Women's Devotionalism and Piety: A Look at Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe and her interactions
Lauren Russo
Margery Kempe was a very expressive 15th century Christian mystic. She is well noted in the literary world as the first person to author an autobiography in English. Margery’s book, The Book of Margery Kempe, depicts her many interactions and struggles from her first steps into a devout life to her travels around Europe and more. Though she was illiterate in both Latin and vernacular, like most women of her time, Margery was able to compile this autobiography through the assistance of a handful of scribes or “readers” as Carolyn Dinshaw puts it. More times than not, when asked, a scribe would refuse to write her book for her because of the risks attached to the act.
The Book starts with Margery’s initial struggle to become devoted to God after receiving a vision from Christ some while after confessing a long kept sin to her confessor. She takes this as a sign to become a more devout Christian; however she doesn’t do so for quite some time. As portrayed in chapter two, Margery continues to go through a period of self-serving and pride. She dressed herself in rich clothes flamboyantly, hoping to draw the attention, worship, and envy of those around her while ignoring the counsel of her husband or any other man (Kempe 568). She pursued two business endeavors during this time: a brewery and a horse-mill. Both started off well, but plummeted not long after. Margery took these as signs of God’s anger with her and from then on and entered a life of worship for God. From this point, the Book reads in a slightly less chronological way and was written as she remembered events. When she switched to a devout life, Margery changed many aspects of her everyday living. She often wore hair cloth, fasted, traveled on pilgrimages, and after a few years, managed to convince her husband to live chastely with her. Her most expressive and often used form of piety is her crying and sobbing among places or events of spiritual importance. Her actions often got her split reactions: some were used to it and thought it appropriate and good while others found it rather strange or perhaps even heretical.
Throughout her spiritual life, Margery met, interacted with, and depended upon many different people, primarily men. One of her primary and most interesting relationships (aside from that with her scribes) is her relationship with her husband. Margery starts off in the book as someone who seems to not listen to whatever advice or suggestions her husband holds. He warned her about being too proud and vain, yet she barely spared it a thought, constantly reminding him of her social standing, until after her two businesses failed in an interpreted sign of God's anger. Thereafter, Margery’s main interaction with her husband, that she notes in the Book, are talks about them leading a celibate life. She has several conversations with her husband, trying to convince him to live chaste with her and it doesn’t actually happen for a few years. As she mentions in chapter three, “So she said to her husband:-‘I may not deny you my body, but the love of my heart and affections are withdrawn from all earthly creatures, and set only in God.’ He would have his will and she obeyed with great weeping and sorrowing that might not live chaste.” (Kempe 570). Her living chastely hinged on consent from her husband, which he would not give to her. This brings about an interesting aspect of married life during her time: Margery, being a wife, was not allowed to deny her husband sex if he asked for it. Regardless of whether she wanted it or not, which she obviously didn’t. Margery gives a few examples of actions she would rather happen than commune with her husband. In chapter three, she states that she would rather eat the slime in the sewers (Kempe 570). In chapter eleven, he husband gives her a hypothetical choice: would she rather have sex with him or see him slain on the spot, and she stated she would rather see him killed (Kempe 575). After two years of successfully being celibate, Margery is faced with the temptation of another man. She initially becomes convinced that God has forsaken her by putting this temptation before her, but after the man rejects her advances, the blame turns to the devil (Kempe 571). For Margery, this seems like another wake-up call; her first being her two failed businesses after she received a message from God to become devout. This time, she finally achieves the chaste life she wanted in the first place, but seems to be longing for what she had before and is therefore tempted by this other man. Being so harshly rejected, she realizes the gravity of the sin she was about to commit and it shocks her away from physical relationships forever. Dinshaw mentions in her essay how Margery was constantly in fear of being raped on her travels to various place (Dinshaw 234).
Margery also had many interactions with people and clergymen throughout her traveling and actions of worship. Margery’s extreme forms of piety, crying and wailing, tended to bother some people while others were used to it. In the Book, she tells of some occasions where her crying causes people to consider her almost heretical. In one instance, Margery chastised the clergy of Lambeth for their reckless behavior. This instigated the reaction of another woman who said to her, “And with that, there came forth another woman of the same town in a furred cloak, who forswore this creature, banned her, and spoke full cursedly to her in this manner:- ‘I would thou wert in Smithfield, and I would bring a faggot to burn thee with. It is a pity thou art alive.’” comparing Margery to the level of a heretic (Kempe 577). However, most clergymen (at least the ones she wasn’t chastising) saw nothing wrong with her way of worship. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in Lambeth at the time of this event, stated that Margery should be praised for her manner of living and he would never forsake her (Kempe 577). The White Friar, William Sowthfeld, answers to her similarly saying that she should not be ashamed for her manner of living and that God will always love her (Kempe 579). These kinds of interactions that she has with the clergy are very reassuring to Margery and her way of life. The split of opinions on Margery between the clergy and laity also appears again when she experiences a sort of miracle at church. Some stones and part of a beam fall on Margery from the roof of the church, but when she cried to Jesus, the pain subsided (Kempe 574). The clergy took this as a great miracle that God protected her against the “malice of her enemy”. However, many other people saw this as a bad omen and an act of vengeance against Margery (Kempe 575).
Though a bit controversial and extreme in her ways, Margery Kempe brought amazing words to the people of her time as well as a great literary piece to ours. Her rise to a devout Christian life wasn’t immediate and she struggled with her own self-serving actions. However, once there, she inspired many and preached toe-to-toe with any clergyman. Her various interactions with the people around her and Christ helped make her the interesting person she was.
Dinshaw, Carolyn, and David Wallace. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.
Kempe, Margery, and William Butler-Bowden. The Book of Margery Kempe, Fourteen Hundred & Thirty-six. New York: Devin-Adair, 1944. Print.
Margery Kempe was a very expressive 15th century Christian mystic. She is well noted in the literary world as the first person to author an autobiography in English. Margery’s book, The Book of Margery Kempe, depicts her many interactions and struggles from her first steps into a devout life to her travels around Europe and more. Though she was illiterate in both Latin and vernacular, like most women of her time, Margery was able to compile this autobiography through the assistance of a handful of scribes or “readers” as Carolyn Dinshaw puts it. More times than not, when asked, a scribe would refuse to write her book for her because of the risks attached to the act.
The Book starts with Margery’s initial struggle to become devoted to God after receiving a vision from Christ some while after confessing a long kept sin to her confessor. She takes this as a sign to become a more devout Christian; however she doesn’t do so for quite some time. As portrayed in chapter two, Margery continues to go through a period of self-serving and pride. She dressed herself in rich clothes flamboyantly, hoping to draw the attention, worship, and envy of those around her while ignoring the counsel of her husband or any other man (Kempe 568). She pursued two business endeavors during this time: a brewery and a horse-mill. Both started off well, but plummeted not long after. Margery took these as signs of God’s anger with her and from then on and entered a life of worship for God. From this point, the Book reads in a slightly less chronological way and was written as she remembered events. When she switched to a devout life, Margery changed many aspects of her everyday living. She often wore hair cloth, fasted, traveled on pilgrimages, and after a few years, managed to convince her husband to live chastely with her. Her most expressive and often used form of piety is her crying and sobbing among places or events of spiritual importance. Her actions often got her split reactions: some were used to it and thought it appropriate and good while others found it rather strange or perhaps even heretical.
Throughout her spiritual life, Margery met, interacted with, and depended upon many different people, primarily men. One of her primary and most interesting relationships (aside from that with her scribes) is her relationship with her husband. Margery starts off in the book as someone who seems to not listen to whatever advice or suggestions her husband holds. He warned her about being too proud and vain, yet she barely spared it a thought, constantly reminding him of her social standing, until after her two businesses failed in an interpreted sign of God's anger. Thereafter, Margery’s main interaction with her husband, that she notes in the Book, are talks about them leading a celibate life. She has several conversations with her husband, trying to convince him to live chaste with her and it doesn’t actually happen for a few years. As she mentions in chapter three, “So she said to her husband:-‘I may not deny you my body, but the love of my heart and affections are withdrawn from all earthly creatures, and set only in God.’ He would have his will and she obeyed with great weeping and sorrowing that might not live chaste.” (Kempe 570). Her living chastely hinged on consent from her husband, which he would not give to her. This brings about an interesting aspect of married life during her time: Margery, being a wife, was not allowed to deny her husband sex if he asked for it. Regardless of whether she wanted it or not, which she obviously didn’t. Margery gives a few examples of actions she would rather happen than commune with her husband. In chapter three, she states that she would rather eat the slime in the sewers (Kempe 570). In chapter eleven, he husband gives her a hypothetical choice: would she rather have sex with him or see him slain on the spot, and she stated she would rather see him killed (Kempe 575). After two years of successfully being celibate, Margery is faced with the temptation of another man. She initially becomes convinced that God has forsaken her by putting this temptation before her, but after the man rejects her advances, the blame turns to the devil (Kempe 571). For Margery, this seems like another wake-up call; her first being her two failed businesses after she received a message from God to become devout. This time, she finally achieves the chaste life she wanted in the first place, but seems to be longing for what she had before and is therefore tempted by this other man. Being so harshly rejected, she realizes the gravity of the sin she was about to commit and it shocks her away from physical relationships forever. Dinshaw mentions in her essay how Margery was constantly in fear of being raped on her travels to various place (Dinshaw 234).
Margery also had many interactions with people and clergymen throughout her traveling and actions of worship. Margery’s extreme forms of piety, crying and wailing, tended to bother some people while others were used to it. In the Book, she tells of some occasions where her crying causes people to consider her almost heretical. In one instance, Margery chastised the clergy of Lambeth for their reckless behavior. This instigated the reaction of another woman who said to her, “And with that, there came forth another woman of the same town in a furred cloak, who forswore this creature, banned her, and spoke full cursedly to her in this manner:- ‘I would thou wert in Smithfield, and I would bring a faggot to burn thee with. It is a pity thou art alive.’” comparing Margery to the level of a heretic (Kempe 577). However, most clergymen (at least the ones she wasn’t chastising) saw nothing wrong with her way of worship. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in Lambeth at the time of this event, stated that Margery should be praised for her manner of living and he would never forsake her (Kempe 577). The White Friar, William Sowthfeld, answers to her similarly saying that she should not be ashamed for her manner of living and that God will always love her (Kempe 579). These kinds of interactions that she has with the clergy are very reassuring to Margery and her way of life. The split of opinions on Margery between the clergy and laity also appears again when she experiences a sort of miracle at church. Some stones and part of a beam fall on Margery from the roof of the church, but when she cried to Jesus, the pain subsided (Kempe 574). The clergy took this as a great miracle that God protected her against the “malice of her enemy”. However, many other people saw this as a bad omen and an act of vengeance against Margery (Kempe 575).
