I started the previous chapter by asking to what extent a medieval woman could have agency over her own public identity and over the construction and promotion of this identity. Katherine Swynford clearly provides a positive answer to this question. Moreover, her example suggests that not only could a female have and maintain control over her own image but that the models and associations she used could be female as well. Katherine’s armorial clearly shows that she purposely appropriated the symbol of St Katherine for her own use. Kolve discusses the language of sign in the fourteenth century, stating that there were three levels to this:
There is first of all a vocabulary of attribute, which allows the ready identification of certain historical or pseudo-historical persons: the crown and the harp that indicates King David, for example, or St Catherine with her wheel, or St Lawrence with the gridiron of his martyrdom. Such objects mean themselves literally, but their significance derives from a history or legend which must be learned. There is also a vocabulary of symbol, in which things mean other than themselves: the Holy Ghost is not a dove, but a dove can stand for the Holy Ghost, in painting or in literature. And finally, there are complex allegorical figures, generally abstract ideas expressed in human form, often accompanied by other conventional symbols: Fortune as a woman blindfolded, beautiful on one side, ugly on the other, turning a wheel in the midst of the sea; or Avarice as an old man wearing torn clothes sitting at a counting table with money.1
Clearly Katherine’s emblem would have been recognised as the symbol of St Katherine. The wheel represented St Katherine’s holiness, her ability to withstand torture; but, more than this, it stood for her whole story and emphasised her whole character. The appropriation of this symbol shifted the desirable traits of the saint’s character to Katherine’s public persona, or so Katherine hoped. Which connections were made between the two women may not always have been the ones that Katherine desired, but surely her audience would have made connections between Katherine and the saint? The story of the saint was extremely well known to the population of late medieval England. Importantly, Katherine consciously chose this emblem as her own, understanding fully its representation in art as the emblem of a female saint, a virgin martyr. She would have understood that people would make connections between her and the saint based on this emblem – it must therefore be beyond dispute that she deliberately based the construction of her public persona on that of St Katherine. Her agency in this is manifest, her model clearly that of another female.
Moreover, Katherine was not alone in doing this. There is evidence that other women used saints to construct and promote identity. The saints they chose and the ways they did this manifest themselves differently, but it would appear that medieval women had female role models who provided them with help, support, self-affirmation and examples of behaviour.
Of course, shared gender need not be the only reason why these women made connections with the saints. But this aspect of shared femininity does seem to have been of importance. Katherine L. French’s study of women’s bequests to the church reveals much here. Her investigation of the wills of two dioceses demonstrates that women were more likely than men to leave domestic items to the church. Where women did leave items such as dresses, tablecloths, handkerchiefs and so on, they were often explicit in how they should be used: ‘in the process they left their aesthetic and spiritual imprint on their parish.’2 Men, on the other hand, seemed more willing for the churchwardens to make these decisions for themselves. The most favoured request by women was that their goods should be used to adorn the saints. Agnes Petygrew asked for her wedding ring to be given to the image of St Mary ‘at the pillar’; Agnes Awmbler gave a kerchief to ‘the image of Our Lady within the quore’; more significantly, Sybil Pochon left ‘her best silk robe’ to St Katherine on the understanding that on special occasions such as her saint’s day the image would be dressed in it.3 The link between females seems explicit here: ‘The saints received items that had physically marked the donor as a woman. The items were intended to adorn these female saints in similar ways: kerchiefs on the head and decorative girdles around a robe or skirt.’4 Household items such as sheets and tablecloths became altar clothes; in donating these, the women were providing not only for their own households but the household of God.
This seems at odds with the teaching of the Church. The Virgin Mary was held as an exemplar of perfect femininity, beyond that which the vast majority of women could expect to reach. But the hagiography of the virgin martyrs portrays them in many ways as the opposite of what a good medieval wife should be – shrewish, stubborn, wilful, a bad role model when viewed against the women portrayed in the courtesy texts of the time. Why then did these women connect with them on such a basic feminine level:
How, one wonders, did the assertive, often destructive heroines of Middle English hagiography speak to the experience of medieval men and women? To be sure, many women probably found the examples of feminine mastery in virgin martyr legends rather attractive. Yet there is little evidence that the male authors of virgin martyr legends were writing specifically for women or that they anticipated a predominantly female audience. Indeed, if they were tailoring their narratives to women, it is hard to see why they would exaggerate behaviour that they would surely not want their readers to emulate. On the other hand, it is certainly not obvious how the self-confident heroines who best all the men they meet could have appealed either to the clerics who composed saints’ lives or to the men who must have constituted a substantial segment of their audience.5
But these women who gave clothes and domestic items were following examples that were not only set by the saints but also told to them through courtesy texts. The Knight of la Tour Landry encouraged the use of female saints as role models. Inevitably, this included the perfect Virgin Mary, an example of humility and courtesy. But the knight also specifically ordered his daughters to follow the examples of the virgin martyrs as well, stating that they provided examples of proper behaviour.6 In this, then, were women following the orders of a man, rather than the examples of the saints, in copying these models of behaviour? But the stories of the saints would have been well known, the behaviour they displayed understood more than that described in the courtesy texts. The less desirable traits of the saints would have been as familiar to medieval women as those expounded in texts as examples of good feminine behaviour. And, moreover, although the hagiographies were written by men, female influence in the pictorial depictions of the stories was possible:
Images of the saints surely influenced the ways in which people understood the legends they read or heard, just as written text must in turn have shaped viewers’ interpretations of the images. Because thirteenth and fourteenth century lay people played an active role both in producing and in commissioning religious images, the visual arts provide especially useful evidence of lay ‘readings’ of saints’ legends.7
The production and commission of these images would not have been the sole domain of men; women too would have orchestrated the design of images for wall paintings or manuscript decoration.
