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Margery Kempe Quotes (1373-1438)
About Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe (née Brunham) (c. 1373 – after 1438) was a married English visionary and mystic of the Catholic Church. She was also the mother of fourteen children. The Book of Margery Kempe, a record of her spiritual life and travels around holy sites in Europe and Asia, written in the third person, is sometimes called the first autobiography in the English language. She was a contemporary of Julian of Norwich, whom Margery had met in person and received spiritual guidance from.
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“Sche cam beforn the Erchebischop and fel down on hir kneys, the Erchebischop seying ful boystowsly unto hir, "Why wepist thu so, woman?" Sche, answeryng, seyde, "Syr, ye schal welyn sum day that ye had wept as sor as I."”
“Sometimes she felt sweet smells with her nose; it was sweeter, she thought, than ever was any sweet earthly thing that she smelled before…Sometimes she heard with her bodily ears such sounds and melodies that she might not well hear what a man said to her in that time unless he spoke the louder. These sounds and melodies had she heard nearly every day for the term of twenty-five years…She saw with her bodily eye many white things flying all about her on every side, as thick in a manner as motes in the sun; they were right delicate and comfortable, and the brighter that the sun shone …Also our Lord gave her another token, which endured about sixteen years, and it increased ever more and more, and that was a flame of fire wonderfully hot and delectable and right comfortable, not wasting but ever increasing of flame, for, though the weather was never so cold, she felt the heat burning in her breast and at her heart, and verily as a man should feel the material fire if he put his hand or his finger therein”
Quotes About Margery Kempe
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T. W. Coleman on Margery Kempe
“As an intimate record of personal religious experience it has few equals. The marks of accuracy, sincerity, and reality are stamped on every page.”
Derek Brewer on Margery Kempe
“Margery was more of a religious hysteric than a mystic. But she gives a vibrant account of her life as a woman to whom religion and weeping were as attractive as sex was to the Wife of Bath.”
Alison Torn on Margery Kempe 2 quotes
“The Book of Margery Kempe tells the story of one woman’s spiritual journey in Medieval England over a twenty-five year period, describing her quest to establish spiritual authority as a result of her personal conversations with Jesus and God. Whilst the text is written in the third person, it is generally acknowledged to be the first autobiography written in the English language...Kempe’s story relates not only Margery’s struggle to achieve some form of divine spirituality, but also her polarised reception within society. Some, most notably religious authority figures, revered Margery as a holy mystic, whilst others, mainly commoners, rejected and slandered her as a devil worshiper.”
Marlys Craun on Margery Kempe
“Kempe was psychotic for much of her adult life...Kempe continued to have psychotic symptoms throughout the remainder of her life...[her] account provides the modern reader with a unique opportunity to hear the voice of a woman with serious mental illness who lived 600 years ago”
Claridge on Margery Kempe
“Given this mixture of affective and schizophrenic features a modern psychiatric diagnosis for Margery Kempe would most likely be ‘schizoaffective psychosis’, precipitated in the first instance by childbirth”
About Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe (née Brunham) (c. 1373 – after 1438) was a married English visionary and mystic of the Catholic Church. She was also the mother of fourteen children. The Book of Margery Kempe, a record of her spiritual life and travels around holy sites in Europe and Asia, written in the third person, is sometimes called the first autobiography in the English language. She was a contemporary of Julian of Norwich, whom Margery had met in person and received spiritual guidance from.