Margery Kempe and the Late-Medieval Image Debates in England: The Curious Case of the Non-Animating Crucifix

ABSTRACT

This article examines the devotional practices presented by The Book of Margery Kempe in connection to late-medieval English image debates. While scholarly consensus holds that Kempe displays an uncritical approach to the popular devotional practices of her time and a strong attachment to effigies, I argue that she espoused a much more nuanced view, deeply influenced by the anxieties raised in the clash between the Church and the iconoclastic Lollards. This article offers a case study of Kempe’s approach by analysing a scene in which her desire to experience a miracle of image animation is denied. This is a highly unusual outcome within The Book’s literary genre, which can be explained as an active engagement with the issues raised in the image debates. I conclude that the scene should be read as offering guidance on the idolatrous potential of devotional images and how to properly engage with such artefacts.

KEYWORDS:

• Margery Kempe
• lay spirituality
• devotion
• artefacts
• idolatry
• Lollards
• materiality
• affective piety

Introduction

Throughout the history of Christianity, the debate between iconoclasts and iconodules has centred on when and how image-aided devotional practices cross the line into idolatry. The key argument has always been based on a presumption, made by both sides, of possessing inside information on the thoughts and intentions of the devout as they enact their devotion before or with the help of religious artefacts. Rather than purely through any physical manifestations of devotion, the actualisation of idolatry vis-à-vis these artefacts occurs when the inanimate object is used improperly as a spiritual aid and is presumed to house the divine, or perceived as having a miraculous quality that offers privileged access to God. Those who believe that this is a conceptual error that occurs in the mind of the devout fall into the iconoclast rather than the iconodule camp. As James Simpson noted, ‘clerical X-ray vision into the minds of the credulous is the principal constant of iconoclastic practice’.¹

If interpreting the thoughts of the faithful was a difficult exercise for contemporaries, sparking endless debates and conflicts, it is even more difficult for the modern scholar investigating the devotional norms and practices of the distant past. This article, however, examines an episode from chapter 4 of the fifteenth-century Book of Margery Kempe in which the textual subject wishes for a crucifix to come alive, as a case study that offers us just such a glimpse into the mind of the devout.²

Much recent scholarship has seen The Book as non-idiosyncratic in its approach to artefact veneration and as a rich source for understanding the place of images in late medieval popular lay piety, even an exemplar of late medieval image-aided devotional practices. Kempe is viewed as displaying an attachment to religious artefacts and uncritically supporting image-dependent devotional norms found in other texts belonging to the tradition of late-medieval affective piety. She is described as subscribing to folkloric practices in which images were believed to possess supernatural powers and sympathetic magic.³ In contrast to this scholarly consensus, I contend that Kempe’s text should be seen as articulating a critical approach to religious artefacts and their employment within the devotional practices of the faithful, and that her work should be seen as part of a wider debate over religious imagery that engulfed England during her lifetime, a context in which The Book has not been previously placed. In particular, this article will read the crucifix episode from chapter 4 in, within this context; more broadly, it will explore how the ideas raised in the English image debates were circulated among the laity in the vernacular and influenced the perception of the material religious culture of the period.

The English Image Debates: Iconodules, Lollards, and the Mind of the Devout

Before discussing the episode of Kempe’s non-animating crucifix, it is useful to review late-medieval positions on images and idolatry as they were promoted by the Lollards and criticised by the Church. This is well trodden scholarly ground, but it is important to touch upon the particular historical context in which Kempe operated and The Book was produced.

Religious artefacts are not the root of idolatry; they are only its focal point. Images are inert, human-made objects; their authorship and origin define their insentient nature. This, as Kathleen Kamerick noted, is a ‘taint’ they can never shake off and determines a priori their limited and inanimate nature, but it is not what transforms them per se into problematic objects whose worship is idolatrous.⁴ It is the faithful’s intentionality in worshipping the image that transforms the artefact into an idol. A question that divides iconoclasts and iconodules is whether the ‘minds of the credulous’ are confusing the signifier with the signified. For the former, the answer is a scandalised ‘yes’; for the latter, a resounding ‘no’.

It was along this divide that the theological battle lines were drawn in the late-medieval Lollard-fuelled English image debates.⁵ The image-critical Lollards were greatly concerned with what they observed as the faithful’s highly physical and emotional engagement with religious artefacts,⁶ as documented for example in the anonymous early-fifteenth-century Lollard ‘Tretyse of Ymagis’ (BL MS Additional 24202, ff. 26-28v):

… þe puple is foul disceyuyd by veyn trist in þes ymagis. For summe lewid folc wenen þat þe ymagis doun verreyly þe myraclis of hemsilf, and þat þis ymage of þe crucifix be Crist hymsilf, or þe seynt þat þe ymage is þere sett for lickenesse … cleuen sadly strokande and kyssand þese olde stones and stokkis, laying doun hore grete offryngis. And maken avowis riȝt þere to þes dede ymagis … as ȝif þei were Crist and oure Lauedy … ⁷

As this text illustrates, the Lollards judged that the devout were exhibiting an attachment to human-made religious artefacts that went beyond what could reasonably be considered appropriate. They believed that image-aided devotional practices were driven by improper emotions and dogged by misunderstandings of basic Christian truths. Furthermore, the Lollards believed that worshippers endowed images with miracle working powers: ‘ … fully traystyng þat ymagis han done þe werkis of grace and not ȝee [i.e. God]’.⁸ Thus, in their eyes the devout were treating human-made artefacts as if they were Christ or Mary rather than mere representations of divine prototypes – mistaking the signifier for the signified.

In witnessing how the faithful stroked, kissed, and addressed these images as if they were alive, the Lollards believed that the devout were confusing the inanimate artefacts with the divine figures they were meant to simply represent and thus falling into the sin of idolatry. They read the emotionally charged and physically engaged performance of image-aided devotion as directly reflecting the worshippers’ inner thought processes and intentions in relation to the artefacts before them, labelled them idolatrous, and warned against what they perceived as the laity’s error, as in the case of the anonymous early-fifteenth-century The Lanterne of Liȝt (c.1409-15):

… for þou schalt neiþir do sacrifice to ymage … þou schalt not worschip hem. wiþ no godli worschip … þou schalt not swere bi hem neiþir knele to hem ne kisse hem neiþir putt feiþ hope ne trist in oo ymage more þan in anoþir … ⁹

As Sarah Stanbury has illustrated, The Lanterne’s list of ‘þou schalt not’ instructions reflects both what its author observed and how they interpreted the image-focused actions of the faithful as idolatrous and problematic.¹⁰

In calling attention to actions such as the touching and kissing of artefacts, the image critics were describing the daily reality of the physical manifestation of late-medieval affective devotion, which they viewed as transgressive. Such observations, as Kamerick has shown, went beyond pure Scriptural arguments. They lay at the heart of the Lollards’ criticism of image-aided devotional practices, which they saw as being supported and promoted by the Church.¹¹ As The Lanterne claims:

Ƿe peyntour makiþ an ymage forgid wiþ diuerse colours, til it seme in foolis iȝen as a lyueli creature. Þis is sett in þe chirche. in a solempne place, fast bounden wiþ boondis for it schulde not falle. Prestis of þe temple. bigilen þe peple wiþ þe foule synne of Balaam in her open preching Þei seyn þat Goddis powere in worching of hise miraclis loweþ doun in oo ymage more þan in anoþir … to make ȝoure silf worldli riche … ¹²

In The Lanterne, the author points an accusing finger at those who created and promoted religious images. Lollards, as Stanbury noted, ‘ … were commenting broadly on the uses and abuses of public image-making in their time, targeting in their critiques not just images but also the system of their production, circulation, and reception’.¹³ The Lanterne’s author first cites the artisans, specifically the painters, who produced polychrome effigies that could appear life-like to some. This spoke to anxieties about the seductive power of late-medieval affective religious images. However, the artists were only the first rung, and blame could not fully be laid at their workshop doors. The bulk of criticism was reserved for those who elevated these human-made objects in the minds and affections of the faithful. The main culprits were therefore the priests who gave these artefacts a place of honour in their churches and preached in favour of them, stoking the belief that some images were more efficacious than others to line their institutional pockets and fuel the pilgrimage industry.