This again provides evidence of a connection based on shared gender. The authors of the hagiographies may have felt able to ascribe the saints with roles and attributes that were not really deemed suitable for women, because they were not writing about average women. The saints were special, on another level, above mere mortals, so their ‘unfeminine’ behaviour could be forgiven. But, increasingly, in the depictions produced by the laity, the saints were represented as mere women, wearing contemporary clothes, pictured in contemporary surroundings, undertaking contemporary roles. This did not happen only with the virgin martyrs but with all female saints. It would seem that the laity wanted their saints to be not just holy figures but real, everyday people.
As early as 1300 women were associated with the teaching of reading. A growing image in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was that of St Anne teaching the Virgin Mary to read:
There are two ways of interpreting such scenes. One is that they were symbolic. Mary’s reading may be meant to emphasise her role in conceiving and giving birth to the word of God, hence the liking of artists to place texts on her book which speak of praise to God. Equally, her act of reading may have been meant to be real. The scene of Mary and Anne appears in art just as we hear in literature that ‘women teacheth child on book’, at a time when artists were portraying Mary and Jesus in lifelike houses and landscapes. These portrayals tended to imagine the holy family living in the style of wealthy people of the latter middle ages, and it would have been natural to attribute Mary with the kind of education current among such people. In turn, the scene may have affirmed such education, encouraging mothers to teach their children to read.8
Therefore, the images depicted real medieval issues and confirmed these issues – Anne was shown teaching Mary because in late medieval society women taught children and through the power of these images more women felt able to teach children. The image and the reality were self-supporting. Other aspects of St Anne’s life were adopted, the saint setting the precedent for certain behaviours and therefore affirming that these behaviours were acceptable. Indeed, Anne can be seen to have ‘represented the cult of the family’.9 She was a ‘constructed’ saint, for the actual details of Mary’s family were unknown. By the late Middle Ages, however, Anne’s entire life story was ‘known’, including, famously, her remarriage. This was one of the reasons for Anne’s popularity. The widow’s choice was normally of a chaste life within a convent – Anne’s marriages to three different men, bearing a child to each before vowing herself to this chaste life, provided women with an alternative choice. She represented the value of motherhood to married women and was also the patron of widows.
Virgin martyrs, too, despite their status being very different from that of wives, could provide assurances. St Margaret was seen as the patron of childbirth and St Katherine as a marriage broker. Indeed, St Katherine, after her mystical marriage to Christ, is depicted in the role of household manager.10 It was not only wives who could find self-affirmation in female saints. Agnes Sorel, mistress of the French king Charles VII in the 1440s, had a devotion to St Mary Magdalene.11
Of course, different readings of saints’ lives were possible. The saints could mean different things to different people: ‘Virgin martyrs were presented as models to women but that does not mean that they internalised her example in uncomplicated and unresponsive ways.’12 One medieval woman who clearly appropriated the female virgin saints as role models was Margery Kempe. This was not merely in terms of echoing those behaviours that perhaps were seen as most appropriate, but in adopting all behaviours, most certainly in a responsive way. In this she becomes an extreme example of medieval women appropriating and reflecting saintly attributes, but a discussion on how saints were adopted as role models cannot be complete without her inclusion.
Margery Kempe (born c. 1373) lived in East Anglia, in the town of King’s Lynn. She was a wife, a mother to fourteen children, and a businesswomen. Her father had been mayor of Lynn – presumably this was where she received the capital and the contacts to set up her businesses, first in brewing then in milling. Both were unsuccessful. We know of her life through her book, the single extant manuscript of which was at Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire in the fifteenth century, where the story of Margery’s life seems to have found favour. It is clear from her book that she saw herself as extremely pious, to the extent that she believed herself capable of sainthood. Moreover, it is manifest that she believed she was capable of this through her deliberate attempts to echo the lives of the female saints so well known to medieval people. The book depicts her life story, seemingly dictated by Margery to a scribe. However, the authorship and the truth of the content of the book are under debate.
