Margery Kempe (1373-1438, esp. 1413-1434)

(Travellers | Cities | Routes | Trade Goods | Themes)

by Caroline Stone (See Chinese translation)

Margery Kempe (alternative names) is famous for the account of her life, The Book of Margery Kempe – the first extant autobiography in English. The book is primarily a record of her spiritual life, but in the course of it she describes her numerous pilgrimages, shedding a fascinating light on the realities of travel in the 15th century. Margery Kempe went to many shrines in England, such as Canterbury and Walsingham, the three great sites that every Christian tried to visit – Jerusalem, Rome and St James of Compostela – and even travelled as far afield as Scandinavia.

Margery Kempe was born at Lynne (now King’s Lynn) in Norfolk ca. 1373 and died in or after 1438. Towards the end of her life she dictated her work, by intention a guide to her mystical experiences. She and her scribe explain the process in detail in the introduction, providing an unusual insight into the problems faced by someone who cannot write when composing a book.

Belonging to a wealthy family in one of the richest and most important trade centers in England, Margery married young and bore a large number of children, but religion soon became the driving force of her life. Her ceaseless public weeping and lamenting over the sins of the world made her a trying companion and she was frequently in serious trouble because her behaviour associated her with the extremist reforming sect known as the Lollards.

It was logical that Margery should have set out on pilgrimage. Apart from her problems at home, she would naturally have wanted to visit the holy places, and furthermore pilgrimage was the form of travel approved of for a middle-aged woman – for example her diametrically opposed fictional contemporary, the Wife of Bath of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Her account gives a remarkable amount of information about the kind of people she met on her travels and also the organization of the forerunners of the package tours from Venice to the Holy Land. Margery, with her constant complaints, reproofs, weeping and wailing, and peculiar clothes was no more popular with her fellow travellers than she had been at home. The Muslims, with their traditional tolerance of eccentricity, were more patient.

“The Saracens,” she said (speaking of herself in the third person, as she does throughout her book), “made much of her, and conveyed her, and led her about the country wherever she would go; and she found all people good to her and gentle, save only her own countrymen.”

Margery Kempe was not writing a travel account and consequently was casual about details that she felt were of minor importance, as she makes quite clear:

And so they sailed forth to a place which is called Strawissownd (Stralsund). If the names of the places be not right written let no man marvel, for she studied more about contemplation than the names of the places, and he that wrote them had never seen them and therefore hold him excused.

Margery's various travels were taken either alone or, apparently, in the case of the later ones, with her elder son. On her last pilgrimage to Danzig and Wilsnack she was accompanied by her daughter-in-law.

The Book of Margery Kempe had less influence than might have been expected and, after being cited a couple of times in the early 16th century, basically vanished until the 20th. The much more famous mystic and theologian, Julian of Norwich, whom, incidentally, Margery met, was slightly better known, her theological work existing in various manuscripts and being printed in the 17th century, although her more personal account of her mystic experiences is similarly preserved in a unique edition. It should not be assumed that the lack of attention paid to Margery was because of her being a woman: the slightly earlier St Bridget of Sweden and St Catherine of Siena were widely known and extremely influential.

Since the discovery of the manuscript, The Book of Margery Kempe has been published in various editions and there are a number of versions in modern English, as well as a considerable literature on her. It seems, not, however, to have been translated into other languages.