The continuity of the Book lies in Margery’s own will and, as something of a prophet in her time, the local structure of her writing is often determined by the recollection of a sequence of events which proved her foresight. As an illiterate person, the role of human speech seems central to Margery’s remembering of past events, and happily central to her dictated account of that past. Her sensitivity to the spoken word is displayed in her feeling that she is being crucified by the cruel words of others. Challenged to justify herself, continually placed in the position of being tested, Margery must also speak out clearly for herself. So it is natural that she should compose and shape written ‘scenes’ through the interchange of remembered speech and the climax of some successful riposte. The degree to which Margery represents scenes from years before in direct-speech exchanges may make some modern readers suspect some subsequent ‘improvement’ in the writing of her history. There is certainly a likelihood of this, although the powers of the unbookish mind to remember scenes in terms of spoken exchanges can often still be remarked. If we imagine ourselves with Margery’s ‘unlettered’ awareness, her ability ‘to answer every clerk’ is clearly a reflection of the favour shown her and of her extraordinary vocation. In this light it is understandable that Margery would long preserve in memory her exchanges with the monk whose sins she reveals to him (chapter 12), or her trouncing of her detractors at Canterbury (chapter 13). In both cases she takes on the established and advantaged; it would be natural for her to husband in her memory the spoken ‘text’ of these triumphs. Clear in her mind that she should not rush into writing – indeed she almost left it too late – she was, possibly from her earliest experience, committing to the record of a kind of inner memory-book the challenges and exchanges which would one day, she felt, be outwardly set down in her Book, and in the meantime would serve to sustain her conviction in her often lonely and isolated spiritual pilgrimage.
It is in direct speech that Margery seems to recall some of the most pointed and independent moments of her long-past experience. (Indeed, the frustrations of not being able to speak, or to understand speech, on her foreign travels are so extreme for Margery as to be the subject of miraculous relief.) To the mild but cautious Bishop of Lincoln Margery records her grand answer that she will indeed visit the Archbishop, but not for the reason he suggests (chapter 15); she recalls the words with which she boldly rebukes Archbishop Arundel for the misconduct of his household (chapter 16). The accuracy of Margery’s memory, where this can be cross-checked with recorded events, is impressively good, while her recollection of what was said to her at their meeting by Dame Julian of Norwich is also impressive with a different kind of accuracy, in that what Margery records Julian as saying rings true in content, and even in style, with Julian’s own writing. Since it seems unlikely that Margery would know anything of Julian’s written work, her memory of this conversation is at once a precious witness to the wholeness of vision, life and counsel in Dame Julian, and a witness to the quality of Margery’s own power to recollect what was said to her both on this and, by implication, on other occasions.
When Margery returns to England after her travels her trials and difficulties with authority are naturally occasions that Margery recalls in terms of the testing questions put to her and her answers to them. She is always good at catching the edge in other people’s voices, and although it was not her purpose to provide character-sketches of the people she encounters, her modern readers will feel they know something, none the less, of a person like Archbishop Bowet, because Margery’s account allows him to speak in his own, splendidly testy, words.
In fact, there are far too many memorable moments in the Book to recall here, where the vividness of the speech brings alive the presence of those around Margery, or highlights her own relation to them. There are the comments of neighbours (‘Why do you talk so of the joy that is in heaven? … You haven’t been there any more than we have,’ chapter 3). There is the apparently reasonable comfort offered by a priest for her shriekings (‘Woman, Jesus is long since dead,’ chapter 60), which enables Margery to rise to the magnincent retort: ‘Sir, his death is as fresh to me as if he had died this same day, and so, I think, it ought to be to you and to all Christian people.’
Indeed, it is the kindly-meant advice of menfolk as Margery is taken under arrest towards Beverley (‘Woman, give up this life that you lead, and go and spin, and card wool, as other women do, and do not suffer so much shame and so much unhappiness …’) which leads Margery to spurn such counsel in terms that reveal her idea of her vocation: ‘I do not suffer as much sorrow as I would do for our Lord’s love, for I only suffer cutting words, and our merciful Lord Christ Jesus … suffered hard strokes, bitter scourgings, and shameful death at the last…’ (chapter 53). As her extraordinarily heightened and suggestible imagination shows, Margery is able throughout her Book to step into the life of Christ and out again. Those constantly recollected scenes of his life, reinforced in her mind’s eye by her visits to the Holy Places, form a kind of extra life concurrent with her own and which she sees suffused, superimposed, simultaneous, with the world of ordinary streets and rooms, humble mothers and their children. As a woman both entangled in the world and beckoned out of it, at one time nursing her senile and incontinent husband, at another called to contemplation, the extraordinary strains and variousness of Margery’s life as she remembers it give her text the unevenness of living, and mean that her Book’s very weaknesses prove its strengths, as a work of human memory and the life of the self.