Lynn Staley, for example, argues that The Book of Margery Kempe is a work of fiction featuring a radical, exceptional figure fighting against the restrictions of her society.13 Staley clearly distinguishes between the author and the textual subject:
Implicitly . . . Kempe’s achievement is undervalued precisely because, before we even begin to talk about that achievement, we define the Book in terms of its author’s gender and so circumscribe our response to it by assuming an absolute equation between the book’s author and its subject.14
Because Margery is a woman, Staley believes that readers will not credit her with the role of conscious author, and therefore Staley chooses to read the Book as a biography not an autobiography, ‘Kempe’ prescribing the life of ‘Margery’. Staley chooses to limit the role of the two scribes in Margery’s text, stating that ‘I would like to say that the scribe never existed’ and believing that the scribes are a fictional device used by Kempe to ‘authorise’ the text through a male voice.15 For Staley, any reading of the text should highlight the skill of the female author, the ability of Kempe to write the tale of an extraordinary woman.
But the Book is undoubtedly an autobiography. The subject and the author are the same. This is not to deny Margery the role of textual authority because of her female status but rather to acknowledge that the subject she constructed, or desired to construct, in the text was her own identity. Also, to acknowledge the existence of a scribal authority is not to limit the influence of Margery over the textual structure. Rather, it leads to the question of Margery’s intent and motivation in writing and portraying her own identity. The influences and relationship between Margery and her second scribe echo hagiographical techniques, and this in itself provides information on how Margery desired to be perceived. The scribe is only able to believe in Margery, and therefore able to write the text, after reading the lives and works of other female mystics and saints. From this point he believes in Margery’s holiness, and adopts the role of disciple. His intent for the text then becomes the same as Margery’s; he too wishes to advance her saintly identity.
Timea Szell states that it is possible to argue that Margery Kempe’s construction of herself reflects many of the psychological and spiritual concerns of the lives of women saints, and represents a hagiographical tradition. However, Szell continues that, ultimately, Margery does not fit any of the recognised categories of saints’ lives, and that Margery ‘proudly and stubbornly cultivates her identity as marginal outsider’.16 Clarissa Atkinson argues that the ‘received categories of social and religious history do not easily accommodate Margery Kempe’,17 reflecting Szell’s concerns of how to ‘categorise’ Margery. But does Margery have to fit a refined category? It is a mistake to pigeonhole her within the constraints of modern understanding, or of modern influences such as feminism or Marxism. Surely one should read the Book to discover Margery’s own intents and the motivations surrounding her portrayal, not to fit modern preconceived ideas or formats to the Book? Margery herself tells us that she is familiar with the lives of female saints, and throughout the Book her identity can be seen to be influenced and empowered by the precedents set by these figures. It is this influence and empowerment that necessitate the use of the third person in the text, as Margery could not have easily narrated a saint’s life in the first person, the difficulty of which she acknowledges, stating that the Book was ‘written to show the homely intimacy and goodness of our merciful Lord Christ Jesus, and not to commend this creature’.18 The Book represents the sanctity of Margery, which is ultimately the work of Christ; therefore the subject of the Book, the channel of Christ’s work, has to be discussed as a separate entity from that of the author.
The influences of female saints on Margery have been acknowledged by many, but Margery’s reasons for accepting these influences have been glossed over. It would seem that, because Margery never achieved official, recognised sainthood, then her desire to be seen and recognised as a saint takes second place to a portrayal of her as a radical, anxious, marginal, hysterical, exceptional, essentially unorthodox figure battling against the conventional restrictions of her society. But it is within the context of these saintly influences that Margery would have seen herself. The medieval culture, in which Margery resided and wrote, was profoundly mimetic. Ideals and archetypes were blatantly ‘copied’ by individuals who saw this as a means of attaining similar levels of achievement of those they were copying. Margery was familiar with the lives of the saints and believed that, if she lived a similar life, she too would demonstrate her holiness and would achieve sainthood.
This placing of Margery firmly in the context of medieval culture and society indicates the empowerment an individual could gain from the lives and precedents of female saints. Therefore, Margery is clearly the author of the text; she is the creator of a subject influenced by other writing and the genre of saintly literature, and the Book is not a literal autobiography. But the subject created is Margery and Margery’s sanctity, a sanctity that, while not recognised through history, was not a fiction to Margery but ordained in her by God, as her text makes clear:
Those who believe that God loves you shall be blessed without end.19
Daughter, I shall make the whole world wonder at you, and many men and women shall speak of me for love of you, and honour me in you.20
As Fanous states, the subject of the Book is not ‘a projection of her fictive narrative person, in a Chaucerian or Langlandian way’ but ‘so widespread is the mimetic topos in medieval literature that to ignore its use is to show a marked antipathy towards one of the most fundamental of medieval impulses’.21 Margery was a deliberate, conscious author, but the text is edited to emphasise the message she wanted to portray, and this message firmly links her self to female saints and the precedents they provided for the role she desired and believed she was ordained to hold. Therefore, Margery’s female status is empowered, as Staley would desire, through an acknowledgement of the authorial abilities and skill of Margery, but these abilities are firmly interlinked with the chosen portrayal of identity, an identity influenced by the precedents available to the author in the form of female sanctity. Establishing the links between Margery and these saints will therefore unwrap Margery’s editorial decisions, and consequently will provide a picture of Margery’s identity as she wished it to be seen.
