Margery Kempe - The Fire of Love
Margery Kempe - a Woman Transformed
Margery Kempe was one of the most remarkable figures in English history. Dating from about 1430, her account of her life - The Book of Margery Kempe - is the first autobiography by any English man or woman. Set mainly in Kempe's home town - the busy port of Bishop Lynn, now Kings Lynn, UK - it tells of a life full of trouble and turmoil, with failures in business, mental illness, sexual passion, religious visions and courtroom dramas.
As daughter of the mayor and wife of a wealthy burgess Kempe was dressy and proud in her younger days.
Transformed by her visions, she took up a life of hardship and rigour. She trekked for months to foreign shrines, giving birth on one expedition, increasingly lame as the years wore on and often with only beggars to guard her. But why only beggars? She did set out with pilgrim parties but her ranting self-righteousness drove her companions to give her the slip. ‘I never knew why they set off without me,’ she says in the Book!
By contrast, her religious experience is sublime and intense, yielding other-worldly episodes that jostle with earth-bound disputes and adventures throughout her Book. Red-blooded sex and religious purple aren’t kept completely separate, though, and a few scenes make for uncomfortable reading. ‘The fire of love,’ which burned increasingly hot in her breast, was beyond Kempe’s control.
A Book with a Story
Being semi-literate, Kempe dictated the Book to scribes, who copied it for monastic libraries. Nothing appeared in print for over 500 years except for meagre, pious extracts attributed to ‘a devoute ancres … of Lynne.’
All copies of the Book itself were lost and with them the story of Kempe and her life. Then, in 1934, a copy was found in a private library, presumably smuggled there from a nearby religious house at the Reformation.
This precious copy, still the only one known, is the Book just as Kempe dictated it. (The page shown above describes how she burned with the 'fyer of love.') In the Norfolky English and scribal hand of the 1430s it's a treat for scholars (available here) but a total frustration for anyone else.
Modern translations (including my own) mean that Kempe's remarkable voice can now be heard by all. I've also brought her alive on stage in a play entitled The Fire of Love. Read about it here or get yourself a copy here.
Go to Kempe the Pilgrim, explore her contradictions at Agony and Ecstasy - or use the form to get in touch!
Tony D Triggs
