The Book of Margery Kempe (2 page)

Throughout her
Book
Margery shows her retentive memory working to recall or allude to various passages of scripture, and the repeated reference to these four books conveys something of Margery's connections with contemporary devotion through the texts she heard read. By ‘Hilton's book' Margery presumably means Walter Hilton's
The Scale of Perfection
,
⁷
a work of spiritual counsel distinguished not only by the great dignity and grace of Hilton's English style but also by his deep humanity and understanding of the difficulties of contemplative life. By referring to
Incendium Amoris
Margery shows she has heard something of perhaps the most characteristic and celebrated single work of the earlier fourteenth-century English mystic, Richard Rolle of Hampole (d. 1349).
⁸
The
Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love),
written in Latin, offers a practical guide to the spiritual life, shot through with Rolle's autobiographical vividness and written very much from within the continuing experience of a fervent mystic. In hearing something of these very different masterpieces by two of the great fourteenth-century English mystics, Margery gained access to the mainstream of current mystical writing in England, while she also enjoyed lengthy conversations with Dame Julian of Norwich, as she recalls (chapter 18). Of the medieval English mystics it is thus only with the works of the author of
The Cloud of Unknowing
that Margery – unsurprisingly – shows no familiarity, for she is unlikely to have relished that astringent exposition of the
via negativa,
with its withering characterization of literal-minded contemplatives.
⁹
Margery's spiritual school is very different – a passage from one of her devotions (chapter 28) reveals Margery's familiarity with one of Richard Rolle's
Meditations on the Passion
,
¹⁰
where Christ's wounded body is likened to a dovecote, and underlines Margery's attachment to the tradition of meditation
on the events of Christ's life. Margery's religious sensibility is saturated in this kind of tender devotion to the manhood of Christ, found among the works of St Anselm and embodied in the most influential
Meditationes Vitae Christi.
¹¹

The
Stimulus Amoris
(which Margery mentions being read to her on several occasions) is also related to this tradition of meditation on the events of Christ's life which so markedly colours Margery's visions. The
Stimulus Amoris,
which was often wrongly attributed to St Bonaventura, is a composite devotional poem, comprising a series of meditations on the Passion followed by a treatise on the spiritual life and contemplation, and ending with some devout meditations. The second chapter, to which Margery particularly refers, deals with ‘compassion for Christ's Passion'. Available in an English version,
The Prick of Love
,
¹²
attributed in some manuscripts to Walter Hilton, the
Stimulus Amoris
is but one of the many instances of the availability in later medieval England of English translations of works of contemplative interest. The extent of Margery's association during her life with the inhabitants of what she calls ‘Dewchlond' – i.e. the German-speaking lands together with the Low Countries – has often been noted, and a number of the works of the great medieval Dutch and German mystics were known in England, as well as those from further afield.
¹³
Margery's friend, the Carmelite Alan of Lynn, is known to have prepared indexes of both the
Stimulus Amoris
and the
Revelations
of St Bridget of Sweden, the other book that Margery mentions as being read to her by the priest.

St Bridget and ‘St Bride's book', as Margery calls it, are mentioned in Margery's
Book
in ways that suggest how potent a model the Englishwoman found for herself in the life and revelations of the visionary Swedish saint. When (in chapter 20) Margery sees a marvel during mass, our Lord rather gratifyingly tells her, ‘My daughter Bridget never saw me in this way … just as I spoke to St Bridget, just so I speak to you, daughter, and I tell you truly that every word that is written in Bridget's book is true, and through you shall be recognized as truth indeed.'

St Bridget of Sweden (1303–73) was of noble birth, and
connected with the royal house. She was married at thirteen, but persuaded her husband to remain chaste for two years. Eventually Bridget bore eight children, but was drawn increasingly to a strict religious life. She went to Santiago on pilgrimage with her husband in 1341, and on his death in 1343 devoted herself to the life of a visionary, pilgrim, and foundress of a new order of nuns. She dictated her revelations to her spiritual director. In 1349 Bridget left for Rome, where she stayed for the rest of her life, making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 13 71 at Christ's command. The cult of St Bridget in England in Margery's day was extensive; the influence of her life and of her visions and devotions was great,
¹⁴
and in this the Bridgettine house of Syon Abbey, visited by Margery in her
Book,
was most important.