Margery states that the purpose of the Book is to provide ‘great solace and comfort’ for ‘sinful wretches’.22 This is a clear hint at an intercessory role; through reading and understanding the grace Christ provided in Margery, the reader will gain comfort. Margery is to be a helper and a healer – a traditional saintly function. Margery anticipates her veneration and aid as intercessor elsewhere in the Book.
Lord, I ask for mercy and preservation from everlasting damnation for me and for all the world.23
Daughter, there is no man so sinful alive on earth that, if he will give up his sin and do as you advise, then such grace as you promise him I will confirm for love of you.24
Daughter . . . in this church and in this place I will be worshipped in you.25
She also establishes herself as a patron, a protector of travellers. Through her trials of sea travel and her accounts of bad weather and conditions against her that through the grace of God she survives, Margery links herself to a role of protection and provider of aid.
Afterwards, as this creature was in contemplation, our Lord warned her in her mind that she should not sail in that ship, and He assigned her another ship, a galley, that she should sail in. Then she told this to some of the company, and they told it to others of their party, and then they dared not sail in the ship which they had arranged.26
Margery also provides traditional saintly functions through the establishment of miracle stories. For example, she survives the church stone falling on her, although the weight and height from which it fell should have warranted serious injury.27
Therefore Margery establishes her saintly credentials as intercessor, protector and worker of miracles. But she specifically connects herself to the female saints Mary Magdalene, Bridget of Sweden, and the most popular virgin martyrs for the late medieval period, Katherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch. Mary Magdalene and St Bridget offer instant and obvious comparisons, namely in their sexual status. They too had renounced the pleasures of the flesh to become chaste followers of Christ. As Carolyn Coulson states, ‘the Magdalene serves as the perfect model for the reader who cannot achieve the unattainable, singular perfection of the Virgin Mary. At the most fundamental level, Mary Magdalene represents the quintessential forgiven sinner saved by the love and mercy of Christ.’28 Susan Eberly suggests that the dating of the commencement of the Book ‘on the next day after Mary Magdalene’ should alert us to the importance of this saint to Margery.29 While the use of dating in the Book is scarce and therefore the inclusion of dates potentially significant, this seems a strange detail to choose to link Margery and the Magdalene. The Book offers much more emphatic links than this. In the visions Margery experiences around her meditations of the Crucifixion she takes over the role of the Magdalene, present at a scene with Christ and the Virgin Mary, where the Virgin pleads with Christ to stay with them.30 In The Meditations on the Life of Christ Mary Magdalene also pleads with Christ; in the Book Margery becomes the pleader, and Mary Magdalene is not present.31
Margery therefore places herself firmly in the female community surrounding Christ, utilising the example and role of the Magdalene to authorise her own relationship with Christ. Margery also adopts the role of St Bridget in a similar way: ‘specific examples imitated from St Bridget, such as the bowl of water thrown over her head, confirm that Bridget’s life served as a direct model.’32 Both women were delivered from the perils of childbirth, and called to become brides of Christ, undertaking extensive pilgrimages:
Kempe not only replicates Bridget’s book and pilgrimages with her own; she also takes pains to visit Brigittine houses, the Hospice in Rome near the English college where Bridget wrote so much of her Revelations and other books and where she died, perhaps the Norwegian Brigittine convent of Munkaliv, almost certainly the Brigittine convent of Manenbrunn at Gdansk, and also English Brigittine Syon and Carthusian Sheen.33
Bridget became a model as bookwriter, pilgrim and non-virgin saint and therefore provided Margery with the precedent for her achievements. As with the Magdalene, Margery ‘lived’ the Brigittine experience; both persuaded husbands to adopt a chaste marriage, both were reduced to begging in the city of Rome, both combated Paul’s dictate against preaching.34 More importantly, Christ himself links the two women. ‘For in truth I tell you, just as I spoke to St Bridget, just so I speak to you, daughter, and I tell you truly that every word that is written in Bridget’s book is true, and through you shall be recognised as truth indeed.’35 And when witnessing mass: ‘Therefore thank God that you have seen it. My daughter Bridget never saw me in this way.’36
Here reference to St Bridget is clearly authorising Margery’s holiness. Margery’s words and works will spread the word of Bridget and establish the veracity of her work, and Margery’s holiness is compared to Bridget’s and found to be superior. Using Bridget as an example and paradigm in the text benefits the status of Margery, who is living the life of Bridget, and gains assurance from God that Margery is on a par with the saint in His eyes.
