Review of The Book of Margery Kempe

The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


What do I think of this book? I recognize its place in history -- the first extant autobiography by an English person. But how to judge it?

Is it simply the babblings of someone who suffered from mental illness -- who believed herself bound by God to do bizzare things that constantly put her at odds with her society? To do that puts me in the dangerous position of having to apply that label to others, from Abraham to Paul -- indeed, having to discount all religious experience as insanity.

Did she genuinely experience the visions of which she wrote? Whether she did or not,
her perseverance in the face of endless opposition, her courage, is inspiring. Her love of even her worst enemies, is humbling.

But without the constant, tiresome references to her crying spells, I think the book would have been half as long.





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Visualizing God

"Although every intellect as such is capable of apprehending the whole range of being," wrote Duns Scotus, that tremendous quality of being capax Dei, capable of (the vision of) God , is what made man as seen by Scotus the whole man of the Renaissance, of whom Pico della Mirandola was to cry, " L'anime mi s'aggrandisce (my soul swells!) -- Anne Fremantle, The Age of Belief.

Jewish scapegoating

Reading an otherwise excellent book: Monasticism, Gateway to the Middle Ages (Duckett, 1938), I am disturbed by its casual acceptance of the claim that the Jews in a certain medieval French city, Arles, attempted to betray the place to barbarian (Frankish) besiegers by tossing down a message stone from the walls -- a claim that came just in time to take the pressure off the city's ecclesiastical leader, one Caesarius. I searched through James Carroll's Constantine's Sword and found no mention of the episode. Rather surprising, since Carroll's theme is the tortured relationship of Christianity and Judaism, and Caesarius was the controversial Vicar Apostolic of all Gaul and Spain at the time. His allegiance to Arles was several times questioned, since he was of Burgundian birth. What would the local Jews possibly have gained from having Arles pass into Frankish hands? Even the best books of history are written by mortal men and women, and a good scholar doesn't unquestioningly swallow their every word, however authoritative.