42 Facts About Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe is honoured in the Anglican Communion, but has not been canonised as a Catholic saint.

Margery Kempe was born Margery Burnham or Brunham around 1373 in Bishop's Lynn, Norfolk, England.

Margery Kempe appears to have been taught the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, the Ten Commandments, and other "virtues, vices, and articles of faith".

At around twenty years of age, Margery Kempe married John Margery Kempe, who became a town official in 1394.

Margery Kempe affirms that she had visitations and conversations with Jesus, Mary, God, and other religious figures, and that she had visions of being an active participant during the birth and crucifixion of Christ.

Margery Kempe reported hearing a heavenly melody that made her weep and want to live a chaste life.

Margery Kempe was known throughout her community for her constant weeping as she begged Christ for mercy and forgiveness.

Margery Kempe did not join a religious order, but carried out "her life of devotion, prayer, and tears in public".

Margery Kempe's visions provoked her public displays of loud wailing, sobbing, and writhing, which frightened and annoyed both clergy and laypeople.

Margery Kempe's book is commonly considered to be the first autobiography written in the English language.

Margery Kempe was tried for heresy multiple times but never convicted.

Margery Kempe was accused of preaching without Church approval as her public speeches skirted a thin line between making statements about her personal faith and professing to teach scripture.

Margery Kempe proved to be something of a nuisance in the communities where she resided, as her frantic wailing and extreme emotional responses seemed to imply a superior connection to God that some other lay people saw as diminishing their own, or inappropriately privileged above the relationship between God and the clergy.

Margery Kempe had lived in Germany, but he died before the work was completed and what he had written was unintelligible to others.

The narrative of Margery Kempe's Book begins with the difficult birth of her first child.

Sometime around 1413, Margery Kempe visited the female mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich at her cell in Norwich.

Margery Kempe was especially eager to obtain Julian's approval for her visions of and conversations with God.

Margery Kempe received affirmation of her gifts of tears by way of approving comparison to a continental holy woman.

In chapter 62, Margery Kempe describes an encounter with a friar who was relentless in his accusation for her incessant tears.

The friar admitted to having read of Marie of Oignies and recognised that Margery Kempe's tears were a result of similar authentic devotion.

Margery Kempe prayed at Caister's burial place for the healing of a priest.

Margery Kempe's book was essentially lost for centuries, being known only from excerpts published by Wynkyn de Worde in around 1501, and by Henry Pepwell in 1521.

In 1934, a manuscript, now British Library Add MS 61823, the only surviving manuscript of Margery Kempe's Book, was found in the private library of the Butler-Bowdon family, and then consulted by Hope Emily Allen.

Margery Kempe is unusual compared to contemporaneous holy women, such as Julian of Norwich, because she was not a nun.

Margery Kempe's Book is revealed as a carefully constructed spiritual and social commentary.

The suggestion that Margery Kempe wrote her book as a work of fiction is said to be supported by the fact that she speaks of herself as "this creature" throughout the text, dissociating her from her work.

Margery Kempe's autobiography begins with "the onset of her spiritual quest, her recovery from the ghostly aftermath of her first child-bearing".

Margery Kempe had such works read to her, including the by Richard Rolle.

Margery Kempe was motivated to make a pilgrimage by hearing or reading the English translation of Bridget of Sweden's Revelations.

Margery Kempe went on many pilgrimages and is known to have purchased indulgences for friends, enemies, the souls trapped in Purgatory and herself.

In 1413, soon after her father's death, Margery Kempe left her husband to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Margery Kempe was in Jerusalem for three weeks and went to Bethlehem where Christ was born.

Margery Kempe visited Mount Zion, which was where she believed Jesus had washed his disciples' feet.

Margery Kempe visited the burial places of Jesus, his mother Mary and the cross itself.

Margery Kempe went to the River Jordan and Mount Quarentyne, which was where they believed Jesus had fasted for forty days, and Bethany, where Martha, Mary and Lazarus had lived.

When Margery Kempe returned to Norwich, she passed through Middelburg, in today's Netherlands.

In 1417, Margery Kempe set off on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, travelling via Bristol, where she stayed at Henbury with Thomas Peverel, bishop of Worcester.

Margery Kempe encountered further accusation, specifically of heresy, of which she was eventually found innocent by the Archbishop.

Margery Kempe visited important sites and religious figures in England, including Philip Repyngdon, Henry Chichele, and Thomas Arundel, both Archbishops of Canterbury.

From Danzig, Margery Kempe visited the Holy Blood of Wilsnack relic.

Margery Kempe then travelled to Aachen, and returned to Lynn via Calais, Canterbury and London, where she visited Syon Abbey.

In 2020, a statue in honour of Margery Kempe was erected at the entrance of a medieval bridge in Oroso in Northern Spain, on the pilgrimage trail she would have followed to Santiago de Compostela.