While the Magdalene and St Bridget appear as obvious models for the assurance and confirmation of Margery’s status and identity, the virgin martyrs SS Katherine and Margaret initially appear to be awkward paradigms for a creature who previously led such a worldly lustful life. But the influence of Katherine and Margaret was integral in medieval society; Margery’s own parish church in King’s Lynn was dedicated to St Margaret, Mary Magdalene and all the Virgins. They were clearly important figures in Christ’s female community and therefore needed as advocates for Margery. Moreover, despite their virgin status, they were linked to female identities with which Margery was familiar. Margaret, as the patron saint of childbirth, provided a link for Margery with the suffering she endured during her sexual life; and St Katherine would have helped Margery to overcome the anxieties she felt surrounding her lack of virginity.37 Katherine’s conversion of the Empress that appears in her Vita, and the saint’s reassurance that married women could be included in the community of Christ’s brides, was clearly an important message for Margery, emphasising the worth and value of a mental desire and conviction of virginity over and above the physical state.38 This distinction was recognised and understood by Margery, who perceived herself to be a maiden in her soul. Wives also feature strongly in the text as helping Margery. In Leicester, when the Steward sends to the jailer for her, the jailer’s wife would not let her go.39 And in York, the goodwife of the house where Margery was held gave her wine to drink without the knowledge of her husband.40
Therefore, although virgins in both the mental and the physical sense, the martyr saints held practical appeal for Margery. The symbolic renouncing of a previous life or a status in society, implicit in Margery’s text, is also present in the tales of the virgins: ‘before the virgin martyr takes up her vocation she must first renounce the world, its honours, privileges, and pleasures, her heritage, social position and above all, her sexuality.’41 In this context another character in the Book links Margery and St Katherine. The Mayor of Leicester asks Margery ‘from which part of the country she came, and whose daughter she was’,42 which echoes the first encounter of St Katherine with Maxentius.43 The Mayor himself appears to make this connection, stating after Margery’s response: ‘St Katherine told of what kindred she came, and yet you are not alike, for you are a false strumpet, a false Lollard, and a false deceiver of the people and therefore I shall have you in prison.’44 This was a deliberate attempt by Margery to link her story to that of the female saints: ‘for by drawing an equation between Margery’s kindred and Katherine’s the Mayor effectively contextualises Margery’s trial in the tradition of the virgin martyr’s ordeal.’45
Here lies the major role of the virgin martyrs in the Book. Many have noted the hostility directed towards Margery, the threat to her chaste status, and the trials and persecution she underwent as a suspected Lollard or heretical figure, and many have interpreted this as a representation of Margery’s unorthodox nature, and radical hysterical behaviour. But, as Fanous argues, if the Book is analysed too closely for fact, then ‘we endow the text with a historicity which its author would not have recognised and ignore the dualism characteristic of any saint’s life: ethos and praxis, or ethical and historical truth’.46 The issue that should arise is not the factual truth surrounding the events of the Book but the motivation. The travels in England and the people encountered by Margery in the hostile situation of a trial or questioning are all in one way or another notable for their anti-heretical activity: ‘her flight directly to these places and the prominence accorded to the subsequent trials point to their outcome, which is surely a vindication of her orthodoxy. Having passed through the courts of the harshest and most active heretical repressors, her credentials were impeccable.’47 This quest for orthodoxy provided proof of her sanctity, both in terms of establishing her beliefs firmly within the context of the Church, and through placing herself in a trial situation reminiscent of the trials of the virgin martyrs, themselves emulations of the trial of Christ.