Though a bit controversial and extreme in her ways, Margery Kempe brought amazing words to the people of her time as well as a great literary piece to ours. Her rise to a devout Christian life wasn’t immediate and she struggled with her own self-serving actions. However, once there, she inspired many and preached toe-to-toe with any clergyman. Her various interactions with the people around her and Christ helped make her the interesting person she was.
Dinshaw, Carolyn, and David Wallace. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.
Kempe, Margery, and William Butler-Bowden. The Book of Margery Kempe, Fourteen Hundred & Thirty-six. New York: Devin-Adair, 1944. Print.
Margery Kempe: Revelations and Ramblings
Ben Traffas
During the Middle Ages there was much value placed in stability with regards to organized religion. The Church knew the correct path for humanity to follow, and was more than happy to serve as the ultimate authority on spiritual matters. “He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.” Indeed, the entire faith is based around the death of Christ. This posed a particular challenge when mystics began cropping up, claiming to interact with the divine and the spiritual in ways that others could not comprehend. One such mystic was Margery Kempe.
Born to a well-off family in England, Margery lived a relatively undevout life for a large period of time. However, after the birth of her first child she had an experience that would ultimately be pivotal in her experience as a mystic and a Christian. She was tormented by horrifying visions, by “devils opening their mouths all inflamed with burning waves of fire, as if they would have swallowed her in, sometimes ramping at her, sometimes threatening her, pulling her and hauling her, night and day during the aforesaid time” before being ultimately saved by the intervention of Christ. This was but the first of many visions to follow, and these visions ultimately were what inspired her to go out and to share her inspirations with the rest of the world. (Book, Chapter 1)
One factor that ended up causing her quite a bit of trouble was how interwoven her tale is with the sensual. This was perhaps inevitable, in some ways. Making troublesome women out to be impure, seductive monsters is a textbook method that churches and media and governments have used to suppress them for more or less all of recorded history. Interestingly enough, in this case Margery doesn’t necessarily discourage the associations. She recounts many stories in her book about her sexual temptations, her conflicts with her husband over that and over his family’s status, and in her first vision certainly saw Christ as the pinnacle of manly, physical perfection. Later she even tells of a time she was tempted to become an adulteress, only for it all to turn out to be a test of her devotion that she ultimately failed. None the less, this is all a rather negative way of looking at her relationship with her religion. Carolyn Dinshaw remarked in her analysis of The Book of Margery Kempe that “In Christ [Margery] has found an ideal intimate: she is married mystically to the Godhead”, and one could look at her determination to be devoted to God above all else—even her husband and the material world—and to live a life in service of Him. (Dinshaw 234)
This aspect of her visions and her means of speaking of them would have served as, ironically, a complete turn off for most of the clergy. However, this was truly only a fraction of her problems in dealing with the powerful religious men of the time. Margery struggled to get her message across on a much more fundamental level because it was inherently something that very few could relate to or understand. This was even what made it so appealing in the first place. As a mystic, Margery was able to experience things and possess a connection with both the divine and the demonic that was unique only to her. People are interested in revolutionary and innovative ideas to be sure, but they are also interested in how these ideas apply to their lives and how they themselves can relate to these religious experiences. Christianity is about a personal relationship with God through Christ, and if a spiritual experience is merely secondhand and utterly incomprehensible, it is certainly not especially useful. Margery’s tendency to be dramatic and emotional only served to make her seem even more alien, however many had faith in the genuineness behind her feelings. Dinshaw relays that “Since she already lives in the presence of Christ; experiencing him in daily conversation, she is overwhelmed when her pilgrimage brings her to the very place where he suffered his agonies she sees ‘verily and freshly how our Lord was crucified’ and that “A test imposed by uncertain priests proved that these cryings are not done for the sake of publicity.” So while her actions didn’t always endear her to the people around her, they were able to see the truth in them. (Dinshaw 232)
As before, this is still taking a fairly negative attitude towards Margery and her work. One could certainly argue that The Church was frightened of someone like her. A person who challenged traditional notions of what worship had to be and was willing to attack corruption and unfaithfulness wherever it occurred, even in the households of powerful religious leaders. In Chapter 16 of her book for instance, she is willing to even reprimand the Archbishop of Canterbury for the behavior of his household members. Such a thing was unprecedented, and such behavior was even more astonishing given that it came from someone who seemed to have such a powerful yet unorthodox connection with God. One of the most terrifying thoughts from a religious standpoint is the one that you are doing it all wrong. That you’ve misinterpreted what God wants you to do, and that all your diligence in following your path is ultimately meaningless because you have chosen the wrong path. Christianity in the Middle Ages largely tried to avoid these sorts of dilemmas by holding conferences between great men and authorities on religion to iron out what was and wasn’t orthodox behavior. From there, institutions could act with certainty and authority, rooting out heresy and incorrect worship practices systematically. This however, could have had the consequence of leaving individuals vulnerable to new ideas. Many were likely not used to pondering the mysteries of the universe and the intentions of God, and so could be taken completely off guard by a woman like Margery Kempe. A woman capable of saying things that had never been said before, with all the certainty of men with a thousand years of tradition behind them. Someone who may have seen the glory of God with her own eyes. (Book, Chapter 16)
While certainly a polarizing and odd figure in religious history, Margery Kempe had the courage to speak her mind and challenge conventional means of worship. Her faith was strange and something that few could understand, and yet her words and actions inspired many to try. Only God can say for certain whether she was a hero and warrior of the faith, a madwoman, or some bizarre mixture of the two, but her conviction and her bravery are things that can inspire us all.
Bibliography
Kempe, Margery. "The Book of Margery Kempe." In Readings in Medieval History. Edited by Patrick J. Geary, pp. 567-599. Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 2003.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. "Margery Kempe." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing. Edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, pp. 222-239. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
During the Middle Ages there was much value placed in stability with regards to organized religion. The Church knew the correct path for humanity to follow, and was more than happy to serve as the ultimate authority on spiritual matters. “He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.” Indeed, the entire faith is based around the death of Christ. This posed a particular challenge when mystics began cropping up, claiming to interact with the divine and the spiritual in ways that others could not comprehend. One such mystic was Margery Kempe.
Born to a well-off family in England, Margery lived a relatively undevout life for a large period of time. However, after the birth of her first child she had an experience that would ultimately be pivotal in her experience as a mystic and a Christian. She was tormented by horrifying visions, by “devils opening their mouths all inflamed with burning waves of fire, as if they would have swallowed her in, sometimes ramping at her, sometimes threatening her, pulling her and hauling her, night and day during the aforesaid time” before being ultimately saved by the intervention of Christ. This was but the first of many visions to follow, and these visions ultimately were what inspired her to go out and to share her inspirations with the rest of the world. (Book, Chapter 1)
One factor that ended up causing her quite a bit of trouble was how interwoven her tale is with the sensual. This was perhaps inevitable, in some ways. Making troublesome women out to be impure, seductive monsters is a textbook method that churches and media and governments have used to suppress them for more or less all of recorded history. Interestingly enough, in this case Margery doesn’t necessarily discourage the associations. She recounts many stories in her book about her sexual temptations, her conflicts with her husband over that and over his family’s status, and in her first vision certainly saw Christ as the pinnacle of manly, physical perfection. Later she even tells of a time she was tempted to become an adulteress, only for it all to turn out to be a test of her devotion that she ultimately failed. None the less, this is all a rather negative way of looking at her relationship with her religion. Carolyn Dinshaw remarked in her analysis of The Book of Margery Kempe that “In Christ [Margery] has found an ideal intimate: she is married mystically to the Godhead”, and one could look at her determination to be devoted to God above all else—even her husband and the material world—and to live a life in service of Him. (Dinshaw 234)
This aspect of her visions and her means of speaking of them would have served as, ironically, a complete turn off for most of the clergy. However, this was truly only a fraction of her problems in dealing with the powerful religious men of the time. Margery struggled to get her message across on a much more fundamental level because it was inherently something that very few could relate to or understand. This was even what made it so appealing in the first place. As a mystic, Margery was able to experience things and possess a connection with both the divine and the demonic that was unique only to her. People are interested in revolutionary and innovative ideas to be sure, but they are also interested in how these ideas apply to their lives and how they themselves can relate to these religious experiences. Christianity is about a personal relationship with God through Christ, and if a spiritual experience is merely secondhand and utterly incomprehensible, it is certainly not especially useful. Margery’s tendency to be dramatic and emotional only served to make her seem even more alien, however many had faith in the genuineness behind her feelings. Dinshaw relays that “Since she already lives in the presence of Christ; experiencing him in daily conversation, she is overwhelmed when her pilgrimage brings her to the very place where he suffered his agonies she sees ‘verily and freshly how our Lord was crucified’ and that “A test imposed by uncertain priests proved that these cryings are not done for the sake of publicity.” So while her actions didn’t always endear her to the people around her, they were able to see the truth in them. (Dinshaw 232)
As before, this is still taking a fairly negative attitude towards Margery and her work. One could certainly argue that The Church was frightened of someone like her. A person who challenged traditional notions of what worship had to be and was willing to attack corruption and unfaithfulness wherever it occurred, even in the households of powerful religious leaders. In Chapter 16 of her book for instance, she is willing to even reprimand the Archbishop of Canterbury for the behavior of his household members. Such a thing was unprecedented, and such behavior was even more astonishing given that it came from someone who seemed to have such a powerful yet unorthodox connection with God. One of the most terrifying thoughts from a religious standpoint is the one that you are doing it all wrong. That you’ve misinterpreted what God wants you to do, and that all your diligence in following your path is ultimately meaningless because you have chosen the wrong path. Christianity in the Middle Ages largely tried to avoid these sorts of dilemmas by holding conferences between great men and authorities on religion to iron out what was and wasn’t orthodox behavior. From there, institutions could act with certainty and authority, rooting out heresy and incorrect worship practices systematically. This however, could have had the consequence of leaving individuals vulnerable to new ideas. Many were likely not used to pondering the mysteries of the universe and the intentions of God, and so could be taken completely off guard by a woman like Margery Kempe. A woman capable of saying things that had never been said before, with all the certainty of men with a thousand years of tradition behind them. Someone who may have seen the glory of God with her own eyes. (Book, Chapter 16)
While certainly a polarizing and odd figure in religious history, Margery Kempe had the courage to speak her mind and challenge conventional means of worship. Her faith was strange and something that few could understand, and yet her words and actions inspired many to try. Only God can say for certain whether she was a hero and warrior of the faith, a madwoman, or some bizarre mixture of the two, but her conviction and her bravery are things that can inspire us all.
