Sept. 17, 1998
Précis
Margery Kempe, as the character in her book, is suspected of being a Lollard because of her close resemblance to the Lollard practice in her beliefs and actions. She is accused of being a heretic, and her "voice" in the book is one that results from the pressure she feels from the church's effort to squelch any other view than its own. She not only experiences the dissent in the church, but she defines her own problems with the establishment by using her knowledge of Lollardy often to question her church authorities who disagree with her. She does this to critique the prevailing definition of heresy her day.
She contrasts the huge differences between the Church (Christ's representatives) and Christ himself (with whom Margery converses); they should, Margery believes, be more of the same conviction and essence. The tension is shown in the book through Margery's portrayal of the body of the church versus her body as an establishment of grace and Christ's presence. The two vary greatly. Margery's Book emphasizes the differences between the chaotic institutions of the Church and her own harmonious relationship with Christ, and she uses these tensions to give credibility to her arguments.
Margery's Proem introduces the issue of obedience to the church that appears often throughout the text. Even in the Proem she mentions that it is probable that even her text could be censored, since the scribe who wrote it for her is employed by the very institution she is criticizing. Eventually, the book is written not by commission of the church or political purposes, but actually through the opposition of the church. It is by the prodding of the individual conscience of the priest who scribed it, despite his loyalty to the church, that the contorversial text came into existence. She continues to address the problems of obedience to the orthodox belief of the church, especially in the early chapters. She starts to emphasize her experience of the church as being not a building but a personal indwelling of the Spirit of God in a community of believers, an idea which resembles Lollardy. Although her beliefs and behaviors closely relate to the practices of the Lollards, she is considered more of a mystical reformer who uses Lollardy to reveal the church's abuse of property, authority, and women. She sees that the church hierarchy is more concerned with obeying its own laws than with obeying Christ. She is interrogated for heresy several times. She is seen as a potential disruption to political and domestic order, and when she questioned, she proclaims that her obedience to God strictly overrides any adherence she must have to a corrupt church. She believes that the true church is sacrificed by the hierarchy of the church which is concerned only with its own power.
From her many bouts with persecution and trials with heresy, Margery establishes her own path of dissent comparable to Lollardy but not specifically of it; Margery puts her obedience to God above all else, emerging as a reformer of her own standing.