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Wednesday, October 30, 2019

So Margery Kempe and Merlin seem to be very similar

Okay, so recently we just read about Margery Kempe. I noticed quite a few similarities between her and Merlin. Somethings that one might not realize at first. First of all, Margery also went a little crazy, but it was after having her first child getting very sick and then having the tragic run in with the priest during confession and obviously her visions. During her time of insanity, she had to be chained to the bed and isolated. As I was reading this Vita Merlini, I noticed that Merlin too also seemed to go crazy after his experience in the war and also had to be restrained and coerced. Both of them seems to lose it after a traumatic event too. Merlin with the war and Margery with the traumatic birth.
The weird thing is that for Merlin, when he hears this music in the forest, he is instantly better kind of like when Jesus comes to Margery. Although the two things that come to these two people are different, it seems to give them that same feeling of ease and sanity.
Another thing that I noticed that was similar about these two was the fact that Merlin isolates himself in the forest and leaves his wife behind telling her to go ahead and find someone else to marry. In Margery's case, she doesn't leave her husband but she does stop sleeping with him and living with him and devotes herself to traveling for God.
Lastly, they are both given sorts of visions throughout their whole lives that can deeply disturb them. Merlin sees how people are going to die. While it might not explicitly say that this could have disturbed him from time to time I think we can assume it would disturb someone. And in Margery's case, she was seeing these visions of Jesus and his life and death, which at times could be a lot for her to handle hence all the crying.
Both of these people were not considered witches or wizards, but they both seemed to have powers beyond the realm of normal. I think this is an interesting thing during this time that some people would have been seen as witches and burnt at the stake for these same acts but these two are not.
Image result for similarity meme

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