Abstract
The Book of Margery Kempe recounts how its eponymous protagonist experienced meditative visions of the Passion both in England and during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. A close reading of these visionary experiences shows that Kempe engages with the biblical narrative very differently in these two locations. While her vision at Calvary is purely descriptive, her meditations back in England are much more powerful, immersive experiences, in which she collapses past and present and inserts herself in the biblical story. This article views these differences as the result of Kempe’s privileging of the Eucharist over local sancta as a visionary trigger and an effective conduit to the divine. It further argues that such a preference should be read as a byproduct of the author’s local historical context, in particular her engagement with the debates regarding transubstantiation that were sparked by the English Lollard movement.
Zusammenfassung
The Book of Margery Kempe erzählt von den meditativen Passionsvisionen, die die gleichnamige Protagonistin in England und auf einer Pilgerfahrt ins Heilige Land erlebte. Eine genaue Lektüre dieser visionären Erfahrungen zeigt, dass Kempe das biblische Narrativ an beiden Orten sehr verschieden abruft. Während ihre Vision auf dem Hügel Golgatha rein deskriptiv bleibt, sind ihre Meditationen in England viel wirkmächtigere, immersivere Erlebnisse, in denen sie Vergangenheit und Gegenwart verschränkt und sich selbst in die biblische Geschichte einschreibt. Dieser Aufsatz interpretiert diese Unterschiede als das Ergebnis von Kempes Privilegierung der Eucharistie gegenüber den loca sancta als Visionsauslöser und effektivem Weg zum Göttlichen. Ich argumentiere, eine solche Präferenz kann als Nebenprodukt des lokalhistorischen Kontexts der Autorin verstanden werden, besonders ihrer Verwicklung in die von der englischen Lollard-Bewegung ausgelösten Debatten um die Transsubstantiation.
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Notes
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt, Cambridge 2004, 151. – All Middle English quotes are from this edition, unless otherwise stated.
In my reading of The Book of Margery Kempe (British Library, Add MS 61823) I follow Lynn Staley’s model of bifurcating Margery Kempe’s name, as I find her distinction between ›Margery, the protagonist/narrator, and Kempe her author‹, useful, and employ it throughout this paper, however, I do so divorced from Staley’s theory of the authorship of the The Book. Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions, University Park, Penn. 1994, 3, 37. – Richard Kieckhefer described The Book as an autohagiography. Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu, Chicago 1984, 6.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 101; Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. Anthony Bale, Oxford, 2013, 33 – all modern translations will be from this edition, unless otherwise stated.
Ailred of Rievaulx as quoted in Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers, Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion, London 1984, 135.
Quote found in: Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, Oxford 1988, 46.
See for example: Sixten Ringbom, »Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions: Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Piety«, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 73 (1969), 159–170; Gabriella Mazzon, Pathos in Late-Medieval Religious Drama and Art: A Communicative Strategy, Leiden 2018; Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, Narrative performance and devotional experience in the art of Hans Memling, Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Santa Barbara 2005; Barry Windeatt, »Signs and Symbols«, in: Marilyn Corrie (ed.), A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature, Chichester 2009, 9–31; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, »The Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns: The Case of Heinrich Suso and the Dominicans«, The Art Bulletin 71, no. 1 (1989), 20–46; id., »Seeing and Believing: The Suspicion of Sight and the Authentication of Vision in Late Medieval Art and Devotion«, in: Klaus Krüger, Alessandro Nova (eds.), Imagination und Wirklichkeit: Zum Verhältnis von mentalen und realen Bildern in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit, Mainz 2000, 47–69; Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages, Chicago 1989.
These meditations or visualizations were both divinely directed and gifted by Christ. Therefore, I view them as visions or meditation-visions, part of Margery’s pursuit of her mystical calling. Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 75; and Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 20–21.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 75; and Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 21.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 76–78.
Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 21–22.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 161–162.
Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 64.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 166–167.
On how the pilgrimage to the Holy Land advances Kempe’s spiritual development, and alters her, see for example: Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, »The Jerusalem Pilgrimage: The Centre of the Structure of the Book of Margery Kempe«, English Studies 86:3 (2005), 193–205; Diane Watt, »Faith in the Landscape: Overseas Pilgrimages in The Book of Margery Kempe«, in: Clare A. Lees, Gillian R. Overing (eds.), A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, University Park, PA 2006, 176; and Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and Her World, London 2002, 192.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 163; Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 64.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 167.
Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 65–66.
To see how Marie of Oignies is employed to validate Margery’s public performances see: Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 292–294.
