Chapter 51
1. Genesis i, 22 (‘Be fruitful, and multiply …’); held by some heretics to justify free love.
2. John Aclom has not been identified.
3. John Kendale was a vicar choral, not a canon, of York Minster at this time; each canon delegated some or all of his duties in the church to his own vicar choral, hence Margery’s confusion.
4. Perhaps one of the two chaplains of the Chantry of All Saints, established on the south side of the Lady Chapel in 1413 by Archbishop Bowet, near to the tomb he had built for himself.
5. i.e. the Chapterhouse which still stands.
6. William Fitzherbert, Archbishop of York (d. 1154); miracles were reported at his tomb in the Minster, and he was canonized in 1227; his relics were translated to a new shrine in 1281. There was a strong cult of the saint at York.
7. The palace of Archbishops of York at Cawood, south of York. ‘AH that remains is the tall Gatehouse …’ (built later than Margery’s visit) (Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: The West Biding, Penguin, 1959).
Chapter 52
1. Henry Bowet, Archbishop of York 1407-23; he showed zeal against the Lollards. He is also said to have had a great reputation for hospitality and sumptuous housekeeping.
2. St John of Bridlington (d. 1379), Prior of the Augustinian canons of Bridlington, who combined his official duties with a life of fervent prayer, and had the gift of tears. Miracles were reported at his tomb, and he was canonized in 1401. His confessor, William Sleightholme (referred to by Margery as ‘Sleytham’ in chapter 53), was himself reported to be a worker of miracles.
3. Luke xi, 27-8.
4. i.e. that like various contemporary Lollard women, Margery has been studying scripture. See C. Cross, ‘ “Great Reasoners in Scripture”: The Activities of Women Lollards 1380-1530’, in Medieval Women, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 359-80.
5. I Corinthians xiv, 34-5.
6. i.e. six shillings and eightpence.
Chapter 53
1. John, Duke of Bedford (1389-1435), third son of Henry IV, and at this time Lieutenant of the kingdom, during Henry V’s absence in France.
Chapter 54
1. i.e. the Chapterhouse no longer extant at Beverley Minster.
2. cf. Matthew v, 48.
3. Margery is here accused of being the spiritual daughter of the contemporary arch-Lollard, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. Pronounced a heretic by Archbishop Arundel in 1413, Oldcastle escaped from the Tower and was in hiding in his home county of Herefordshire until recaptured late in 1417. He was hanged and burnt as an outlaw, traitor and heretic on 14 December 1417, in the presence of the Duke of Bedford.
4. i.e. because Lollards disapproved of pilgrimages.
5. Joan de Beaufort (d. 1440), Countess of Westmorland, daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, sister of Cardinal Beaufort and aunt of the Duke of Bedford.
6. Elizabeth, daughter of Joan de Beaufort, who married John de Greystoke.
7. Margery is probably speaking in the autumn of 1417, and left for Jerusalem in 1413.
8. Margery will have remembered that St Bridget ‘had a laughing face’ (chapter 39).
9. It is noticeable how many events in her life are remembered by Margery as occurring on Fridays, the day of Christ’s Passion.
Chapter 55
1. Matthew x, 19-20.
2. West Lynn, on the west bank of the River Ouse, just across the river from Lynn itself.
3. Arundel’s successor, Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury 1414-43.
Chapter 57
1. Referring to the old custom by which all those moving house within the same district did so on the same day.
2. Extant records mention him as an early fifteenth-century Prior of Lynn.
3. Archbishop Chichele’s letter is more liberal than Arundel’s allowance of Sunday communion (chapter 16).
4. At the end of Holy Week the crucifix was customarily wrapped in silk and buried with the Host in the Easter Sepulchre (a special recess with tomb-chest for the purpose, usually in the wall of the chancel), and a vigil was then kept.
