Candidates for the Role of Priest-Scribe:

Textual Representations

The Dominican Anchorite

The “ankyr” at the Friar Preachers who serves as Margery’s principal confessor.

v An anchorite is “a person who separated him or herself from society in order to devote a life to penance and prayer in solitude. Anchorites were similar to hermits, but their location was invariably within populated communities, not the desert or forest location of the traditional hermit. They could be members of religious orders but they also could be solitary individuals who chose to live an ascetic life marked by permanent enclosure in a building or part of a building (an anchorage or anchorhold) attached to a religious foundation. . . Chief among them was scrupulous observation of chastity and limited contact with the outside world.” (Mapping Margery Kempe).

Ø As an anchorite, this man’s interaction with Margery is significant due to his solitary lifestyle, either because of a) Margery’s particular spiritual situation, having been directed by Christ himself to reveal her revelations to the anchorite, b) Margery’s station, as the daughter of the mayor with access to important clerical figures like the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, or c) because he became an anchorite during the period in which he was serving as principal confessor to Margery.

v The anchorite must have been a priest before he became an anchorite, since he is named as Margery’s “principal confessor” and only priests and ministers had the authority to hear confession (Ch. 18; see Catholic Encyclopedia for confession).

Is the Dominican Anchorite Margery Kempe’s Scribe?

The Dominican Anchorite is NOT Margery’s Scribe.

v This anchorite is referred to by means of multiple descriptors, including:

Ø “The ankyr at the Frer Prechowrs” – indicating his position as an anchorite whose anchorhold (the Friar Preachers) was attached to the Dominican house on the east side of Lynn (first usage in Ch. 5)

Ø “Principal gostly fadyr” – the phrase “ghostly father” is a colloquialism used synonymously with “confessor,” the term “principal” indicating that the anchorite served as Margery’s primary confessor; thus others such as Master Robert Spryngolde were used when the anchorite was unavailable (first usage in Ch. 18).

Ø “Principal confessowr” – first usage in Ch. 18

Ø “Commensowr in dyvinyte” – same as “doctor of divinity,” implying that the anchorite has been university educated and has received a doctorate in theology (only usage in Ch. 15).

However, the anchorite is never referred to as “priest,” the sole descriptor used by the scribe for self-identification.

v This anchorite calls Margery “daughter,” as Christ does, rather than “Mother,” as the English priest and the priest-scribe do (first usage, Ch. 5).

v The anchorite is consistently supportive, kind, and instructive. Margery refers to him as “the most special and synguler comforte that evyr I had in erde, for he evyr lovyd me for thy lofe and wold nevyr forsakyn me for nowt that any man cowd do er seye whylys he levyd.” (Ch. 69). He refuses to forsake Margery despite “mych evyl langwage of [her]” (Ch. 16) and the urgings of “meny. . . that he schuld forsakyn hir and ellys he schuld lesyn hir frenshep” (Ch. 19). His consistent loyalty, though kind, is inconsistent with the priest-scribe’s general moral uncertainty, especially that which causes him to “speke wyth [Margery] but seldom” and forsake (albeit temporarily) the transcription of the Book (Proem).

v Although the anchorite himself is inclined towards mystical experience, having been said to divine events that would occur on Margery’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem “be the spiryt of prophecye” (Ch. 18), in Chapter 69, he is said to have been “takyn fro” Margery by the “Lord” before her return from Jerusalem (sometime during the years 1414-1418), far before the writing of even the first scribe’s work.

PASSAGES

Involving the Dominican Anchorite

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