Religion In The Book Of Margery Kempe

Throughout the Middle Ages, Christianity dominated the actions of citizens. Without the prevalence of religion, there would be no context for The Book of Margery Kempe to exist in; one might argue that religious figures, such as Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary, are some of the most important characters within the narrative. Due to this historical emphasis on religion, one common activity among those who could afford it was pilgrimages. These pilgrimages gave people the opportunity to give sacrifices and offer devotion to religious saints, many of whom were idols of the time period. A large part of Kempe’s story consists of her travels to many different religious sites, indicating her piety and devotion to Catholicism. The culmination of her

Kempe self-fashions herself into the image of a devout Catholic, disrupting the main discourse of pilgrimages by representing how a truly devout religious woman should behave. The 15th century represents a time in which there was not an abundance of travel, people lived within a small radius of their family and their place of birth. Movement was limited because the majority of travel occurred on foot or by horse; it was another four hundred years before the invention of trains, let alone cars. Socioeconomic status also restricted ability to travel; much in the same way that pleasure travel to extravagant places today makes a statement about the travelers’ lifestyles, travel in the Middle Ages also portrayed a great deal about a person’s standing within society. Terence Bower States this in his article, “Margery Kempe as Traveler,” through the quotation: “... since travel (as a voluntary act) ‘demonstrated one’s freedom from necessity’ and identified

Stopford comments on the accommodations of travelers through the quote, “ The proportion of monastic space sometimes given over to accommodate pilgrims is illustrated by the hostels at the Southern Monastery of Der Sim'an in Syria (Braunfels 1972: 15-18)...was surrounded by four two-storey buildings” (Stopford 67). If churches were to make money based on pilgrims, they needed plenty of space to house them. Rooms would have been available to Kempe, but either she rejected it or was rejected from it by other pilgrims. One of the most notable examples of her humility is in chapter 34 when she cared for a homeless, impoverished woman; “Also, she fetched home water and sticks on her neck for the poor woman and begged food and wine both for her” (Kempe 63). She helped this woman for six weeks, caring to her needs at all times and living in a mendicant way, despite the typically, men were the only ones allowed to act in such a way. Again, Kempe takes action to distance herself from typical actions of the time and therefore creates a stark example of what the rest of her fellowship perhaps should have been doing. Even before getting dismissed from her fellowship, Kempe portrays different aesthetics than the pilgrims around