The Book of Margery Kempe (11 page)

When this creature and her companions had arrived at Constance, she heard tell of an English friar, a master of divinity and the Pope's legate, who was in that city. Then she went to that worthy man and unfolded to him the story of her life from the beginning up to that hour, as near as she could in confession, because he was the Pope's legate and a respected clerk.

And afterwards she told him what trouble she was having with her companions. She also told him what grace God gave her of contrition and compunction, of sweetness and devotion, and of many various revelations which our Lord had revealed to her, and the fear that she had of delusions and deceptions by her spiritual enemies, because of which she lived in great fear, desiring to put them aside and to feel none, if she might withstand them.

And when she had spoken, the worthy clerk gave her words of great comfort, and said it was the work of the Holy Ghost, commanding and charging her to obey them and receive them when God would give them and to have no doubts, for the devil has no power to work such grace in a soul. And also he said he would support her against the ill will of her companions.

Afterwards, when her party pleased, they invited this worthy doctor to dinner. And the doctor told this creature, warning her to sit at table in his presence as she did in his absence, and behave in the same way as she did when he was not there.

When the time had come for them to sit at table, everybody took his place where he liked. The worthy legate and doctor sat first, and then the others, and lastly the said creature, sitting at the end of the table and speaking not a word, as she was wont to do when the legate was not there. Then the legate said to her, ‘Why are you not merrier?'

And she sat still and did not answer, as he himself had commanded her to do.

When they had eaten, the company made a great deal of complaint about this creature to the legate, and said absolutely that
she could no longer be in their party, unless he would order her to eat meat as they did, and leave off her weeping, and that she should not talk so much of holiness.

Then the worthy doctor said, ‘No, sirs, I will not make her eat meat while she can abstain and be the better disposed to love our Lord. Whichever of you all who made a vow to walk to Rome barefoot, I would not dispense him of his vow whilst he might fulfil it, and nor will I order her to eat meat while our Lord gives her strength to abstain. As for her weeping, it is not in my power to restrain it, for it is the gift of the Holy Ghost. As for her talking, I will ask her to stop until she comes somewhere that people will hear her more gladly than you do.'

The company was extremely angry. They gave her over to the legate and said absolutely that they would have nothing more to do with her. He very kindly and benevolently received her as though she had been his mother, and took charge of her money -about twenty pounds – and yet one of them wrongfully withheld about sixteen pounds.
¹
And they also withheld her maidservant and would not let her go with her mistress, notwithstanding that she had promised her mistress and assured her that she would not forsake her for any necessity.

And the legate made all arrangements for this creature (and organized for her the exchange of her English money into foreign money), as though she had been his mother. Then this creature went into a church and prayed our Lord to arrange for somebody to escort her. And then our Lord spoke to her and said, ‘You shall have a very good help and guide.'

And very soon afterwards there came to her an old man with a white beard. He came from Devonshire, and he said, ‘Ma'am, will you ask me, for God's love and for our Lady's, to go with you and be your guide, since your fellow countrymen have forsaken you?'

She asked what his name was.

He said, ‘My name is William Wever.'

She prayed him, out of reverence of God and of our Lady, to help her in her need, and she would well reward him for his labour. And so they were agreed.

Then she went to the legate and told him how well our Lord had arranged for her, and took her leave of him and of her party who had so unkindly rejected her, and also of her maidservant who was bound to have gone with her. She took leave with a very long face and was very unhappy, because she was in a strange country, and did not know the language or the man who was going to escort her either. And so the man and she went off together in great anxiety and gloom. As they went along together this man said to her, ‘I'm afraid you'll be taken from me, and I'll be beaten up because of you and lose my coat.'

She said, ‘William, don't be afraid. God will look after us very well.'

And every day this creature remembered the Gospel that tells of the woman who was taken in adultery and brought before our Lord. And then she prayed,

‘Lord, as you drove away her enemies, so drive away my enemies, and preserve my chastity that I vowed to you and let me never be defiled, and if I am, Lord, I vow that I will never return to England as long as I live.'

Then they went on day by day and met many excellent people. And they didn't say a bad word to this creature, but gave her and her man food and drink, and the good wives at the lodgings where they put up laid her in their own beds for God's love in many places where they went. And our Lord visited her with great grace of spiritual comfort as she went on her way.

And so God brought her on her way until she came to Bologna. And after she had got there, her former companions who had abandoned her arrived there too. And when they heard tell that she had got to Bologna before them they were amazed, and one of the party came to her asking her to go to his companions and try if they would have her back again in their party. And so she did.

‘If you want to travel in our party you must give a new undertaking, which is this: you will not talk of the Gospel where we are, but you will sit and make merry, like us, at all meals.'

She agreed and was received back into their party. Then they went on to Venice and stayed there thirteen weeks.
²
And this
creature received communion every Sunday in a great house of nuns – and was very warmly welcomed amongst them – where our merciful Lord Christ Jesus visited this creature with great devotion and plentiful tears, so that the good ladies of the place were greatly amazed at it.

Afterwards it happened, as this creature sat at table with her companions, that she repeated a text of the Gospel which she had learned before with other good words, and then her companions said she had broken her undertaking. And she said, ‘Yes, sirs, indeed I can no longer keep this agreement with you, for I must speak of my Lord Jesus Christ, though all this world had forbidden me.'

And then she took to her chamber and ate alone for six weeks, until the time when our Lord made her so ill that she thought she would die, and then he suddenly made her well again. And all the time her maidservant left her alone and prepared the company's food and washed their clothes, and to her mistress, whom she had promised to serve, she would in no way attend.

