The Book of Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe was an upper-middle class English mystic who lived during the Late Middle Ages. Kempe was born in East Anglia ca. 1373 and grew up in the merchant town, King’s Lynn, where her father served as mayor and as an alderman (a county or town council member). When she was approximately 20 years old, she wed local burgess John Kempe, a middle-class man who was of slightly lower status than Margery, something she reminds us of in her book.

She bore 14 children, during which time she began having visions of the divine and saintly figures as well as “contemplations” in which she believed God spoke directly to her. She often fasted and wore a hair shirt as acts of penance for her sins and in imitation of Christ’s suffering during the crucifixion, acts that were not uncommon among pious medieval people. She frequently went to confession because of her concerns over her salvation and had several close confessors, including a local anchorite in Norwich, the county in which King’s Lynn sits.

Kempe undertook local and long-distance pilgrimages at God’s direction, even visiting sacred sites in Jerusalem and Rome, where she spent some time. After returning to England, Kempe says God instructed her to make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which took several weeks. During her pilgrimages, she faced frequent criticism for her consistent weeping, inspired by her love for Christ and desire for unity with him in heaven, and which began some time earlier in her homeland. She also began “crying,” that is, screaming, while in Jerusalem when she encountered scenes of Christ’s Passion.

This weeping and screaming continued for some years and when she returned to England, further alienating some who claimed she did so only for attention. Kempe claims the derision she faced was a blessing from God that allowed her to suffer in his likeness. She was also repeatedly accused of being a Lollard. Lollardy was a late medieval Christian heresy that was critical of clerical corruption and in which women took on active preaching—something that Margery is accused of doing, though she counters that she only speaks and has no formal role as a preacher and no pulpit. The accusations against her proved false on multiple occasions.

She dictated her recollections of her spiritual journey, known as The Book of Margery Kempe, to an unnamed priest and scribe in 1436, after the first attempt ended in a failed, inferior, and no-longer extant manuscript. This act makes her the first women to author an autobiography in the English language. Kempe appears semi-literate: For example, she is well-versed in the Gospels, though she also notes that her companions had to read some texts to her. Her level of education remains unknown.

The last reference to Kempe in King’s Lynn comes from 1438, the same year that the priestly scribe recorded the second book within the text. The date of her death remains unknown.