The Book of Margery Kempe Read Online Free

of the holy life of Mary of Oignies the reader of
The Book of Margery Kempe
will find many echoes of Margery’s experience.
    The
life
of Mary of Oignies in a Middle English version survives in a Bodleian Library manuscript 17 together with English translations of the lives of several other holy women, one of the works of Suso, and some material on the life of the great Italian mystic St Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) – a collection which in itself suggests the kind of reading that some of Margery’s advisers would draw upon. St Catherine’s writings were known and translated in later medieval England 18 and, like Margery, the Italian visionary saw herself as a bride in a mystical marriage to the deity. The experiences and writings of other female mystics of the Middle Ages will often seem paralleled and echoed in Margery’s own book, and the example of such mystics as St Mechthild of Hackeborn 19 and Blessed Elisabeth of Schönau was known in England. The
Mirror of Simple Souls
of Marguerite Porete (burnt as a heretic in 1310) was translated from French into an English version, 20 and was also translated into Latin by that Mount Grace mystic, Richard Methley, whose own ecstasies were compared with Margery Kempe’s by the annotators of the manuscript of her
Book
at Mount Grace Priory.
    It is also intriguing to recall the association between Margery’s experience and the experience of such other female mystics as Blessed Angela of Foligno and Blessed Dorothea of Montau, not because evidence survives that their lives were known in England, but because Margery on her pilgrimages actually visited the areas where these mystics had lived. Thus, though there is no evidence that Margery had direct knowledge of the life of Angela of Foligno, at Assisi she visited the site of some of Angela’s experiences and could well have heard tell of the example of this remarkable local figure.
    Blessed Angela of Foligno (c. 1249–1309) lived a worldly life as a well-to-do wife and mother up to the age of forty, but suddenly underwent a conversion, although initially she was ashamed to confess all her sins. Her family having all died, she was able todevote herself to a life of poverty and penitence. She wept ceaselessly, cried aloud when she heard the name of God, and fell into a fever upon seeing a picture of Christ’s Passion. It was difficult for her not to talk of God. She thought of herself as drinking the blood from Christ’s side, and wanted, for love of Christ, to suffer the vilest death and humiliation. She was subject to fits of screaming which astonished everybody, and people said she was troubled by devils. She was so ashamed that she wondered whether this was indeed true. She had ecstasies and visions, and was ardently devoted to the crucified Christ. Her Franciscan confessor acted as her secretary and wrote down what she dictated. 21
    Margery’s visit to Danzig late in life makes especially interesting the parallels between her experience and that of the Prussian visionary and ecstatic, Dorothea of Montau, who spent her married life in Danzig and whose cult would have been strong there at the time of Margery’s visit.
    Blessed Dorothea of Montau (1347–94), who describes herself as illiterate, was married at sixteen to an older man and bore him nine children, all but one of whom died young. From 1378 she experienced ecstasies. She was badly treated by her husband, although a mutual vow of chastity eventually followed, and Dorothea was allowed weekly communion. She went on pilgrimage to Aachen with her husband, and to Rome on her own. She could find no one in Danzig who understood her inner life and pilgrimage offered her the opportunity to seek out spiritual counsellors. After her husband’s death in 1390 Dorothea became a recluse at Marienwerder Cathedral, under the direction of the pious John of Marienwerder, who wrote accounts of her visions and her life. A decisive