The deep attachment that the devout seemed to display towards religious artefacts, so objectionable to image critics, did not go unnoticed by the Church and orthodox defenders of images. They were not oblivious to the practices described by the Lollards. They did not dismiss such accounts as false; rather, they acknowledged them. However, when confronted with such highly somatic and emotionally charged examples of popular image-aided devotional practices, they interpreted and rationalised the actions of the devout in a manner that made them theologically acceptable. An example of this is found in Dives and Pauper, an anonymous early fifteenth-century (c.1405-10) Middle English orthodox treatise on the Ten Commandments, written as a dialogue between a rich layman (Dives) and a mendicant preacher (Pauper).¹⁴ Several times throughout the text’s discussion on the First Commandment, Dives expresses concern over worshipers’ somatic engagement with artefacts and Pauper defends the efficacy of employing images in the performance of devotion:¹⁵

DIUES. Me thynkyȝt qhanne meen kneelyn aforn þe ymage and makyn here prayere aforn þe ymage þat þey doon it to þe ymage and so wurshepyn þe ymage, and so wenyȝt mechil of þe peple, as me thynkyȝt. For þei staryn and lokyn on þe ymage wyt wepyngge eye. Þey heldyn vp here hondys, þey bunchyn here brestys and so be here eye and here continenaunce, me thynkyȝt, þey doon it al to þe ymage … PAUPER. Ȝyf þey doon it to þe ymage þey synnyn wol heyliche in ydolatrie and þey been nought excusyd, for it is a synne al aȝens resound and aȝens kende. But as I seyd ferst, þey moun doon al þis aforn þe ymage and þow nought to þe ymage. DIUES. How myghte þey doon al þis aforn þe ymage and nought wurshepyn þey ymage? PAUPER … al þe wurshepe þat he doth aforn þe ymage he doth it nought to þe ymage but to hym þat þe ymage representyȝt hym.¹⁶

In the above passage, Dives draws a straight line between the actions of the faithful and their thoughts and intentions. When he witnesses men kneeling in prayer before images, he understands that they ‘wurshepyn þe ymage’. He supports this reading by citing their physical performance of devotion as evidence that they believe the image to have some degree of divine presence or vivacity. He finds it hard to separate the external from the internal and asks ‘How myghte þey doon al þis aforn þe ymage and nought wurshepyn þey ymage?’ Pauper, representing the Church’s position, immediately recognizes Dives’ concerns and acknowledges that if he were correct they would be inexcusably sinning in idolatry. However, Pauper instantly dismisses this reading by arguing that the physical actions of the faithful are not indicative of improper understanding of devotion and the nature of human-made artefacts. He differentiates between the appearance of their actions and what is actually happening, their thoughts and mental state, maintaining that they are simply praying ‘aforn þe ymage’ and not ‘to þe ymage’, a common orthodox rebuttal to concerns over the highly somatic nature of late-medieval devotion.¹⁷

Some iconodules went a step further in their zeal to defend the efficacy and importance of images in religious worship. They contended that even if there were a correlation between the worshipper’s thoughts and actions to the point of offering their veneration ‘to þe ymage’ rather than simply ‘aforn þe ymage’ this was to be tolerated and not considered idolatry. Such a position revolved around the issue of intent. These image defenders argued that if the intentions were non-idolatrous, their subsequent actions or thoughts would not constitute a sin.¹⁸ An example of this approach is found in Reginald Pecock’s The Repressor of over Much Blaming of the Clergy, written in the mid-fifteenth century, a text that sought to defend and uphold the orthodox, that is, iconodule, position by engaging at length with Lollard doctrines:

But so it is that these opiniouns, bi whiche symple men trowen at sumtyme that an ymage hath withinne him vertu, such as God mai putte into a creature; or that the ymage dooth miraclis, or spekith at sumtyme, or heerith alwey, or swetith at sum tyme, ben opiniouns of the ij^e. now seid soort; that for hem discrete men mowe oonli lauȝe at suche folies of men, as thei doon at her othere folies, of whiche no moral harme cometh. Wherfore for noon such opinioun the hauyng, and the vpsetting of ymagis, whilis therbi myche moral good cometh … ouȝte be left and leid aside; namelich, sithen these now seid folisch opiniouns mowe liȝtli be schewid to her holders forto be vntrewe.¹⁹

Pecock, like the author of Dives and Pauper, openly recognised the dangerous potential inherent in the somatic image-aided devotional practices performed by the faithful. He too accepted the potential for correlation between the thoughts and actions of the devout towards religious artefacts. However, he still argued for the efficacy of and continued need for these artefacts, believing that the benefits outweighed any harm that might have derived from them, especially when considering that the intentions of the devout were not idolatrous, and therefore ‘no moral harme cometh’ as a result of these potential errors of practice.²⁰

In summary, the debates over the potentially problematic reality created by the late-medieval profusion of images and the affective devotional practices they supported hinged on the relationship between the actions and thoughts of the devout, and how closely they did or did not mirror each other.²¹ The iconodules argued that the actions performed by the faithful, while seeming to indicate a belief that the image was God or that it contained some divinely-privileged power, were actually displays of fervent devotion directed at God through the image. Lollards and other image critics, on the other hand, saw a more direct relationship between thought and action. In their eyes, the faithful acted as if the image was a manifestation of the divine on Earth, because for them it actually was. This, according to the Lollards, explained why the devout preferred some artefacts over others, believing them to be more powerful and efficacious, thus fuelling the pilgrimage industry. However, since there was no way to know unequivocally what were the thoughts and intentions that stood behind the actions of the devout, each side fortified its interpretative position and proposed different measures accordingly.

Margery Kempe in the Image-Debate Arena

Solving such an impasse would have required direct, unmediated access to the mind of worshippers at the critical moment of image perception, illuminating what it really was that the devout expected of the human-made artefact. This type of access is offered, as I will argue below, to the readers of The Book of Margery Kempe. Produced in the mid 1430s in East Anglia, the text, which the lay-mystic pilgrim Margery Kempe of Bishop’s Lynn dictated to her scribe, recounts the life and mystical experiences of its textual subject, Margery, referred to throughout the text as ‘this creatur’.²² It is a first person account, told in the third person, meant to present Margery as a living saint and put forth an argument for the establishing of a future cult around her saintly personage, a form of auto-hagiography.

The text itself claims to have been written to serve as a devotional guide to its potential readers, members of the devout laity who, like Kempe, lived within the secular world but desired a closer connection with the divine. This is made clear in the scribe’s opening statement, announcing that ‘here begynnyth a schort tretys and a comfortabyl for synful wrecchys, wherin thei may have undyrstondyn the hy and unspecabyl mercy of ower sovereyn Savyowr Cryst Jhesu … alle the werkys of ower Saviowr ben for ower exampyl and instruccyon … ’²³ This guidance and instruction is provided by means of personal example: it teaches through Margery’s experiences, thought processes, and actions.

One of the main devotional practices for which The Book offers guidance is image-focused piety, instructing its readers on how correctly to perceive and engage with religious objects and giving examples of what constitutes both idolatrous and proper artefact-aided devotion. Like Dives and Pauper, The Book’s approach to images and artefact-focused piety reflects concerns and anxieties about the transgressive potential of popular devotional practices – ideas propelled to the forefront of public discourse and consciousness by the image debates.²⁴

Of course, there is nothing novel about suggesting that Kempe was conscious of the existence of the Lollard movement and some of the ideas that were put into circulation as a result of its activities and the tensions that it produced. Scholars such as John Arnold, Nancy Partner, Clarissa Atkinson, Mary Morse, and others, have illustrated, in a variety of ways, how Kempe was acquainted with ideas that the Lollards were believed to hold, if not directly at least through anti-Lollard materials the Church promoted. She mentions the movement by name several times throughout the text and defends herself against accusations of heretical affiliations or doctrinal beliefs on five separate occasions.²⁵ As Andrew Cole correctly noted, ‘any conclusion that the Book of Margery Kempe expresses the cultural issues of its day – especially those related to Wycliffism, heresy and “Lollardy” – is bound not to surprise’.²⁶

In addition, the decision to produce The Book in the vernacular has rightfully been viewed by some scholars as indicative of a desire to take part in the translation debates that were raging alongside the image debates – both of them fuelled by the real or perceived threat of the Lollard heresy and its doctrines.²⁷

Even scholars who have pushed to read The Book in connection with the translation debates, however, and who have recognised the influence of those discussions on the text’s production, have not linked it to the contemporaneous conflict over images.²⁸ They generally maintain that Kempe was uninfluenced by the controversy surrounding image-aided devotion and see her as deeply attached to religious artefacts, in line with the norms of affective devotional piety subscribed to by other mystics and holy women of her time in England and across Europe.²⁹ This, despite the fact that The Book contains only a handful of scenes in which Margery interacts with devotional artefacts. And, as I shall illustrate, a carefully contextualised analysis of these scenes reveals that they do not present an uncritical acceptance of the use of devotional artefacts, but rather serve to cast Kempe into the image debates in the same way that her choice to produce her text in the vernacular placed her in the translation debates.

