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Margery Kempe was not a typical medieval lay person. Far from it: few lay people abandoned spouse, children, work, and ordinary life in search of religious perfection, as she did. People in her company often grew tired of her religious talk, vigorous weeping, and unusual religious practices, such as vegetarianism and wearing white garments. Her visions aroused suspicion that she was possessed or epileptic or a hypocrite or a heretic.

But Margery also had admirers, especially among the clergy, who defended her visions and tears as genuine gifts from God.

It’s difficult to determine what exactly “everyday faith” was in the late Middle Ages. The vigorous and slack all practiced the same religion. Though there were doubters and dissidents, most men and women, masters and servants, kings and cloth merchants were generally moved by the same religious beliefs and rituals.

In spite of, and maybe because of, her extreme devotion, Margery reveals in sharp relief the everyday faith of the late Middle Ages.

One central yearning had great force in later medieval life: an intense desire for religious experience.

In the 1200s, the church, more than ever before, began successfully reaching people through preaching, art and drama, books and pamphlets, and annual confession and Communion, among other things. In response, there was a widespread hunger for religious experience, a hunger, ironically, the church, which created it, could not satisfy. People found parish life humdrum and spiritually undemanding. In unprecedented numbers, devout lay people began seeking a more intense religious life while staying married and working in their secular vocations.

Margery Kempe was one of those people. She was born about 1373 in Norfolk (England), the daughter of a respected merchant and public official. She married merchant John Kempe, with whom she had fourteen children. She died sometime after 1433.

In her younger years, she was orthodox and respectful of the church—though she knew some clergy were spiritually lax and sometimes told them so. Still, she went frequently to her parish church, heard sermons, confessed often, weekly sought the Eucharist, fasted, wore a hair shirt for a time, said her rosary, and gave alms. But she sought something more.

In her twenties, Margery began having visions in which she talked on a friendly basis with Jesus, Mary, and some saints. In one vision, Jesus told her that her religious practices were good, but they were for “beginners,” and that Margery should go deeper.

Thus began her remarkable religious quest. At about age 60, she dictated her memories to two scribes, who put together the first autobiography in English, the Book of Margery Kempe, from which we know her story.

This passion for religious experience was shaped by a growing awareness of the four Gospels.

Between the 500s and 900s in western Europe, the Old Testament loomed large in religious consciousness. Perhaps the Germans and Celts identified with the Hebrews, who subdued rival nations and conquered the Promised Land. Early medieval clergy were inspired by Old Testament references to incense in worship, anointings with oil, tithing, and strict observance of the Sabbath.

These Christians read the New Testament filtered through their warlike cultures and Old Testament imagery. Jesus was more the stern judge to whom all would answer. The apocalyptic judgment in Matthew 25:31–46, with its grand vision of the end of time, with the separation of the just and unjust, held the early medieval imagination.

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