Bibliography
Kempe, Margery. "The Book of Margery Kempe." In Readings in Medieval History. Edited by Patrick J. Geary, pp. 567-599. Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 2003.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. "Margery Kempe." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing. Edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, pp. 222-239. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Margery Kempe: Breaking the Rules and taking names
_Chris DeLacy
In an era that was dominated by rigid Christian orthodoxy and rarely glimpsed the social prowess of a woman, Margery Kempe stood out as a progressively bold woman and marginalized religious devotee. The amount of social taboos she broke as a woman is enough to give her story historical importance, although it was primarily her recollections of direct communications with Christ, God, Satan and a whole cast of other biblical characters that made her story compellingly controversial in her own time. It’s impossible to separate her two revolutionary personas (woman, mystic) as discrete narratives as they’re intimately interwoven together in her autobiography, but I’ll try my best to delve into the two and give them justice as free standing narratives of validation and justified insubordination.
Her life work really takes off after an existential crisis she refers to as her ‘black night.’ This dark period of depression kicked off after she bore her first child, which could perhaps be interpreted as her entrance into domesticity. It is unclear how long her black night lasted, but it encompassed her realizations of sinful thoughts, her reluctance to officially confess to a man of the collar, and her perceived discomfort of living a life unfulfilled. The Lord came to her in a vision and comforted her, remarking that he does not feel she has acted sinfully. I find this significant because it is the first instance of her validation of thought. Margery continues to seek validation from other religious figures (I’ll get to that later) but is always more concerned with what Jesus and God’s opinion of her virtuousness than her human contemporaries.
After Christ visits her, beginning an ongoing mystical dialogue, she takes one more swing at domestic life by brewing and milling at home. These enterprises fail, and although left unsaid, I think Margery took these business failures literally as a sign from God that she isn’t cut out for traditional womanly domesticity. Academic Sarah Salih stated “Margery and her amanuenses assume that she is of interest only insofar as she is not a housewife,” remarking how important it was for to standout by denying herself a tradition life for a woman of her time. Although a woman running her own brewery was probably pretty cutting edge in her day, Margery believed she held a higher purpose, and sought to influence more people than her local environment provided.
Perhaps the most important social move Margery made was to live a life of chastity, and in her remarkable ability to convince her husband likewise. Granted, she had already bore fourteen children, and her husband didn’t exactly warm up to the idea for four years after she proposed it, but in the end she succeeded both in living a life of celibacy and in exerting power over her male spouse. I place emphasis on the latter point because of how uncommon it was for a woman to subordinate her husband in any manner in those days. Take the Wife of Bath’s tale from The Canterbury Tales, the knight is able to give the queen the answer she wants to hear: a woman’s greatest desire is sovereignty over their husbands. Later in Margery’s life, she is encouraged to wear white, and “people call her a hypocrite for wearing white” because white is the traditional color of purity and virginity (Dinshaw 231). The fact that she has bore fourteen children is no secret and she isn’t trying to fool anyone, her white clothing fad was a only a statement of her high spiritual worth, that she barely considered purity of the body as relevant when speaking in terms of purity of the soul.
Sometimes her husband disagreed with Margery’s decisions, take her initial attempts to dress lavishly to inspire admiration from her peers, but she made her husband’s opinion of her an example of how she held the opinions of all else. She used the excuse that she was “come of worthy kin” and that it was “unseemly for [her husband] to have wedded her” in order to posit her actions as likewise worthy and above the scrutiny of her husband and peers (Provost, 304). It becomes clear that this has become her general attitude of all skepticism she receives after her mystic trysts commence, stating that “she would not take heed of any criticism” (Provost 305). It appears contradictory that she denies the validity of others’ criticism yet continues a life of pilgrimage to visit high religious figures, but it should be noted that she took some criticisms of her own along with her.
She took it upon herself to bring any moral errors she witnessed to light, regardless of the subject’s social status or seat of religious power. Margery was totally unphased by earthly threats or punishment and felt it was her duty to “criticize the lack of such faith wherever she found it, even in the immediate household of an archbishop” (Provost 299). Margery gained a lot of respect from laypeople and members of the upper religious community alike from her relentless pilgrimages to speak with members of the rigid orthodoxy. Only seldomly was she instantly understood and revered, most often she was mere syllables away from being killed for heresy, yet she persisted in proving her visions were real and that she did in fact enjoy frequent direct communication with the Lord.
Although Margery’s life choices closely resemble those of the ascetics before her (abandonment of worldly possessions, wearing little clothing, denying herself mean, championing celibacy), the way she publicly displayed her faith is a stark contrast. Living a quiet, reclusive life wasn’t an option for her, she claimed to “live her life as versions of [holy men like Caister and Richard Rolle]” but felt impelled to dispel the word of God herself. She was never a self proclaimed ‘preacher’ (in fact, vehemently denied any allegations of preaching), but still felt a great responsibility of being an active medium through which God could do good work in the world.
Her incessant weeping was an interesting component of her life of religious devotion. It was common for the “direct experience of the divine to bring with it tears,” and Margery often wept when she felt the presence of the Lord, so overcome with emotion that she uncontrollable broke down in tears, regardless of her company or location (Dinshaw 232). The “violence of her weeping and wailing, beyond her own ability to contain,” was behavior was extremely off-putting to many (Dinshaw 225). Even her second amanuensis (the priest) only “regained his belief in her after he read of the tears and cries of other holy people” (Dinshaw 229). Her weeping is said to have started after her first contact with the Lord, that “when Margery heard that Christ wept, she wept too, and loudly;” her weeping was “an important spiritual bond” she shared with the Lord (Dinshaw 226). Some were displeased with her weeping by claiming it was all for attention, but was officially rectified of any such claims when “a test imposed by uncertain priests proves that these cryings are not done for the sake of publicity” (Dinshaw 232).
The most controversial aspect of her life as a mystic was her conflict with the orthodoxy. The church feared the likes of Margery, someone with a direct connection to the Lord had no need for the church as a medium of higher communication. She was controversial to the church because she “advocated direct communication between all Christians and God” while “circumventing and correcting clerical authorities” (Dinshaw 228). It was her belief that “Christ is present physically in the here and now, that humans can touch the divine, that the Godhead motivates all events, public and private”, and it was thus feared that she could directly usurp power away from the church (Dinshaw 236). The church also feared her directly preaching in the same way local translations of the bible were feared because the power of interpretation wouldn’t rest solely in the hands of the orthodoxy. In her time it was “declared heretical not just to make, but even to own, without diocesan permission, a single biblical verse translated into English” and it was “dangerous to produce vernacular devotional prose,” which Margery boldly ignored (Dinshaw 228). She was illiterate and did not speak Latin, so the only verses available to her were illegal translations of the bible or illegally translated sermons.
In conclusion, Margery was an important important popular figure who played a role in chipping away the strength of the ruling class and sex in a church and male dominated society. There are ironies to her story, take the fact that she felt the need to be validated by members of the very orthodoxy she sought to correct the ways of. It seems she did this because it was the only way should could gain widespread respect and notoriety, not to mention be taken seriously. The validation of those in power made the vast majority of those she came into contact with listen to her as a credible source. Another irony is that her being illiterate forced her to seek the aid of men to write down and proliferate her story. Being a historical victim of circumstance, women rarely were taught how to read or write, and Margery was no exception. She used whichever resources were available to her, and I don’t think it discredits her narrative as a strong independent woman because she sought the help of a few literate men.
In an era that was dominated by rigid Christian orthodoxy and rarely glimpsed the social prowess of a woman, Margery Kempe stood out as a progressively bold woman and marginalized religious devotee. The amount of social taboos she broke as a woman is enough to give her story historical importance, although it was primarily her recollections of direct communications with Christ, God, Satan and a whole cast of other biblical characters that made her story compellingly controversial in her own time. It’s impossible to separate her two revolutionary personas (woman, mystic) as discrete narratives as they’re intimately interwoven together in her autobiography, but I’ll try my best to delve into the two and give them justice as free standing narratives of validation and justified insubordination.
Her life work really takes off after an existential crisis she refers to as her ‘black night.’ This dark period of depression kicked off after she bore her first child, which could perhaps be interpreted as her entrance into domesticity. It is unclear how long her black night lasted, but it encompassed her realizations of sinful thoughts, her reluctance to officially confess to a man of the collar, and her perceived discomfort of living a life unfulfilled. The Lord came to her in a vision and comforted her, remarking that he does not feel she has acted sinfully. I find this significant because it is the first instance of her validation of thought. Margery continues to seek validation from other religious figures (I’ll get to that later) but is always more concerned with what Jesus and God’s opinion of her virtuousness than her human contemporaries.
After Christ visits her, beginning an ongoing mystical dialogue, she takes one more swing at domestic life by brewing and milling at home. These enterprises fail, and although left unsaid, I think Margery took these business failures literally as a sign from God that she isn’t cut out for traditional womanly domesticity. Academic Sarah Salih stated “Margery and her amanuenses assume that she is of interest only insofar as she is not a housewife,” remarking how important it was for to standout by denying herself a tradition life for a woman of her time. Although a woman running her own brewery was probably pretty cutting edge in her day, Margery believed she held a higher purpose, and sought to influence more people than her local environment provided.