Margery’s Non-Animating Crucifix

I will concentrate here mainly on one of the key examples of Kempe’s critical position on image-focused devotion, which is found in chapter 4 of The Book, during the initial steps of Margery’s conversion:

Sche was smet wyth the dedly wownd of veynglory and felt it not, for sche desyryd many tymes that the crucifix schuld losyn hys handys fro the crosse and halsyn hir in tokyn of lofe. Ower mercyful Lord Crist Jhesu, seyng this creaturys presumpcyon, sent hir … iii yer of greet temptacyon … ³⁰

Margery’s wish for the Crucifix to come to life and embrace (‘halsyn’) her is not granted, and she is instead punished by Christ with three years of temptations, primarily of a sexual nature. Moreover, the text labels Margery’s wish as a sign that she has fallen into the sin of ‘veynglory’.³¹ This episode, which has garnered almost no scholarly attention, illustrates both the idolatrous potential inherent in late-medieval image-focused affective devotional practices, and reflects the author’s engagement with the concerns and anxieties over the proliferation of highly somatic artefacts. It does so by not only denying the aspiring-saint’s desire for an artefact-based miracle, but also by branding that desire as sinful.

Through this scene Kempe criticises the popular belief in the vivacity of images by presenting herself as a negative example, a sinner who – perhaps due to her inexperience and ignorance at the outset of her mystical journey – falls into the perilous territory of idolatry. Here Margery does not simply want to feel closer to Christ and be embraced by him; she desires to experience a miracle of the animation of the inanimate human-made crucifix. However, her wish for such a miracle is not offered as a preface for a miracle she was granted, but is presented to illustrate her pride (‘veynglory’) and explain why she was punished, despite her conversion and move away from the material world.

The scene recalls the desires and miraculous experiences found within other mystical texts, devotional manuals, and sermons with which both Kempe and her audience would have been acquainted. The familiarity of the scene would have bred certain genre expectations, and having a spiritually privileged person’s desire for a miraculous embrace denied would have served as a signpost, a warning that ought to be heeded. Here, Kempe takes popular and common themes that generally play out in a formulaic manner, particularly within accounts of holy personages, and turns them on their head. The deviation from the norm calls for a careful reading of this passage within the historical and literary context in which it was produced.

Late-medieval sermons, exemplaria, vitae and devotional guides are filled with stories of the miraculous actualisation of the animation potential of images. For example, several of the sermons in John Mirk’s Festial include miracle-working images and emphasise the power and importance of religious artefacts, including their ability to convert.³² The Festial’s Good Friday sermon tells a story of a knight who was embraced by the crucifix:

… when þys knyȝt com crepyng to þe cros and kyssud þe fete, þe ymage losyd his armes, and clyppyd þe knyȝt about þe necke, and kyssyd hym, and sayde þus þat all þe chyrch herd: ‘I forȝeue þe, as þow hast forȝeuen for me.’³³

Alongside such literary accounts, artistic depictions of animated crucifixes leaning forward and embracing holy persons, such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux, further promoted the sentient potential of images that religious texts nurtured in the devout.³⁴ Such expectations are also expressed in Dives and Pauper, even though the text cautions against ascribing miraculous characteristics to human-made objects, and worshiping images over God:

Take heid to the ymage how his heid is bowid doun to the, redy to kissyn the and comyn at on wyt the. See how hese armys and hese hondys been spred abrod on the tre in tokene that he is redy to fangyn [clasp] the and halsyn [embrace] the and kissyn the and takyn the to his mercy. […] On this maner, I preye the, rede thin book and falle don to grounde and thanke thi God that wolde doon so mechil for the, and wurshepe hym abovyn alle thyngge, noght the ymage, nought the stok, stoon ne tre, but hym that deyid on the tree.³⁵

Here the crucifix is described on the brink of animation, about to embrace (‘halsyn’) the devout individual, who, as Sara Lipton illustrates, is instructed to look upon the image with that potential embrace in mind.³⁶ In addition, as Barry Windeatt notes, the faithful were encouraged and instructed to view Christ’s outstretched arms on the cross as those of a lover, holding his arms wide about to embrace a beloved.³⁷

In addition to the literary and artistic instances of animated images, the faithful also had more direct examples of artefacts apparently coming to life that they encountered throughout the liturgical year or on pilgrimages. These were various mechanically-animated effigies, primarily of Christ, ranging from the most basic type of animation, such as the Palmesel – the wheeled life-size statue of Christ on a donkey that was pulled in processions – or the crosses used to re-enact Christ’s entombment and celebrate Easter, to more elaborate contraptions that were made to appear fully sentient.³⁸ One notable example of the latter is reported to have existed in England: the Rood of Grace at the Cistercian Abbey of Boxley in Kent, which was destroyed in 1538.³⁹ A surviving description found in the antiquarian William Lambarde’s sixteenth-century account, disparagingly reports how through ‘certain engines and old wires’ this artefact would nod its head, move its eyes and even shed tears:

… of wood, wyer, paste and paper, a Roode of such exquisite arte and excellencie, that it not onely matched in comelynesse and due proportion of the partes the best of the common sort: but in straunge motion, variety of gesture, and nimblenes of ioints, passed al other that before had been seene: the same being able to bow down and lifte up it selfe, to shake and stirre the handes and feete, to nod the head, to rolle the eies, to wag the chaps, to bende the browes, and finally to represent to the eie, both the proper motion of each member of the body, and also a lively, expresse, and significant shew of a well contented or displeased minde: byting the lippe, and gathering a frowning, froward, and disdainful face, when it would pretend offence: and shewing a most milde, amyable, and smyling cheere and countenaunce, when it woulde seeme to be well pleased … now it needed not Prometheus fire to make it a lively man, but onely the helpe of the covetous Priestes of Bell, or the aide of some craftie College of Monkes, to deifie and make it passe for a verie God.⁴⁰

The Boxley Rood moved and responded to the prayers of the faithful in a manner corresponding to the miracle stories the preachers recounted to the devout of objects that miraculously came to life.⁴¹ It was a very popular pilgrimage object, which the devout treated as a holy artefact, along the lines of the effigy of St. Mary at Walsingham. It is important to keep in mind that the mechanical manipulations that vivified objects such as the Boxley Rood were not solely the product of the machinations of clergy who wanted to profit from pilgrimages and offerings. They were, as Gail McMurry Gibson suggests, a natural by-product of late-medieval material culture and its devotional orientation, which was intensely focused on the physical reality of the Incarnation.⁴² Such objects were physical expressions and manifestations of attitudes that we find in texts that directly or indirectly promoted the power of images.

It is texts, objects and attitudes such as these that inform Kempe’s work and to which she alludes in her own encounter with the crucifix in chapter 4, and in her desire that ‘the crucifix schuld losyn hys handys fro the crosse and halsyn hir in tokyn of lofe’.⁴³

The scene also recalls the desires and miraculous experiences found within other mystical texts. It is similar in nature to the desire for communion with Christ and a deeper understanding of the Passion that is commonly found within devotional texts and accounts by late-medieval mystics such as Julian of Norwich, a contemporary and acquaintance of Kempe, who states that she deeply.

