The Book of Margery Kempe

“Here begins a short treatise and a comforting one for sinful wretches, in which they may have great solace and comfort for themselves, and understand the high and unspeakable mercy of our sovereign Savior Jesus Christ.”

Margery explains her purpose in recording her recollections in book form. The text is didactic and readers should use it as an exemplar: They should learn from Margery’s challenges, temptations, and torments to become better Christians, just as she did.

“[O]ur merciful Lord Christ […] appeared to his creature who had forsaken him, in the likeness of a man, the most seemly, most beauteous, and most amiable that ever might be seen with man’s eye, clad in a mantle of purple silk, sitting upon her bedside […] and he said to her these words: ‘Daughter, why have you forsaken me, and I never foresook you?’”

Margery’s first vision of Christ recalls St. Paul of Tarsus’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus. Paul, born Saul, persecuted followers of the early Christian movement at his synagogue for blasphemy. However, after being struck by a blinding light and hearing a voice asking why he engaged in persecution, Paul became an advocate for Jesus’s continuing ministry and went on to become the apostle to the Gentiles, working to establish early Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean world. Margery’s description of her vision shows her familiarity with the Acts of the Apostles, included in the New Testament, and which recounts Paul’s vision and conversion. Though she may not have been able to read or write, she was not uneducated in Biblical literature and makes frequent references to it throughout the book. Margery’s vision ends the torments that caused her to slander those close to her, just as Paul stopped his persecution. Like Paul, Margery goes on to act as a kind of apostle and prophet, which multiple clerics react to unfavorably due to her gender.