Perhaps the most important social move Margery made was to live a life of chastity, and in her remarkable ability to convince her husband likewise. Granted, she had already bore fourteen children, and her husband didn’t exactly warm up to the idea for four years after she proposed it, but in the end she succeeded both in living a life of celibacy and in exerting power over her male spouse. I place emphasis on the latter point because of how uncommon it was for a woman to subordinate her husband in any manner in those days. Take the Wife of Bath’s tale from The Canterbury Tales, the knight is able to give the queen the answer she wants to hear: a woman’s greatest desire is sovereignty over their husbands. Later in Margery’s life, she is encouraged to wear white, and “people call her a hypocrite for wearing white” because white is the traditional color of purity and virginity (Dinshaw 231). The fact that she has bore fourteen children is no secret and she isn’t trying to fool anyone, her white clothing fad was a only a statement of her high spiritual worth, that she barely considered purity of the body as relevant when speaking in terms of purity of the soul.
Sometimes her husband disagreed with Margery’s decisions, take her initial attempts to dress lavishly to inspire admiration from her peers, but she made her husband’s opinion of her an example of how she held the opinions of all else. She used the excuse that she was “come of worthy kin” and that it was “unseemly for [her husband] to have wedded her” in order to posit her actions as likewise worthy and above the scrutiny of her husband and peers (Provost, 304). It becomes clear that this has become her general attitude of all skepticism she receives after her mystic trysts commence, stating that “she would not take heed of any criticism” (Provost 305). It appears contradictory that she denies the validity of others’ criticism yet continues a life of pilgrimage to visit high religious figures, but it should be noted that she took some criticisms of her own along with her.
She took it upon herself to bring any moral errors she witnessed to light, regardless of the subject’s social status or seat of religious power. Margery was totally unphased by earthly threats or punishment and felt it was her duty to “criticize the lack of such faith wherever she found it, even in the immediate household of an archbishop” (Provost 299). Margery gained a lot of respect from laypeople and members of the upper religious community alike from her relentless pilgrimages to speak with members of the rigid orthodoxy. Only seldomly was she instantly understood and revered, most often she was mere syllables away from being killed for heresy, yet she persisted in proving her visions were real and that she did in fact enjoy frequent direct communication with the Lord.
Although Margery’s life choices closely resemble those of the ascetics before her (abandonment of worldly possessions, wearing little clothing, denying herself mean, championing celibacy), the way she publicly displayed her faith is a stark contrast. Living a quiet, reclusive life wasn’t an option for her, she claimed to “live her life as versions of [holy men like Caister and Richard Rolle]” but felt impelled to dispel the word of God herself. She was never a self proclaimed ‘preacher’ (in fact, vehemently denied any allegations of preaching), but still felt a great responsibility of being an active medium through which God could do good work in the world.
Her incessant weeping was an interesting component of her life of religious devotion. It was common for the “direct experience of the divine to bring with it tears,” and Margery often wept when she felt the presence of the Lord, so overcome with emotion that she uncontrollable broke down in tears, regardless of her company or location (Dinshaw 232). The “violence of her weeping and wailing, beyond her own ability to contain,” was behavior was extremely off-putting to many (Dinshaw 225). Even her second amanuensis (the priest) only “regained his belief in her after he read of the tears and cries of other holy people” (Dinshaw 229). Her weeping is said to have started after her first contact with the Lord, that “when Margery heard that Christ wept, she wept too, and loudly;” her weeping was “an important spiritual bond” she shared with the Lord (Dinshaw 226). Some were displeased with her weeping by claiming it was all for attention, but was officially rectified of any such claims when “a test imposed by uncertain priests proves that these cryings are not done for the sake of publicity” (Dinshaw 232).
The most controversial aspect of her life as a mystic was her conflict with the orthodoxy. The church feared the likes of Margery, someone with a direct connection to the Lord had no need for the church as a medium of higher communication. She was controversial to the church because she “advocated direct communication between all Christians and God” while “circumventing and correcting clerical authorities” (Dinshaw 228). It was her belief that “Christ is present physically in the here and now, that humans can touch the divine, that the Godhead motivates all events, public and private”, and it was thus feared that she could directly usurp power away from the church (Dinshaw 236). The church also feared her directly preaching in the same way local translations of the bible were feared because the power of interpretation wouldn’t rest solely in the hands of the orthodoxy. In her time it was “declared heretical not just to make, but even to own, without diocesan permission, a single biblical verse translated into English” and it was “dangerous to produce vernacular devotional prose,” which Margery boldly ignored (Dinshaw 228). She was illiterate and did not speak Latin, so the only verses available to her were illegal translations of the bible or illegally translated sermons.
In conclusion, Margery was an important important popular figure who played a role in chipping away the strength of the ruling class and sex in a church and male dominated society. There are ironies to her story, take the fact that she felt the need to be validated by members of the very orthodoxy she sought to correct the ways of. It seems she did this because it was the only way should could gain widespread respect and notoriety, not to mention be taken seriously. The validation of those in power made the vast majority of those she came into contact with listen to her as a credible source. Another irony is that her being illiterate forced her to seek the aid of men to write down and proliferate her story. Being a historical victim of circumstance, women rarely were taught how to read or write, and Margery was no exception. She used whichever resources were available to her, and I don’t think it discredits her narrative as a strong independent woman because she sought the help of a few literate men.
Christine L
One can find, in The Book of Margery Kempe, a great deal of nuanced commentary on her life. It is an autobiography in which she explores many themes of her existence including motherhood, her identity as a wife, her relationship to God, her relationship to others and the world, pilgrimage, mysticism, sickness, and morality. She lived from 1373 to 1439 and was only twenty years old she was married to John Kempe. In chapter one the reader learns that Kempe falls into illness after the birth of her first child. She was bothered by spirits for a little over half a year, allegedly due to her fear of damnation and criticism from her confessor after she began to divulge her secrets. The devils tormented her and convinced her to do what she would not otherwise have done. She abused herself physically, and mentally sided with the spirits. Jesus, manifested as man, visits her at her bedside and her faith and devotion are restored.
In chapter two she explains her continued struggles with pride, envy and material want. She tries her hand in many professions but has no long-term luck with any of them. In the latter part of chapter two and in chapter three she engages in bodily penance, hears music, speaks of heaven, desires to abstain from sexual relations with her husband, fasts, prays, weeps, and has more children. In chapters four through eleven, Kempe wrestles with adultery, abstains from eating meat, meditates, is injured by a stone and beam that fall from the roof of the church, leaves for York with her husband, and receives agreement from her husband that they will abstain from sex. She speaks, in chapter seventeen, with a vicar in Norwich who believes her stories and agrees that she has been receiving true messages from God. She sees the Host moving and is warned by God of a coming earthquake in chapter twenty. Kempe speaks with God regarding her heavenly fate, has trouble with her traveling companions on the way to Constance due to her piety, cries excessively upon contemplation of Christ’s death, and continues her travels to see more holy sites in chapters twenty-two, twenty-six, twenty-eight and twenty-nine, respectively.
The majority of Kempe’s autobiography covers her constant struggle to stay pure, devoted, and morally right. The illness that comes after the birth of her first child is partly attributed to the devils that try to convince her to live an earthly life and partly due to her sin and inability to deal with her sin. This leads to her eventual rejection of anything the world has to offer. God tells her that if she is hated by people and the world, she is loved by Him.
It would not be such a jump in modern day to assume that Margery Kempe desired to live a chaste life without engaging in sex with her husband because of the consequences. She had fourteen children who, based on the above chapters, have less autobiographical importance to her in the grand scheme of her life than spiritual matters. Similarly, she holds her earthly marriage in low regards compared to her heavenly marriage to God. “I shall say to thee, Mine own blessed spouse:--‘Welcome to Me with all manner of joy and gladness, here to dwell with Me and never to depart from Me without end’” (22). God calls her to be his wife and she tells her husband that their carnal relationship is second to her relationship with God. “And then she said with great sorrow:--‘Forsooth, I would rather see you being slain, than that we should turn again to our uncleanness’” (11). She seems to be attracted to her spiritual life in the same way other women were attracted to living in convents. Perhaps such moves can be seen as a type of medieval feminism or an escape from unfulfilling, conventional routine.
She expresses her regret further when she says, “lack of maidenhood is to me now great sorrow; me-thinketh I would I had been slain when I was taken from the font-stone, so that I should never have displeased Thee” (22). She would have rather had a life without children or a husband. If a woman is a virgin it signifies that she has not taken that extra step away from God and towards earthly existence. She has, in some sense, higher status for living chaste. God reinforces the idea that having love only for Him is superior to anything else when He tells Kempe, “thou art a singular lover, and therefore thou shalt have a singular love in Heaven” (22).
As Dinshaw states, Margery Kempe is a woman deeply in and profoundly out of her time. “Married at about the age of twenty to a man of lesser social status – Margery indignantly reminds him of her family’s importance when he tries to correct her” (Dinshaw 223). She has a solid will that speaks across time to women who feel similarly hampered. In her travelling, witnessing and ministering, she is modern woman. She dictates her own destiny. Kempe experiences greater connection to God through pilgrimage and imagination. Traveling to sites such as Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, Mount Sion, and Bethlehem allows her to comprehend God’s suffering and life. She uses these geographical encounters to move closer to the divine, not unlike the way iconodules used icons to attain a deeper understanding of God.
Mysticism decentralized authority as it gave individuals the ability to explore and express their personal connection to God. This potential loss of power was a great threat to the Church. A common experience of mystics was direct communication with God and other heavenly beings. Many mystics, including Kempe, were said to be crazy and heretical. These claims were made both in sincerity through observation and out of fear. For example, when it came to her intense weeping some “people around her, suspecting her of inappropriate attachment and a prideful sense of her own singularity,” (Dinshaw 225) discounted her claims as true. However, others understood and respected her. It is especially powerful that Margery Kempe is a woman because she and other mystics, through their personal relationships and communications with the divine, could undermine the patriarchal institutions and societal norms that existed. Kempe not only chipped away at religious tradition as a mystic, she paved the way for a kind of nonconformity and pushed for an unapologetic style of living.