… desyrede thre graces be the gyfte of god … to have mynde of Cryste es passionn … that I might have sene bodylye the passion of oure lorde that he suffered for me, that I might have sufferede with hym as othere dyd that lovyd hym … Nouȝt withstondynge alle this trewe be leve I desyrede a bodylye sight, whare yn y might have more knawynge of bodelye paynes of oure lorde oure sayoure … ⁴⁴

Unlike Margery’s, Julian’s wish for a divine gift of miraculous vision (‘a bodylye sight’) is not deemed unreasonable or presumptuous. Her desire for the ‘thre graces’ is offered as an introduction, by way of explanation, for the series of revelations she is granted while gazing at an image of the crucifix, which miraculously ‘bled faste’ and serves as the trigger for her sixteen revelations.⁴⁵ Here Julian’s desire is granted and thus by extension presented as natural, logical, and in a positive light.⁴⁶

More broadly, it is uncommon to see rebuffed and punished a request voiced by a bride or confidante of Christ to experience a heightened sense of love or intimacy with the divine. Thus, the labelling of Kempe’s desire as ‘presumpcyon’ and its accompanying punishment shine a light on the uniqueness of the episode within the affective mystical tradition to which it belongs. Furthermore, if we compare Margery’s interaction with the crucifix to that of other mystics of her period and mystical tradition, it is clear that Kempe is presenting a different experience of and approach to these objects. This is not the crucifix in San Damiano in Assisi, which speaks to St. Francis, or indeed that of Julian, whose visionary experiences are triggered by a crucifix that she gazes upon:

My curate was sent for to be at my ending, and before he cam I had set vp my eyen and might not speake. He set the crosse before my face,⁴⁷ and sayd: I haue brought the image of thy sauiour; look ether vpon and comfort thee ther with. My thought I was well, for my eyen was sett vpright into heauen, where I trusted to come by the mercie of god; but nevertheless I ascentyd to sett my eyen in the face of the crucyfixe, if I might, and so I dide, for my thought I might longer dure to looke even forth then right vp. After this my sight began to feyle. It waxed as darke aboute me in the chamber as if it had ben nyght, saue in the image of the crosse, wher in held a common light; and I wiste not / how. All that was beseid the crosse was oglye and ferfull to me as it had ben much occupied with fiends … And in this sodenly I saw the reed bloud rynnyng downe from vnder the garlande, hote and freyshely … ⁴⁸

In Julian’s case the crucifix is not merely a visual trigger; it is the conduit through which she receives the visions, which are dependent on her fixing her gaze upon the artefact. When her eyes are removed from the crucifix, the visions cease, and her physical pain and mental torment resume. Julian’s crucifix can be clearly catalogued among the miracle-working images that were common in the sermons and exemplars of the period and that the Lollards opposed and criticised, while Margery’s remains an inanimate object that becomes the focus of an idolatrous desire that is punished by Christ. Thus, to some degree, it is the widespread and popular nature of both the object and the desire at the centre of Kempe’s non-animating crucifix passage that highlight even more the critical light in which the author presents certain practices and mindsets that were at the heart of the image debates.

Despite its deviation from the devotional and literary norms of the tradition that The Book belongs to, only a few scholars have taken note of the peculiarity of this scene of the non-animating crucifix; these include Robert Stanton, Kathleen Kamerick, and Laura Varnam. Both Stanton and Kamerick note that the scene presents Margery’s desire in a somewhat negative light. Kamerick, while pointing to the possible existence of some ambiguity toward artefacts on Kempe’s part, asserts that the scene is in fact indicative of the author’s attachment to images and her active fusing of the signifier with the signified. Stanton too notes that the desire for communion with Christ through the crucifix is not presented in a positive light.⁴⁹ He finds that curious, since he believes that ‘it is worth noting that this desire for intense personal communion with Christ is not very different from much of [Margery’s] communication with him later in the book, which she presents entirely positively … ’⁵⁰ Neither scholar connects the negative framing of the scene to the object of Margery’s desire – a human-made object – and to the broader context of the image debates and discussions on borderline-idolatrous devotional practices.

Varnam, in her 2015 article, uniquely recognises that ‘Margery’s attribution of agency to the crucifix portrays it as a desirable and potentially miraculous object … ’ even if her desire was potentially transgressive and ‘ … held in check by the narrative’s categorisation of it as vainglorious … ’.⁵¹ Citing a presumed lack of concern among the laity over the idolatrous potential inherent in this approach to images, Varnam concludes that the passage can and should be read favourably, as validating the fervour of Margery’s devotion and an opportunity to perform her holy vocation. Moreover, Varnam reads this episode as offering Kempe an opportunity for devotional self-fashioning and identity production as a holy woman. However, in her lengthy analysis of both the episode and Margery’s engagement with the crucifix, Varnam glosses over the denial of Margery’s desire and its subsequent punishment. As I will illustrate below, these aspects of the scene are key to understanding how this passage emphasises and engages with the issue of idolatry on several levels.

Idolatry, Pride, and Lust

Kempe positions Margery’s desire for a miracle-working crucifix within the framework of idolatrous sin, bookended by vainglory (‘the dedly wownd of veynglory’) and lechery (‘greet temptacyon’). Not only is her yearning thwarted, it is labelled presumptuous (‘presumpcyon’). It illustrates her pridefulness, her having fallen into the sin of vainglory, and explains why God punished her with several years of lecherous temptations.⁵² Of the three sins present in the non-animating crucifix scene only two are named: vainglory (‘veynglory’, pride, superbia) and lechery (‘greet temptacyon’, lust, adultery, luxuria).

The third sin, idolatry, is not explicitly invoked. This is not surprising, as even to discuss or mention idolatry was a dangerous proposition in early-fifteenth century England amid the Church-led backlash against Lollard ideas. The threat of being accused of heresy limited the open discussion on religious artefacts within the devotional practices of the Church.⁵³ Even many heterodox texts – both those that were borderline cases and those clearly attributed to the Lollards – did not always employ the term ‘ydole’ or ‘ydolatrie’ to point to the problematic nature of image-aided devotional practices. The allegation was often folded into the choice of words and how the authors opted to describe the actions of the faithful. So we can expect Kempe, who sought to align herself and her text with the orthodox English Church and gain acceptance as a fully orthodox lay-holy woman, to exercise even more caution when engaging with this thorny and potentially perilous issue. Still, from the manner in which authors chose to describe and, by extension, interpret and rationalise the physical manifestations of image-aided devotion, it is possible to gauge their position on these practices, in a way that circumvents the need to specifically label certain practices of image veneration as idolatrous.

The judgment of Margery’s desire for the vivification of the crucifix as idolatrous is not only indicated by the denial of her wish, but by the two accompanying sins that are explicitly mentioned in the scene: pride (‘veynglory’ and ‘presumpcyon’)⁵⁴ and lust (letchery).⁵⁵ The merging of these sins is a common theme in Christian theology and particularly so in Kempe’s time. In the popular fifteenth-century text of the Speculum Christiani the great sin of idolatry is defined by enumerating the different manners in which this offence is made manifest:

Many be spices of ydoltre. Sum es worschipynge of duelryes; an-other es worship of sonne, of mone, of plantese streres; therd of elementese; fourth of men; fifth of vnresonable bestes; sextet of ymages or of other werkes of other mannes hande … ydolatry es a grete synne. It takeȝ awey worschip fro god and ȝeues it to a creature that es not worthi to take it, and he makeȝ creatures lyke as god. The synne of ydolatry es so mych contrariouse to god and despisable, as myche as the creature that es so made equale to god es vile and vn-worthi to hym. No doubte es bot that thei don ydolatre that ȝeuen to ydoles that thynge that oweȝ to be ȝeuen to god only.⁵⁶

The veneration of images (‘ymages or of other werkes of other mannes hande’) is but one instance in the list of idolatrous acts, and is mentioned last among them. It is preceded, among other things, by the veneration of other created things (‘creatures’), such as people (‘fourth of men’). Idolatry is not defined or enacted here by what is venerated, by the object of affection. It is the giving of what is owed to God to something or someone else and thus making them ‘equale to god’. This definition of idolatry can be found elsewhere. The Book of Vices and Virtues, a translation of the thirteenth-century Somme le Roi, states that in loving or favouring something above God, one breaks the First Commandment, makes false gods and commits idolatry. This category includes those who set themselves up as gods – worship themselves – through their pride, desire for worldly glory and vainglory:

For cause ƿat no ƿing schulde beo loued most but ƿat ƿ^t is best and most worƿi to be loued. And ƿ^t ƿing is God al one: ƿerfore he schulde be most loued. And so what ƿing enimon loueƿ most: ƿ^t ƿing he makeƿ his god in as muche as in him is beo hit wyf, or child, gold, or seluer, aor eny catel. Also what ƿing eny mon loueƿ most ȝif hit beo not verrei god him self: ƿ^t same ƿing falsli ƿei meken heore god and so hit is to hem a fals god. For ƿei louen hit souereynli as god and is not god. Of ƿis foleweƿ ƿ^t ƿre manere of folk suwen ƿe sturynge of oure ƿreo enemys: whuche ben ƿe flesch … Lecherous and gloterous men ƿei loue more heore wombes ƿen god and so heore wombes ƿei maken heore god … Ƿe ƿridde maner of men ƿ^t breken ƿis comaundement ƿat folewen ƿe fend: beon ƿo ƿat setten heore hertes most on worldly worschipes and veyn glorie and heiȝnesse of hemself. Ƿis manere woschipe of him self … ⁵⁷

Pride is considered the original and most serious of the Seven Deadly Sins, and the source from which all others arise. It is connected to an immoderate love of self above God, which relegates the latter to second place, at best. Thus, pride is both the forgetting of God and the failure to revere him.⁵⁸

The other element within the idolatrous framing of the scene and the thwarted wish is the lecherous desire with which Margery is afflicted, which is itself a form of idolatry, as listed for example in the Speculum Christiani, quoted above. The idea that lust and idolatry are the same sin has many precedents; the association between adultery, lust and idolatry has its roots in the writings of St. Paul in I Corinthians 6:9-10 and again in Romans 1:23-27, for example.⁵⁹ This connection is also found within secular literature and popular medieval legends of early Christian virgin martyrs, such as the life of St. Catherine, which also link the worship of idols to lust and uncleanness.⁶⁰

In summary, vainglory, lechery and idolatry are three sins that are theologically connected and to a certain degree essentially one and the same. They operate similarly and have equal results vis-à-vis the relationship with the divine. Idolatry can be otherwise described as the transferring of affections and thoughts away from God and bestowing them upon another object or person  – a created thing. In vainglory, attention is diverted away from God and bestowed upon the self. In lechery, the punishment Margery receives, one’s affections are diverted and become unnaturally attached to a third being other than God or the self.

Margery’s idolatrous actions in bestowing her affections, devotions and trust on a human-made object are mirrored and emphasised here in the two sister sins. Read in this manner, the scene in chapter 4 emerges as a subtle commentary on image veneration and the idolatrous potential inherent within certain devotional practices where humans and human-made objects are favoured and honoured over God. By providing a window into her thoughts and desires, Kempe succeeds in framing such practices in a critical light while remaining firmly within the camp of orthodoxy, as her vainglory would have been immediately recognised as idolatrous by both iconoclasts and iconodules.

This critical view becomes even clearer when contrasted to a later passage within Kempe’s text, in which Christ promises to embrace Margery in her soul:

… dowtyr, for wyth myn owyn handys, whech wer nayled to the crosse, I schal take thi sowle fro thi body wyth gret myrthe and melodye, wyth swet smellys and good odowrys, and offyr it to my Fadyr in hevyn, ther thu schalt se hym face to face, wonyng wyth hym wythowtyn ende … And, for-as-mech as thu art a mayden in thi sowle, I schal take the be the on hand in hevyn and my modyr be the other hand, and so schalt thu dawnsyn in hevyn wyth other holy maydens and virgynes, for I may clepyn the dere abowte and myn owyn derworthy derlyng. I schal sey to the, myn owyn blyssed spowse … ⁶¹

This passage offers a different and corrective perspective on pious devotional thoughts and norms. In this later scene, Margery is being embraced by her heavenly husband, Christ. The reference to Christ’s ‘handys, whech wer nayled to the crosse’, recalls Margery’s earlier sinful desire for the animation of the artefact, for ‘the crucifix schuld losyn hys handys fro the crosse and halsyn hir in tokyn of lofe’,⁶² and replaces it with the true promise of the embrace of the real Christ, in her soul. Thus, it stands in opposition to the denied wish she expressed in chapter 4, with the choice of wording mirroring that of the earlier transgressive scene.

Kempe’s Guide to Proper Image-Focused Devotion

Kempe’s critical framing of the failed animation of the crucifix should not be read as a heterodox call denouncing the presence of religious artefacts within the fabric of the Church or advocating for imageless devotion and mysticism. It should be seen instead as a cautionary tale that exemplifies for her devout reader how easily the thin and dangerous line between proper and idolatrous engagement with artefacts can be crossed. Kempe does not oppose the presence of images as part of the daily religiosity of the devout laity. Their educational, mnemonic, and devotional efficacy is explicitly valued in the devotional practices she depicts in The Book. An examination of her visions and meditations shows that she is both aware of the ecclesiastical decoration and furnishings that surrounded her and makes use of them. The long cycle of visions of the nativities of Mary and Christ and the life of the Holy Family, found early in the text, were strongly influenced by the artistic production of her time and place.⁶³ These scenes bring to mind late-medieval biblical depictions, altarpieces and artefacts, which were popular both on the Continent, which Margery visited, and in England.⁶⁴

The position that Kempe espouses is that as long as images are employed to draw one's emotions and thoughts to God, they are efficacious. This follows Gregory the Great’s sixth-century pedagogical argument for the presence of images in churches:

… in order that those who do not know letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they are unable to read in books … so that persons ignorant of letters may have something whereby they may gather knowledge of the story and the people may by no means sin through adoration of a picture.⁶⁵

Kempe’s text is instructive, not iconoclastic, and argues for the proper conception and employment of religious artefacts. To this end, her text does not only offer examples of what constitutes improper intentionality in the interaction with religious artefacts, as in the case of the non-animating crucifix; it also contains examples of images shown in a positive light, as beneficial affective aids that heighten and deepen the devotion to Christ and his Passion.

There are two such scenes in The Book. The first revolves around Margery’s reaction in chapter 60 to the Pietà (‘owr Lady clepyd a pyte’), a popular late-medieval iconographic invention created to support affective piety, in which the Virgin holds the body of her dead son in her lap:⁶⁶

… sche went to the cherch ther the lady herd hir servyse, wher this creatur sey a fayr ymage of owr Lady clepyd a ‘pyte’. And thorw the beholdyng of that pete hir mende was al holy ocupyed in the Passyon of owr Lord Jhesu Crist and in the compassyon of owr Lady, Seynt Mary, be whech sche was compellyd to cryyn ful lowde and wepyn ful sor, as thei sche schulde a deyd. Than cam to hir the ladys preste seying, ‘Damsel, Jhesu is ded long sithyn.’ Whan hir crying was cesyd, sche seyd to the preste: ‘Sir, hys deth is as fresch to me as he had deyd this same day, and so me thynkyth it awt to be to yow and to alle Cristen pepil. We awt evyr to han mende of hys kendnes and evyr thynkyn of the dolful deth that he deyd for us.’ Than the good lady, heryng her communicacyon, seyd, ‘Ser, it is a good exampyl to me, and to other men also, the grace that God werkyth in hir sowle.’ And so the good lady was hir avoket and answeryd for hir.⁶⁷

The second example is Margery’s positive reaction to a ‘petowsly poyntyd and lamentabyl to beheldyn’ crucifix she encountered in Leicester (chapter 46):

Sythyn yed sche forth to Leycetyr … And ther sche cam into a fayr cherch wher sche behelde a crucyfyx was petowsly poyntyd and lamentabyl to beheldyn, thorw whech beheldyng the Passyon of owr Lord entryd hir mende, wherthorw sche gan meltyn and al-to-relentyn be terys of pyte and compassyown. Than the fyer of lofe kyndelyd so yern in hir hert that sche myth not kepyn it prevy, for, whedyr sche wolde er not, it cawsyd hir to brekyn owte wyth a lowde voys and cryen merveylowslyche and wepyn and sobbyn ful hedowslyche that many a man and woman wondryd on hir therfor.⁶⁸

Gazing upon artefacts such as the crucifix in Leicester and the Pietà in Norwich greatly moves Margery to recall and empathise with the pain and sorrow of Christ and the Virgin, helping to keep them fresh in her mind and promote her devotion to and understanding of God, his sacrifice and humanity’s redemption. This is very much in line with the orthodox practice of late-medieval incarnational devotion and the reactions that such images were meant to trigger.