5. One Mount Grace annotator comments in the MS margin ‘langor amoris,’ i.e. the languishing of love.
6. Actually, it has not been written before. Margery has said that her eight years of illness (which evidently started several years after the visit to Jerusalem when her cries began) were followed by increased cryings (chapter 56).
7. The Mount Grace annotator notes in the margin ‘petite et accipietis’, referring to John xvi, 24 (‘ask, and ye shall receive …’).
Chapter 58
1. Luke xix, 41-4.
2. i.e. the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden, probably Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, the pseudo-Bonaventuran Stimulus Amoris, and Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris. On the books known to Margery, see Introduction, p. 15ff
Chapter 59
1. cf. the anxiety of Julian of Norwich: ‘Another part of our same belief is that many creatures will be damned … all these shall be condemned to hell everlastingly, as Holy Church teaches me to believe. This being so I thought it quite impossible that everything should turn out well, as our Lord was now showing me’(Revelations of Divine Love, tr. C Wolters, Penguin, 1966, chapter 32).
Chapter 60
1. Richard of Caister died on 29 March 1420. Miracles were reputed to have happened at his tomb, which was a place of pilgrimage.
2. i.e. an image of the Virgin seated with the dead body of Christ in her lap. For evidence that such images were fairly common in fifteenth-century England, see ‘The History of the Pietà’, in R. Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford. 1968), pp. 392-4.
3. This priest – who is never named by Margery – probably thus came to Lynn about 1413.
Chapter 61
1. A marginal note in the MS in chapter 63 (see below), names the friar as ‘Melton’, perhaps identifying Margery’s enemy as the Franciscan preacher William Melton, although the authority of the note remains doubtful.
2. The other chapel-of-ease in the parish of St Margaret’s, Lynn.
3. Presumably Master Alan and Master Robert Spryngolde.
Chapter 62
1. 25 July; the year is uncertain.
2. On Mary of Oignies, see Introduction, p. 18ff.
3. Perhaps a Middle English translation of the Stimulus Amoris; cf. The Prickynge of Love, ed. H. Kane (Salzburg, 1983), chapter 2, p. 20.
4. i.e. Richard Rolle. See The Fire of Love, tr. C. Wolters (Penguin, 1972), chapter 34: ‘And his shout, excited and bursting out from the core of his longing love, goes up, of course, to his Maker … I have not the wit to describe this shout or its magnitude …’
5. St Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-31). Happily married to the Landgrave of Thuringia, after his death on crusade in 1227 she became a Franciscan tertiary, devoting herself to the care of the poor and sick and to a life of austerity. Canonized in 1235, her relics at Marburg were a popular object of pilgrimage.
Chapter 63
1. From the Old French gesine, ‘childbed’; a chapel in St Margaret’s Church devoted to the Nativity.
2. Here an annotator writes ‘nota contra Melton’ in the MS margin; see chapter 61, n. 1.
3. Margery perhaps looks forward here to her own sainthood.
4. cf. chapter 8.
Chapter 64
1. Matthew vii, 12.
Chapter 65
1. Margery has not recorded this revelation; St Paul is quoted against her at her examination in chapter 52.
Chapter 67
1. This fire is recorded as having happened on 23 January 1420/1421.
2. Probably Robert Spryngolde.
3. Note Margery’s caution in divulging her revelations.
Chapter 68
1. A Dominican, Thomas Constance, is mentioned in contemporary records.
2. Presumably Mary of Oignies; see chapter 62.
Chapter 69
1. i.e. Prior Thomas He
vingham; see chapter 57.
2. John Wakering (d. 1425), consecrated Bishop of Norwich in 1416.
3. i.e. Alan of Lynn and Robert Spryngolde.
4. Thomas Netter (d. 1430), elected Provincial Prior of the English Carmelites in a council held at Yarmouth in 1414, and one of the English representatives at the Council of Constance. He had taken a prominent part in the prosecution of the Lollards and had been present at the examination of Oldcastle before Archbishop Arundel in 1413. He is also recorded as a special patron of women recluses and an encourager of holy women, although disapproving of publicity for them.
