Everything we know about Margery Kempe comes from her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe. She was unable to read or write and so she dictated her Book to two scribes who heard what she said and wrote it down for her.
Margery Kempe was born around 1373 in England and was at various times the owner of a horse-mill and a brewer. Kempe married when she was about 20 years old, giving birth to her first child soon after. The birth was difficult, and afterwards, she "went owt of hir mende" (went out of her mind). Today, doctors might diagnose this episode as post-natal depression. During this time she had a vision of Jesus, who appeared at the end of her bed and offered her words of comfort. In the years following this, Margery experienced several failures in her life including two businesses that she ran collapsed. She interpreted this as a sign that she was being punished by God and decided thereafter to devote herself to a religious and spiritual life based on the teachings in Christianity and the Bible. |
In her new life, Margery traveled extensively: she visited the Holy Land (Jerusalem), Rome, and pilgrimage sites in Germany and Santiago de Compostela in Spain (see maps below). This was quite unusual in Feudal Europe, since men who were part of the Catholic Church would go on pilgrimages to holy sites. World historians see many similarities between her travels and those of Ibn Battuta, who traveled around the dar al-Islam, and Marco Polo, who traveled around the Mongol Empire. On her travels, Margery often attracted attention to herself by wearing white and loudly weeping when she was moved by devotion to God. Kempe was tried for heresy (the belief in something that was considered contradictory to Christian teachings or scriptures) multiple times in her life but was never convicted; she mentions with pride her ability to deny the accusations she was faced. Possible reasons for her arrests include her preaching (which was forbidden to women), her wearing of all white as a married woman (which was viewed as her impersonating a Catholic nun), or her apparent belief that she could pray for the souls of those in purgatory and tell whether or not someone was damned in the afterlife. Kempe was also accused of preaching without the Catholic Church's approval as her public speeches skirted a thin line between making statements about her personal faith and professing to teach the Christian scripture. During a trial into her accused heresy, people thought she was possessed by the devil when she quoted the Bible, and was reminded of St. Paul's prohibition against women preachers.
|