Margery Kempe - Kempe's Significance

Kempe's Significance

Part of Margery Kempe's significance lies in the autobiographical nature of her book: it is the best insight available of a female, middle class experience in the Middle Ages. Kempe is unusual among the more traditional holy exemplars of her time, such as Julian of Norwich, a member of a religious order. In describing her visit to Julian in Norwich, Kempe tells of their discussion of Kempe's visions and assessment as to their orthodoxy. They decided that because the visions led to charity, they were of the Holy Spirit.

Although Kempe has been depicted as an "oddity" or a "madwoman," recent scholarship on vernacular theologies and popular practices of piety suggest she was not as odd as she appears. Her Book is revealed as a carefully constructed spiritual and social commentary. As Swanson (2003) explains, in the 1420s, Kempe began dictating her book to a scribe. After his death, she continued to work with another male scribe, to complete The Book of Margery Kempe. While Kempe began dictating her book, her husband John Kempe fell ill, and she returned to Lynn to be his nursemaid. Soon after, he and her son both died. Her final travel was to Danzig with her daughter-in-law.

Her autobiography begins with "the onset of her spiritual quest, her recovery from the ghostly aftermath of her first child-bearing" (Swanson, 2003, p. 142). There is no firm evidence that Margery Kempe could read or write, but Leyser notes how religious culture was informed by texts. She had such works read to her as the Incendium Amoris by Richard Rolle; Walter Hilton has been cited as another possible influence on Kempe. Among other books that Kempe had read to her were, repeatedly, the Revelationes of Birgitta of Sweden and her pilgrimages were related to those of that married saint, who had had eight children.

Kempe and her Book are significant because they express the tension in late medieval England between institutional orthodoxy and increasingly public modes of religious dissent, especially those of the Lollards. Throughout her spiritual career, Kempe was challenged by both church and civil authorities on her adherence to the teachings of the institutional Church. The Bishop of Lincoln and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel were involved in trials of her allegedly teaching and preaching on scripture and faith in public, and wearing white clothes (interpreted as hypocrisy on the part of a married woman). Kempe proved her orthodoxy in each case.. In his efforts to suppress heresy, Arundel had enacted laws that forbade allowing women to preach, for example.

In the 15th century, a pamphlet was published which represented Kempe as an anchoress, and which stripped from her "Book" any potential heterodoxical thought and dissenting behaviour. Because of this, later scholars believed that she was a vowed religious holy woman like Julian of Norwich. They were surprised to encounter the psychologically and spiritually complex woman revealed in the original text of the "Book."

In 1438, the year her book is known to have been completed, a Marguerite Kempe, who may have been Margery Kempe, was admitted to the Trinity Guild of Lynn. The last record of her is in the town of Lynn in 1438, but it is not positively known when and where she died.

Kempe's book was essentially lost for centuries until a manuscript (now British Library MS Additional 61823) was found by Hope Emily Allen in the private library of the Butler-Bowdon family in Lancashire in 1934. It has since been reprinted in numerous editions and inspired numerous spiritual seekers, as well as scholars trying to understand the role of women in the Middle Ages.

The manuscript was copied, probably slightly before 1450, by someone who signed himself Salthows on the bottom portion of the final page, and contains annotations by four hands. Since the first page of the manuscript contains the rubric, "Liber Montis Gracie. This boke is of Mountegrace," it is likely that some of the annotations are the work of monks associated with the important Carthusian priory of Mount Grace in Yorkshire. Although the four readers largely concerned themselves with correcting mistakes or emending the manuscript for clarity, there are also remarks about the Book's substance.