Margery Kemp's Interactions with The Virgin Mary

Margery Kemp's Interactions with The Virgin Mary

According to her own testimony, Margery Kempe's spirituality involved deeply passionate experiences of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Kempe had "the gift of tears" -- meaning that, for years, she was unable to attend mass without crying profusely, and, as often as not, sobbing loudly and theatrically. Her adventurous life included a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where much weeping and wailing took place, and tanglings with several Bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In chapter 3 Margery has a rather jumbled account of a vision of heaven. Then Margery starts to begin to have the desire to stop having sex. Which I assure you doesn't go well with her husband. Finally in chapter 3 it describes both two years of peace and three years of temptations Kempe went through.

Later in chapter 5 Kempe has her first conversation with God (Jesus), and is assured of his forgiveness, and given instructions to take communion weekly, and finally is told to go to a certain anchorite for confirmation that her revelations were real. By this time while I was reading this book it got really confusing. Chapters 6 & 7 are a vision of Mary, her mother, and the birth of both Mary and later Jesus. Margery believes herself in service to Mary, as though she was actually present through Jesus' birth and the flight to Egypt. When the vision is done, Margery would like to die and go to heaven, but is told to stay and pray for the world. Chapter 8 continues her vision of various people being saved because of her love of them. Finally in chapters 9 through 11 Margery finally got her will in ceasing all sexual relations with her husband and began making pilgrimages.

I'm going to skip a lot of chapte...

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...ishop approves. Finally, she is given an escort and allowed to go back to York and then to leave.

To conclude we find Margery crying and weeping all through out the book. I find this to be some sort of depression, maybe it is because she can't be with God in heaven so she feels the need to cry. All through out the book Margery is getting people into trouble with her reputation of being "evil". Just one of the instances is the time her travel companions were thrown into jail in Leicester. Then there is the thing of having no sex with her first husband. I know that effected him, like it would with any husband. Personally I don't think that Margery was a "mystic". I think the reason why she weeped so much is because she always had to lie to keep up her life. The more she lied about seeing God to stay live the more she realized that she was falling farther from God.