Laurie Finke has argued that ‘the trials in hagiographies of early Christian martyrs are quite different from the examinations for heresy represented in Kempe’s narrative. The saints in these narratives need not prove the orthodoxy of their Christian beliefs; rather the trial serves as a forum for their proclamation of a faith that is never in question.’48 However, this is to limit the situation of the martyrs. Undoubtedly the detail of their faith was not questioned, but the trials were based on the faith they held, the pagan judges of their trials against the morals of their faith. Indeed, the connections between the trials of Margery and SS Katherine and Margaret are clear. As Lewis states, as Katherine ‘faced the 50 philosophers, so too Margery is publicly examined on several occasions by groups of learned clerics. Like St Katherine, Margery always gets the better of them.’49 As St Katherine converted the fifty philosophers to the Christian faith, so the examiners of Margery have to concede to her orthodoxy and beliefs. For example, in Leicester: ‘The Mayor, who was her deadly enemy, said, “Truly, she does not mean with her heart what she says with her mouth.” And the clerics said to him, “Sir, she answers us very well.”’50 Unable to find fault with the orthodoxy of her beliefs, the Mayor then has to resort to name calling and the use of ‘indecent words’, presenting Margery ‘in the tradition of the embattling saint who outwits her inquisitor’.51
Moreover, Margery manifestly attempts to associate herself with the martyrdom of these saints. Inevitably the virgin martyrs suffered torture and death. Margery is never tortured, but she makes the threat implicit. In Canterbury the people cried, ‘You shall be burnt you false lollard,’ ‘take her and burn her,’ and in York the Archbishop’s household ‘swore many a horrible oath that she should be burned’.52 The lack of any real threat to Margery emphasises the placing of this tension in the text, tying her into the tradition of the suffering virgin, and the suffering of injustice, cruel words and punishment.53 As Margaret and Katherine during torture elicit sympathy from their observers, so Margery in Beverley moves the female audience with edifying stories so that the women wept and said, ‘alas, woman, why should you be burned?’54
Along with these threats, real or otherwise, Margery imagines her torture and death, reassured by Christ that such physical suffering was not necessary. ‘I thank you, daughter, that you would be willing to suffer death for my love, for as often as you think so, you shall have the same reward in heaven as if you had suffered that same death.’55 Margery is aware of the need to associate herself with the torture trope of the martyrs, and is also aware that this was hardly likely to occur. For Margery, the torture would be mental, her suffering the abuse and hostility she received. The emphasis in the text on the antagonism and enmity she suffered highlights Margery’s intent to make obvious her martyrdom. Christ again confirms this message for the audience of the text. ‘Daughter, it is more pleasing to me that you suffer scorn and humiliation, shame and rebukes, wrongs and distress, than if your head were struck off three times a day every day for seven years.’56 As Henrietta Leyser argues: ‘Bitter as the accounts of those who try to silence her are, it would be as well not to imagine her as a marginal figure or a social outcast. Rather, allowance must be made for Margery’s need to experience persecution as a form of martyrdom.’57
Margery places dispute and suffering at the forefront of her text to attach herself undeniably to the genre of the virgin martyrs, seeking an implicit connection in the mind of the reader between her life and those of SS Katherine and Margaret: ‘the extent of Margery’s martyrdom can be measured by the number of times she reports being told to shut up.’58 The very acts of hostility that critics have interpreted as indicative of Margery’s radical or marginal status were intended by the author to embrace her in the wholly orthodox and socially acceptable lives of the virgin martyrs. For Margery the animosity she receives is a tool to authorise and underpin her sanctity. The information we have of this hostility is edited and chosen by Margery as an essential element of her identity construct, a self-representation of her desired sanctity.
Linking hostility to a sexual threat also echoes hagiographical tradition. Margery has to battle to gain and keep her chastity. The very act of achieving her chastity becomes a trade-off between the worldly material life of her past and the Christian ideal she wishes to follow. On the road to Bridlington Margery gains her chastity from John, her husband, by paying his debts. She exchanges money, a symbol of her past status as a proud businesswoman, for her symbol of holiness, her chastity.59 The various threats she then overcomes against her new virginal state are highly reminiscent of the sexual threats of the pagan emperors against the Christian virgins. There is no pagan king to force Margery to abandon her faith through sexual attack, so the Steward of Leicester adopts this role. Unable to outwit Margery with words, the Steward resorts to physical attack. She is saved through telling him ‘how she had her speech and conversing from the Holy Ghost and not from her own knowledge’.60 The constancy and veracity of her faith both protect her from attack and necessitate attack.
As Staley argues, Margery’s textual achievements should be acknowledged. Margery was a conscious author, editing her text to bring to the forefront the issues she desired to be associated with. But the work is an autobiography, Margery discussing her self and constructing her identity in a way that a medieval audience would have implicitly linked to the lives of female saints. The Book may not fit squarely into a set hagiographical category of virgin martyr or reformed sinner, but clear connections exist that demonstrate Margery’s awareness of the format of saintly literature. The Book represents Margery’s sanctity as she has prescribed it, through the acknowledgement, influence, authorisation and assimilation of the hagiographical texts that Margery herself tells us she was familiar with. In a context and society of mimetic culture the importance of literary identification with an archetypal pattern was firmly established.
