The Book of
Margery Kemp
As I move closer and closer to the date when I leave for
Norwich, March 12, I get more and more excited.
I find myself finding scraps of information about Norwich, about Julian
and the 14th century. As I
mentioned in the last post, Sheila Upjohn’s book describes her search for the
real Julian of Norwich. In that
investigation Upjohn describes Margery Kemp.
Margery is unique in this history, as someone who wrote
the first surviving autobiography in English.
Margery herself could not read or write so she dictated her story to her
scribe, her amanuensis, who dutifully wrote down events of Margery’s
controversial life.
Like so many medieval texts, this one was lost for
centuries. Modern translations are based
on a manuscript that was found in a home in Lancashire in 1934. Margery dictates the tale in third person and
refers to herself as “the creature.”
The tale reveals Margery as a young wife and mother, a
pilgrim, a businessperson and a mystic who had supernatural visions and who
continuously searched for a connection to God.
She unabashedly describes details of her personal life—the debate with
her husband about whether or not to maintain chastity; she describes the
depression she felt after giving birth to the first of her 14 children; she
recounts her constant and excessive weeping when she contemplates the passion
of Christ--which she is told is a sign of God’s favor. Her travels take her all across England, to
the church of St. Briget and to the Apostles’ Church in Rome and the Holy Land,
to her pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
She is tried for being a faithless heretic in York, and in Leicester the
Steward asks after her arrest, “You shall tell me whether you get this talk
from God or from the devil. . .” Still
Margery persisted with her journey to find God.
Margery must have been quite a sight, a weeping
“creature” sobbing whenever she considered the passion of Christ, shedding
voluminous tears, dressed in all in white as she maintained the lord required
of her. She was outspoken on her journey and--attracted much attention both positive and negative. Still Margery remains
a strong, admirable character imbued with the courage of her convictions.
The exciting thing for me was that she is someone who can
verify the existence of Julian as a mystic and holy woman. In her text she says that she “was commanded
by our Lord to go to an anchoress in the same city who was called Dame
Julian. And so she did, and told her
about the grace, that God had put into her soul, of compunction, contrition,
sweetness and devotion, compassion with holy meditation and high contemplation,
and very many holy speeches and converse that our Lord spoke to her soul, and
also many wonderful revelations. . .”
Further Margery indicates that Julian told her that “The Holy Ghost
never urges a thing against charity, and if he did, it would be contrary to his
whole will, for he is all charity.” She
says also that “Great was the holy conversation that the anchoress said and
this creature had through the love of our Lord Jesus Christ on the many days
that they were together” (Kemp, p. 79.
I have heard of Margery Kemp before. A novel called A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley set in 14th
century England has a main character called Margaret who dictates her
autobiography to Brother Gregory. Like
our Margery she has visions, in this book they are called “visions of light.” The fictionalized story seems very close to
the story of Margery Kemp.
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