“Nota de Clamore”
This chapter recounts how a fifteenth-century annotator has added “nota de clamor[e]” in the margin at the moment of Margery Kempe's “fyrst cry pat euyr sche cryed in any contemplacyon.” It mentions Hope Emily Allen, one of the earliest editors of Kempe's book, who observes that the marginal comment recalls Richard Rolle's description of his own tumultuous expression of divine love: “clamor iste canor est.” It also examines Allen's view that misunderstands Rolle and reads in Margery Kempe's tears and wails the possibility that Rolle's clamor is literal and physical. The chapter explores how Allen sets Kempe's spiritual understanding against other medieval mystics, such as the author of the late fourteenth-century treatise The Cloud of Unknowing. It shows how the Cloud-author advances a familiar distinction between bodily and spiritual sensation, which aligns the misunderstanding of the novice contemplative or would-be mystic with a desperate excess of labor.