The problem for the modern reader is that ‘St Margery’ is not a figure embraced by the 500 years between the writing of and the discovery of the text. But the text was clearly intended to be read with Margery’s saintly manifestation established. Margery believed that her sanctity was ordained by God, and imparts her saintly credentials throughout the Book as intercessor, protector, and miracle-worker. Her authorisation was the powerful status of female saints in medieval life. She may not fit a neat modern category, but that is explained by the varying models she adopted, and the varying influences of the sexual and the virgin. The precedents of the Magdalene and the more contemporary St Bridget were necessary to authorise Margery’s renouncement of past lusts, and the recognisable trial and martyrdom suffered by the virgin saints and echoed by Margery were necessary to embed her status of female sanctity. The formats of the hagiographical tradition echo throughout Margery’s text as a device to encompass the acts and events of Margery’s life in the lives of female saints. The Book may not fit some modern commentators’ ideals and interpretations of what constitutes ‘official’ hagiography, and, indeed, the failing of Margery’s saintly ambitions leads to the uniqueness of the text. Moreover, we do not know whether Margery undertook the actual events in her Book; there is no other evidence but her text. But the author clearly sought identification with the female community that surrounded Christ, and Margery believed that she would take her place here as ordained by Christ. Margery sought and confirmed her orthodox status in terms of her beliefs through her trials and questionings, and the adoption of hagiographical structures that are evident throughout the Book confirms the orthodoxy of Margery’s literary style.
Of course, it was not just women who looked to the saints to provide affirmation of identity. Evidence shows that men too appropriated the images and emblems of the saints for their own purposes, the most well-known case in the fourteenth century being Richard II. Richard was devoted to Edward the Confessor. Edward was king of England from 1042 to 1066, but most of his life prior to accession had been spent in Normandy. His early years as king saw a number of notable magnates exiled, which led to later political problems for Edward when these exiles returned. His reign was also troubled with issues of succession – although Edward had married in 1045, by 1050 it was clear that no offspring were forthcoming. Indeed, Edward does not seem to have married happily. He was in his 40s before he married and, when his wife’s father, Godwin, was exiled, his wife was despatched to a convent. However, Godwin returned and Edith was reinstated as Edward’s wife.
The Life of King Edward was written after his death, but, states the author, at the request of Edith, so it must have been composed prior to 1075, the date of Edith’s death.61 The Life was written in two parts, one covering Edward’s political life, the other his spiritual, personal life. Elements of the work reflect that of hagiography. In the first part of the book appears the assertion that a monk of Glastonbury had a vision predicting Edward’s holiness as St Peter marked him out for a chaste life. The second part emphasises again his chastity and attributes him with the ability to perform miraculous cures. The cult of Edward probably started in his own court before his demise: ‘the idea of a holy king was fashionable in the eleventh century. The power to cure illness, an adjunct of sainthood, had become in France an adjunct of kingship.’62 Edward was canonised in 1161, by the authority of the Pope and not merely by the existence of a cult, and in 1163 he was translated to a new shrine within the abbey of Westminster.
The cult of Edward was clearly important to the early Plantagenet kings, in particular Henry III.63 Henry was the patron of Westminster Abbey, and rebuilt the church from 1245 at massive cost, the equivalent of two years’ royal revenue. Edward the Confessor himself had undertaken the construction of the original Romanesque abbey that Henry rebuilt, and also established the palace of Westminster as a major royal residence: ‘In the twelfth and thirteenth century cult literature of St Edward, it is striking that all the important events of his reign are presented as having occurred either within the king’s household at the palace or in the abbey at Westminster.’64 Together with his shrine at the Abbey, Henry obviously saw the palace as an important manifestation of the saint. This devotion explains his interest in rebuilding Westminster on such a scale, but it is unclear why Edward’s cult suddenly came to prominence under this king. Binski argues that it was possibly a counterattack on the cult of St Thomas Beckett, the rise of a royal saint over that of a rebellious magnate. However, ‘Henry III attended St Thomas’s translation at Canterbury in 1220, gave relics of his vestment, comb, and blood to Westminster Abbey, and regularly honoured the saint’s memory, as did his son to an even greater degree’.65 Binski continues that the emergence of St Edward was more likely due to the idea of the construction of the monarchy and the growth of the sense of nation with Westminster at the heart, stating that, while Henry III’s request to be buried at Westminster was probably in part an act of piety, it was also ‘an acknowledgement of the political centralisation of the kingdom, a centralisation which was simultaneously acquiring a mythology in the life and character of St Edward’.66
The fourteenth century saw a dip in the popularity of Edward’s cult. However, it re-emerged under the reign of Richard II. From what has been discovered about Henry III and the growth of the cult of Edward, it would appear that Edward was closely associated with the sense of royal authority and power: in this context a link between Richard and Edward would seem manifest, one king using the cult of another to uphold monarchical strength. This would seem particularly true given Richard’s known thoughts on the absolute power of kingship granted by God. Richard was clearly devoted to Edward, even impaling his arms with those of the saint, an act usually reserved for man and wife. And Edward was one of the saints who appeared with Richard in his supplication to the Virgin Mary on the Wilton Diptych.