5. Neither has been positively identified, although a Thomas Andrew was presented as rector of St Peter Hungate, Norwich, in 145 7, and a John Amy was presented as Vicar of Appleton (1417) and Sedgeford (1426), both villages in north-west Norfolk, not far from Lynn.
6. Not identified.
Chapter 70
1. Probably Thomas Netter; see chapter 69, n. 4.
Chapter 71
1. Extant records identify the two Priors in this episode as Thomas Hevingham and his successor, John Derham.
2. Henry V died in France on 31 August 1422.
3. Henry Beaufort (d. 1447), son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, half-brother of Henry IV; Bishop of Winchester 1405-47; nominated a cardinal in 1426, and later referred to by Margery as a cardinal (Book II, chapter 9), suggesting the present incident preceded his elevation.
Chapter 72
1. Romans viii, 28.
Chapter 73
1. In the MS margin a fifteenth-century note: ‘Father M. was wont so to doo’, referring to the Mount Grace mystic, Richard Methley.
2. Recalling our Lord’s words to Margery on her way from Jerusalem, which may well have taken place on the feast of the Translation of St Nicholas (9 May), although Margery did not specify this in chapter 30.
Chapter 74
1. Margery is in accord with St Bridget’s revelations on the date of the Virgin’s death; the Blessed Elisabeth of Schönau’s revelations put the date a year after the crucifixion.
2. It is appropriate for Margery to identify herself with the tearful Magdalene.
3. After his conversion, St Francis of Assisi similarly wished to kiss lepers, although he had previously found them repellent, and St Catherine of Siena also cared for lepers. Mary of Oignies and her husband turned their home into a hospital for lepers, whom they personally nursed.
4. Margery had herself endured sexual temptations; cf. chapter 59.
Chapter 75
1. This recalls Margery’s own troubles in chapter 1.
Chapter 76
1. i.e. to drain the wound.
Chapter 77
1. cf. Song of Songs ii, 16, vi, 3.
2. Matthew v, 44; Luke vi, 27, 35.
Chapter 78
1. This chapter touches on such Palm Sunday observances as the procession into the churchyard, the priest’s entering the church with the sacrament while followed by the people, and the pulling away of the Lenten curtain.
Chapter 80
1. In the celebrated late-fourteenth-century retable in Norwich Cathedral the flagellation scene shows Christ with arms tied above his head to a pillar, and torturers with three-branched scourges.
2. The maximum under Mosaic Law (cf. Deuteronomy xxv, 3). Sixteen men each giving forty lashes with an eight-tipped scourge might result in 5,120 wounds to Christ’s body. In various late-medieval devotions and revelations the numbering of Christ’s wounds varied between 4,732, 5,475, even 6,666.
3. Margery had visited the scene of this incident in Jerusalem (chapter 29).
4. In the Wakefield Mystery Play of the Scourging, Mary offers to carry the cross; see English Mystery Plays, ed. P. Happé (Penguin, 1975), P. 519.
5. cf. the York Crucifixion Play. ‘It failis a foote and more, /The senous [sinews] are so gone ynne’ (Happé, p. 529).
6. The cross is similarly raised and dropped into a mortise in the York Crucifixion Play (Happé, p. 533).
7. Margery had seen this stone for herself in Jerusalem (chapter 29).
Chapter 81
1. cf. Meditationes Vitae Christi: ‘If you will use your powers, you too will know how to obey, serve, console, and comfort [Our Lady] so that she may eat a little …’ (chapter 83).
2. cf. Meditationes Vitae Christi: ‘But then there was a knock at the door … John went to the door, and looking out recognized Peter, and said, “It is Peter.” And Our Lady said, “Let him in.” Thereupon Peter entered shamefacedly, with great sobbing and weeping’ (chapter 84).