For the importance of St. Bridget for Margery Kempe see for example: J. B. Holloway, »Bride, Margery, Julian, and Alice: Bridget of Sweden’s textual community in medieval England«, in: S. J. McEntire (ed.), Margery Kempe: a Book of Essays, New York 1992, 203–222; Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, »Margery Kempe’s Mystical Marriage and Roman Sojourn: Influence of St Bridget of Sweden«, Reading Medieval Studies 28 (2002), 39–58; Sylvia Schein, »Bridget of Sweden, Margery Kempe and women’s Jerusalem pilgrimages in the middle ages«, Mediterranean Historical Review 14 (1999), 44–58; Gunnel Cleve, »Margery Kempe: a Scandinavian influence in medieval England?«, in: M. Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Cambridge 1992, 163–178; J. Wilson, »Communities of dissent: the secular and ecclesiastical communities of Margery Kempe’s Book«, in: Diane Watt (ed.), Medieval Women in their Communities, Toronto 1997, 155–185, and Einat Klafter, »The feminine mystic: Margery Kempe’s pilgrimage to Rome as an imitatio Birgitta«, in: Victoria Blud, Diane Heath, Einat Klafter (eds.), Gender in medieval places, spaces and thresholds, London 2018, 123–136.
Bridget of Sweden, The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden, Volume 3: Liber Caelestis, Books VI-VII, Bridget Morris (ed.), Denis Michael Searby (trans.), Oxford 2012, 234–235 (full revelation 234–238).
Bridget of Sweden, The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden, Volume 3, 238.
Einat Klafter, A Critical View of Popular Image-Aided Devotional Practices: The Book of Margery Kempe in Its Local Historical and Cultural Context, Ph.D. Diss., University of Tel Aviv 2016, 179–180.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 345; Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 171.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 242–243.
Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 169.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 336–337.
Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 165.
This is a stage close to the end of ritual formula of Palm Sunday, prior to the congregation’s reentry into the Church, following the elevated sacrament.
Despite its pejorative connation, the choice to use the term ›Lollard‹ over ›Wycliffite‹ or other derivations stems from a differentiation between Wycliffite as a more intellectual and university-based movement, and Lollardy as related to the circulation of Wycliffite ideas outside scholarly circles among the laity. This is also the term that The Book of Margery Kempe employs. On the distinctions made between these terms by scholars in the past see, for example: Fiona Somerset, Jill C. Havens, and Derrick G. Pitard (eds.), Lollards and Their Influence in Late Medieval England, Rochester, NY 2003; and Andrew Cole, Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer, Cambridge 2008.
For the presence of Lollardy in The Book of Margery Kempe and Kempe’s negotiation of Lollardy see for example: Roseanne Gasse, »Margery Kempe and Lollardy«, Magistra (1996), 43–69; Mary Morse, Nicholas Watson »›Tak and bren hir‹: Lollardy as Conversion Motif in The Book of Margery Kempe«, Mystics Quarterly 29, no. 1/2 (2003), 24–44; John H. Arnold, »Margery’s Trials: Heresy, Lollardy and Dissent«, in: John H. Arnold, Katherine J. Lewis (eds.), A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe, Woodbridge 2004, 75–93; Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, Philadelphia 1994; ead., »The Book of Margery Kempe: The Marginal Woman’s Quest for Literary Authority«, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 16 (1986), 33–55; Staley (note 1); Nancy F. Partner, »Reading The Book of Margery Kempe«, Exemplaria 3, no. 1 (1991), 27–66; Clarissa W. Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe, Ithaca 1985; Cole (note 29).
This served as a testament to her public status as a particularly holy woman. – In chapter 16, Arundel grants Margery her desire to receive communion every Sunday: »sche cam to hys presens […] prayng hym of hys gracyows lordship tp grawnt hir auctoryte of chesyng hyr confessor and to be howselyd every Sonday, yyf God wold dysposen hir therto, undyr hys lettyr and hys seel thorw al hys province. And he grawnt it her ful benyngly all hir desyr wythowtyn any sylver er gold, ne he wold latyn hys clerkys takyn anything for wrytyn ne for seelyng of the lettyr.« Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 110.
Cole (note 29), 155.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 234; Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 104.
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 235; Bale, The Book of Margery Kempe, 105.
Christian Kiening, »Mediating the Passion in Time and Space,« in: Christian Kiening, Martina Stercken (eds.), Temporality and Mediality in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture, Turnhout 2018, 117.
Klafter (note 21), 148–170.
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Klafter, E. Mary’s handmaiden. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 93, 403–415 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-019-00086-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-019-00086-y