Margery Kempe: In Search of the Scribe
Lollards Abound
Robert Stauffer
In 1401, William Sawtree was the first person to be executed for being a Lollard under the edict known as “De haeretico comburendo.” He was a parish priest in Lynn, where Margery Kempe was just beginning her own adventures into mysticism. This is just the first coincidence between Margery and Lollardy – a heresy she would be accused of time and time again according to her own accounts of events. Perhaps these brushes with heresy were not so coincidental and may point to the actual reason her book was written. Perhaps the story of her life was to serve to make clear the difference between a true believer and a heretic.
The question of heresy may have started with Margery’s first scribe. We know from the second scribe that the manuscript he agreed to revise was evilly written – in his own words – with letters that seemed to be shaped by an inexperienced hand. Stargardt explains that perhaps the book had been written by a Margery’s daughter-in-law, who “could have learned enough English to produce the garbled half English, half German manuscript the priest, Margery’s second amanuensis, revised.” Stargardt demonstrates how this possibility might solve many of the other riddles around the second scribe’s description of how he came to the task. For one thing it would explain how someone who was familiar with the dead man’s script was not able to recognize the work. For another it would also explain how Margery’s son – who has usually been thought to be the first scribe – could have composed the work in the time allowed between his return home and his death. And finally it might have explained our second scribe’s reluctance for taking Margery’s manuscript on in the first place. If the book had been written by a woman in these troubled times – when an unlicensed female author may have brought down suspicion on a woman who was already considered a heretic – it would only have inflamed the suspicion of heresy. Perhaps the second scribe found the words of Margery’s text worth a cover-up for the rewrite. Or perhaps the identity of the first scribe was kept from him, and he decided not to pursue that knowledge for the sake of transmitting the work.
Margery’s career was also spurred on by a Lollard connection. Her first supporter – both financially and spiritually – was Philip Repingdon, the bishop of Lincoln.
In his early days, Repingdon had been tried and convicted of being a follower of John Wycliff’s Lollard teachings. He was also one of the first to publicly recant his actions and had thus found his way back to a successful career in the church as both Henry IV’s confessor and later the bishop of Lincoln. Repingdon had also become one of the most fervent fighters of the Lollards, whether as a part of a his maturing process or so that he might keep on the right side of the accusations and trials that were the focus of the Church in the early part of the fifteenth century is unclear. The fact that he could find Margery’s questionable practices supportable may indicate that his sympathies had not quite left his old master – and perhaps his experience was what helped Margery escape suspicion and trial.
Margery would also have a meeting with the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel
whose attempts at controlling the Lollard situation included his Constitutions passed as legislation by Henry V in 1409. The Constitutions’ goal was to see that all who preach either by writing or speaking were to be licensed by the Church in the form of official approval. As of yet, I have not found any evidence that these Constitutions were enacted in any specific way beyond the letters of approval that appear on Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, which was released in 1410, and on one other book. We know, thanks to Love’s own introduction, that he meant the work to combat the Lollard heresy. He offered those people who demanded a vernacular text of the Gospels, a version that would not violate the dictates of the Church, when he translated the work of a pseudo-Bonaventuran clerk who had written about the life of Christ. The copy of Margery’s book we have spent some time in Mount Grace, the very monastery from which Nicholas Love completed his work. Perhaps this is mere coincidence yet again, but it seems that there may be more to this connection. Perhaps the Church found a way to use Margery’s work as a guide for what would be considered the upper limit of what would be permitted.
In Nicholas Watson’s article, “Blah, blah, blah” he points out that the course of religious writing was changed radically by these Constitutions and that only Margery’s book seems to defy them. During Margery’s audience with Archbishop Arundel, he seems to give her approval to continue on with her work, but the passage is not terribly specific as to whether he means her pilgrimage or her bouts of preaching or even getting her book written – all of which would seem to have to obtain his official license. Time and time again, Margery’s actions are challenged, but always to be supported by high-level churchmen – in this case, by the highest churchman in England.
During her discussion with Archbishop Arundel, he asks her to explain what the Bible means when it tells people to go forth and multiply. Margery answers that it means to spread the virtues of God and Christ through her ministry and the Archbishop offers another statement of approval. This question was often put to Lollards and Margery’s answer seems to be the right one to clear of the charge.
In another episode, Margery claims that Jesus has given her permission to eat meat on Fridays in order to complete a compact with her husband that they will have a chaste marriage from there on out. During the Norwich trials of 1428-1431, a good many of those who are convicted as Lollards, a good percentage of them were charged with defying this particular law of the Church. Margery’s defiance of this rule seems to meet with the approval of not only the Church, but of God as well. As she is only doing as instructed by the power of God, once again the charge of heresy is lifted from her. Could it be that the Church found ways of getting around their own laws for certain circumstances or for certain people? Did the Church find it unnecessary for Margery to comply with each of its rules because of her holiness? Or was this perhaps some sort of dividing line set up by the trials of heresy.
Some of Margery’s visions – particularly the vision of Mary helping her with the birth of her first child seem to be based on the N-Towne plays. The N-Towne plays were a series of productions that portrayed the life of Christ and related stories from the Gospels. The only significance to Lollardy here is that need to know the stories of the Gospels and to explore them thoroughly without the intervention of the Church. The plays were gathered together sometime in the 1460s, well after Margery’s book is supposed to have been written, but there is evidence that these plays had been performed for some time before their collection, and that the plays that involved Mary directly are thought to come from the Norwich region.
The timing of Margery’s book is also of interest as it relates to the troubles of Lollardy. Margery’s journey to Jerusalem begins with a stop in Constance, Germany in 1415 – right in the middle of the Council of Constance during which John Wycliff, now some 30 years dead, was officially labeled a heretic and his bones were exhumed to be burned. This same council would also go on to sanctify Birgitta of Sweden – a woman whom Margery emulates…
Margery’s career begins during the introduction of anti-Lollard legislation (1409) and her journey to the Holy Land coincides with the capture and execution of one of the most notorious Lollards, Sir John Oldcastle. 
She begins to seek a scribe for her book just after the lengthy period of the Norwich Lollard trials from 1428-31. And perhaps simply coincidentally, the Winken de Worde edition that quotes several passages from Margery’s work appears in 1521, a year during which there was another serious suppression of the Lollards in Lincoln. Finally, the book would disappear after this time – a time during which Henry VIII would remove the Catholic Church’s control over the people of his country, a period that would lead a later English king to enact the very project for which John Wycliff’s bones were burned: the production of an English version of the Gospels.
Who Margery Kempe’s second scribe was may never be definitively answered, but perhaps some insight into why the book may have been written will help us to get closer to understanding who the scribe might be. One of the clues we have is the number of references to Lollardy. Perhaps Margery’s book was meant to serve as a guide for those who prosecuted the heresy
. The events of her life may have been the dividing line between acceptable behavior and punishable heresy.