3. Perhaps the Chapel of the Apparition, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Margery herself had visited (chapter 30). The risen Christ’s appearing first to his mother (in contradiction of Mark xvi, 9, where he appears first to Mary Magdalene) was a widespread medieval tradition.
4. ‘Hail, holy parent’
Chapter 82
1. i.e. 2 February. Margery’s experience here recalls that of Mary of Oignies, who at Candlemas had a vision of our Lady offering her son in the Temple and of Simeon receiving him in his arms. cf. the English Ltfe of Mary; ed. by C. Horstmann, ‘Prosalegenden: Die Legenden des MS Douce 114’, Anglia 8 (1885), p. 173.
Chapter 83
1. Evidently St Michael’s Church at Mintlyn, just east of Lynn, now in ruins.
Chapter 84
1. Denny Abbey, a house of Franciscan nuns, near Waterbeach, northeast of Cambridge. The mid-fourteenth-century refectory survives; fragments of the church are incorporated into an eighteenth-century house.
Chapter 86
1. Probably alluding to Margery’s meditations on the infancy of Christ
Chapter 88
1. See chapter 8.
Book II
Chapter I
1. Extant records suggest a Margery Kempe became a member of the Trinity Guild at Lynn before Easter 1438.
2. i.e. 28 April 1438.
Chapter 2
1. The Priory of Our Lady at Walsingham, one of the most celebrated places of pilgrimage in medieval England with its image of the Virgin and shrine of the Holy House.
2. Romans viii, 31.
Chapter 3
1. Probably 2 April 1433.
2. In England the Host and the cross were usually raised from the Easter Sepulchre early on Easter morning.
Chapter 4
1. Probably referring to hostilities in 1433 between Poland and the Teutonic Order, to which Danzig belonged.
2. When the church at Wilsnack in Brandenburg was burned down in 1383, three Hosts were reputedly found in the ruins, miraculously unscathed and sprinkled with blood. The site became the object of pilgrimage; see J. Sumption, Pilgrimage (London, 1975), pp. 282-4.
3. By 1433 there were serious disagreements over trading privileges and payment of dues between England and the Teutonic Order.
4. Margery’s amanuensis spells it ‘Strawissownd’, i.e. Stralsund in Pomerania, a Hansa town.
Chapter 5
1. Margery’s giving of her age here suggests that she was born c. 1373.
2. Probably 10 June 1433.
Chapter 6
1. i.e. the period of eight days beginning with the day of the festival; 11-18 June in 1433.
2. i.e. Psalm cxxvi, 5-6: ‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.’
3. They call her an English ‘sterte’, which means ‘tail’, referring to a very old jibe on the continent that English people had tails.
Chapter 7
1. St Bridget of Sweden and Blessed Dorothea of Montau were among those who went on pilgrimage to Aachen, a place of pilgrimage for its four great relics: the smock the Virgin wore at Christ’s birth, the swaddling clothes of Jesus, the cloth which received St John the Baptist’s head, and the loin cloth that Christ wore on the cross. By St Margaret’s Day Margery probably means 20 July here.
Chapt
er 9
1. The only appearance of Margery’s surname in her book.
2. i.e. declining a humble fish but eating a better one.
3. i.e. Cardinal Beaufort; see chapter 71.
Chapter 10
1. Allowing for Margery’s travels from Aachen, this is perhaps 1 August 1434-
2. Margery here mistakes Sheen for Syon Abbey. Henry V founded a Carthusian monastery at Sheen, Surrey, and also, on the other side of the Thames from Sheen, a Brigettine house of Mount Syon, which in 1431 was moved further downriver to Isleworth (now the site of the Duke of Northumberland’s Syon House). The Carthusians of Sheen and the Brigettines of Syon formed a great centre of contemplative piety in fifteenth-century England. The ‘Pardon of Syon’ was an indulgence for pilgrims to the abbey; it was available at Lammastide.
The Book of Margery Kempe Page 33