For Margery Kempe the model provided by St Bridget must have been particularly powerful. St Bridget's social status was, of course, more exalted than Margery's relatively modest bourgeois life: she was of the highest birth, in middle age she struggled at the divine command to learn Latin, she was instructed to found a new order, to involve herself in great affairs, to denounce abuses. Yet the pattern of her life as a married mystic, the transition from wife to Bride of Christ, the sustainedly visionary experience of her life – all such things will have appealed to Margery in vindicating the potential of the female mystic.

But St Bridget, while an important example and influence, was by no means the only female visionary brought to Margery's attention by those who read to her, advised her, or discussed their own reading with her, as the events of chapters 62 and 68 suggest. In chapter 62 the priest who is himself writing down Margery's
Book
tells how his confidence in her was badly shaken by the general impatience shown at her weeping and crying, until he was led to read the
Vita
of the
béguine
Mary of Oignies, whose saintly life was similarly characterized by the gift of uncontrollable tears. Both the
Stimulus Amoris
and Rolle's
Incendlum Amoris
are also cited here in support of manifestations of mystical fervour, as is St Elizabeth of Hungary, while a little later one of Margery's learned friends repeats the selfsame incident as that
read by Margery's scribe from the life of Mary of Oignies to support Margery's tears, suggesting how accessible to those in England interested in the spiritual life were the examples of continental female piety.

Mary of Oignies (d. 1213), born of wealthy parents at Nivelles in Brabant, was married off at fourteen, despite her wish for the religious life.
¹⁵
She persuaded her husband to live chastely, however, and they devoted themselves to nursing lepers at Williambroux. She led a life of great austerity and holiness, and her fame drew so many visitors that she eventually retreated to live as a hermit in a cell next to the monastery at Oignies, where she died. She had visions and ecstasies, was especially devoted to the Passion of Christ and the sacrament, and had the gift of prophecy.
¹⁶

Many features of Mary's experience are echoed in the life of Margery Kempe. Mary of Oignies privately mortifies her flesh beneath her clothes, and persuades her husband to live chaste. She weeps copiously at the thought of the Passion. She cannot behold a crucifix, or speak, or hear others speak, of the Passion without falling down in a swoon. If she tries to restrain her tears they only increase. She is asked by a priest to stop her weeping and sobbing in church. When confessing trivial sins she is so overcome with contrition that she has to cry out like a woman in labour. She does not eat meat. She has the fellowship of blessed spirits who delight her ears with a marvellously sweet and merry melody. She wears a coat and mantle of white wool. She is told by the Holy Ghost that she will pass straight to paradise and spend no time in purgatory. Like Margery, she has a miraculous vision of the sacrament as it is held between the priest's hands at mass. Like Margery, she has at Candlemas a vision of the Presentation in the Temple. Like Margery, she is so ‘drunk with charity' that she is sometimes unaware of the passing of time. And just as Margery tells a tale of a blossoming tree to illustrate the shortcomings of the clergy, so Mary of Oignies calls a newly ordained priest who sings his first mass in her presence ‘a new tree now flowered, of which our Lord has ordained to me the first fruits …'
Even in this summary account of the holy life of Mary of Oignies the reader of
The Book of Margery Kempe
will find many echoes of Margery's experience.

