English mystic (c. 1373 – after 1438)
Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438) was an English Catholic mystic, known for longhand through dictation The Book of Margery Kempe, a work advised by some to be the first autobiography in the Spin language. Her book chronicles her domestic tribulations, her extensive pilgrimages to holy sites in Europe and the Holy Land, hoot well as her mystical conversations with God. She is worthy in the Anglican Communion, but has not been canonised despite the fact that a Catholic saint.
She was born Margery Burnham or Brunham around 1373 in Bishop's Lynn (now King's Lynn), Norfolk, England. Her father, John Brunham, was a seller in Lynn, mayor of the town and Member of Legislature. The first record of her Brunham family is a speak of her grandfather, Ralph de Brunham, in 1320 in say publicly Red Register of Lynn. By 1340, he had joined description Parliament of Lynn.[1] Kempe's kinsman Robert Brunham, possibly her fellowman, became a Member of Parliament for Lynn in 1402 avoid 1417.[2]
No records remain of any formal education that Kempe can have received. As an adult, a priest read to put your feet up "works of religious devotion" in English, which suggests that she might have been unable to read them herself, although she seems to have learned various texts by heart.[2] Kempe appears to have been taught the Pater Noster (the Lord's Prayer), Ave Maria, the Ten Commandments, and other "virtues, vices, professor articles of faith".[2]
At around twenty years of age, Kempe wedded John Kempe, who became a town official in 1394. Margery and John had at least fourteen children. A letter survives from Gdańsk which identifies the name of her eldest contention as John and gives a reason for his visit have round Lynn in 1431.[3]
Kempe, like other medieval mystics, believed that she was summoned to a "greater intimacy with Christ" as a result of multiple visions and experiences she had as lever adult.[2] After the birth of her first child, Kempe went through a period of crisis for nearly eight months,[4] which may perhaps have been an episode of postpartum psychosis.[5] Over her illness, Kempe claimed to have envisioned numerous devils last demons attacking her and commanding her to "forsake her credence, her family, and her friends". She claims that they uniform encouraged her to commit suicide.[2] She also had a facing of Jesus Christ in the form of a man who asked her, "Daughter, why have you forsaken me, and I never forsook you?".[2]
Kempe affirms that she had visitations and conversations with Jesus, Mary, God, and other religious figures, and desert she had visions of being an active participant during picture birth and crucifixion of Christ.[4] These visions and hallucinations physically affected her bodily senses, causing her to hear sounds person in charge smell unknown, strange odours. She reported hearing a heavenly song that made her weep and want to live a pure life. According to Beal, "Margery found other ways to word the intensity of her devotion to God. She prayed cheerfulness a chaste marriage, went to confession two or three historical a day, prayed early and often each day in faith, wore a hair shirt, and willingly suffered whatever negative responses her community expressed in response to her extreme forms presumption devotion".[2]
An explanation for bearing this scrutiny from others was smear conversation held with the mystic Julian of Norwich, whom she travelled to meet. At the end of their conversation, Statesman of Norwich implores that "the more shame she [Kempe] elicits, the more merit she gains in the eyes of depiction Lord".[6] Kempe was also known throughout her community for prudent constant weeping as she begged Christ for mercy and absolution.
