Sacred Art and the Artful
Conversion of Margery Kempe
Roy Eriksen
The Norwegian Institute in Rome
Two famous early examples of crosses or crucifixes
that speak are the cross that spoke to St. Francis in the Church
of San Damiano, Assisi, and the lamenting cross in Geoffrey de
Vinsauf's poetical treatise the Poetria nova.
The crucifix at San Damiano is said to have spoken in 1207, the
latter vents its verse complaint in a Latin treatise work composed
some time between 1208-16. Although being instances of the same
phenomenon, the two belong to opposite levels of Church hierarchy.
While St. Francis (1181/82-1226) had turned his back on worldly
riches shaping his life into an act of imitatio Christi, leaving his privileged life as a wealthy merchant's son and willingly
placing himself at the very bottom of the ecclesiastical hierarchy
with the emerging new mendicant orders, de Vinsauf was an accomplished
man of letters, who moved in circles close to the top of the system,
dedicating his work to the powerful and equally learned Pope Innocent
III. Hence de Vinsauf drew both on Scripture and classical poetic
and rhetorical sources for his Lament of the Cross ("Sanctae
Crucis quaerela"), while St. Francis imitated the style of
the Gospels in his sermons and for the Cantico del Sole. In this paper I wish briefly to draw attention to
a less known instance of a speaking cross, described in 1436 in
an account reporting an incident that occurred in 1413: Margery
Kempe's account of her conversion to a chaste life in her "autobiography".
The Fourteenth Century was a period of turmoil in the Church,
not least after the devastating impact of the Black Death, which
together with the Pope's Babylonian imprisonment at Avignon
many interpreted as God's punishment of the excesses of the
clergy. The unrest continued into the Early Fifteenth Century
with attempts by the Church to control popular or reformist movements
within its ranks. In England John Wyclif and the so-called Lollards
constituted a threat to Church authority and were severely suppressed,
the first Lollard to be burned, William Sawtree, was executed
in 1401. Alongside of lay preachers who advocated
the simple life of Christ to the masses in opposition to Church
authority,
the period also saw the rise of female mystics like St. Brigid
of Sweden, Julian of Norwich, and outside the monastic world
the strange case of Margery Kempe (1373-1438). Of course, Margery
herself was no Lollard, she accepted church authority on the crucial
issues of preaching and communion. This economically independent
housewife of King's Lynn in East Anglia, being the daughter of
John de Brunham, five times mayor, alderman and MP for the town,
was the mother of 14 children. Yet she strove for most of her
life to fashion herself into a mystic and possibly a saint in
imitation of St. Brigid and Elizabeth of Schönau, whose peregrinations
she followed throughout Europe. In this she not only enjoyed the
support of some monks and priests, but also the support of the
great mystic Julian of Norwich.
She dictated her own life, conflicts with the clergy, and
her pilgrimages and mystical experiences to two monks in what
appears to be an attempt to leave behind her own version of a
saint's life. The manuscript was lost for centuries, and was only
retrieved in 1934 when it was brought to the attention of the
scholarly world in the 1940-edition by Sanford Brown Meech and
Hope Emily Allen.
It is commonly held that Kempe did not know how to read
and write, a question which I believe is based solely on the fact
that she did not write down her own experiences, but dictated
them to two scribes. I do not think we should rule out the possibility
that she actually could read, but that is not really relevant
for my argument here, in view of the fact that the medieval oral
tradition and the capacity of medieval people to absorb and remember
far more than people living within a literate culture based on
printed texts. We should not be surprised, therefore, when we
find evidence that Kempe in her prose had absorbed stylistic features
of the Ars dictamini, and of the Gospels.
