Analysis Of The Thirty-Seven Conclusions Of The Lollards

“‘Either you are a right good woman or else a right wicked woman’” (Kempe 83). Determining the exact label for Margery Kempe is debatable amongst scholars, as it was amongst her peers. While Kempe does exhibit convictions that can be found in “The Thirty-Seven Conclusions of the Lollards,” many scholars argue that Kempe’s beliefs were entirely orthodox. However, it is possible that Kempe was influenced by the radical preaching’s of the Lollards, and chose specific tenets in which to believe – namely the ability to preach, something deemed as heretical during Kempe’s time. If Kempe was familiar with the texts of the Lollards, it is also possible Kempe was familiar with King Henry IV’s De Hæretico Comburendo, which decreed that heretics would …show more content…
In her essay “The Radical, Yet Orthodox, Margery Kempe, Fiona Tolhurst argues: “Based on the testimony of her book, Kempe embodies the opposite of Lollard norms: she is solidly middle-class, implicitly rejects the married state when she chooses celibacy, and enacts an extreme version of women’s devotion through her cryings that reflect medieval representations of the Virgin Mary’s grief” (183). When Margery is on trial in Leicester for participating in Lollardy, she: “acquits herself with the standard orthodox response, acknowledging that priests have the power of consecration” (Morse 31). When asked to state her belief in the sacrament of the alter, Margery responds: “‘Sirs, I believe in the sacrament of the alter … if he says duly those words over the bread that our Lord Jesus Christ said … I believe that it is his very flesh and his blood and no material bread nor ever may be unsaid be it once said” (Kempe 84-85). Margery’s belief in transubstantiation directly opposes the Lollard belief that priests held this power, and for Kempe’s persecutors, having this answer on record is enough to declare her innocence. Accordingly, Kempe participates in many other “anti-Lollard” and orthodox practices: “she presents herself as fasting, using pilgrimage as a way to prove her devotion to God, adoring images of Christ as well as people who resemble those images, invoking and receiving aid from saints and her good angel, and keeping holy days” (Tolhurst 183). Even those practices that parallel the Lollard tenets; like Kempe’s abhorrence to cursing, can be argued as orthodox Christian behavior: “…but criticism of unnecessary oaths … was also commonplace in orthodox discourse, as various preaching materials recount” (Arnold