In Kempe's vision, Christ reassured her that he had forgiven her sins. "He gave her several commands: to call him her love, to stop wearing the hair shirt, to yield up eating meat, to take the Eucharist every Sunday, run to ground pray the rosary only until six o'clock, to be importunate and speak to him in thought"; he also promised put your feet up that he would "give her victory over her enemies, interaction her the ability to answer all clerks, and that [He] will be with her and never forsake her, and barter help her and never be parted from her".[2] Kempe upfront not join a religious order, but carried out "her discernment of devotion, prayer, and tears in public".[2]
Her visions provoked disclose public displays of loud wailing, sobbing, and writhing, which panicky and annoyed both clergy and laypeople. At one point impossible to differentiate her life, she was imprisoned by the clergy and zone officials and threatened with the possibility of rape.[4] However, she does not record being sexually assaulted.[2] During the 1420s, she dictated her Book, known today as The Book of Margery Kempe, which illustrates her visions, mystical and religious experiences, laugh well as her "temptations to lechery, her travels, and disintegrate trial for heresy".[7] Kempe's book is commonly considered to give somebody the job of the first autobiography written in the English language.[7]
Kempe was proved for heresy multiple times but never convicted. She mentions be pride her ability to deny the accusations of Lollardy swop which she was faced.[8] Possible reasons for her arrests comprise her preaching, which was forbidden to women, her wearing virtuous all white as a married woman, i.e., impersonating a priest, or her apparent belief that she could pray for say publicly souls of those in purgatory and tell whether or clump someone was damned, in a manner similar to the piece together of the intercession of saints. Kempe was also accused chastisement preaching without Church approval as her public speeches skirted a thin line between making statements about her personal faith sit professing to teach scripture.[9][10]
During an inquiry into her heresy she was thought to be possessed by a devil for quoting the scripture, and reminded of the prohibition against women preachers in 1 Timothy.[11][12] Kempe proved to be something of a nuisance in the communities where she resided, as her wrought up wailing and extreme emotional responses seemed to imply a noble connection to God that some other lay people saw chimp diminishing their own, or inappropriately privileged above the relationship among God and the clergy.[13]
Main article: The Book of Margery Kempe
Nearly everything that is known of Kempe's life comes running off her spiritual autobiography known as the Book. In the beforehand 1430s, despite her illiteracy, Kempe decided to record her ecclesiastical life. In the preface to the book, she describes endeavor she employed an Englishman as a scribe. He had ephemeral in Germany, but he died before the work was realised and what he had written was unintelligible to others. That may possibly have been John Kempe, her eldest son.[3] She then persuaded a local priest, who may have been supreme confessor Robert Springold, to begin rewriting on 23 July 1436. On 28 April 1438, he started work on an addon section covering the years 1431–4.[3][14]
The narrative of Kempe's Book begins with the difficult birth of her first child. After describing the demonic torment and Christic apparition that followed, Kempe undertook two domestic businesses: a brewery and a grain mill, both common home-based businesses for medieval women. Both failed after a short period of time. Although she tried to be work up devout, she was tempted by sexual pleasures and social resentment for some years. Eventually turning away from her worldly enquiry, Kempe dedicated herself completely to the spiritual calling that she felt her earlier vision required.[15]
In the summer of 1413, nisus to live a life of commitment to God, Kempe negotiated a chaste marriage with her husband. Although chapter 15 catch the fancy of The Book of Margery Kempe describes her decision to mid a celibate life, chapter 21 mentions that she is gravid once again. It has been speculated that Kempe gives inception to a child, her last, during her pilgrimage; she afterwards relates that she brought a child with her when she returned to England. It is unclear whether the child was conceived before the Kempes began their celibacy, or in a momentary lapse after it.[16]
Sometime around 1413, Kempe visited the feminine mystic and anchoressJulian of Norwich at her cell in Norwich. According to her own account, Kempe visited Julian and stayed for several days. She was especially eager to obtain Julian's approval for her visions of and conversations with God.[17] Picture text reports that Julian approved of Kempe's revelations and gave Kempe reassurance that her religiosity was genuine.[18] However, Julian tutored and cautioned Kempe to "measure these experiences according to picture worship they accrue to God and the profit to draw fellow Christians."[19] Julian also confirmed that Kempe's tears were corporal evidence of the Holy Spirit in soul.[19] Kempe also traditional affirmation of her gifts of tears by way of approbative comparison to a continental holy woman.[20]
In chapter 62, Kempe describes an encounter with a friar who was relentless in his accusation for her incessant tears. The friar admitted to having read of Marie of Oignies and recognised that Kempe's terrified were also a result of similar authentic devotion.[21] During that time, Kempe's spiritual confessor was Richard Caister, the Vicar capacity St Stephen's Church, Norwich, who was buried in the faith in 1420.[22] Kempe prayed at Caister's burial place for depiction healing of a priest. After the priest was healed, Caister's burial place became a shrine for pilgrimage.[23]
In 1438, the twelvemonth her book is known to have been completed, a "Margueria Kempe", who may well have been Margery Kempe, was admitted to the Trinity Guild of Lynn.[14] It is not darken whether this is the same woman, and it is strange when or where after this date Kempe died.
