Margery Kempe's Spiritual Medicine Suffering,
Transformation and the Life Course - 1st Edition
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MARGERY KEMPE’S SPIRITUAL MEDICINE
Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course
Laura Kalas
D. S. BREWER
© Laura Kalas 2020
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Laura Kalas to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2020
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 978-1-84384-554-6
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and
does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or
appropriate
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Typeset by www.thewordservice.com
For my parents, Anne and Paul Kalas
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xiii
Note on Editions and Translations xiv
Introduction 1
1 Bleeding the Tears of Melancholia 29
2 ‘Þe mukke’ of Marriage and the Sexual Paradox 59
3 Lost Blood of the Middle Age: Surrogacy and Fecundity 97
4 Margery Medica: The Healing Value of Pain Surrogacy 127
5 The Passion of Death Surrogacy 161
6 Senescent Reproduction: Writing Anamnestic Pain 183
Afterword / Afterlife 211
Glossary of Medical Terms 223
Select Bibliography 225
Index 245
vii
Illustrations
Figure 1. The recipe folio: British Library Additional MS 61823, fol.
124v. © The British Library Board. 3
Figure 2. Detail of the recipe folio achieved using multispectral imaging
technology: British Library Additional MS 61823, fol. 124v. © The
British Library Board. 4
Figure 3. Detail of the bottom of the recipe folio achieved using
multispectral imaging technology: British Library Additional MS
61823, fol. 124v. © The British Library Board. 4
Figure 4. The medicinal sweets recreated by Theresa Tyers. Photograph:
Theresa Tyers. 5
Figure 5. 1437–8 Trinity Guild account roll (KLBA, KL/C 38/16).
Photograph: Laura Kalas. Credit to the King’s Lynn Borough
Archives. 214
Figure 6. Detail of Margery Kempe’s entry in the 1437–8 Trinity Guild
account roll (KLBA, KL/C 38/16). Photograph: Laura Kalas. Credit to
the King’s Lynn Borough Archives. 214
Figure 7. 1438–9 Trinity Guild account roll (KLBA, KL/C 38/17).
Photograph: Laura Kalas. Credit to the King’s Lynn Borough
Archives. 215
Figure 8. Detail of Margery Kempe’s entry in the 1438–9 Trinity Guild
account roll (KLBA, KL/C 38/17). Photograph: Laura Kalas. Credit to
the King’s Lynn Borough Archives. 215
Figure 9. Photograph from excavations in the Saturday market place at
King’s Lynn, showing part of the charnel house beneath the chapel
of St John, where human burials were discovered. Photograph: Clive
Bond, September 2014. 218
The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals
listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright.
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are
offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any neces-
sary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.
ix
Edge
Sylvia Plath
al shal be wele, and al shall be wele, and all manner thing shal be wele.
Julian of Norwich
x
Acknowledgements
This book has materialised at a life moment that resonates curiously with the
medieval women of a similar age and stage whose tenacity, persistence, and
textual production inspired my return to academia with the same impulse
to grow, and to write. That I have been given the chance to flourish in
an academic career is something for which I will always be grateful, and
I am indebted to my colleagues at Swansea University for giving me the
opportunity to do that.
It is hard to express how much I owe to Liz Herbert McAvoy, who,
through her feminist, intellectual, and mentoring principles, has been with
me on my academic journey, quite literally, every step of the way. Liz has
shown extraordinary guidance, scrupulousness, and care, and her support – in
more ways than I can possibly say here – has been utterly invaluable. I hope
that I might one day do justice to her remarkable mentorship and scholarly
example, and I am proud to be able to call her a friend and colleague. In many
ways, this book is for her.
My thanks are also due to the many other inspirational scholars who
have guided and supported me over the past few years. During my time at
the University of Exeter, Eddie Jones was a superlative doctoral supervisor
and his continued encouragement and patience as I learned the academic
ropes once again was hugely appreciated. Thanks must also go to Catherine
Rider for setting me on the medieval medical path as my second super-
visor, and to the English department at Exeter, who supported me in my
postdoctoral ambitions. I am indebted also to Vincent Gillespie for his
meticulous engagement with my work as external examiner, and for his
continuing support of my career aspirations. I also owe thanks to Naoë
Kukita Yoshikawa for her support and enthusiasm for my work, and the
sharing of her own, and to Diane Watt, for her supreme scholarly example,
advice, and valiant willingness to work with me.
I am lucky to have generous colleagues and friends at Swansea University
who have welcomed me to the college and offered insightful critiques of my
work-in-progress. Thanks are due to Roberta Magnani for her wonderful
support and friendship, to Trish Skinner, Alison Williams, and Chris Pak for
their reading of draft material, and to Alice Barnaby for her unfailing support
as Head of Department. Many others have given me invaluable feedback on
drafts of this and other publications, along with words of much-needed
encouragement in the final stages of this book’s production: Sarah Salih,
Lucy Allen, the great team that is the Gender and Medieval Studies Group,
the anonymous readers of my manuscript for their thoughtful critiques, and
xi
Acknowledgements
my Margery Kempe ‘partner in crime’, Laura Varnam, whose wisdom and
friendship I value greatly. Any errors in this manuscript of course remain
my own.
The discovery of the contents of the recipe from the Margery Kempe
manuscript has been a joy to reveal, and possible only with the help of
several individuals. My thanks go to Andrea Clarke at the British Library
for allowing me access to the manuscript, to the British Library imaging
scientist, Christina Duffy, for providing me with the multispectral images,
and to Daniel Wakelin, Eddie Jones, Susan Maddock, Laura Varnam, and
Paul Acker for their help in interpreting the handwriting and enabling me
to arrive at a transcription. I am also grateful to Theresa Tyers for taking on
the unenviable task of recreating the medicinal sweets in an impressively
authentic manner.