Margery's reactions here reflect established arguments for the defence of the efficacy of artefacts, like Aquinas’s threefold argument for the usefulness of images and their continued incorporation in Church-sanctioned devotion:

There was a threefold reason for the institution of images in the church. Firstly, for the instruction of the simple who are taught by them as though by books; secondly, in order that the mystery of the incarnation and the examples of the saints may be more firmly in our memory when they are daily made present to the sight; thirdly to excite the feeling of devotion, which is more effectually excited by what is seen than by what is heard.⁶⁹

These arguments held that the visual had a heightened power, compared to the written or spoken word, to stir the faithful to devotion and affection to Christ and his Passion. This argument drew upon the idea that sight is the highest of the cognitive senses. This was ‘a theory inherited from Aristotle and expounded upon by St. Thomas. When employed in the defense of images, this theory conferred upon images a pre-eminence in the realm of devotional communication … ’.⁷⁰ The impact of this on doctrines concerning images and religious experience is carefully explained by a contemporary of Aquinas, William Durand:

For it is seen that a painting moves the imagination more than what is written. In a painting some past event is placed before the eye; but in literature the action is recalled to the memory as it were through the hearing, which touches the imagination less. Hence likewise in church we do not show as much reverence to books as we do to images and pictures⁷¹

This argument is also found in Dives and Pauper, in Pauper’s response to Dives’ criticism of the presence of images in churches and his desire to see these objects burned:

… Þey seruyn of thre thynggys. For þey been ordeynyd to steryn manys mende to thynkyn of Cristys incarnacioun and his passioun and of holye seyntys lyuys. Also þey been ordeynyd to steryn mannys affeccioun and his herte to deuocioun, for often man is more steryd be syghte þan be heryng or redyngge. Also þey been ordeyned to been a tokene and a book to þe lewyd peple … ⁷²

According to this argument, the very act of evoking or recalling is in and of itself an act of devotion,⁷³ as Mirk states in his own defence of images:

Saynt Austyn sayde: ‘þe mynde of Cristis passion is þe best defence aʒens temptacions of þe fende.’ Herefor ben roodes sett on hey in holy chirch, and so by syȝt þerof have mynd of Cristis passion. And þerof roods and oþyr ymages ben necessary in holy chirch, whatever þes Lollardes sayn⁷⁴

Of course, the emotive power of the visual was a double-edged sword. The fear that it would help blur the line between the image and the prototype and promote idolatry was very much part of the concerns of image critics.⁷⁵

Conclusion

By offering access to her own thoughts and feelings, Kempe sides with the iconodule argument that when intentionality is in line with proper image veneration, the highly emotional reaction that the devout experience at the sight of religious images cannot automatically be interpreted as a signpost of idolatry. The emotive effect becomes dangerous only when or if the faithful mistake the image for the prototype it was meant to represent or when they attribute the emotional response it triggers to divine influence rather than to their own machinations. In Kempe’s text, Margery’s highly charged responses to the Pietà and the Leicester crucifix, dramatic as they may be, offer a counterpoint to the scene of the non-animating crucifix in chapter 4, as they present proper affective employment, conception and intentionality toward religious artefacts. In these scenes, the devotional images function solely as mnemonic devices that stimulate and deepen devotion to and understanding of the redemptive sacrifice of God. Regardless of how dramatic and vocal her reactions appear to be, and despite the priest’s criticism of her crying (‘Damsel, Jhesu is ded long sithyn’) she doesn’t cross the line between devotional aid and idol. She no longer seeks, as she had done at the beginning of her conversion, a miraculous transformation of the artefacts into the divine personage they are meant to represent; and she does not address or engage with these objects, as Dives, the image-critical voice in Dives and Pauper, accuses the faithful of doing:

Diues. Contra. On Good Friday oueral in holy cherche, meen creypn to þe croos and wurshepyn þe cross. Pauper. Þat is soth, but nought as þu menyst. The croos þat we crepyn to and wurshepyn so hylely þat tyme is Crist himself þat deyid on þe cross þat day for oure synne and oure sake … ⁷⁶

Rather, Margery maintains devotion ‘aforn þe ymage and þow nought to þe ymage’, and the artefact remains simply a meditative or mnemonic aid.

When analysing these examples of proper image veneration it is important to note that as with the crucifix in chapter 4, the readers are granted access to Margery’s thought processes, her perception of and feelings toward the images that she encounters. But in contrast to these positive examples, in the scene in chapter 4 we are not offered any information about Margery’s outward behaviour. This is likely because her physical actions are deemed unimportant: whether she embraced the crucifix like Angela of Foligno, cried copiously, or stood contained before the image, the sin of idolatry had already been triggered by her thoughts the moment she substituted Christ himself for his image, by desiring ‘that the crucifix schuld losyn hys handys’.⁷⁷ As noted at the beginning of this study, thoughts and intentions bring forth the sin of idolatry, at which point physical behaviour is immaterial – it does not deepen the transgression or mitigate it.⁷⁸

In the same manner, the outward expressions of devotion that human-made artefacts provoke do not indicate idolatrous behaviour. It is by turning her mind to holy personages and matters that Margery’s deeper and more mystical experiences are triggered, such as the ‘fyer of lofe’, and her ‘cryyn ful lowed and wepyn ful sor’ or her ‘lowed voys and cryen merveylowslyche’. Her heightened response can be explained by the fact that she presents herself as a mystic and divinely gifted individual – an extreme example and model that others may aspire to emulate, but may not be able to equal. That said, the key point is not the extremity of the devotion that the artefacts trigger, but that they do so only as aids, exemplifying Aquinas’ argument in favour of images.

For Kempe and her text, the question is not whether or how the actions of the devout are revelatory of their thoughts as they worship an image. She does not participate in the rhetorical guessing game of iconoclasts and iconodules. Her purpose is to directly instruct the devout on how properly to perceive sacred images and thus prevent their mind from straying into idolatry, regardless of the physical manifestations and emotional intensity of their devotion. So long as the image is merely a representation and conduit to the divine, and the lines between the signifier and signified are clearly maintained, devotion is correctly expressed. In this manner Kempe skirts the danger of associating with one interpretive camp over the other, and works to negotiate between the two positions. Far from being an uncritical approach to a pan-European standard of image-aided devotion, Kempe’s is a delicate balancing act that is simultaneously influenced by and attempts to address the concerns and questions of her time and place.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ James Simpson, Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 57.

² On ‘textual subject’ see A.C. Spearing, Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 36; Spearing., Medieval Autographies: the ‘I’ of the Text (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 266; David Lawton, Voice in Later Medieval EnglishLiterature: Public Interiorities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 76–8.

³ This consensus is generally upheld and promoted, even among scholars who note the fact that Kempe’s account lacks details and descriptions of her material surroundings or adopts rhetoric similar to that of the Lollards. See for example: Raymond A. Powell, ‘Margery Kempe: An Exemplar of Late Medieval English Piety’, The Catholic Historical Review 89 (2003): 1–23; Sarah Stanbury, ‘Margery Kempe and the Art of Self-Patronage’, in Women's Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church, ed. Virginia Chieffo Raguin and Sarah Stanbury (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005), 75–104; Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Kathleen Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England 1350–1500 (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 71; Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 62–3; Nancy F. Partner, ‘Reading the Book of Margery Kempe’, Exemplaria 3 (1991), 33.

⁴ Kathleen Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 1; see also Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 1, 297.