Works Cited:
Kempe, Margery. “The Book of Margery Kempe.” In Readings in Medieval History, edited by Patrick J. Geary, 567-599, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. “Margery Kempe.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, 222-239. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
One can find, in The Book of Margery Kempe, a great deal of nuanced commentary on her life. It is an autobiography in which she explores many themes of her existence including motherhood, her identity as a wife, her relationship to God, her relationship to others and the world, pilgrimage, mysticism, sickness, and morality. She lived from 1373 to 1439 and was only twenty years old she was married to John Kempe. In chapter one the reader learns that Kempe falls into illness after the birth of her first child. She was bothered by spirits for a little over half a year, allegedly due to her fear of damnation and criticism from her confessor after she began to divulge her secrets. The devils tormented her and convinced her to do what she would not otherwise have done. She abused herself physically, and mentally sided with the spirits. Jesus, manifested as man, visits her at her bedside and her faith and devotion are restored.
In chapter two she explains her continued struggles with pride, envy and material want. She tries her hand in many professions but has no long-term luck with any of them. In the latter part of chapter two and in chapter three she engages in bodily penance, hears music, speaks of heaven, desires to abstain from sexual relations with her husband, fasts, prays, weeps, and has more children. In chapters four through eleven, Kempe wrestles with adultery, abstains from eating meat, meditates, is injured by a stone and beam that fall from the roof of the church, leaves for York with her husband, and receives agreement from her husband that they will abstain from sex. She speaks, in chapter seventeen, with a vicar in Norwich who believes her stories and agrees that she has been receiving true messages from God. She sees the Host moving and is warned by God of a coming earthquake in chapter twenty. Kempe speaks with God regarding her heavenly fate, has trouble with her traveling companions on the way to Constance due to her piety, cries excessively upon contemplation of Christ’s death, and continues her travels to see more holy sites in chapters twenty-two, twenty-six, twenty-eight and twenty-nine, respectively.
The majority of Kempe’s autobiography covers her constant struggle to stay pure, devoted, and morally right. The illness that comes after the birth of her first child is partly attributed to the devils that try to convince her to live an earthly life and partly due to her sin and inability to deal with her sin. This leads to her eventual rejection of anything the world has to offer. God tells her that if she is hated by people and the world, she is loved by Him.
It would not be such a jump in modern day to assume that Margery Kempe desired to live a chaste life without engaging in sex with her husband because of the consequences. She had fourteen children who, based on the above chapters, have less autobiographical importance to her in the grand scheme of her life than spiritual matters. Similarly, she holds her earthly marriage in low regards compared to her heavenly marriage to God. “I shall say to thee, Mine own blessed spouse:--‘Welcome to Me with all manner of joy and gladness, here to dwell with Me and never to depart from Me without end’” (22). God calls her to be his wife and she tells her husband that their carnal relationship is second to her relationship with God. “And then she said with great sorrow:--‘Forsooth, I would rather see you being slain, than that we should turn again to our uncleanness’” (11). She seems to be attracted to her spiritual life in the same way other women were attracted to living in convents. Perhaps such moves can be seen as a type of medieval feminism or an escape from unfulfilling, conventional routine.
She expresses her regret further when she says, “lack of maidenhood is to me now great sorrow; me-thinketh I would I had been slain when I was taken from the font-stone, so that I should never have displeased Thee” (22). She would have rather had a life without children or a husband. If a woman is a virgin it signifies that she has not taken that extra step away from God and towards earthly existence. She has, in some sense, higher status for living chaste. God reinforces the idea that having love only for Him is superior to anything else when He tells Kempe, “thou art a singular lover, and therefore thou shalt have a singular love in Heaven” (22).
As Dinshaw states, Margery Kempe is a woman deeply in and profoundly out of her time. “Married at about the age of twenty to a man of lesser social status – Margery indignantly reminds him of her family’s importance when he tries to correct her” (Dinshaw 223). She has a solid will that speaks across time to women who feel similarly hampered. In her travelling, witnessing and ministering, she is modern woman. She dictates her own destiny. Kempe experiences greater connection to God through pilgrimage and imagination. Traveling to sites such as Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, Mount Sion, and Bethlehem allows her to comprehend God’s suffering and life. She uses these geographical encounters to move closer to the divine, not unlike the way iconodules used icons to attain a deeper understanding of God.
Mysticism decentralized authority as it gave individuals the ability to explore and express their personal connection to God. This potential loss of power was a great threat to the Church. A common experience of mystics was direct communication with God and other heavenly beings. Many mystics, including Kempe, were said to be crazy and heretical. These claims were made both in sincerity through observation and out of fear. For example, when it came to her intense weeping some “people around her, suspecting her of inappropriate attachment and a prideful sense of her own singularity,” (Dinshaw 225) discounted her claims as true. However, others understood and respected her. It is especially powerful that Margery Kempe is a woman because she and other mystics, through their personal relationships and communications with the divine, could undermine the patriarchal institutions and societal norms that existed. Kempe not only chipped away at religious tradition as a mystic, she paved the way for a kind of nonconformity and pushed for an unapologetic style of living.
Works Cited:
Kempe, Margery. “The Book of Margery Kempe.” In Readings in Medieval History, edited by Patrick J. Geary, 567-599, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. “Margery Kempe.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, 222-239. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Kelsi Tallman
Medieval Women's Devotionalism and Piety: The Book of Margery Kempe
The Book of Margery Kempe is a spiritual autobiography by a fifteenth century medieval mystic woman who focuses much of her book on her devotional life and her struggles of following Christ. She starts by describing her marriage and illness after giving birth to her first child. She then experiences great anxiety with spirits that torment her constantly. She mentions her first couple of encounters with Christ and her struggles to give up worldly pride. She decides to follow Christ but as she describes it, it is not an easy journey, especially in her struggles with the male church authorities. Margery also describes a trip she takes to Norwich where she meets a vicar who understands her form of piety. She also tells of her pilgrimages to the Holy Land and how her devotion to Christ is not well received by those around her. In Jerusalem she saw what Christ had gone through when he was crucified and it made her fall to the floor weeping, which is one of the main characteristics of her form of piety.
Margery Kempe was a medieval mystic who wanted to share her divinely inspired experiences with the world, and aside from the male authors’ convictions mixed into her book, there is still much to be learned about medieval female piety from the Book. Her form of spiritual devotion and piety are not well accepted by those she encounters through her life (Orthodox priests, friars, the public, etc.). Since her devotions are loud and disruptive people tend to think of her as a heretic and therefore assume that her piety is not real and out of control. She often becomes overwhelmed with tears and weeping for Christ and she practices bodily penance as a sign of her devotion to him.
Margery was not accepted by others for many reasons including “her direct communication with the divine, her circumventing and correcting clerical authorities, her speaking in public and her generally unofficial and disruptive devotional style” (Dinshaw 228). Margery is a female mystic who is claiming to have direct contact with the divine aside from the mediation of the male church authority. She continuously has conversations between her and God “that are deep, familiar, and spiritual” (Dinshaw 232). Her direct experience with the divine brings her to weeping and deep emotional connection to God, which "finds its place in the tradition of late medieval affective devotion, deeply felt forms of piety focused on humanity of Christ and often practiced by women” (Dinshaw 233).
Not only is Margery correcting male authority and having her own experiences with God aside from the male church authorities, she is also speaking and preaching in public, which is not something that is acceptable for women to do. It is difficult for most of the male church authorities to listen to and follow a female preacher because she is a threat to their position and power. Margery was not a quiet preacher either, she went about wailing and falling on the floor in uncontrollable fits of weeping. However, Margery seems to depend on the abilities and skills of male authorities in helping her produce her message in written form since she was illiterate. Margery was living in a very difficult world. Although she was well-off financially and was married with children, she didn’t want to document her life as a housewife, but rather she wanted to put focus on her devotional life.
Margery was not the only medieval female mystic who had visions, experienced uncontrollable weeping and convinced her husband to live in chastity. There were also Saints Mary of Oignies and Bridget of Sweden who were well known in Margery’s time (Dinshaw 229). It is also apparent that through these written texts it can be concluded that one can learn about the “experiential” as well as “the everyday life” of a medieval female mystic (Dinshaw 230). One can look at the Book, as well as these other well known mystics to get a better understanding of the content of devotion in this time period. Chastity, as well as extreme emotional devotion to Christ and pilgrimages to the Holy Land, were important parts of female piety. However, female piety wasn’t as well documented as male piety so the Book of Margery Kempe gives great insight into what female piety looked like in the fifteenth century. According to Dinshaw, female mysticism in this period “expressed itself often in terms of ecstatic union with the humanity of Christ, perhaps because of the ages-old association of femininity with carnality,” even though Margery puts her own spin on her experiences (234).
Another observation that can be concluded from the Book is that sex is a major theme in her writings. There are three important episodes where Margery struggles with her husband to convince him to live in chastity, during her time of temptation when a man persuades her to “lie” with him, and Dinshaw suggests that she fears rape when she travels. Most importantly is that Margery “has found an ideal intimate: she is married mystically to the Godhead.” The language of the Book is also very sexual, such language as “dalliance” which Dinshaw suggests is a Middle English term that “denotes… sexual union” (234). Dinshaw also states that the Lord “withdrawal from her [Margery] is experienced in sexual terms” (235). There is a theme of sexual language in describing Margery’s devotional life with Christ. Language is the way one describes their experience and understanding of the world, and Margery does just this in her sexual language. Medieval femininity is connected to sexuality, they are interwoven ideologies. Furthermore, Dinshaw argues that “when Margery is deprived of the spiritual element of her devotion, vicious carnality is all that remains” (235).
