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Women on the Move in Holy Land   The improvement in pilgrimage conditions brought about not only a significant growth in the total number of pilgrims but also renewed the presence of Western women in the Holy Land. Most of the female pilgrims hailed from the European bourgeoisie, a fact that is reflected in the literature of the period. The Wife of Bath, for example, one of the heroines of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canter- bury Tales, written at the end of the fourteenth century, announces that she has been to Jerusalem three times. Pilgrims bathing in the River Jordan, from a medieval manuscript. The renewal of women's pilgrimages effected a reappearance of the feminine genre of pilgrimage literature after a hiatus of a thousand years. The prominent texts in the field are the books of the mystic Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) and Margery Kempe of Norfolk, England (1373-1438). Bridget, a member of the aristocracy in Sweden who wielded influence among the church leadership in Rome, and Margery Kempe, a member of the English upper middle class, were strikingly similar. Both were in their forties and mothers of a great many children (Bridget had eight and Margery fourteen) when they became ascetics. And both women experienced visions in which Jesus himself told them to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Both of the women, taking their respective visions to heart, decided to travel to Jerusalem. Leaving their homes and children, they dedicated themselves entirely to religious faith and experience. The descriptions left us by the two women are set in the sites where Jesus suffered—Golgotha, the Holy Sepulchre, and the place on the Mount of Olives from which he ascended to heaven. In fact, the two women's identification with Jesus' afflictions was physically manifested. Bridget was the victim of weakness and aches, and Margery, who could not stop weeping during the entire three weeks of her stay in Jerusalem, had convulsions during her visits to the holy places, so that she could neither stand nor kneel.  |
