Margery Kempe and Lollardy

초록

Margery does share with the Lollards a contempt for the worldliness of the clergy, an abhorrence of swearing, and a claim to enjoy a direct relationship with God unmediated by the clergy. In addition, more than any one specific practice or belief, the anxiety and the backlash Kempe evokes result from the claims she makes to enjoying an unmediated relationship with God and the audacity with which she "preaches" her claims. That ecclesiastical anxiety only makes sense within the context of a more widespread social movement that was empowering the laity at the expense of the clergy. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to examine in the context of The Book the nature and extent of the clerical anxiety incurred by the spread of the Lollard movement; and second, to examine the effect of this prevailing anxiety, which lay hidden behind the power and repression represented by anti-Lollard statutes such as Archbishop Arundel's Constitutions, formally issued in 1409, on Kempe's religious, social and textual experience related, in particular, to her peculiar behavior of crying.