Carruthers abstract

‘I preach not, Sir, I come in no pulpit’: Margery Kempe as Saint and Preacher

Leo Carruthers

University of Paris IV, Sorbonne

The paper will examine Margery Kempe’s image as a mystic and a preacher in a social and religious context which made her words and actions highly contentious. However much she may have rejected such claims, the autobiography of 1436-38 does indeed represent her as both a saint and a preacher. She describes her complex religious experiences in detail, leaving no doubt that she saw herself as God’s chosen instrument, though she was fully aware that her detractors did not accept this view. Her devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints, and her frequent communication with them in prayer, demonstrate the influence of hagiography on the popular imagination, though the automatic control she exercised over this otherworldly contact raises issues of self-delusion and wish-fulfillment.

For an unlettered laywoman Margery displays unusual familiarity with earlier mystical writings in English, which had been read out to her by a priest. She adopted St Bridget of Sweden as a model with whom she liked to identify. She was a noted traveler in foreign parts, making pilgrimages to Rome, Compostella and Jerusalem, at a time when such journeys were difficult and dangerous, all the more so for a woman on her own. It was in Jerusalem that her emotional outbursts first began, which most witnesses found very distressing if not absolutely diabolical, casting much doubt on the authenticity of her mystical experience.

Margery was a fervent devotee of good sermons which she liked to hear and repeat, so much so that she left herself open to accusations of unlawfully preaching. Yet she strongly upheld her personal orthodoxy and denied that she ever preached, saying that she “came in no pulpit” and limited herself to “communication and good words”. She sometimes involved priests and preachers in controversy. Subject more than once to ecclesiastical enquiry, she was obliged to refute her accusers publicly, but nevertheless went on proclaiming the word of God whenever she thought it right to do so. She therefore provides us with unusual insight into some of the possible effects of preaching in medieval religious culture and social life.