Margery’s experience in the medieval world is described as a struggle with the male church authority and with masculine domination. Her entire life and devotional experience discussed in her writings portray the difficulties that a fifteenth century medieval female mystic struggled with; from being a subject of male church authorities to her “uniquely female danger (childbirth)” to needing permission from the male authorities to travel and go on pilgrimages (as well as the financial support from her husband), and as Dinshaw concludes “Margery experiences this clerical demystification as a horror” (235). That is an excellent way to recapitulate Margery’s experience as a female mystic – horror. The majority of her encounters with other people are horrifying because they do not understand her style of piety. She continuously struggles with many male church authorities, as well as her husband and the public, in finding her agency and autonomy as a female mystic.
Margery is repeatedly described as being “set apart from her peers” and this is argued to be because “she is an anachronism ever in her own (temporally heterogeneous) time” (236). This would explain why her style of devotionalism is not understood and mistaken as heretical by others. But where then would Margery fit? Dinshaw notes that medieval mystics usually lived in the spiritual world while participating “in the life everlasting of Christ” (235). In other words, medieval mystics saw themselves in two places at once, or as Dinshaw quotes Gurevich “’on two temporal planes at once’” (235). This is well explained in Margery’s pilgrimages to the Holy Land where she describes her deeply emotional experiences with Christ and the suffering he went through, thus “bringing biblical time into the present” (235). Moreover, Dinshaw discusses the idea that Margery “lives in a multitemporal, heterogeneous now,” meaning that she lives as a medieval female mystic and also as contemporary with the modern world; she connects the two worlds, or as Dinshaw puts it she “exists both in and out of time” (237). Therefore Margery’s style of extreme devotion to Christ is misunderstood for heretical activity, demon possession or bodily sickness. She does not fit into her own time, which is clearly understood in the Book.
Medieval Women's Devotionalism and Piety: The Book of Margery Kempe
The Book of Margery Kempe is a spiritual autobiography by a fifteenth century medieval mystic woman who focuses much of her book on her devotional life and her struggles of following Christ. She starts by describing her marriage and illness after giving birth to her first child. She then experiences great anxiety with spirits that torment her constantly. She mentions her first couple of encounters with Christ and her struggles to give up worldly pride. She decides to follow Christ but as she describes it, it is not an easy journey, especially in her struggles with the male church authorities. Margery also describes a trip she takes to Norwich where she meets a vicar who understands her form of piety. She also tells of her pilgrimages to the Holy Land and how her devotion to Christ is not well received by those around her. In Jerusalem she saw what Christ had gone through when he was crucified and it made her fall to the floor weeping, which is one of the main characteristics of her form of piety.
Margery Kempe was a medieval mystic who wanted to share her divinely inspired experiences with the world, and aside from the male authors’ convictions mixed into her book, there is still much to be learned about medieval female piety from the Book. Her form of spiritual devotion and piety are not well accepted by those she encounters through her life (Orthodox priests, friars, the public, etc.). Since her devotions are loud and disruptive people tend to think of her as a heretic and therefore assume that her piety is not real and out of control. She often becomes overwhelmed with tears and weeping for Christ and she practices bodily penance as a sign of her devotion to him.
Margery was not accepted by others for many reasons including “her direct communication with the divine, her circumventing and correcting clerical authorities, her speaking in public and her generally unofficial and disruptive devotional style” (Dinshaw 228). Margery is a female mystic who is claiming to have direct contact with the divine aside from the mediation of the male church authority. She continuously has conversations between her and God “that are deep, familiar, and spiritual” (Dinshaw 232). Her direct experience with the divine brings her to weeping and deep emotional connection to God, which "finds its place in the tradition of late medieval affective devotion, deeply felt forms of piety focused on humanity of Christ and often practiced by women” (Dinshaw 233).
Not only is Margery correcting male authority and having her own experiences with God aside from the male church authorities, she is also speaking and preaching in public, which is not something that is acceptable for women to do. It is difficult for most of the male church authorities to listen to and follow a female preacher because she is a threat to their position and power. Margery was not a quiet preacher either, she went about wailing and falling on the floor in uncontrollable fits of weeping. However, Margery seems to depend on the abilities and skills of male authorities in helping her produce her message in written form since she was illiterate. Margery was living in a very difficult world. Although she was well-off financially and was married with children, she didn’t want to document her life as a housewife, but rather she wanted to put focus on her devotional life.
Margery was not the only medieval female mystic who had visions, experienced uncontrollable weeping and convinced her husband to live in chastity. There were also Saints Mary of Oignies and Bridget of Sweden who were well known in Margery’s time (Dinshaw 229). It is also apparent that through these written texts it can be concluded that one can learn about the “experiential” as well as “the everyday life” of a medieval female mystic (Dinshaw 230). One can look at the Book, as well as these other well known mystics to get a better understanding of the content of devotion in this time period. Chastity, as well as extreme emotional devotion to Christ and pilgrimages to the Holy Land, were important parts of female piety. However, female piety wasn’t as well documented as male piety so the Book of Margery Kempe gives great insight into what female piety looked like in the fifteenth century. According to Dinshaw, female mysticism in this period “expressed itself often in terms of ecstatic union with the humanity of Christ, perhaps because of the ages-old association of femininity with carnality,” even though Margery puts her own spin on her experiences (234).
Another observation that can be concluded from the Book is that sex is a major theme in her writings. There are three important episodes where Margery struggles with her husband to convince him to live in chastity, during her time of temptation when a man persuades her to “lie” with him, and Dinshaw suggests that she fears rape when she travels. Most importantly is that Margery “has found an ideal intimate: she is married mystically to the Godhead.” The language of the Book is also very sexual, such language as “dalliance” which Dinshaw suggests is a Middle English term that “denotes… sexual union” (234). Dinshaw also states that the Lord “withdrawal from her [Margery] is experienced in sexual terms” (235). There is a theme of sexual language in describing Margery’s devotional life with Christ. Language is the way one describes their experience and understanding of the world, and Margery does just this in her sexual language. Medieval femininity is connected to sexuality, they are interwoven ideologies. Furthermore, Dinshaw argues that “when Margery is deprived of the spiritual element of her devotion, vicious carnality is all that remains” (235).
Margery’s experience in the medieval world is described as a struggle with the male church authority and with masculine domination. Her entire life and devotional experience discussed in her writings portray the difficulties that a fifteenth century medieval female mystic struggled with; from being a subject of male church authorities to her “uniquely female danger (childbirth)” to needing permission from the male authorities to travel and go on pilgrimages (as well as the financial support from her husband), and as Dinshaw concludes “Margery experiences this clerical demystification as a horror” (235). That is an excellent way to recapitulate Margery’s experience as a female mystic – horror. The majority of her encounters with other people are horrifying because they do not understand her style of piety. She continuously struggles with many male church authorities, as well as her husband and the public, in finding her agency and autonomy as a female mystic.
Margery is repeatedly described as being “set apart from her peers” and this is argued to be because “she is an anachronism ever in her own (temporally heterogeneous) time” (236). This would explain why her style of devotionalism is not understood and mistaken as heretical by others. But where then would Margery fit? Dinshaw notes that medieval mystics usually lived in the spiritual world while participating “in the life everlasting of Christ” (235). In other words, medieval mystics saw themselves in two places at once, or as Dinshaw quotes Gurevich “’on two temporal planes at once’” (235). This is well explained in Margery’s pilgrimages to the Holy Land where she describes her deeply emotional experiences with Christ and the suffering he went through, thus “bringing biblical time into the present” (235). Moreover, Dinshaw discusses the idea that Margery “lives in a multitemporal, heterogeneous now,” meaning that she lives as a medieval female mystic and also as contemporary with the modern world; she connects the two worlds, or as Dinshaw puts it she “exists both in and out of time” (237). Therefore Margery’s style of extreme devotion to Christ is misunderstood for heretical activity, demon possession or bodily sickness. She does not fit into her own time, which is clearly understood in the Book.
Experiences of a Late Medieval Mystic
Mary Bahia-Zilar
Part One:
With the help of several scribes, medieval female mystic Margery Kempe wrote what is now considered to be the first English autobiography, describing both her experiences of fourteenth century everyday life and her direct experiences with the divine.
The Book of Margery Kempe begins with Margery’s marriage and resulting pregnancy at the age of twenty. When she experiences troubles with her pregnancy and becomes fearful of death, she calls upon her confessor to cleanse herself before God. However, when she goes to confess a serious sin, her confessor does not let her finish speaking, and harshly reprimands her. Unable to finish, Margery becomes terrified that she has not been forgiven, and falls into madness, experiencing visions of demons who “bade her that she should forsake Christendom, her faith, and deny her God…her good works…her father, her mother, and all her friends” (chapter 1). She does as she is told until finally she receives a vision of Jesus Christ, who speaks to her and calms her spirit. Soon after, she resumes her place within the community and attempts to start a brewery business. While the vision of Christ creates in her a desire to serve God, her vanity and pride prevent her from doing so fully, and lead her to begin brewing. Both her brewery and her next business attempt (a horse-mill) fail, failures which Margery interprets in chapter two as being “the scourges of Our Lord that would chastise her for her sin." It is only after her second business failure that Margery becomes determined to live a life pleasing to God, giving up her pride and love of the world.
Among other things, Margery’s new lifestyle includes constant prayer, unusual worship involving weeping and strange bodily motions, the wearing of a hairshirt, fasting, discussions with and visions of the divine, pilgrimage, and celibacy (chapters 3, 6, 28). Her controversial behavior both inspires and distresses those in the Christian community, and Margery begins to walk a thin line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. As a result, she seeks comfort and guidance in the examples of other controversial female mystics such as Saint Mary of Oignies and Saint Bridget of Sweden, whose lives bore resemblance to her own. As Carolyn Dinshaw remarks, “[Margery] may live her life as versions of them” (Dinshaw 229). Like other mystics, Margery experiences God in an immediate and intimate way, lives a celibate life despite her being married, and exercises authority through chastisement of church officials. In this way, The Book of Margery Kempe both provides insight into Margery’s individual character, and also effectively illustrates some of the typical experiences of a late medieval female mystic.