But it would appear that Richard’s appropriation of the images of St Edward in this way was beyond that of shared kingship. Lewis has argued that Richard’s devotion to Edward was a way of enforcing not just his kingly authority but his masculine status. As well as kingship, Richard and Edward shared the status of childlessness.67 These two issues do not sit well together; part of the role of king is to produce an heir. Neither Richard nor Edward seemed particularly anxious to achieve this. It has already been stated that Edward married late in life and sent his wife off to a convent at the first opportunity. Richard was married twice, first to Anne of Bohemia, traditionally seen as a love match, and then again to the extremely young Isabella of France, only 7 years of age at the time of the wedding. It seems odd that, after a childless first marriage, Richard would marry a bride who could not produce heirs for several years at least. Politically, the marriage was necessary to promote links with France and to secure peace, but dynastically it was disastrous. It was after this second marriage in 1397 that Richard probably adopted the impaled arms, although he first used them in the period between the death of Anne and his remarriage. The arms of Richard and Edward together appeared on silver vessels, on his banner and on his signet seals.68
Edward’s sanctity was based on his lack of children. The myth grew that this was due to Edward and Edith’s chastity and Edward’s virginity was lauded. Obviously, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, virginity was seen as the ideal state, leaving the body pure, as intended by God. However, in reality this was a status associated with women. Masculinity called for more physical prowess in the securing of dynasty and power. Clerics were, of course, both male and virgin, but they were seen as above the level of the laity, closer to God and removed from the rest of society through their ability to perform the miracle of the holy mass. In secular society maleness and virginity were not ideal partners. Lewis argues that this is where Richard’s appropriation of the image of Edward the Confessor is most significant: ‘by representing himself as heroically chaste Richard could demonstrate that he was a real man, even without fathering children or having sex with wife or mistresses.’69 Whatever Richard’s actual sexual status, whether virgin, impotent, or married to a barren wife, his adoption of the emblems of Edward led to an association of holy chastity, and affirmation that it was possible to be a successful king but be childless: ‘for the surviving partner of a childless, royal marriage, reconstructing that marriage as one of deliberate sexual abstinence could be a means of self-validation, not to say self-preservation.’70
Here, as seen with Katherine Swynford and Margery Kempe, the issue of shared gender is significant. Richard and Edward were both male and both kings. If Edward had not been of the same royal status, then the appropriation of his image would not have carried the same meaning. In this, gender is secondary to role. However, Richard’s appropriation of the emblem of a virgin queen would not have conveyed the same message. As already mentioned, virginity in women was seen in a very different light from that of men. The saints, for Richard II, Katherine Swynford, Margery Kempe and the women mentioned as leaving gifts to the church, were clearly gendered role models.
But this did not have to be the case. Evidence shows that cross-gender devotions were present. The clearest example of this is with the worship of the Virgin Mary, her growth in importance and popularity in the fourteenth century happening in all elements of society, both male and female. The Wilton Diptych demonstrates that Richard had a Marian devotion; her role of intercessor is clear in this iconography. John of Gaunt also appears to have been a Marian devotee. She is mentioned in his will on numerous occasions to the exclusion of any other saint bar the twelve apostles. John Beaufort appears to have shared his mother’s devotion to St Katherine. He died at the hospital of St Katherine by the Tower of London, and owned a book of hours with an exquisite depiction of the saint with her wheel.
Men also gave gifts of household items and personal clothing to the Church. Gaunt bequeathed to the Church of the Annunciation of our Lady of the Newarke in Leicester his red garment of velvet embroidered with gold suns.71 However, as French found, there was a difference in the manner in which men and women bequeathed these items. Women specifically stated how they should be used, and these uses were gender based – ornamentation for female saints, or coverings for altars. It would appear that gender played an important role in the way devotions manifested themselves. Cross-gender devotions were possible and happened frequently. But it would seem that the actual appropriation of a saint’s image – the manifestation of the individual with part of the saint’s life, the adoption of the saint’s emblem as a personal badge, the self-affirmation that was a possible part of devotion – was based on shared gender and the shared understanding of role that this led to.
Clearly, medieval society viewed the saints as significant figures, not just in the traditional sense of holy figures to pray to for intercession, but as models of certain lifestyles or characteristics that could be appropriated for an individual’s own use. Women in particular connected with the virgin martyrs, viewing them as intrinsically female as well as holy, as can be seen in the instructions given for the use of bequests and gifts to local churches. But there is evidence that men also saw the saints as human beings who could help them in their process of self-affirmation. Within this context Katherine’s use of the spiked wheel as her armorial and livery badge seems a natural step for a woman of previously dubious position who wished to emphasise her newly confirmed royal status, her respectability and her nobility of character, traits that were central to the story of St Katherine. The evidence is plain: Katherine Swynford had agency over how her character was presented and used a female role model to help her create an image that matched her new status as Duchess of Lancaster.