⁵ Despite its pejorative connation, the choice to use the term ‘Lollard’ over ‘Wycliffite’ or other derivations stems from a differentiation between Wycliffite as a more intellectual and university-based movement, and Lollardy as related to the circulation of Wycliffite ideas outside scholarly circles among the laity. This is also the term that The Book of Margery Kempe employs. On the distinctions made between these within the scholarship see, for example: Fiona Somerset, Jill C. Havens, and Derrick G. Pitard, eds., Lollards and Their Influence in Late Medieval England (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003); and Andrew Cole, Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

⁶ The Lollard movement concerned itself with more than just the idolatrous potential of religious artefacts. Lollardy was not a well-organised or defined movement, and members subscribed to a long and varied list of heterodox doctrines and reformist positions. In the context of this paper, I will only focus on the image-critical aspects of the heresy. To read further on the Lollard movement see, for example: Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: The Hambledon Press, 1984); Aston, England's Iconoclasts. Vol. 1, Laws against Images (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Aston, Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350–1600 (London: Hambledon Press, 1993); Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Hudson, Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif's Writings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Hudson, Lollards and Their Books (London: Hambledon Press, 1985); Richard Rex, The Lollards (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002); J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Mishtooni Bose and Fiona Somerset, eds., A Companion to Lollardy (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Nicholas Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995): 822–64.

⁷ ‘Tretyse of Ymagis’ (BL MS Additional 24202, ff. 26-28v), in Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. Anne Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 87.

⁸ ‘Tretyse of Ymagis’, 83.

⁹ Lillian Swinburn, ed., The Lanterne of Liȝt (London: Kegan Paul, Oxford University Press, 1917), 84.

¹⁰ Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire, 26–7.

¹¹ Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 22–34.

¹² Swinburn, ed., The Lanterne of Liʒt, 84–5.

¹³ Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire, 12.

¹⁴ Anne Hudson, ‘Wycliffite Prose’, in Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. Anthony Stockwell Edwards (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 263; Margaret Aston, ‘Lollardy and Literacy’, History 62 (1977), 365–6; Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 48–9.

¹⁵ Priscilla H. Barnum, ed., Dives and Pauper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ix.

¹⁶ Dives and Pauper, 85–6.

¹⁷ Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 49.

¹⁸ Gerald Robert Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England: A Neglected Chapter in the History of English Letters & of the English People (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961), 137–9.

¹⁹ Reginald Pecock, The Repressor of over Much Blaming of the Clergy, Volume 1, ed. Churchill Babington (London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1860), 156. Another example is the Latin treatise De adoracione ymaginum, whose author argues that even if ‘simplices laici’ are worshipping the image itself, which he thought was likely the case, they do not err in the sin of idolatry, because their ‘implicit intention’ is good, even if they do indeed worship one particular image over another that might have been more readily available to them. For the text’s attribution to Walter Hilton, see for example: J.P.H. Clark, ‘Walter Hilton in Defense of the Religious Life and of the Veneration of Images’, Downside Review 103 (1985): 1–25; and Joy Russell-Smith, ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defense of the Veneration of Images’, Dominican Studies 7 (1954): 180–214. Nicholas Watson questions these attributions. See Watson, ‘‘Et que est huius ydoli materia? Tuipse’: Idols and Images in Walter Hilton’, in Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image, ed. Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 97.

²⁰ Owst, Literature and Pulpit, 137–9; Simpson, Under the Hammer, 77.

²¹ Michael Camille described the late-medieval profusion of images as an ‘image explosion’, referencing the over production of such objects. See Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 219.

²² The Book of Margery Kempe opens with a proem written by Kempe’s amanuensis outlining how the text came into existence, its content and purpose. My reading of The Book accepts that both Margery Kempe and her scribe existed. This is in contrast to Lynn Staley’s reading, which argues that Kempe did not employ a scribe to author her text, but simply employed ‘the trope of a scribe’ in lieu of an actual one. My approach also recognises that it is impossible to fully determine the level of input and control that that scribe may have had on the text and its contents. However, this does not impact my analysis of the text and its position on proper and improper image veneration. At the same time, I find Staley’s distinction between ‘Margery, the subject, and Kempe her author’, useful, and employ it throughout this paper, divorced from Staley’s general argument regarding Kempe and her scribe. Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (University Park, PA: Penn State, 1994), 3, 37.

²³ Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 41; Laura Varnam, ‘“A booke of hyr felyngys”: Exemplarity and Margery Kempe’s Encounters of the Heart’, in Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Laura Kalas and Laura Varnam (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), 14–59.

²⁴ I do not aim to suggest that Kempe or her amanuensis either read or were familiar with Dives and Pauper. Rather, I argue that Kempe’s text is aware of and engages with the anxieties and concerns of its time and place, like Dives and Pauper.

²⁵ For the presence of Lollardy in The Book of Margery Kempe and Kempe’s negotiation of Lollardy see for example: Roseanne Gasse, ‘Margery Kempe and Lollardy’, Magistra (1996): 43–69; Mary Morse, ‘“Tak and bren hir”: Lollardy as Conversion Motif in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Mystics Quarterly 29 (2003): 24–44; John H. Arnold, ‘Margery’s Trials: Heresy, Lollardy and Dissent’, in A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe, ed. John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (Woodbridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 75–93; Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); Lochrie, ‘The Book of Margery Kempe: The Marginal Woman’s Quest for Literary Authority’, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 16 (1986): 33–55; Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions, passim.; Nancy F. Partner, ‘Reading The Book of Margery Kempe’, Exemplaria 3, no. 1 (1991): 27–66; Clarissa W. Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Cole, Literature and Heresy.

²⁶ Cole, Literature and Heresy, 155.

²⁷ For example, Ruth Shklar holds that Kempe consciously ‘ … casts her book into the debate over the Lollard advocacy of biblical translation and vernacular writing.’ See Shklar, ‘Cobham's Daughter: The Book of Margery Kempe and the Power of Heterodox Thinking’, Modern Language Quarterly 56 (1995): 277–304 (285); see also: Gasse, ‘Margery Kempe and Lollardy’; Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh; Lochrie, ‘The Book of Margery Kempe’.

²⁸ Scholarship that links Kempe to the ideas circulated by Lollardy also looks at her public speaking, refusal to swear or take oaths, criticism of ecclesiastical wealth, and writing in the vernacular as aspects of Lollard influences at work in the text. See note 25.

²⁹ See for example: Powell, ‘Margery Kempe: An Exemplar of Late Medieval English Piety’; Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art; Kamerick, ‘Art and Moral Vision in Angela of Foligno and Margery Kempe’, Mystics Quarterly 21 (1995): 148–58; Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Religiöses Erleben vor Bildender Kunst in Autobiographischen und Biographischen Zeugnissen des Hoch- Und Spätmittelalters’, in Images of Cult and Devotion: Function and Reception of Christian Images of Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe, ed., Søren Kaspersen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), 61–88; and Laura Varnam, ‘The Crucifix, the Pietà, and the Female Mystic: Devotional Objects and Performative Identity in the Book of Margery Kempe’, The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 41 (2015): 208–37.

³⁰ Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 66.

³¹ Ibid., 66.

³² It is a text that seems to show a preference for accessing knowledge via visual images and direct revolutionary experiences. One example is the sermon on the miracles of the Blessed Virgin, which includes a tale of a Jew converted through an animated image. John Mirk, Mirk’s Festial, ed. Theodor Erbe (London: Early English Text Society, 1905), 302–3; Judy Ann Ford, John Mirk's Festial: Orthodoxy, Lollardy and the Common People in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), 89.

³³ Sermon 28, ‘Sermo Dicendus ad Parochianos in Parasceue Domini Hoc Modo’, in Mirk, Mirk’s Festial, 120–124 (124).

³⁴ By the fifteenth century, late medieval lyrics also suggest or instruct the devout to focus their attention on an actual devotional artefact – statue, crucifix, altar, illustration – to nurture their mental sight of the Passion of Christ and connect to it. We can see this in several of Lydgate’s lyrics. Shannon Noelle Gayk, Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 84–122.

³⁵ Dives and Pauper, 84–5.

³⁶ Sara Lipton, ‘“The Sweet Lean of His Head”: Writing about Looking at the Crucifix in the High Middle Ages’, Speculum 80 (2005): 1172–208.

³⁷ Barry Windeatt, ‘Signs and Symbols’, in A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature, ed. Marilyn Corrie (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 20–1. The call to actively embrace the outstretched arms of the Crucifix is found already in the twelfth century. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, ‘The Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns: The Case of Heinrich Suso and the Dominicans’, The Art Bulletin 71 (1989), 42; Lipton, ‘“The Sweet Lean of His Head”’, 1175–9.

