I love Margery Kempe. Well, I find her really interesting historically. If I knew her in real life, I would flee in the opposite direction.
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She was known for screaming, sobbing & writhing about in spiritual ecstasies to the inconvenience & annoyance of nearly everyone else.
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Then her register would switch & she'd become a gossipy, pragmatic, materialistic woman of the top echelons of the merchant class.
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This led to her being dismissed as an attention seeker & a hypocrite by many of her contemporaries & 20th century scholars.
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But more recently, some historians have argued that this assumes that a dichotomy between spirituality & worldliness must exist.
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Nicole Klan pointed out that a highly affective religiosity exists alongside down-to-earth pragmatism in rest of life among the Pentecostals
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Alison Torn argued contemporary society conflates mysticism with psychosis but only the latter is a hindrance to a fully functional life.
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In late 14th, early 15th century England, there was also a sense of dichotomy. You were either a religious or you were of the world.
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But this didn't work in practice either and there were semi-religious women who married & worked but lived in a monastic community.
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This was seen very positively although some felt this was usurping the status of the anchoress or nun without fully committing.
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And if living alongside anchoresses and nuns (when single) that having one foot still in the world could bring in corruption.
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But either way, you were meant to be quiet & private about your religiosity if you chose such a hybrid way of life. Margery wasn't quiet.
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She wanted to be a saint & some of her attempts at this do seem very naive & obvious. God says he talks to her even more than Saint Bridget.
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But I don't think she was a hypocrite. I think both her affective piety & her worldly pragmatism were genuine & she didn't see a conflict.
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