Margery Kempe reports visiting near Jerusalem ‘the place ther owyr Lady was beriid’, but as such a devout person would believe, the Virgin's tomb had been occupied only briefly before Mary was assumed into heaven integrally in body and soul. Kempe is following in the footsteps of St Bridget of Sweden, who at the Virgin's tomb receives a vision of Mary, who tells her firmly: ‘Know that there is no human body in heaven apart from the body of my glorious Son and my own body’ (Liber Celestis, 7.26). Satisfyingly surpassing St Bridget, Kempe has visions at the Virgin's tomb not only of Mary but of Christ as well (ch. 29). Kempe also sees herself present at the death of the Virgin and weeps so much that the apostles try in vain to silence her, but Mary thanks her and promises remission of sins (ch. 73). When Christ assures Kempe that he will be present at her death with companies of angels, apostles, and saints (ch. 22), Kempe envisages her own end by means of the iconography of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin. In such moments Kempe reflects the Assumption's familiarity and significance in later medieval English culture. The Assumption was a major feast, celebrated with splendid liturgy and music, and as one of the Joys of the Virgin it was much depicted in all the arts: Mary, wafted by angels, soars up towards her coronation in heaven by her son, in an image of exuberant triumph.

Yet nagging doubts and questions had arisen since the earliest times about this non-scriptural episode. Stories of Mary's passing away, obsequies, and assumption into heaven originate in apocryphal literature from the fourth century onwards with various accounts in Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Greek, as well as in Latin. The nature of Mary's transition from this life to the next – was there a death or a ‘dormition’, a kind of falling asleep? – was a source of contention, as also was her bodily assumption into heaven. For the later medieval West at least, the most influential narrative sources were the Transitus Mariae attributed to Pseudo-Melito of Sardis, and the Transitus A (actually a thirteenth-century Italian composition, but supposedly authored by Joseph of Arimathea). An influential synthesis was presented in Jacobus de Voragine's account of the Assumption in The Golden Legend.