The Book of Margery Kempe

The Book of Margery Kempe is a 15th-century autobiography of an English mystic, wife, and mother who devoted much of her life to Christian spirituality. Kempe (b. ca. 1373) was a semi-literate member of the upper-middle class from King’s Lynn, a mercantile town in Norfolk, a county in eastern England. She gave birth over a dozen times before she convinced her husband to embrace a chaste marriage. Kempe claimed to have divine revelations in which God spoke directly to her and visons of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and various saints. She made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela as well as visiting sacred English sites. The text claims many loved and trusted her, but she also details numerous detractors who accused her of possession or heresy. The text is the first autobiography in the English language and has become influential in medieval studies, with Kempe remaining a controversial religious figure.

This guide uses the 2019 Penguin Classics edition, translated and edited by B. A. Windeatt.

Content Warning: This source contains references to physical and sexual violence throughout.

Summary

The Book of Margery Kempe combines several medieval and Christian literary genres, including memoir, saint’s life (hagiography), and travel account. This combination makes the text unique beyond its status as the earliest autobiography attributed to a woman in English. The text refers to her as “this creature” throughout, perhaps as an act of humility, with her name only revealed later in the manuscript.

Margery Kempe’s account details her deeply personal spiritual journey for mystical connection with the divine, revealing the late medieval social, religious, and economic environments in which she existed. The book also sheds light on women’s spirituality, specifically the opposition that devout and knowledgeable women might experience: Clerics and members of the laity alike on several occasions accused Margery of being a Lollard heretic. They likely leveled these charges against her because she was an outspoken religious woman who defied social norms. She traveled without her husband, embraced a chaste marriage, and acted like a prophet and teacher, even educating, chastising, and correcting members of the clergy. Moreover, on one occasion God himself tells Margery that he will obey her when she is obedient to his will. The book thus emphasizes not only her piety, but her religious authority. This authority makes her an admirable example for others but also vulnerable to critique.

Her autobiography is not recorded in chronological order, though it opens with her early life and marriage. An anonymous scribe recorded Margery’s memories as they came to her. Most of these memories involve her contemplative experiences, divine revelations, pilgrimages, and the abuse and slander she endured. Margery appears alternatingly insecure in her faith and confident in her beliefs and God’s love for her. This tension serves as a model for others grappling with matters of faith, as the manuscript’s proem indicates. In the second book, the text describes Margery acting as an intercessor, like a saint, with God on behalf of her lecherous, sinful son. He is miraculously healed and turns to virtue after her intervention with the divine. The manuscript also chronicles moments of fear and doubt, especially when Margery is on pilgrimage and in the early years of her contemplative experiences.

For example, Margery wonders if the words she hears are divine or demonic and seeks comfort and validation from clerics, confessors, and God. While on pilgrimage to Jerusalem she is abused and bullied by her fellow travelers, who find her piety and copious weeping tiresome. They abandon her several times, making her journey more perilous because she is a woman alone in foreign lands. Similarly, when she travels to Prussia and back to England via Aachen and Calais, she finds herself alone on multiple occasions after her escort and fellow pilgrims leave her. The narrative recounts her fear, especially for her chastity, calling attention to the dangers lone women faced when traveling. Just as early Christian and medieval saints’ biographies emphasize holy women’s vows of chastity and threats to that chastity, so does Margery’s autobiography.

The text ends abruptly with her return to England from the Continent after she accompanies her daughter-in-law to Prussia and visits several holy shrines. Readers know that at this time (1438) Margery was an elderly woman, fragile and often ill, but are left to wonder how her life concluded. Nevertheless, she left a permanent imprint on English religious literature and history.