Part Two:
For the mystic, interactions with the divine are often experienced in a very intensely immediate way, and have the ability to transform the mystic’s exterior intellectual understanding of God to an interior, more personal understanding. For Margery, these visions seem to cross the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds, often mingling the two together so that they become indistinguishable. In chapter twenty-eight when Margery visits Calvary Hill, she sees “in the city of her soul” Christ’s crucifixion. Margery goes on to say that, while in Jerusalem, “when she saw the crucifix, or if she saw a man with a wound…she thought she saw Our Lord being beaten or wounded.” There is a similar collapsing of time and space when in chapters six and seven Margery envisions the birth of Mary, the birth of Christ, and then the holy family’s flight to Egypt. In this vision, Margery assumes an active role as Mary’s maidservant, thus experiencing and becoming a part of “the everlasting now of the divine” (Dinshaw 226). Margery seems to exist both within the corporeal world where time is understood chronologically, as well as within the spiritual world, where time is collapsed and visions are immediately experienced. Margery’s existence outside of the corporeal understanding of time seems to point towards her fixation with and preference for divine affairs, as opposed to the ordinary concerns of the material world.
One of the ways that Margery’s preference for the divine manifests itself is through her desire for marital celibacy. In chapters twenty-one and twenty-two, Margery laments her lost virginity, believing herself to be less worthy of God because of it. She wishes for celibacy in her marriage so that she can more fully experience union with the humanity of Jesus. It is only after several conversations with her husband and much prayer that Margery’s husband becomes willing to accommodate her. Margery wishes to remain loyal to Christ through her act of celibacy, and falls into sexual temptation only when Christ withdraws himself from her. This can be seen in chapter four, when after Margery comes to believe that she has erased all human lust from her heart, Christ allows her to be tempted for three years, during which she consents to sleep with another man. While Margery seeks to erase her carnal sexual desire, she craves deeper intimacy with Christ. Throughout her book, Margery uses the word “dalliance” to describe her encounters with God, a word which has sexual implications. In chapter five, Margery declares that when Christ appears to her in a vision, he “ravished her spirit.” This way of understanding interactions with Jesus is not uncommon in female mysticism, as Dinshaw notes (234). In the New Testament, Paul discusses the greater worth of those who remain celibate, and in Christian orthodox tradition chaste women who enter the convent become “married” to Christ. Margery wishes for this same kind of singular relationship with God. As Dinshaw writes: “In Christ [Margery] has found an ideal intimate: she is married mystically to the Godhead” (234).
Lastly, her role as mystic gives Margery a greater sense of authority through her personal conversations with God. She advises various individuals, as well as chastises those who she perceives as being out of line with God. One of the better examples of this comes when Margery visits the archbishop of Canterbury in chapter sixteen, and sees “many of the Archbishop’s clerks and other reckless men, both squires and yeomen, who swore many great oaths and spoke many reckless words.” When Margery is permitted to speak with the archbishop, she informs him that “Ye shall answer for them, unless ye correct them, or else put them out of your service.” He patiently and kindly listens to her before giving her a "fair answer," which she takes to mean that he will work to fix the situation. Another example can be found In chapter 60, when Margery visits Norwich and comes across an image in a church of Mary holding Christ crucified. She begins to weep uncontrollably and the priest decides to approach her, finding her sobs unnecessary and exaggerated. He says to her "Lady, Jesus died a long time ago." Margery, who experiences Jesus' crucifixion more immediately, finds the priest to be "indifferent to the reality of Christ," and responds with "a scorching reproof of him and a ringing declaration of the faith" (Dinshaw 231). On this occasion, Margery comes into conflict with the clergyman, but does not hesitate to assert her strong opinion. In challenging this priest on the grounds of her immediate access to God, this incident provides insight into the complex power relationship between Margery and the Church. After all, during this time period it is the Church which plays an intermediary role between the Christian and Christ. Because of this, Margery's is at times "associated with [heterodoxy through] Lollardy because of her direct communication with the divine, [and] her circumventing and correcting clerical authorities" (Dinshaw 228).
In The Book of Margery Kempe, the themes of perceived influence and controversial authority, celibacy and dalliance with Christ, and immediate experience of the divine all demonstrate how Margery’s life experiences were largely unique to her role as mystic. While she was both a wife and a mother of many children, her book focuses primarily on her church life and relationship with Christ. In centering in on the religious aspect of her life, The Book of Margery Kempe provides a great example of what life was like for the medieval female mystic in general, and for Margery Kempe in particular.
Works Cited:
Kempe, Margery. "The Book of Margery Kempe." In Readings in Medieval History. Edited by Patrick J. Geary, pp. 567-599. Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 2003.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. "Margery Kempe." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing. Edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, pp. 222-239. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Margery Kempe - Adora Arias
The Book of Margery Kempe is the autobiography of a medieval woman and Christian mystic. The actual writer of the book is not completely certain, but it is speculated to have been written by several different people over the years, including Margery’s son and a
priest.
Margery’s story begins shortly after her marriage to John Kempe and the birth of her first child, which evidently, was a trying time. We learn that Margery, referred to as the “creature” throughout the book, has had something on her conscience which has bothered her for quite some time, but to which she has never confessed, as the devil always managed to convince her that confession wasn’t necessary, only that she “do penance by herself alone and all should be forgiven” (Kempe 567).
Margery finally decides to confess when she feels she is near death, but before she can fully explain herself her confessor sharply reproves her (Kempe 567) and she doesn’t finish her confession. This leads to a period of Margery’s life where she is “out of her mind and was wonderfully vexed and labored with spirits” (Kempe 567). During this time Margery does damage to her own body as well as speaks ill of her parents, her husband, and Christianity. Jesus then comes to Margery and tells her she is forgiven for her untold
confession and that everything is okay. Margery immediately calms down and returns to her senses.
After her first encounter with Jesus, Margery goes back to her husband and her life with renewed confidence that she is in God’s good graces. However, Margery has a hard time giving up the material attachments she has grown accustomed to as the daughter of the mayor of Lynn. She speaks of the fancy clothes she wore and of wearing gold pipes in her hair and admits to starting two different businesses because she wasn’t satisfied with what she had and “ever desired more and more” (Kempe 568). When both businesses fail she finally takes it as a sign that God is punishing her for her worldly attachments and gives them up.
In the years that follow, we see Margery’s struggle to live a life consistent with the medieval view of piety – chasteness, obedience to God, prayer, while also trying to fulfill her duties as a wife. Often, these two roles are in direct conflict with each other, causing her grief, for which Jesus always consoles her. After 14 children, Margery’s husband finally agrees to a chaste marriage.
Margery travels to many places over the course of the book, sometimes with her husband and sometimes alone, she visits and speaks with many people including Julian of Norwich and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Margery offers her advice, relays messages of Christ’s wishes, asks God’s forgiveness on the behalf of other’s, and shows that she can prophesize with the best of them. Some people are impressed with Margery and believe her relationship with God to be pure and true, others are put-off by her dramatic show of weeping, while others still, accuse her of heresy and say of her weeping that “some evil spirit vexed her in her body” (Kempe 578).
The Book of Margery Kempe, in many ways, exemplifies what it meant to be a medieval mystic. Margery has a deeply personal relationship with Christ and is granted frequent visits and council from him in matters both large and trivial. Her sensual and deeply emotional relationship with God is also typical of a mystic and can be seen in the story where she hears the sweet melody while lying in bed with her husband and is overcome with emotion. Obviously, she is overcome with emotion at many other times in the book as well, but the story involving the melody is a good depiction of how the senses are often involved in the mystic's spiritual bond with the divine. Dinshaw refers to a quote from the Cloud of Unknowing which states that "a sort of infection of sensualized mysticism was creeping over English devotion" (Dinshaw 233-234) and says that the "term 'sensualized' is carefully chosen here, the word applying not only to the senses but to sexual passion as well (234).
Margery's autobiography not only shows us what a medieval mystic's life can look like, but also what is typically expected from a woman in this time. One of the issues focused on throughout the book is Margery's desire to live a chaste life, made difficult because of her obligation as a married woman to perform her wifely duties. This is not only demanded of her by her husband and accepted by Margery, but is also understood by Christ as well (Kempe 576). Also shown as being of importance regarding women is the status of virginity. Although Christ ends up telling Margery, "I love thee as well as any maiden in the world" (Kempe 583), the fact that she is so concerned about this issue points to how women are regarded in medieval times. Dinshaw also makes note of how Margery's story is a good account of how women were looked at when she calls Margery a controversial figure because she is "loud, demonstrative, and disruptive in her devotion" (Dinshaw 224), and when she uses a quote stating that "Margery and her amanuenses assume that she is of interest only insofar as she is not a housewife" (DInshaw 224).
While the Book of Margery Kempe, and Margery Kempe herself, may not have gained the esteem of other writings by female medieval mystics such as St. Bridget of Sweden, Kempe's autobiography stands out as a slice-of-life portrayal for a middle or upper-class female mystic in late medieval times.
Bibliography
Dinshaw, Carolyn and David Wallace, “Margery Kempe.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, 222-237. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Kempe, Margery, “The Book of Margery Kempe.” In Readings in Medieval History, edited by Patrick J. Geary, 567-599. Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003.
Part One:
With the help of several scribes, medieval female mystic Margery Kempe wrote what is now considered to be the first English autobiography, describing both her experiences of fourteenth century everyday life and her direct experiences with the divine.
The Book of Margery Kempe begins with Margery’s marriage and resulting pregnancy at the age of twenty. When she experiences troubles with her pregnancy and becomes fearful of death, she calls upon her confessor to cleanse herself before God. However, when she goes to confess a serious sin, her confessor does not let her finish speaking, and harshly reprimands her. Unable to finish, Margery becomes terrified that she has not been forgiven, and falls into madness, experiencing visions of demons who “bade her that she should forsake Christendom, her faith, and deny her God…her good works…her father, her mother, and all her friends” (chapter 1). She does as she is told until finally she receives a vision of Jesus Christ, who speaks to her and calms her spirit. Soon after, she resumes her place within the community and attempts to start a brewery business. While the vision of Christ creates in her a desire to serve God, her vanity and pride prevent her from doing so fully, and lead her to begin brewing. Both her brewery and her next business attempt (a horse-mill) fail, failures which Margery interprets in chapter two as being “the scourges of Our Lord that would chastise her for her sin." It is only after her second business failure that Margery becomes determined to live a life pleasing to God, giving up her pride and love of the world.