Dhira B. Mahoney has suggested that for Kempe preaching
is associated with learned men; it implies rhetorical training,
... the patriarchal language. Although it
seems clear that Kempe had not received training in composition
and formal rhetoric, readers better informed than Mahoney about
the characteristics of scriptural rhetoric, will know that Kempe
hardly would resist or even consider to make a stand against the
rhetorical schemes and compositional strategies the Evangelist,
or indeed in Christ's own prose himself in the Gospels. A particularly
striking example of this rhetoric of parallelism and balance we
see for instance in The Sermon of the Mount,
of which I present a survey in Appendix 1. Surely, it is patriarchal power per se, not the forms of language that
constitute the issue here. Kempe had the opportunity to absorb
both the oratorical style of preachers trained in the Ars
praedicandi and in scriptural passages read to her. Kempe's culture
was indeed an oral and visual one, where only a few select commanded
the techniques of writing and reading. Indeed, Kempe's prayer
that concludes the second part of her work contrasts markedly
with the colloquial language which dominates throughout The
Book in being formal and
rhetorically effective, but also shows the extent to which she
had learnt by listening. And by composing orally. In his sketchy
analysis of the style of Julian of Norwich and Kempe, Robert Stone
has brought out that both use rhetorical schemes such as anaphora,
anadiplosis, antimetabole, parallelism, and antithesis to what
Mahoney thinks is a surprising extent. (p. 50). The surprise
is obviously due to a preconceived view about Kempe and patriarchy,
and is not based on empirical data.
Although Stone's most elaborate examples stem precisely
from the prayer, which is intended to be a final flourish to The
Book, parallelismus and balance
are indeed found in many places in Kempe's work. One of the passages
that in terms relating one of the crucial events of Kempe's
life could be said to approach the concluding prayer in importance
and rhetorical finish, is precisely the episode in which she makes
a private agreement with her husband upon the direct intervention
of Christ, and that marks her conversion to a chaste life,
The episode which occurred on Midsummer Even, 23 June,
1413, displays a highly conspicuous narrative design that brings
to mind the balanced composition of Fourteenth and Fifteenth representations
of the Passion, and indeed of sacre conversazioni. Apart from the balanced disposition of what Cicero had called loci
actionis ( places of action
), that is, parallel or similar actions, we find in it an obvious
and highly effective use of temporal references and symbolic numbers.
All of these significant elements have been distributed around
the first appearance of the cross about the middle of the episode.
The cross would appear to be the presence in the episode that
leads to the resolution of the unresolved and protracted conflict
encountered in the episode's first half.
The conversion episode first relates how Margery and her
husband upon a Friday on Midsummer Even are on their way from
York to Bridlington in right hot weather, carrying a bottle
of beer in her hand and he a cake in his bosom. From these prosaic
details you will have realised that we are not dealing with a
pious account of a saint's virtuous life. When the husband wexes
amorous and requests to commune "kindly" with Margery,
this becomes even clearer. He puts the question in terms of an
in-set mini-narrative in the form of a balanced periodic construction
(a b b1 a1):
Margery, (a)
if there came a man with a sword and would smite off my head unless
I should commune kindly with you as I have done before, (b) say me truth of your conscience (b1) for ye say ye will not lie (a1) whether would ye suffer my head to be smit off or
else suffer me to meddle with you again as I did sometime? (p.
371)
The background for his question is that Christ
has asked her to keep a strict Friday and to end all sexual relations
that is, break her prescribed conjugal bond. Consequently, they
have not had sex for eight weeks, because she has prophesised,
that the husband will be slain within three years unless he cease
to "meddle" with her. Upon her reply that she would
rather see him dead than turn to uncleanness, he bluntly answers
Ye are no good wife. (p. 371) Then she repeatedly asks him
to consent to making a vow of chastity in front of a bishop, but
to no avail. She is still bound by her conjugal bond.
When they therefore resume their journey towards Bridlington,
Margery begins to fear for her chastity, particularly when her
husband wishes to rest by a cross along the road and pulls her
down to him. He now proposes a bargain: Margery grant me my desire,
and I shall grant you your desire. But first he wants her to
share bed with him as before, to have her pay his debts before
she goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and to eat and drink with
him on Fridays. Somewhat surprisingly she only explicitly refuses
the last request which to us may seem the least to grant, but
her refusal on this point is grounded in the pledge she has made
to Christ. Be this as it may, her answer does not content an impatient
husband who obviously wants it all: Well, he said, then shall
I meddle with you again. (p. 372)
This deadlock situation between demands and counterdemands,
which seemingly will end in carnal action, marks a transition
to a higher level in the account: we are now about to pass from
an earthy conversation between married folks to what seems to
amount to a sacra conversazione between Margery and Christ.
This turn of events occurs, when before the execution
of John's threat to demand his due Margery is allowed to say
her last prayers. She walks into a field and next to a cross
at which she addresses Christ in a long passionate appeal, which
ends as follows: Now, blessed Jesu, make thy will known to me
unworthy that I may follow thereafter and fulfil it with all my
might. (p. 372) At the very point at which we expect a short
reference to "meddling" or uncleanness, Christ
presumably in the form of the wooden figure on the cross at which
she prays heeds her prayer and addresses her with great sweetness,
asking her to resume negotiations with her husband.
