Amanuensis

Someone who copies dictation. A secretary. A learned hand.

"Towards the end of her days she made two attempts to record all that had happened in her adventurous life. Although she had often been asked to put it down on paper, she for long refused, saying that the time was not ripe. Shortly before her last journey, however, she decided that the time had now come and, as she thought, the man to act as her amanuensis, for she could not write herself. This man, she tells us, had lived for many years in 'Dutchland' (Germany), and on his return had come to live with her. Although she does not say so, it seems highly probable that this was her son, who, as we have seen, came to Lynn with his wife and child about this time. Be this as it may, he had only taken down part of her story when he died, and for a while Margery could get no one to help her. In the end she prevailed on a priest whom she trusted, and who had pressed her to set down her story, to look at what had been done. When he did so he complained that the language was neither English nor 'Dutch', and furthermore that the book was written in a difficult hand which he was most reluctant to try to reduce to order. Finally he made a start in July 1435, and although he found the script so hard to read that he thought the Devil had affected his eyesight, by reading it word by word to Margery and being aided by her memory when the text was obscure, he successfully rewrote Book I, and then turned to write Book II, telling of Margery's further history and her last pilgrimage."

Six Medieval Men & Women, "Margery Kempe," H. S. Bennett (1955).