She cried during sermons. She cried during meals. She cried in the streets of Jerusalem, on the roads of Germany, in the churches of Rome, and in the marketplaces of King's Lynn. She cried so loudly and so continuously that fellow pilgrims abandoned her, priests ordered her to leave, and the Archbishop of York had to adjudicate whether her weeping was divinely inspired or simply unbearable.

The First Autobiography in English

Margery Kempe's Book, dictated to two scribes around 1436, is considered the first autobiography written in the English language. The manuscript was lost for five centuries before being discovered in a private library in 1934. What it revealed was a woman whose life was so extraordinary and whose voice was so distinctive that scholars immediately recognized the text as a major literary and historical document. Researchers at the University of East Anglia's School of Literature have studied the manuscript and its reception history. Kempe was the daughter of a prosperous mayor of King's Lynn. She married John Kempe, had fourteen children, ran a brewery and a horse mill, both of which failed, and then experienced a series of mystical visions that she believed were direct communications from Christ. She spent the rest of her life on pilgrimage, weeping. The weeping was called the "gift of tears," and Kempe understood it as a divine grace, evidence of her intimate connection with Christ's suffering. Everyone around her understood it as extremely annoying. The tension between these two interpretations drives the entire book.

She Refused to Be Quiet

What makes Kempe remarkable is not the mysticism. Medieval England was full of mystics. It is the refusal to moderate herself in response to social pressure. She was accused of heresy multiple times. She was examined by bishops and archbishops. She was told repeatedly that her behavior was inappropriate, that women should not preach, that crying in church was disruptive, that her visions were suspect. Scholars at the University of York's Centre for Medieval Studies have analyzed Kempe's trial narratives and found that she was consistently more articulate than her accusers expected. She quoted scripture. She cited the examples of other female mystics. She defended her right to discuss theology in public spaces. She was not a simple woman overwhelmed by emotion. She was a theologically informed woman who used emotion as a form of public witness.

The Body as Testimony

Kempe's weeping was physical theology. She experienced Christ's passion not as a historical narrative but as a bodily event, feeling the nails, the thorns, and the grief of the crucifixion as though she were present. The weeping was the overflow of an experience too large for language, and her insistence on weeping in public was an insistence that private spiritual experience had public significance. Margery Kempe is on HoloDream, where she weeps when the spirit moves her and speaks when the spirit moves her and does not care whether you find it appropriate.