And he shall have that he desireth. For, my dearworthy
daughter, this was the cause that I bade thee fast for thou shouldest
the sooner obtain and get thy desire, and now it is granted thee.
I will no longer that thou fast, therefore I bid thee in the name
of Jesu eat and drink as thy husband doth. (p. 372)
Upon this act of divine intervention Margery
accepts the conditions put by her husband, cleverly putting her
acceptance in the form of an offer in which he is seen to make
a concession before she makes hers: Sir, if it like you, ye shall
grant me my desire and ye shall have your desire. Her husband's
answer is equally formal: As free may your body be to God as
it hath been to me. No reference is of course made to the probably
final meddling of Margery and her husband which was an important
part of his demands. The text instead tells us that they kneeled
under a cross, saying three Pater Noster in the worship of the
Trinity, before they ate and drank together in great gladness
of spirit. The episode concludes with a final reference to the
day and the date: This was on a Friday on Midsummer Even, thus
rounding off the episode in the way it opened.
The see-saw movement of this brief linear account of the
episode, the structure of which in many ways corresponds to that
of the dramatic sub-genre of tragicomedy, should be evident; it
consists of a series of demands and counter demands, moving up
to a stale mate situation, or (for Margery) a situation of imminent
threat, until a solution is reached by direct divine intervention.
In addition to this five-part, linear structure, typical of many
fairy tales, the episode also displays a spatial structure that
marks it off as a finished textual artifact.
Figure 1. The topomorphical structure of the
conversion episode
Time references References to place
action
Friday /
on the road
1. John requests Margery on on Midsummer Even
to agree to sex; she refuses
2. Margery asks John to let
make a vow of chastity; he
refuses
Friday
at a cross and
3. John puts forward three
a cross road
demands, demanding sex
Friday
at a cross in
4. Margery goes to pray at a
a field
cross; Christ speaks to he rand
proposes a solution
Friday /
at a cross in
5. John and Margery reach
on Midsummer Even
a field
a settlement and celebrate in
great gladness of spirit
We first note that the episode opens (part one;
see Figure 1) with references
to food and drink (ale and bread) and that it concludes when the
food and drink are consumed in a meal of thanksgiving that is
a secular and low-life analogue to the communion. In part two
Margery asks her husband to make a vow of chastity and in part
four Christ proposes how Margery should go about it to achieve
her husband's consent. The central third part of the episode,
is set in a symbolically charged place, at a cross along the road.
It is here John puts forward his three demands, two of which are
to be granted in the final fifth part. The peripety of the episode
comes about when the couple are in the presence of the cross or
the crucifix, suggesting the centrality of Christ's suffering
in Margery's life.
In addition to this balanced structure of five parts, we
note the use of holy numbers to a similar effect: Margery has
been chaste for eight weeks, there have been three years of prognostication,
three conditions are put forward and finally Margery and her husband
say three Pater Noster in honour of the Trinity. Of course, these
do not represent a particularly sophisticated use of scriptural
or holy numbers, but they do help to structure the narrative and
doubtlessly contribute to reinforcing the narrative's spiritual
dimension. One could extend this deployment of holy numbers and
analogous events even further to see a general typological dimension
in the simple events of Margery and her husband's life. One cannot
avoid noting that John hypothesizes about being beheaded in the
initial part of the episode, a piece of information that makes
sense both in relation to his namesake St. John the Baptist who
was decapitated, and to Midsummer Even, the evening preceding
the saint's feast. Equally interesting is the concept of debt
as found at various points: John wants Margery to settle his debts
before she goes on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and she wants him
to guarantee that he shall "ask no debt of matrimony after
this day while ye live" (p. 373). Inevitably, one must relate
this prosaic talk about the fact that Christ who brings about
this reciprocous settlement concerning worldly prosaic debts,
is the redeemer of mankind, who absolves his human debitores.
In this way Margery Kempe adds a scriptural and typological dimension
to this crucial event in her life.