³⁸ For further reading on animated-Christ figures see for example: Jonah Coman. ‘No Strings Attached: Emotional Interaction with Animated Sculptures of Crucified Christ’, North Street Review, 20 (2017), https://northstreetreview.com/2017/03/29/no-strings-attached-emotional-interaction-with-animated-sculptures-of-crucified-christ/ (accessed August 21, 2017); Carla Varela Fernandes. ‘PATHOS – the Bodies of Christ on the Cross. Rhetoric of Suffering in Wooden Sculpture Found in Portugal, Twelfth--Fourteenth Centuries: A Few Examples’, RIHA Journal 0078 (2013), http://www.riha-journal.org/articles/2013/2013-oct-dec/fernandes-christ (accessed August 21, 2017); Kamil Kopania, Animated Sculptures of the Crucified Christ in the Religious Culture of the Latin Middle Ages (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Neriton, 2010); Kopania,‘Animated Sculptures of the Crucified Christ: Origins, Development and Impact’, Material Religion (2018): 545–58; Kathryn Rudy, ‘Animated Sculptures of the Crucified Christ in the Religious Culture of the Latin Middle Ages’, The Sculpture Journal, 21 (2012): 183–4. Sarah Salih, ‘Idol Theory’, Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 4 (2015): 13–36; Johannes Tripps, ‘The Joy of Automata and Cistercian Monasteries: From Boxley in Kent to San Galgano in Tuscany’, Sculpture Journal 25 (2016): 7–28.

³⁹ Also known as the Boxley Rood.

⁴⁰ William Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent: Conteining the Description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shire (London: W. Burrill, 1826), 205–9 (205–206). See also: Rudolf Berliner, ‘A Relief of the Nativity and a Group from an Adoration of the Magi’, The Art Bulletin 35 (1953): 146; Kopania. Animated Sculptures of the Crucified Christ, 69. Lambarde’s account of the Rood, which was also mockingly called ‘the great God of Boxley’, focuses on the dishonest nature of the monks and priests who seduced and tricked the devout with the animation of the Crucifix and additional artefacts. His position was expressly iconophobic.

⁴¹ Aston, Lollards and the Cross, 99; Berliner, ‘A Relief of the Nativity’, 146–147.

⁴² Gibson, The Theater of Devotion, 15–16.

⁴³ Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 66.

⁴⁴ Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich. Part One: Introduction and the Short Text, Part Two: The Long Text, Appendix, Bibliography, Glossary, Index, ed. Edmund Colledge and Walsh James, 2 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978), 201–2.

⁴⁵ The crucifix that was placed before her appeared to Julian to be bleeding profusely, A Book of Showings, 266.

⁴⁶ Nicholas Watson has successfully argued that Julian used image veneration as a means to establish her orthodoxy and guard against any hint or possible accusations of heresy in ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Speculum 68 (1993): 659–64.

⁴⁷ This was part of the Sarum rite of visitation of the sick, which required parish priests to hold a crucifix before the eyes of dying parishioners. Eamon Duffy, ‘Devotion to the Crucifix and Related Images in England on the Eve of the Reformation’, in Bilder und Bildersturm im Spätmittelalter und in Der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Bob Schribner and Martin Warnke (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1990), 21.

⁴⁸ A Book of Showings, 290–4.

⁴⁹ Varnam, ‘The Crucifix, the Pietà, and the Female Mystic’, 210. Robert Stanton, ‘Lechery, Pride, and the Uses of Sin in the Book of Margery Kempe’, The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 36 (2010): 179–81; Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 143–5.

⁵⁰ Stanton, ‘Lechery, Pride, and the Uses of Sin’, 179.

⁵¹ Varnam, ‘The Crucifix, the Pietà, and the Female Mystic’, 210.

⁵² Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 66; Watson, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, 659–64.

⁵³ Camille, The Gothic Idol, 219; Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 23–24.

⁵⁴ Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 66.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 67.

⁵⁶ Gustof Holmstedt, ed., Speculum Christiani (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), 186.

⁵⁷ W. Nelson Francis, ed., The Book of Vices and Virtues (London: Early English Text Society, 1942), 318–19.

⁵⁸ St. Thomas Aquinas believed pride to be the “deadliest” of the Deadly Sins as it is a sin of idolatry – attempting to elevate oneself and displace God. St. Thomas Aquinas, The ‘Summa Theologica’ of St. Thomas Aquinas, Second and revised edition, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 10 vols, online edition (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1920–1922), https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3094.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3162.htm (accessed April 27, 2024). On the relationship between pride and idolatry, see for example: R. Jared Staudt, ‘Sin as an Offense against God: Aquinas on the Relation of Sin and Religion’, Nova et Vetera 9 (2011): 195–207; and Lester K. Little, ‘Pride Goes before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom’, The American Historical Review 76 (1971): 16–49.

⁵⁹ Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire, 57–8; Stanbury, ‘The Vivacity of Images: St. Katherine, Knighton's Lollards and the Breaking of Idols’, in Dimmick, et al., Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm, 137–138; Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 241.

⁶⁰ Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 63–65

⁶¹ Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 137–8.

⁶² Ibid., 66.

⁶³ Ibid., 75–83. These were divinely inspired, directed and gifted visualizations, and therefore I view them as visions or meditation-visions.

⁶⁴ Stanbury, ‘Margery Kempe and the Art of Self-Patronage’, 77–8; Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim, 93–4.

⁶⁵ ‘Idcirco enim picture in ecclesiis adhibetur, ut hi qui litteras nescieunt saltem in parietibus uidendo legant, quae legere in codicibus no ualent. Tua ergo fraternitas et illa seruare et ab eorum adoratu poulum prohibere debuit, quatenus et litterarum nescii haberent, unde scientiam historiae colligerent et populous in picturae adoratione minime peccaret.’ Quote and translation found in: Celia M. Chazelle, ‘Pictures, Books, and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory I's Letters to Serenus of Marseilles’, Word & Image 6 (1990): 139.

⁶⁶ See Joanna E. Ziegler, Sculpture of Compassion: The Pietà and the Beguines in the Southern Low Countries, C.1300-C.1600 (Brussels: Brepols, 1992).

⁶⁷ Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 285–86.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 228.

⁶⁹ ‘Fuit autem triplex ratio institutionis imaginum in Ecclesia. Primo ad instructionem rudium, qui eis quasi quibusdam libris edocentur. Secundo ut incarnationis mysterium et sanctorum exempla magis in memoria nostra essent, dum quotidie oculis repraesentantur. Tertio ad excitandum devotionis affectum qui ex visis efficacius incitatur quam ex auditis’. St. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptura super Libras Sententiarum, III, ix, Solutio 2, ed. P. Madonnet and M.F. Moos, III, Paris, 1933, 312, quoted and translated in: Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (University of California Press, 1980), 88, 366.

⁷⁰ Woolf, The English Mystery Plays, 88–9.

⁷¹ ‘Pictura namque plus videtur movere animum, quam scriptura. Per picturam quidem res gesta ante oculos ponitur; sed per scripturam res gesta quasi per auditum, qui minus movet animum, ad memoriam revocatur. Hinc etiam est, quod in Eclesia non tantam reverentiam exhibemus libris, quantam imaginibus et picturis’. William Durand, Rationale de divinis officiis, Naples, 1859, 24, text is quoted and translated in: Woolf, The English Mystery Plays, 90, 367. I have altered the translation slightly.

⁷² Dives and Pauper, 81–2.

⁷³ Woolf, The English Mystery Plays, 89.

⁷⁴ Mirk, Mirk's Festial, 171.

⁷⁵ Gayk, Image, Text, and Religious Reform, 9, 96; W. R. Jones, ‘Lollards and Images: The Defense of Religious Art in Later Medieval England’, Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (1973): 29.

⁷⁶ Dives and Pauper, 87.

⁷⁷ Angela of Foligno, Complete Works, trans. O.F.M. Paul LaChance, (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 126.

⁷⁸ Performance of devotion and prayer do have a physical component to them – for example the act of kneeling or using a rosary. There are other more extreme examples of physical engagement of the body in the act of prayer, where the body is used to focus the mind and heighten devotion to God. One example, from the religious and monastic sphere, is The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic. Simon Tugwell, ed., Early Dominicans: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 94–104.