Lynn Staley (Essay Date 1994)

SOURCE: Staley, Lynn. "The Image of Ecclesia." In Margery Kempe's Dissenting Fictions, pp. 83-126. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

In the following excerpt, Staley focuses on Kempe's representations of women, authority, and church hierarchy, examining instances of Kempe superceding or transcending church authority and observing her emphasis on the inherent importance of women in Christian communities.

Kempe's account of Margery's experience in Rome suggests her appraisal of a Church that cannot recognize an embodiment of its own ideals. Margery is cast out of the congregation of the Hospital of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in Rome by the slander of an English priest "þat was holdyn an holy man in þe Hospital & also in oþer placys of Rome" (80). As Kempe implies, what passes for holy in Rome has less to do with spiritual insight than with worldly pomp. Though his malice...