosis as “anachronistic” and preferred to use Kempe’s memoir to understand the medieval view of women’s bodies and health. “For me, Kempe is a tenacious figure, determined to be heard in a culture where women’s voices were not supposed to be heard, and brave enough to express her emotions publicly and viscerally,” added the scholar, who is writing up her findings for academic publication later this year.