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In rendering Margery Kempe’s Book from Middle English the present translation aims to give a readable text for the modern reader, while remaining as close as possible to the form of the original. In the translation, the syntactical pattern of Margery’s text has been kept as far as possible: her sentences are often long and rather loosely connected, and some of her most recurrent forms of connection and transition are simply effected by ‘and’ and ‘then’, which are mostly retained here. But some of Margery’s characteristic diction – such terms as ‘boisterous’ or ‘dalliance’ – have had to be changed in the present text, because of their altered associations for the modern reader. The translation is based upon the unique manuscript, now British Library Additional MS 61823, as edited by Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen (Early English Text Society, O.S. 212, 1940), with the kind permission of the Early English Text Society.
Suggested Chronology of the Life of Margery Kempe
c. 1373 Margery born.
c. 1393 Marriage of Margery to John Kempe.
1413 Summer. Margery’s interview with Philip Repyngdon, Bishop of Lincoln (chapter 15).
1413 Summer or autumn. Margery’s interview with Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury (chapter 16).
1413 Death (before 16 October) of Margery’s father, John Brunham.
1413 Autumn? Margery leaves Lynn for the Holy Land.
1414 1 August. Margery visits the chapel of the Portiuncula in Assisi (chapter 31).
1414 7 October. Margery visits the chapel of St Bridget in Rome (chapter 39).
1414 9 November. Margery’s mystical marriage to the Godhead in the Apostles’ Church in Rome (chapter 35).
1415 After Easter, Margery leaves Rome (chapter 42).
1415 21 May or earlier? Margery arrives in Norwich (chapter 43).
1417 About 7 July. Margery embarks at Bristol for Santiago (chapter 46).
1417 Early August. Margery returns to Bristol from Santiago (chapter 46).
1417 August-September. Margery’s trial and detention at Leicester (chapters 46–9).
1417 Margery visits York, and London (chapters 50–55).
1421 23 January. The great fire at Lynn (chapter 67).
c. 1431 Margery’s son and husband die (II, chapter 2).
1433 2 April? Margery embarks at Ipswich (II, chapter 3).
1433 10–13 April? Margery in Norway (II, chapter 3).
1433 April-May. Margery’s sojourn in Danzi
g (II, chapter 4).
1433 10–24 July. Exhibition of the four holy relics at Aachen (II, chapter 7).
1434 29 July? Margery arrives at Syon Abbey (II, chapter 10).
1436 23 July. Priest begins to revise Margery’s Book I (Proem).
1438 28 April. Priest begins to write Book II (II, chapter 1).
1438 13 April. Admission of one Margery Kempe to the Guild of the Trinity at Lynn; further mentioned, 22 May 1439.
THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE
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The Proem
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 Saviour Jesus Christ – whose name be worshipped and magnified without end – who now in our days deigns to exercise his nobility and his goodness to us unworthy ones. All the works of our Saviour are for our example and instruction, and what grace that he works in any creature is our profit, if lack of charity be not our hindrance.
And therefore, by the leave of our merciful Lord Christ Jesus, to the magnifying of his holy name, Jesus, this little treatise shall treat in part of his wonderful works, how mercifully, how benignly, and how charitably he moved and stirred a sinful wretch to his love, who for many years wished and intended through the prompting of the Holy Ghost to follow our Saviour, making great promises of fasts, together with many other deeds of penance. And she was always turned back in time of temptation – like the reed which bows with every wind and is never still unless no wind blows – until the time that our merciful Lord Christ Jesus, having pity and compassion on his handiwork and his creature, turned health into sickness, prosperity into adversity, respectability into reproof, and love into hatred.
Thus with all these things turning upside down, this creature,1 who for many years had gone astray and always been unstable, was perfectly drawn and stirred to enter the way of high perfection, of which perfect way Christ our Saviour in his own person was the example. Steadfastly he trod it and duly he went it once before.
Then this creature – of whom this treatise, through the mercy of Jesus, shall show in part the life – was touched by the hand of our Lord with great bodily sickness, through which she lost her reason for a long time, until our Lord by grace restored her again, as shall be shown more openly later. Her worldly goods, which were plentiful and abundant at that date, were a little while afterwards quite barren and bare. Then was pomp and pride cast down and laid aside. Those who before had respected her, afterwards most sharply rebuked her; her kin and those who had been friends were now her greatest enemies.
Then she, considering this astonishing change, and seeking succour beneath the wings of her spiritual mother, Holy Church, went and humbled herself to her confessor, accusing herself of her misdeeds, and afterwards did great bodily penance. And within a short time our merciful Lord visited this creature with abundant tears of contrition day by day, insomuch that some men said she could weep when she wanted to, and slandered the work of God.
She was so used to being slandered and reproved, to being chided and rebuked by the world for grace and virtue with which she was endued through the strength of the Holy Ghost, that it was to her a kind of solace and comfort when she suffered any distress for the love of God and for the grace that God wrought in her. For ever the more slander and reproof that she suffered, the more she increased in grace and in devotion of holy meditation, of high contemplation, and of wonderful speeches and conversation which our Lord spoke and conveyed to her soul, teaching her how she would be despised for his love, and how she should have patience, setting all her trust, all her love and all her affection on him alone.
She knew and understood many secret things which would happen afterwards, by inspiration of the Holy Ghost. And often, while she was kept with such holy speeches and conversation, she would so weep and sob that many men were greatly astonished, for they little knew how at home our Lord was in her soul.2 Nor could she herself ever tell of the grace that she felt, it was so heavenly, so high above her reason and her bodily wits; and her body so feeble at the time of the presence of grace that she could never express it with her words as she felt it in her soul.
Then this creature had great dread of the delusions and deceptions of her spiritual enemies. She went by the bidding of the Holy Ghost to many worthy clerks, both archbishops and bishops, doctors of divinity, and bachelors as well. She also spoke with many anchorites, and told them of her manner of life and such grace as the Holy Ghost of his goodness wrought in her mind and in her soul, as far as her wit would serve her to express it. And those to whom she confided her secrets said she was much bound to love our Lord for the grace that he showed to her, and counselled her to follow her promptings and her stirrings, and trustingly believe they were of the Holy Ghost and of no evil spirit.
Some of these worthy clerics took it, on peril of their souls and as they would answer to God, that this creature was inspired with the Holy Ghost, and bade her that she should have a book written of her feelings and her revelations. Some offered to write her feelings with their own hands, and she would in no way consent, for she was commanded in her soul that she should not write so soon. And so it was twenty years and more from the time that this creature first had feelings and revelations before she had any written. Afterwards, when it pleased our Lord, he commanded and charged her that she should have written down her feelings and revelations, and her form of living, so that his goodness might be known to all the world.
Then the creature had no writer who would fulfil her desire, nor give credence to her feelings, until the time that a man living in Germany3 – who was an Englishman by birth, and afterwards married in Germany and had there both a wife and a child -having good knowledge of this creature and of her desire, and moved, I trust, through the Holy Ghost, came to England with his wife and his goods, and dwelt with the said creature until he had written as much as she would tell him in the time that they were together. And afterwards he died.
Then there was a priest that this creature had great affection for, and so she talked with him about this matter and brought him the book to read. The book was so ill-written that he could make little sense of it, for it was neither good English nor German, nor were the letters shaped or formed as other letters are. Therefore the priest fully believed that nobody would ever be able to read it, unless it were by special grace. Nevertheless, he promised her that, if he could read it, he would willingly copy it out and write it better.
Then there was such evil talk about this creature and her weeping, that the priest out of cowardice dared not speak with her but seldom, nor would write as he had promised the said creature. And so he avoided and deferred the writing of this book for nearly four years or more, notwithstanding that this creature often entreated him about it. At last he said to her that he could not read it, and for this reason he would not do it. He would not, he said, put himself in peril over it. Then he advised her to go to a good man who had been great friends with him that first wrote the book, supposing that he would best know how to read the book, for he had sometimes read letters written by the other man, sent from overseas while he was in Germany.
And so she went to that man, asking him to write this book and never to reveal it as long as she lived, granting him a great sum of money for his labour. And this good man wrote about a leaf, and yet it was little to the purpose, for he could not get on well with it, the book was so badly set down, and written quite without reason.
Then the priest was troubled in his conscience, for he had promised her to write this book, if he could succeed in reading it, and he was not doing his part as well as he might have done, and so he asked this creature to get the book back again, if she fittingly could. Then she got the book back and brought it to the priest very cheerfully, praying him to work with a good will, and she would pray to God for him, and gain him grace to read it and to write it as well.
The priest, trusting in her prayers, be
gan to read this book, and it was much easier, as he thought, than it was before. And so he read over every word of it in this creature’s presence, she sometimes helping where there was any difficulty.
This book is not written in order, every thing after another as it was done, but just as the matter came to this creature’s mind when it was to be written down, for it was so long before it was written that she had forgotten the time and the order when things occurred. And therefore she had nothing written but what she well knew to be indeed the truth.
When the priest first began to write this book his eyes failed, so that he could not see to form his letters and could not see to mend his pen. All other things he could see well enough. He set a pair of spectacles on his nose, and then it was much worse than it was before. He complained to the creature about his troubles. She said his enemy was envious of his good deed and would hinder him if he might, and she bade him do as well as God would give him grace and not give up. When he came back to his book again, he could see as well, he thought, as he ever did before both by daylight and by candlelight. And for this reason, when he had written a quire he added a leaf to it, and then he wrote this proem to give a fuller account than does the following one, which was written before this. Anno domini 1436.
The Preface
A short treatise of a creature set in great pomp and pride of the world, who later was drawn to our Lord by great poverty, sickness, shame, and great reproofs in many divers countries and places, of which tribulations some shall be shown hereafter, not in the order in which they befell, but as the creature could remember them when they were written.
The Book of Margery Kempe Page 3
