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After the Viking invasions ended in the eleventh century, western Europe gradually became settled, urbanized, literate, populous, and prosperous. Under these conditions, Europe “discovered” the Gospels, which resulted in a deep religious change, comparable to the Reformers’ “discovery” of the apostle Paul in the 1500s.

A Gospel-based faith fostered an emotional spirituality that slowly flowed through society. The religious (monks and nuns), priests, and laity yearned to learn more about Jesus, his mother, and his apostles. The new spiritual yearning, coupled with wider literacy, encouraged the use of personal prayer books, like the lavish “books of hours” made for the rich, and the many plainer books for the less wealthy.

Since Latin was a barrier for most people, vernacular translations flourished—not only of the Gospels but also of the Psalms (which were believed to have been written about Christ), devotional tracts, and sermons of early church fathers.

Even the illiterate had means of learning more about biblical stories. Margery Kempe was illiterate—a surprising condition considering the comfortable surroundings of her youth. However, she gained religious knowledge from readers, confessors, and preachers. In her autobiography, she says (referring to herself in the third person) of one priest, “He read to her many a good book of high contemplation and other books, such as the Bible with doctors’ [theologians’] commentaries on it,” and she mentions specifically, Revelations of Saint Bridget of Sweden, The Scale of Perfection by Walter Hilton, and Bonaventure’s Stimulus Amoris.

Margery also learned the Bible in long conversations she had with confessors (spiritual directors) and clergy. On one occasion, Margery was chastising an archbishop about his swearing. She disliked swearing, especially oaths that referred to Jesus, for example, “By his wounds!” She told the archbishop, “You shall answer for them, unless you correct them or else put them out of your service.” Then she noted, “In a most meek and kindly way, he allowed her to say what was on her mind and gave her a handsome answer.… And so their conversation continued until stars appeared in the sky.”

Margery’s main source of Gospel knowledge came from preaching. She loved sermons. In the late Middle Ages, with an increasing demand for more biblical knowledge came a surge of interest in preaching, especially preaching that spoke to people personally. There were few good preachers, and those who were good became celebrities.

Margery told of one renowned Franciscan friar: “On St. James’s Day, the good friar preached in St. James’s chapel yard in Lynn [her home town] … where there were many people and a good audience, for he had a holy name and great favor amongst the people, in so much that, some men, if they knew that he would preach in the district, would go with him or else follow him from town to town, such great delight had they to hear him.”

Margery was often deeply moved by preaching. Preachers generally tolerated her loud sobbing; they simply waited for her to quiet down and then went on.

On one occasion, though, her outbursts annoyed the Franciscan preacher, who barred her from his sermons. “She felt so much sorrow,” she wrote of the occasion, “that she did not know what she could do, for she was excluded from the sermon, which was to her the highest comfort on earth when she could hear it, and equally … the greatest pain on earth, when she could not hear it.”

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