Considerable thanks are due to my editor, Caroline Palmer of Boydell
& Brewer, for having faith in my book, even as it became as effusive as
Margery Kempe herself, and for her patience and support while I completed
the manuscript during turbulent times. The production team at Boydell have
been remarkable in their professionalism and efficiency, and I thank them
for that. I am also appreciative of those in King’s Lynn – Kempe’s home-
town – for supporting my work. Thanks go to Luke Shackell and the King’s
Lynn Borough Archives; the Revd Canon Christopher Ivory of King’s Lynn
Minster; Paul Richards; Clive Bond, for inviting me to speak about Margery
Kempe at the 2017 King’s Lynn Festival; and the team at the True’s Yard
Museum for inviting me to be involved with the community performance
of Elizabeth MacDonald’s dramatization of Kempe’s life, Skirting Heresy, in
2018, and the children’s-book initiative in 2019. Indeed, I am grateful to Liz
MacDonald for her interest in and support of my work on Kempe, and for
sharing her own work with me.
My final debt of gratitude is to my friends and family, who have cham-
pioned me and listened tirelessly as I babble about all things medieval. To
friends old and new, for your love and laughs, and to Tony McAvoy, for the
hospitality, kindness, and sustaining beverages, especially during the final
stages of this manuscript’s completion. To my parents, Anne and Paul Kalas,
who have supported me beyond measure in every possible way, including
many years of enforced familiarity with the medieval streets of Canterbury,
and whose love and backing continues to mean the world. To my wonderful
and supportive sister, Lou Lou, for the ‘mers’, wine, and general loveliness,
and to my sorely missed grandparents, Stella and Russell Pooley, whose
memory and love are forever imbricated in this book. Finally, to my boys,
Oliver and Jasper, who remain my proudest achievement, for their dry wit
and banter, incessant requests for snacks, and for talking to me occasionally.
You are all my reason for rising in the morning, and this book is for you all,
with love.
xii
Abbreviations
BL British Library, London
BMK The Book of Margery Kempe
EETS Early English Text Society
e.s. Extra Series
o.s. Original Series
OED Oxford English Dictionary
s.s. Supplementary Series
MED Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath and S.M. Kuhn
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; London: Oxford
University Press, 1952–) https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/
middle-english-dictionary/dictionary
n.s. New Series
PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64)
TEAMS The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages
xiii
Note on Editions and Translations
The edition used throughout is The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS o.s. 212, ed.
Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen (London: Oxford University
Press, 1997, unaltered reprint). Page numbers appear parenthetically in the
text; all italic emphases are my own. All quotations from the Bible in English
are from the Douay-Rheims version: <http://www.drbo.org/>.
The poem ‘Edge’, printed above on p. xiii, is from The Collected Poems of
Sylvia Plath, ed. Ted Hughes © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia
Plath. Editorial material © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of
HarperCollins Publishers and Faber and Faber Ltd.
xiv
Introduction
For fly[ ] take [ ]
Sugyr candy Sugur plate Sugur wyth
Annes sed fenkkell sed notmikis Synamum
Genger Comfetis and licoris Bett them to
Gedyr in a morter and sett them in all maner
of metis and drynkis and dry frist & last et yt
[ ]ger candy sug[?u]r pla[?te]1
This book begins, mutatis mutandis, at its end: a mystery solved; a body
healed. The hastily written, faded recipe, hidden on the final folio of BL
Additional MS 61823, The Book of Margery Kempe, has puzzled schol-
ars of Kempe since the rediscovery of the manuscript in 1934, linger-
ing in a tantalising lacuna of illegibility (Figure 1).2 Perhaps aptly, the
British Library’s multispectral imaging equipment – the same technology
employed in space exploration to capture data about the earth’s surface and
the universe, that is, Creation itself – has enabled the faded handwriting
of the manuscript’s recipe to be deciphered (Figures 2 and 3).3 The recipe,
annotated by a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century reader, probably
1
Translation: ‘For fly[ ] take [ ] / Sugar candy, sugar plate, sugar with /
Aniseed, fennel seed, nutmeg, cinnamon, / Ginger comfetes and licorice. Beat them
/ together in a mortar and make them in all / manner of food and drinks and dry first
and last eat it. / [Sugar candy, sugar plate]’. The top line of the recipe is unclear, but
the word ‘fly’ may indicate ‘flux’. If so, the rest of the recipe is unlikely to be connected
to the top line, since the nature of the hot, dry ingredients indicates a remedy for a
phlegmatic disorder of the stomach.
2
I am indebted to Andrea Clarke at The British Library for allowing me access to
the manuscript; to Christina Duffy, Imaging Scientist at The British Library, for
providing me with the multispectral images of the folio, and to the British Library
Board. My very grateful thanks go to Eddie Jones, Daniel Wakelin, Susan Maddock,
Laura Varnam, and Paul Acker for their help in transcribing the recipe. All errors in
transcription remain my own.
3
A multispectral image captures data within specific wavelength ranges across the elec-
tromagnetic spectrum and allows the extraction of additional information that the
human eye fails to capture with its receptors for red, green and blue. It was originally
developed for space-based imaging and is still used by NASA. See, for example, Mary
Pagnuttia et al., ‘Radiometric characterization of IKONOS multispectral imagery’,
Remote Sensing of Environment, 88 (2003), 53–68.