The manuscript was copied, probably shortly before 1450, by someone who signed himself Salthows on the bottom portion of the closing page. This scribe has been shown to be the Norwich monk Richard Salthouse.[24] The manuscript contains annotations by four dissimilar writers. The first page of the manuscript contains the title "Liber Montis Gracie. This boke is of Mountegrace," making value that some of the annotations are the work of monks associated with the important Carthusian priory of Mount Grace slot in Yorkshire. Although the four readers largely concerned themselves with correcting mistakes or emending the manuscript for clarity, there are along with remarks about the Book's substance and some images which show Kempe's themes and images.[25] A recipe, added to the terminal folio of the manuscript by a late 14th- or exactly 15th-century reader of the Book, possibly at the cathedral priory in Norwich, provides more evidence of its readership and has been determined to be for medicinal sweets, or digestives, hailed 'dragges'.[26]
Kempe's book was essentially lost for centuries, being known sole from excerpts published by Wynkyn de Worde in around 1501, and by Henry Pepwell in 1521. In 1934, a document, now British Library Add MS 61823, the only surviving ms of Kempe's Book, was found in the private library disruption the Butler-Bowdon family, and then consulted by Hope Emily Allen.[14] It has since been reprinted and translated in numerous editions.
Part of Kempe's significance lies in the autobiographical nature honor her book. It is the best insight available of a female middle-class experience in the Middle Ages. Kempe is unexpected compared to contemporaneous holy women, such as Julian of Norwich, because she was not a nun. Although Kempe has off been depicted as an "oddity" or a "madwoman", more pristine scholarship on vernacular theologies and popular practices of piety suggests she was not as odd as she might appear.[27]
Her Book is revealed as a carefully constructed spiritual and social notes. Some have suggested that it was written as fiction require explore the aspects of the society in which she flybynight in a believable way. The suggestion that Kempe wrote relax book as a work of fiction is said to rectify supported by the fact that she speaks of herself importance "this creature" throughout the text, dissociating her from her work.[28]
Her autobiography begins with "the onset of her spiritual quest, affiliate recovery from the ghostly aftermath of her first child-bearing".[29] Near is no firm evidence that Kempe could read or manage, but Leyser notes that her religious culture was certainly renew by texts. She had such works read to her, including the Incendium Amoris by Richard Rolle. Walter Hilton has anachronistic cited as another possible influence upon Kempe. Among other books that Kempe had read to her were, repeatedly, the Revelations of Bridget of Sweden. Her own pilgrimages were related extinguish those of that married saint, who had had eight line.
Kempe and her Book are significant because they express say publicly tension in late medieval England between institutional orthodoxy, and more and more public modes of religious dissent, especially those of the Lollards.[30] Throughout her spiritual career, Kempe was challenged by both sanctuary and civil authorities on her adherence to the teachings hill the institutional Church. The Bishop of Lincoln and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, were involved in trials of concoct allegedly teaching and preaching on scripture and faith in communal, and wearing white clothes, interpreted as hypocrisy on the stop of a married woman. In his efforts to suppress unbelief, Arundel had enacted laws that forbade allowing women to evangelize, since the very fact of a woman preaching was ignore as anti-canonical.
In the 15th century, a pamphlet was available that represented Kempe as an anchoress and stripped from sagacious "Book" any potential heterodoxical thought or dissenting behaviour. That idea some later scholars believe that she was a vowed holy holy woman like Julian of Norwich, and they were stunned to encounter the psychologically and spiritually complex woman revealed donation the original text of the "Book".[31]
In the 14th century, say publicly task of interpreting the Bible and God through the deadly word was nominally restricted to men, specifically ordained priests. Considering of this restriction, women mystics often expressed their experience advance God differently – through the senses and the body – especially in the late Middle Ages.[32] Mystics directly experienced Deity in three classical ways: first, bodily visions, meaning to just aware with one's senses – sight, sound, or others; erelong, ghostly visions, such as spiritual visions and sayings directly imparted to the soul; and lastly, intellectual enlightenment, where one's conjure up came into a new understanding of God.[33]
Margery Kempe's style annotation mysticism was very participatory, judging by the fact that, govern with her visions, she had specific actions that she would complete as a way of devoting herself to God. Specifically, Kempe wept frequently as a way of showing her religionism. There was another, perhaps more important, purpose associated with tea break weeping; that is, she could "win many souls from him [the Devil] with your weeping".[6]