The
life
of Mary of Oignies in a Middle English version survives in a Bodleian Library manuscript
¹⁷
together with English translations of the lives of several other holy women, one of the works of Suso, and some material on the life of the great Italian mystic St Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) – a collection which in itself suggests the kind of reading that some of Margery's advisers would draw upon. St Catherine's writings were known and translated in later medieval England
¹⁸
and, like Margery, the Italian visionary saw herself as a bride in a mystical marriage to the deity. The experiences and writings of other female mystics of the Middle Ages will often seem paralleled and echoed in Margery's own book, and the example of such mystics as St Mechthild of Hackeborn
¹⁹
and Blessed Elisabeth of Schönau was known in England. The
Mirror of Simple Souls
of Marguerite Porete (burnt as a heretic in 1310) was translated from French into an English version,
²⁰
and was also translated into Latin by that Mount Grace mystic, Richard Methley, whose own ecstasies were compared with Margery Kempe's by the annotators of the manuscript of her
Book
at Mount Grace Priory.

It is also intriguing to recall the association between Margery's experience and the experience of such other female mystics as Blessed Angela of Foligno and Blessed Dorothea of Montau, not because evidence survives that their lives were known in England, but because Margery on her pilgrimages actually visited the areas where these mystics had lived. Thus, though there is no evidence that Margery had direct knowledge of the life of Angela of Foligno, at Assisi she visited the site of some of Angela's experiences and could well have heard tell of the example of this remarkable local figure.

Blessed Angela of Foligno (c. 1249–1309) lived a worldly life as a well-to-do wife and mother up to the age of forty, but suddenly underwent a conversion, although initially she was ashamed to confess all her sins. Her family having all died, she was able to
devote herself to a life of poverty and penitence. She wept ceaselessly, cried aloud when she heard the name of God, and fell into a fever upon seeing a picture of Christ's Passion. It was difficult for her not to talk of God. She thought of herself as drinking the blood from Christ's side, and wanted, for love of Christ, to suffer the vilest death and humiliation. She was subject to fits of screaming which astonished everybody, and people said she was troubled by devils. She was so ashamed that she wondered whether this was indeed true. She had ecstasies and visions, and was ardently devoted to the crucified Christ. Her Franciscan confessor acted as her secretary and wrote down what she dictated.
²¹

Margery's visit to Danzig late in life makes especially interesting the parallels between her experience and that of the Prussian visionary and ecstatic, Dorothea of Montau, who spent her married life in Danzig and whose cult would have been strong there at the time of Margery's visit.

Blessed Dorothea of Montau (1347–94), who describes herself as illiterate, was married at sixteen to an older man and bore him nine children, all but one of whom died young. From 1378 she experienced ecstasies. She was badly treated by her husband, although a mutual vow of chastity eventually followed, and Dorothea was allowed weekly communion. She went on pilgrimage to Aachen with her husband, and to Rome on her own. She could find no one in Danzig who understood her inner life and pilgrimage offered her the opportunity to seek out spiritual counsellors. After her husband's death in 1390 Dorothea became a recluse at Marienwerder Cathedral, under the direction of the pious John of Marienwerder, who wrote accounts of her visions and her life. A decisive influence on Dorothea's life was the example of St Bridget, whose relics were carried through Danzig on their return from Rome to Sweden in 1374. And, like Margery Kempe, this middle-class married woman who struggled to lead a religious life tells how she experienced a kind of spiritual drunkenness, and was also noted for her frequent and sustained holy tears.
²²

Both Angela's weeping and shrieking, and her intensity of feeling, and the life of the married Dorothea and her gift of tears, offer parallels with the experience of Margery Kempe, whose own life was made so persistently difficult by her gift of loud and frequent tears. It is essential to retrieve some sense of the spiritual value and desirability that was accorded to the gift of such tears in those days. Their spiritual value was confirmed to Margery – in a discussion of her understandably recurrent concern with discerning authentic tokens of the Holy Ghost – by no less an authority on the contemplative life than Julian of Norwich (‘When God visits a creature with tears of contrition, devotion or compassion, he may and ought to believe that the Holy Ghost is in his soul,' chapter 18). It is this sense of the value of holy tears that lies behind Margery's exchange with the Archbishop of York, to whose rough question ‘Why do you weep so, woman?' she replies firmly, ‘Sir, you shall wish some day that you had wept as sorely as I.'