Among other things, Margery’s new lifestyle includes constant prayer, unusual worship involving weeping and strange bodily motions, the wearing of a hairshirt, fasting, discussions with and visions of the divine, pilgrimage, and celibacy (chapters 3, 6, 28). Her controversial behavior both inspires and distresses those in the Christian community, and Margery begins to walk a thin line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. As a result, she seeks comfort and guidance in the examples of other controversial female mystics such as Saint Mary of Oignies and Saint Bridget of Sweden, whose lives bore resemblance to her own. As Carolyn Dinshaw remarks, “[Margery] may live her life as versions of them” (Dinshaw 229). Like other mystics, Margery experiences God in an immediate and intimate way, lives a celibate life despite her being married, and exercises authority through chastisement of church officials. In this way, The Book of Margery Kempe both provides insight into Margery’s individual character, and also effectively illustrates some of the typical experiences of a late medieval female mystic.
Part Two:
For the mystic, interactions with the divine are often experienced in a very intensely immediate way, and have the ability to transform the mystic’s exterior intellectual understanding of God to an interior, more personal understanding. For Margery, these visions seem to cross the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds, often mingling the two together so that they become indistinguishable. In chapter twenty-eight when Margery visits Calvary Hill, she sees “in the city of her soul” Christ’s crucifixion. Margery goes on to say that, while in Jerusalem, “when she saw the crucifix, or if she saw a man with a wound…she thought she saw Our Lord being beaten or wounded.” There is a similar collapsing of time and space when in chapters six and seven Margery envisions the birth of Mary, the birth of Christ, and then the holy family’s flight to Egypt. In this vision, Margery assumes an active role as Mary’s maidservant, thus experiencing and becoming a part of “the everlasting now of the divine” (Dinshaw 226). Margery seems to exist both within the corporeal world where time is understood chronologically, as well as within the spiritual world, where time is collapsed and visions are immediately experienced. Margery’s existence outside of the corporeal understanding of time seems to point towards her fixation with and preference for divine affairs, as opposed to the ordinary concerns of the material world.
One of the ways that Margery’s preference for the divine manifests itself is through her desire for marital celibacy. In chapters twenty-one and twenty-two, Margery laments her lost virginity, believing herself to be less worthy of God because of it. She wishes for celibacy in her marriage so that she can more fully experience union with the humanity of Jesus. It is only after several conversations with her husband and much prayer that Margery’s husband becomes willing to accommodate her. Margery wishes to remain loyal to Christ through her act of celibacy, and falls into sexual temptation only when Christ withdraws himself from her. This can be seen in chapter four, when after Margery comes to believe that she has erased all human lust from her heart, Christ allows her to be tempted for three years, during which she consents to sleep with another man. While Margery seeks to erase her carnal sexual desire, she craves deeper intimacy with Christ. Throughout her book, Margery uses the word “dalliance” to describe her encounters with God, a word which has sexual implications. In chapter five, Margery declares that when Christ appears to her in a vision, he “ravished her spirit.” This way of understanding interactions with Jesus is not uncommon in female mysticism, as Dinshaw notes (234). In the New Testament, Paul discusses the greater worth of those who remain celibate, and in Christian orthodox tradition chaste women who enter the convent become “married” to Christ. Margery wishes for this same kind of singular relationship with God. As Dinshaw writes: “In Christ [Margery] has found an ideal intimate: she is married mystically to the Godhead” (234).
Lastly, her role as mystic gives Margery a greater sense of authority through her personal conversations with God. She advises various individuals, as well as chastises those who she perceives as being out of line with God. One of the better examples of this comes when Margery visits the archbishop of Canterbury in chapter sixteen, and sees “many of the Archbishop’s clerks and other reckless men, both squires and yeomen, who swore many great oaths and spoke many reckless words.” When Margery is permitted to speak with the archbishop, she informs him that “Ye shall answer for them, unless ye correct them, or else put them out of your service.” He patiently and kindly listens to her before giving her a "fair answer," which she takes to mean that he will work to fix the situation. Another example can be found In chapter 60, when Margery visits Norwich and comes across an image in a church of Mary holding Christ crucified. She begins to weep uncontrollably and the priest decides to approach her, finding her sobs unnecessary and exaggerated. He says to her "Lady, Jesus died a long time ago." Margery, who experiences Jesus' crucifixion more immediately, finds the priest to be "indifferent to the reality of Christ," and responds with "a scorching reproof of him and a ringing declaration of the faith" (Dinshaw 231). On this occasion, Margery comes into conflict with the clergyman, but does not hesitate to assert her strong opinion. In challenging this priest on the grounds of her immediate access to God, this incident provides insight into the complex power relationship between Margery and the Church. After all, during this time period it is the Church which plays an intermediary role between the Christian and Christ. Because of this, Margery's is at times "associated with [heterodoxy through] Lollardy because of her direct communication with the divine, [and] her circumventing and correcting clerical authorities" (Dinshaw 228).
In The Book of Margery Kempe, the themes of perceived influence and controversial authority, celibacy and dalliance with Christ, and immediate experience of the divine all demonstrate how Margery’s life experiences were largely unique to her role as mystic. While she was both a wife and a mother of many children, her book focuses primarily on her church life and relationship with Christ. In centering in on the religious aspect of her life, The Book of Margery Kempe provides a great example of what life was like for the medieval female mystic in general, and for Margery Kempe in particular.
Works Cited:
Kempe, Margery. "The Book of Margery Kempe." In Readings in Medieval History. Edited by Patrick J. Geary, pp. 567-599. Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 2003.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. "Margery Kempe." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing. Edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, pp. 222-239. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Margery Kempe - Adora Arias
The Book of Margery Kempe is the autobiography of a medieval woman and Christian mystic. The actual writer of the book is not completely certain, but it is speculated to have been written by several different people over the years, including Margery’s son and a
priest.
Margery’s story begins shortly after her marriage to John Kempe and the birth of her first child, which evidently, was a trying time. We learn that Margery, referred to as the “creature” throughout the book, has had something on her conscience which has bothered her for quite some time, but to which she has never confessed, as the devil always managed to convince her that confession wasn’t necessary, only that she “do penance by herself alone and all should be forgiven” (Kempe 567).
Margery finally decides to confess when she feels she is near death, but before she can fully explain herself her confessor sharply reproves her (Kempe 567) and she doesn’t finish her confession. This leads to a period of Margery’s life where she is “out of her mind and was wonderfully vexed and labored with spirits” (Kempe 567). During this time Margery does damage to her own body as well as speaks ill of her parents, her husband, and Christianity. Jesus then comes to Margery and tells her she is forgiven for her untold
confession and that everything is okay. Margery immediately calms down and returns to her senses.
After her first encounter with Jesus, Margery goes back to her husband and her life with renewed confidence that she is in God’s good graces. However, Margery has a hard time giving up the material attachments she has grown accustomed to as the daughter of the mayor of Lynn. She speaks of the fancy clothes she wore and of wearing gold pipes in her hair and admits to starting two different businesses because she wasn’t satisfied with what she had and “ever desired more and more” (Kempe 568). When both businesses fail she finally takes it as a sign that God is punishing her for her worldly attachments and gives them up.
In the years that follow, we see Margery’s struggle to live a life consistent with the medieval view of piety – chasteness, obedience to God, prayer, while also trying to fulfill her duties as a wife. Often, these two roles are in direct conflict with each other, causing her grief, for which Jesus always consoles her. After 14 children, Margery’s husband finally agrees to a chaste marriage.
Margery travels to many places over the course of the book, sometimes with her husband and sometimes alone, she visits and speaks with many people including Julian of Norwich and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Margery offers her advice, relays messages of Christ’s wishes, asks God’s forgiveness on the behalf of other’s, and shows that she can prophesize with the best of them. Some people are impressed with Margery and believe her relationship with God to be pure and true, others are put-off by her dramatic show of weeping, while others still, accuse her of heresy and say of her weeping that “some evil spirit vexed her in her body” (Kempe 578).
The Book of Margery Kempe, in many ways, exemplifies what it meant to be a medieval mystic. Margery has a deeply personal relationship with Christ and is granted frequent visits and council from him in matters both large and trivial. Her sensual and deeply emotional relationship with God is also typical of a mystic and can be seen in the story where she hears the sweet melody while lying in bed with her husband and is overcome with emotion. Obviously, she is overcome with emotion at many other times in the book as well, but the story involving the melody is a good depiction of how the senses are often involved in the mystic's spiritual bond with the divine. Dinshaw refers to a quote from the Cloud of Unknowing which states that "a sort of infection of sensualized mysticism was creeping over English devotion" (Dinshaw 233-234) and says that the "term 'sensualized' is carefully chosen here, the word applying not only to the senses but to sexual passion as well (234).
Margery's autobiography not only shows us what a medieval mystic's life can look like, but also what is typically expected from a woman in this time. One of the issues focused on throughout the book is Margery's desire to live a chaste life, made difficult because of her obligation as a married woman to perform her wifely duties. This is not only demanded of her by her husband and accepted by Margery, but is also understood by Christ as well (Kempe 576). Also shown as being of importance regarding women is the status of virginity. Although Christ ends up telling Margery, "I love thee as well as any maiden in the world" (Kempe 583), the fact that she is so concerned about this issue points to how women are regarded in medieval times. Dinshaw also makes note of how Margery's story is a good account of how women were looked at when she calls Margery a controversial figure because she is "loud, demonstrative, and disruptive in her devotion" (Dinshaw 224), and when she uses a quote stating that "Margery and her amanuenses assume that she is of interest only insofar as she is not a housewife" (DInshaw 224).
While the Book of Margery Kempe, and Margery Kempe herself, may not have gained the esteem of other writings by female medieval mystics such as St. Bridget of Sweden, Kempe's autobiography stands out as a slice-of-life portrayal for a middle or upper-class female mystic in late medieval times.
Bibliography
Dinshaw, Carolyn and David Wallace, “Margery Kempe.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, 222-237. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Kempe, Margery, “The Book of Margery Kempe.” In Readings in Medieval History, edited by Patrick J. Geary, 567-599. Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003.