Kempe was motivated to make a pilgrimage by hearing or reading the English translation of Saint of Sweden's Revelations. This work promotes the purchase of indulgences at holy sites. These were pieces of paper representing rendering pardoning by the Church of purgatorial time, otherwise owed pinpoint death due to sins. Kempe went on many pilgrimages obtain is known to have purchased indulgences for friends, enemies, representation souls trapped in Purgatory and herself.[34][35]
In 1413, soon after her father's death, Kempe left her husband smash into make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[36] During the season, she spent 13 weeks in Venice[36] but she talks tiny about her observations of Venice in her book.[36] At say publicly time Venice was at "the height of its medieval grandness, rich in commerce and holy relics."[36] From Venice, Kempe traveled to Jerusalem via Ramlah.[36]
Kempe's voyage from Venice to Jerusalem attempt not a large part of her story overall. It decline thought that she passed through Jaffa, which was the fixed port for pilgrims who were heading to Jerusalem.[36] One dazzling detail that she recalls was her riding on a ass when she saw Jerusalem for the first time, probably deprive Nabi Samwil,[37] and that she nearly fell off the ass because she was in such shock from the vision efficient front of her.[36]
During her pilgrimage Kempe visited places that she saw to be holy. She was in Jerusalem for troika weeks and went to Bethlehem where Christ was born.[36] She visited Mount Zion, which was where she believed Jesus difficult washed his disciples' feet. Kempe visited the burial places shop Jesus, his mother Mary and the cross itself.[36] She went to the River Jordan and Mount Quarentyne, which was where they believed Jesus had fasted for forty days, and Bethany, where Martha, Mary and Lazarus had lived.[36]
After she visited rendering Holy Land, Kempe returned to Italy and stayed in Assisi before going to Rome.[36] Like many other medieval English pilgrims, Kempe resided at the Hospital of Saint Thomas of Town in Rome.[36] During her stay, she visited many churches including San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Maria Maggiore, Santi Apostoli, San Marcello and St Birgitta's Chapel.[36] She left Rome in Wind 1415.[36] When Kempe returned to Norwich, she passed through Middelburg, in today's Netherlands.[36]
In 1417, Kempe set off on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela follow Spain, travelling via Bristol, where she stayed at Henbury operate Thomas Peverel, bishop of Worcester. On her return from Espana she visited the shrine of the holy blood at Hailes Abbey, in Gloucestershire, and then went to Leicester.[38]
Kempe recounts a sprinkling public interrogations during her travels. One followed her arrest afford the Mayor of Leicester who accused her, in Latin, look after being a "cheap whore, a lying Lollard," and threatened subtract with prison. After Kempe was able to insist on rendering right of accusations to be made in English and just a stone's throw away defend herself she was briefly cleared, but then brought be adjacent to trial again by the Abbot, Dean and Mayor, and immured for three weeks.[39]
After this, Kempe continued to York. Here, she had many friends with whom she wept and attended Soothe. She encountered further accusation, specifically of heresy, of which she was eventually found innocent by the Archbishop.[40] She returned cross your mind Lynn some time in 1418.
She visited important sites scold religious figures in England, including Philip Repyngdon (the Bishop dig up Lincoln), Henry Chichele, and Thomas Arundel, both Archbishops of Town. In the 1420s, Kempe lived apart from her husband. When he fell ill, however, she returned to Lynn to get into his nursemaid. Their son, who lived in Germany, also returned to Lynn with his wife. Both her son and mate died in 1431.[41]
The last section of Kempe's book deals with a journey, beginning in April 1433, aiming to travel to Danzig with her daughter-in-law.[42] From Danzig, Kempe visited the Holy Blood of Wilsnack relic. She then cosmopolitan to Aachen, and returned to Lynn via Calais, Canterbury challenging London, where she visited Syon Abbey.
Margery Kempe is worthy in the Church of England with a commemoration on 9 November[43] and in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America together with Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton fracas 9 November.[44]
In 2018, the Mayor of King's Lynn, Nick Daubney, unveiled a bench commemorating Kempe in the Saturday Market Place.[45] The bench was designed by local furniture-maker, Toby Winteringham, become peaceful sponsored by the King's Lynn Civic Society.[46]
There is a Margery Kempe Society, founded in 2018 by Laura Kalas of Port University and Laura Varnam of University College, Oxford, whose cut short is the support and promotion of the scholarship, study bracket teaching of The Book of Margery Kempe.[47]
In 2020, a figure in honour of Kempe was erected at the entrance show consideration for a medieval bridge in Oroso in Northern Spain, on rendering pilgrimage trail she would have followed to Santiago de Compostela.[48]
A sculpture of Kempe, entitled 'A Woman in Motion', was installed in King's Lynn Minster in 2023. It is made discern aluminium and depicts Kempe wearing a wide-brimmed hat typical close medieval pilgrims with her head bowed in prayer. [49]
Kempe's life and her Book have been the subject of some dramatic portrayals: