The Book of Margery Kempe (35 page)

2
.   A repeated conviction in Margery: see chapters 8, 15, 22, 29, 36, 57.

3
.   
cf. the inscription on Margery's wedding ring to Jesus in chapter 31, and God's words in chapter 65.

4
.   At her audience with Archbishop Arundel (chapter 16), Margery gains permission to receive communion every Sunday, and this is later confirmed so that she may receive communion as often as required (chapter 57). Such frequency of communion was most exceptional at the time, although St Bridget of Sweden and her daughter St Catherine were allowed weekly communion, as was Blessed Dorothea of Montau.

5
.   i.e. cod-fish cured and dried; a commodity in medieval Lynn.

6
.   i.e. a recluse attached to the Dominican house at Lynn; he is later (chapter 15) described as a doctor of divinity, and as Margery's principal confessor (chapter 18), as well as being credited with a ‘spirit of prophecy', which suggests he was himself inclined to mysticism. He is consistently loyal to Margery (chapters 18, 19), but evidently dies before she returns from Jerusalem (chapter 58).

7
.   cf. ‘The human mother will suckle her child with her milk, but our beloved Mother, Jesus, feeds us with himself' (Julian of Norwich,
Revelations of Divine Love,
tr. C. Wolters, Penguin, 1966, chapter 60).

1
.   Margery evidently lay on the ground during her devotions (see chapters 6, 22, 23, 38, 87).

2
.   Presumably the Master Robert Spryngolde named as her confessor in chapter 5 7. God again alludes to his role as ‘executor' in chapters 63 and 88.

1
.   The words in brackets are added by an annotator in the MS margin. But in chapter 11 Margery reminds her husband that she told him he would be suddenly slain, and so she perhaps did believe that John Kempe would have been struck dead by God if he had not refrained from intercourse with her. Such married women mystics as St Bridget of Sweden and Blessed Dorothea of Montau were eventually able to live chaste by their husbands' consent, while Mary of Oignies and St Catherine of Sweden managed to remain virgin wives.

2
.   
Probably 26 April 1413, i.e. two months before Margery's argument with John Kempe in chapter 11 (datable to 23 June 1413), when he is said to have gone without sex for eight weeks.

3
.   John Wyrham, a mercer, is mentioned in the medieval records of Lynn, and was a member of the Guild of St Giles and St Julian.

4
.   This Carmelite friar, Alan of Lynn (born c. 1348), was a Cambridge doctor of divinity and, among his writings, is recorded as having made indexes of the revelations and prophecies of St Bridget of Sweden, and of the pseudo-Bonaventuran
Stimulus Amoris.
A native of Lynn, he was to prove a good friend to Margery.

1
.   cf. John xiv, 20; xv, 4–5; xvii, 23; vi, 57; also I John iv, 1, 6, 12, 13. God repeats this assurance to Margery in chapters 34 and 35.

1
.   Probably 2 3 June 1413. After seeing Philip Repyngdon (who became Bishop of Lincoln in 1405) about her vows of chastity (chapter 15), Margery later visits Archbishop Arundel (chapter 16), who died in February 1414. Moreover, Margery – married c. 1393 – records that she bore her husband fourteen children (chapter 48). Between 1405 and 1414 Midsummer's Eve fell upon a Friday only in 1413. As Corpus Christi Day in 1413 fell on 22 June, it is likely that Margery and her husband had seen the Mystery Plays performed at York.

2
.   Surviving Lynn records refer to Margery's father, John Brunham, as alive but in ill health on 19 December 1412, and on 16 October 1413 as deceased. Inheritance of a legacy may have helped Margery to strike this bargain with her husband.

1
.   Even the Franciscans in the Holy Land have heard that God speaks to Margery (chapter 29). After her trials for heresy she later becomes more cautious (e.g. chapters 46, 55, 63).

2
.   cf. Chaucer's portrait of the Monk in the General Prologue: ‘… a monk, whan he is recchelees, / Is likned til a fissh that is waterlees -/ This is to seyn, a monk out of his cloystre …' (179-81).

1
.   Probably John Kynton (d. 1416), formerly chancellor to Queen Joanna, wife of Henry IV, before becoming a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, in 1408.

2
.   Possibly enclosure as an anchoress, but perhaps imprisonment.

3
.   i.e. a heretic with opinions derived from John Wyclif or his followers. Among their other beliefs, Lollards were held to question the authority of the priesthood and the institution of religious orders, and to maintain that every Christian could discover for him or herself the true sense of the Bible and live by it.

4
.   A note here in the MS margin comments that Richard Methley ‘was wont so to say'. Methley (b. 1451), a Carthusian mystic of Mount Grace, translated into Latin
The Cloud of Unknowing
and
The Mirror of Simple Souls,
with a preface on pseudo-Dionysian mysticism. Of himself he wrote: ‘My life consists of love, langour, sweetness, heat and melody…'

5
.   The MS margin here contains a drawing of a pillar. Some medieval German women mystics also thought of themselves as chosen in this way.

1
.   cf. Isaiah xlix, 16: ‘Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands…'

2
.   cf. Isaiah xlv, 15: ‘Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.' Hilton,
Scale of Perfection,
I, chapter 49, also citing this verse, comments: ‘Jesus is treasure hid in thy soul.'

3
.   Margery is assured of the importance of the gift of tears by Julian of Norwich (chapter 18), and by her Dominican anchorite (chapter 19); they are later seen as a most important token of love (chapter 64), a gift of God (chapters 61, 67, 68).

4
.   Mark iii, 35.

1
.   i.e. probably in 1411, as Margery apparently left for the Holy Land in 1413, and visited the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain in 1417.

2.
  White clothes would be taken as a claim to special virtue (chapter 33) or virginity (chapter 52).

3
.   Philip Repyngdon, Bishop of Lincoln 1405-19. Margery visited him sometime after 23 June 1413 (probably because the Bishop of Norwich had died in April 1413, and his successor died without having visited his diocese in 1415). Repyngdon had long ago abjured his earlier support for Wyclif at Oxford, where he had defended Wycliffite doctrine on the sacrament ‘but had won universal esteem for his moderate and kindly bearing' (DNB). Archbishop Arundel later regarded him as a most orthodox bishop, who energetically pursued Lollards. Repyngdon seems to have heard of Margery before.

4
.   For Margery as prophet, see chapters 17, 23, 24, 71; for contemporary religious as prophets, see R. M. Clay,
The Hermits and Anchorites of England
(London, 1914), 155ff.

5
.   The mantle and the ring would indicate the taking of a vow of chastity before a bishop.

6
.   Those in heaven are clothed in white; cf. Revelation iii, 4; iv, 4; Matthew xxviii, 3.

7
.   Repyngdon ‘was described in his lifetime as a “powerful and God-fearing man, a lover of truth and hater of avarice” … He does not appear to have possessed any great force of character, and his promotion was perhaps chiefly due to his friendship with Henry IV'(DNB).

8
.   Thomas Arundel (1353-1414), third son of Richard Fitz Alan, fourth Earl of Arundel. Enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1397, he was banished in the same year by Richard II, returning to England with Henry IV, when he was restored to the archbishopric. A vigorous opponent of the Lollards, he presided at the trials of the heretics William Sawtre, John Badby, and Sir John Oldcastle. See M. Aston,
Thomas Arundel
(Oxford, 1967).

1
.   The first of many rebukes that Margery's book records her as giving to those who sin by swearing. Oaths by aspects of the Passion and Christ's body were felt to torture our Lord all over again, as Chaucer's Parson says in his tale: ‘For Cristes sake, ne swereth nat so synfully
in dismembrynge of Crist by soule, herte, bones, and body. For certes, it semeth that ye thynke that the cursede Jewes ne dismembred nat ynough the preciouse persone of Crist, but ye dismembre hym moore …' (X, 59off.). See also G. R. Owst,
Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England
(Oxford, 1966), pp. 414-25.

2
.   A garment made of skin dressed with the hair.

3
.   William Sawtre, sometime priest of Lynn, was burnt for Lollardy at Smithfield in 1401.

1
.   The Vicar is later named (chapter 43) as Richard of Caister (d. 1420). He has been credited with writing one of the most popular Middle English devotional lyrics,
Jesu, horde, that madest me,
although ‘he may well have expanded and rearranged an already popular poem'
(Medieval English Lyrics,
ed. R. T. Davies, London, 1963, pp. 146-8, 332). After his death Margery seems to pray to him as to a saint (chapter 60).

2
.   The Scale
of Perfection
of Walter Hilton, the
Revelations
of St Bridget of Sweden, the
Stimulus Amoris
of the pseudo-Bonaventura, and the
Incendium Amoris
of Richard Rolle. Margery here mentions the same books as those later read to her by the young priest (chapter 58). On Margery's reading, see Introduction, p. 15ff.

3
.   St Katherine of Alexandria, supposedly a fourth-century virgin martyr, whose cult was very popular in the Middle Ages. A girl of noble birth, and persecuted for her Christianity, she refused marriage with the emperor because she was a bride of Christ; she triumphed over fifty philosophers enlisted to persuade her of the errors of Christianity. She was tortured by being broken on the wheel that became her symbol, and then beheaded.

4
.   As Richard of Caister is known to have died on 29 March 1420, this would date Margery's appearance before the Bishop's officers to c.1413.

1
.   The Carmelite William Southfield is reported to have received supernatural visitations, and the Virgin appeared to him.

2
.   Wisdom i, 4, 5.

3
.   Psalms li, 17.

4
.   Isaiah lxvi, 2.

5
.   i.e. Dame Julian of Norwich (born c. 1343), anchoress at St Julian's Church, Norwich. Julian's revisions of the account of her meditations on her own visions, in the two versions of her
Revelations of Divine Love,
suggest her scrupulous and anxious care in the correct interpretation of such experiences.

6
.   I Corinthians vi, 19.

7
.   James i, 8.

8
.   James i, 6-7.

9
.   Romans viii, 26.

10
. Popularly attributed to St Jerome, although no precise equivalent has been found in his writings. The Middle English treatise
Speculum Christiani
has St Jerome say, ‘Prayers please God but tears constrain him,' and St Bernard says, ‘Tears of a sinner torment the devil more than every kind of torture.'

11
. cf. II Corinthians vi, 16; Apocalypse xxi, 3; also Ezekiel xxxvii, 27-8; and the texts from St John echoed in chapter 10 above.

12
. Luke vi, 22-3.

13
. Luke xxi, 19.

14
. This abrupt transition suggests that in the unique MS this material has been wrongly brought forward from the end of the next chapter, which concerns Margery's dealings with several widows.

1
.   The model for herself provided by the example of St Bridget of Sweden was evidently much in Margery's thoughts; in this chapter God confirms the connection explicitly.

2
.   No earthquake in England is subsequently mentioned by Margery, or, apparently, by contemporary English records.

3
.   St Bridget of Sweden and St Catherine of Siena were the most celebrated examples of medieval women mystics whose visionary life also included a concern for the affairs of the world.

1
.   This conversation with God when Margery is pregnant is apparently out of chronological order, and must have preceded the chastity agreement with her husband in chapter II.

2
.   Blessed Angela of Foligno heard the Holy Spirit saying to her: ‘I love thee more than any woman in the valley of Spoleto.'

3
.   cf.
The Cloud of Unknowing:
‘For it is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you would be… St Augustine is speaking of this holy desire when he says that “the life of a good Christian consists of nothing else but holy desire” ' tr. C. Wolters (Penguin, 1978), chapter 75.

4
.   According to medieval legend she was an actress and courtesan in fifth-century Alexandria who, after her conversion, lived as a hermit in the Jordanian desert. When her clothes wore out, her hair grew long and took their place.

1
.   The cult of this legendary virgin martyr was popular in the later Middle Ages. Shut up in a tower by her father so that no man should see her, she became a Christian; her furious father was killed by lightning after he handed her over to a judge to be condemned. Patron of those in peril of sudden death.

1
.   i.e. Pentney Priory, an Augustinian house on the River Nar near Narborough, some seven miles south-east of Lynn; ‘founded before 1135. Quite a big house, usually with 15-20 canons. The imposing gatehouse alone remains …' (Pevsner,
Buildings of England: North-West and South Norfolk,
Penguin, 1962).