Margery Kempe, the main topic of this essay, was in fact a controversial person. During her lifetime peoples' opinions about her were quite polarized. She was a conspicuous person and was in many conflicts with mostly clerical authorities. Some contemporaries looked up to her, while many others did not really know how to deal with her and her extraordinary behaviour. It is pretty much the same thing today. While some credit her as a mystic, others just condemn her as crazy. During the course of this essay, I will try to answer the question if she was a mystic or not. One approach could be made by looking at definitions of the terms "mystic" and "mysticism":

The "Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" defines it as "an immediate knowledge of God attained in this present life through personal religious experience."

Another attempt to put these terms into words...