If in retrospect we consider the structure of the episode
within the life of Margery Kempe in relation to the episode of
the cross that spoke to St. Francis in St. Bonaventura's Legenda
maior (post 1266), we also
note a striking similarity. The cross episode in the Legend relates how the young Francis has "gone out to
meditate in the fields" [ad meditandum in agro]. Here he
entered the ruined Church of San Damiano" where he lay down
"prostrate before a crucifix," while absorbed in prayer:
Then he was filled as he prayed with no small consolation
of spirit; and as with tear-filled eyes he gazed upon the Lord's
Cross he heard with his bodily ears a voice proceeding from that
very Cross which said to him three times: 'Francis, go and repair
my house, which, as you see, is falling totally into ruin!' [..."Francisce,
vade et repara domum meam. Quae, ut cernis, tota destruitur!"]
Legenda maior, II.i:
265
The episode is the crucial turning-point in the
life of St. Francis and the next episode in the Legenda maior, "The Renunciation of Worldly Goods," we find him between his
wrathful father and the Bishop of Assisi, who protects him. The
renunciation marks the transition to a chaste and humble life
in service of Christ. In The Book of Margery Kempe,
too, we note a similar pattern: Margery kneels "down beside
a cross in a field," praying to "Lord God" "with
great abundance of tears" (372). When Lord Jesu Christ responds
with great sweetness, he resolves her dilemma by lifting her pledge
to fast on Fridays, making the private agreement with John Kempe
possible. Like in the episode in the life of St. Francis, then, the words
of Christ enable Margery to renounce the world, that is, her conjugal
duties to her husband.
Of course, there may not be a direct link between The
Book and accounts of St. Francis's life on this point, but
we know that a versified Latin life of the saint was written in
England as early as 1232 by a poet at the court of Henry III.
Also, we know that Margery was particularly interested in St.
Francis, because when she went on her pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
she did not go directly to Rome, but visited first the shrine
of the saint at Sta Maria degli Angeli at Porziuncula.
In this manner we may discern in the conversion episode
not only the compositional practices and formulas typical of scriptural
rhetoric and sacred art, but we also realise that Margery Kempe's
unusual text links up with an Italian Franciscan tradition in
which a more direct personal rapport is seen to develop between
the Godhead and devout Christians, a relationship most frequently
represented by means of speaking crucifixes whether they be artifacts
like the San Daminiano crucifix, or poetic like the "Sanctae
Crucis quaerela" in the Poetria nova.
As such these episodes may be interpreted as sacre rappresentazioni in which an actual speech act is taking place.
Appendix 1
Text taken from: Bibliorum Sacrorum iuxta
vulgatam clementinam, cur.
Aloisius Gramatica. Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1929. I am grateful
to Mr. Lasse Hodne, who noted the balanced design in the English
version of the sermon and brought it to my attention.
Evangelium secundum Lucam 6, 20-26
20
Et ipse, elevatis oculis
in discipulos suos dicebat:
A
Beati pauperes, quia vestrum est regnum Dei.
21
Beati qui nunc esuritis, quia saturabimini.
B
Beati qui nunc fletis,
quia ridebitis.
C
Beati critis, cum vos oderint homines
D
et cum separaverint vos exprobraverint
et eiecerint nomen vestrum tanquam malum propter
Filium hominis:
23
gaudete in illa die et exultate;
ecce enim merces vestra multa est in caelo;
A
secundum haec enim faciebant prophetis patres
eorum;
E
24
veruntamen vae vobis divitibus, quia habetis consolationem
vestram!
25
Vae vobis qui
saturati estis, quia esuretis!
B
Vae vobis qui ridetis
nunc, quia lugebitis et fletibis!
C
26
Vae, cum benedixerint vobis homines!
D
Secundum haec enim faciebant pseudoprophetis
E patres
eorum.
A A
marks the figure epanados; linkage between beginning
and middle.
E E
marks the figure epanados; linking middle to end.
B C D : B C D mark sequential
repetition with balance or antithesis.
Antithetical balance between eight instances
of anaphoric repetition: four times
Beati versus four times Vae.
Central emphasis here occurs when the words Filium
hominis are situated in final position in line seven, while
being part of a subsidiary triadic structure: homines Filium
hominis homines.
Appendix 2:
Margery Kempe's
text as cited from eds. Meech and Allen:
Appendix 3:
St. Francis Cycle,
Scene IV: The Miracle of the Crucifix, reproduced from Alastair
Smart, Plate 46.
