Margery Kempe, A Medieval Woman on Pilgrimmage

Background to
A Medieval Woman on Pilgrimmage by Margery Kempe
by Jim Jones, West Chester University of Pennsylvania (c.2012)

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Margery Kempe was born in the town of Lynn in England about 1373. She was the daughter of a prominent family whose father served five terms as the mayor of the town, plus a term in Parliament. When she was about 20 years old, she married John Kempe and gave birth of fourteen children over the next twenty years. Her religious experience began came after the birth of her first child when, during her post-partim depression, she began to have visions of Christ. For years, she lived an ordinary bourgeois life, and even operated her own brewing business, but she continued to have visions. After her business failed, however, she began to reexamine her faith and at the age of forty, she decided to devote her life to Christ. She became chaste, wore only white clothing, and set off on a spiritual pilgrimage across Europe to the Holy Land. She also became known for crying violently when she had her visions, which evidently angered many of the people who met her. Although her religious beliefs were fairly orthodox, she was physically threatened and often accused of heresy. In her old age, Margery dictated a spiritual biography to one of her sons. It was recopied and expanded by a traveling priest into the manuscript that formed the basis for the modern version of her story. It is one of the oldest biographies in the English language, and it remained lost for centuries until the manuscript was rediscovered in 1934 in the library of Colonel Butler-Bowdon of Pleasington Old Hall (Lancashire, England) by Hope Emily Allen (a noted scholar of the mystic Robert Rolle). Definitions anchorite: another name for a religious hermit. In the 13th-14th centuries, a number of Franciscan monks became hermits. Constance: city on the upper Rhine River that served as a trading center and meeting point for people traveling between northern Europe and the Mediterranean region Jaffa: eastern Mediterranean port city used by Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem in the 14th-15th centuries pilgrimage: a journey to visit a holy site for religious purposes (i.e. not for tourism or trade) Venice: trading city on the east coast of Italy at the north end of the Adriatic Sea. Venice became one of the most powerful cities in medieval Europe, and controlled the largest European navy prior to the development of maritime empires.
Background By the 13th century, Roman Christianity was well-entrenched in Europe, but it still did not provide satisfactory answers to everyone. The calamities of epidemic disease and frequent war, augmented in the 13th century by the Mongol invasions, made life in the material world seem precarious. Europeans turned to the metaphysical world in large numbers. Monastic sects, heretical priests, self-selected pilgrims, as well as orthodox Catholics all sought ways to ensure their salvation in the afterlife. Margery Kempe was someone who sought salvation by extraordinary means. She was the daughter of John Burnham, who served five times as the mayor of her town of Lynn and once in the English Parliament. Lynn was a port city whose merchants traded with Germany, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia.	Margery Kempe's route from England to Jerusalem
Kempe's experience during her pilgrimage shows several things about life in early 15th century Europe and the relationship between religion, economics and political power. Her route crossed the North Sea to a port in modern Netherlands, followed the Rhine River to Switzerland, and then followed paths over the Alps to Italy. From Venice, she took a ship to Jaffa (Haifa) and traveled overland from there on a mule to Jerusalem. From Jerusalem, she returned to Jaffa and sailed to Italy, where she visited Rome before returning overland to the North Sea and by ship to England. Kempe's pilgrimage lasted eighteen months in its entirety.
One of the things that Kempe's account reveals is how, at each step along the way, there were people who earned a profit by providing services to pilgrims. This was most clear in the examples of the "Saracens" who charged port fees and other bribes before allowing pilgrims to land and continue to Jerusalem. However, the same could be said of the people who operated the ships that crossed the Mediterranean and the North Sea, the caravan leaders who crossed continental Europe, the merchants who sold supplies and the innkeepers who sold lodging to pilgrims. Questions What is the purpose of a pilgrimage? How did Margery Kempe prepare before leaving on her pilgrimage? How did Margery Kempe get from England to the continent? What does the phrase "city of heaven" mean when used to describe Jerusalem?	TIMELINE 1373: Margery Kempe was born around this time 1393: first child born, Kempe aged 20 1394: recovered from first breakdown 1408: began life of chastity 1413: paid off husband's debts Fall 1413: began pilgrimage Jan. 1414: arrived in Venice Apr. 1414: left Venice May 1414: arrived in Jaffa Sep. 1414: reached Rome Easter 1415: left Rome for England mid-May 1415: reached the North Sea coast at Zealand two days later: returned home to Lynn, England
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