Also this company, which had excluded the said creature from their table so that she should no longer eat amongst them, arranged a ship for themselves to sail in. They bought containers for their wine and arranged bedding for themselves, but nothing for her.
¹
Then she, seeing their unkindness, went to the man they had been to and provided herself with bedding as they had done, and came where they were and showed them what she had done, intending to sail with them in that ship which they had engaged.

Afterwards, as this creature was in contemplation, our Lord warned her in her mind that she should not sail in that ship, and he assigned her another ship, a galley, that she should sail in.
Then she told this to some of the company, and they told it to others of their party, and then they dared not sail in the ship which they had arranged. And so they sold off the containers which they had got for their wines, and were very glad to come to the galley where she was, and so, though it was against her will, she went on with them in their company, for they did not dare do otherwise.
²

When it was time to make their beds they locked up her bedclothes, and a priest who was in her party took a sheet away from this creature, and said it was his. She took God to witness that it was her sheet. Then the priest swore a great oath, by the book in his hand, that she was as false as she might be, and despised her and severely rebuked her.

And so she had great and continual tribulation until she came to Jerusalem.
³
And before she arrived there, she said to them that she supposed they were annoyed with her, T pray you, sirs, be in charity with me, for I am in charity with you, and forgive me if I have annoyed you along the way. And if any of you have in any way trespassed against me, God forgive you for it, as I do.'

And so they went on into the Holy Land until they could see Jerusalem. And when this creature saw Jerusalem – she was riding on an ass – she thanked God with all her heart, praying him for his mercy that, just as he had brought her to see this earthly city of Jerusalem, he would grant her grace to see the blissful city of Jerusalem above, the city of heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ, answering her thought, granted her her desire.

Then for the joy that she had and the sweetness that she felt in the conversation of our Lord, she was on the point of falling off her ass, for she could not bear the sweetness and grace that God wrought in her soul. Then two German pilgrims went up to her and kept her from falling – one of them was a priest, and he put spices in her mouth to comfort her, thinking she was ill. And so they helped her onwards to Jerusalem, and when she arrived there she said, ‘Sirs, I beg you, don't be annoyed though I weep bitterly in this holy place where our Lord Jesus Christ lived and died.'

Then they went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,
⁴
and they were let in on the one day at evensong time, and remained until evensong time on the next day.
⁵
Then the friars lifted up a cross and led the pilgrims about from one place to another where our Lord had suffered his pains and his Passion, every man and woman carrying a wax candle in one hand.
⁶
And the friars always, as they went about, told them what our Lord suffered in every place. And this creature wept and sobbed as plenteously as though she had seen our Lord with her bodily eyes suffering his Passion at that time. Before her in her soul she saw him in truth by contemplation, and that caused her to have compassion. And when they came up on to the Mount of Calvary, she fell down because she could not stand or kneel, but writhed and wrestled with her body, spreading her arms out wide, and cried with a loud voice as though her heart would have burst apart, for in the city of her soul she saw truly and freshly how our Lord was crucified. Before her face she heard and saw in her spiritual sight the mourning of our Lady, of St John and Mary Magdalene, and of many others that loved our Lord.
⁷

And she had such great compassion and such great pain to see our Lord's pain, that she could not keep herself from crying and roaring though she should have died for it. And this was the first crying that she ever cried in any contemplation.
⁸
And this kind of crying lasted for many years after this time, despite anything that anyone might do, and she suffered much contempt and much reproof for it. The crying was so loud and so amazing that it astounded people, unless they had heard it before, or else knew the reason for the cryings. And she had them so often that they made her very weak in her bodily strength, and specially if she heard of our Lord's Passion.
⁹

And sometimes, when she saw the crucifix, or if she saw a man had a wound, or a beast, whichever it were, or if a man beat a child before her or hit a horse or other beast with a whip, if she saw or heard it, she thought she saw our Lord being beaten or wounded, just as she saw it in the man or in the beast, either in the fields or in the town, and alone by herself as well as among people.

When she first had her cryings at Jerusalem, she had them often, and in Rome also. And when she first came home to England her cryings came but seldom, perhaps once a month, then once a week, afterwards daily, and once she had fourteen in one day, and another day she had seven, just as God would visit her with them, sometimes in church, sometimes in the street, sometimes in her chamber, sometimes in the fields, when God would send them, for she never knew the time nor hour when they would come. And they never came without surpassingly great sweetness of devotion and high contemplation.

And as soon as she perceived that she was going to cry, she would hold it in as much as she could, so that people would not hear it and get annoyed. For some said it was a wicked spirit tormented her; some said it was an illness; some said she had drunk too much wine; some cursed her; some wished she was in the harbour; some wished she was on the sea in a bottomless boat; and so each man as he thought. Other, spiritually inclined men loved her and esteemed her all the more. Some great clerks said our Lady never cried so, nor any saint in heaven, but they knew very little what she felt, nor would they believe that she could not stop herself from crying if she wanted.

And therefore, when she knew that she was going to cry, she held it in as long as she could, and did all that she could to withstand it or else to suppress it, until she turned the colour of lead, and all the time it would be seething more and more in her mind until such time as it burst out. And when the body might no longer endure the spiritual effort, but was overcome with the unspeakable love that worked so fervently in her soul, then she fell down and cried astonishingly loud. And the more that she laboured to keep it in or to suppress it, so much the more would she cry, and the louder.

And thus she did on the Mount of Calvary, as it is written before: she had as true contemplation in the sight of her soul as if Christ had hung before her bodily eye in his manhood. And when through dispensation of the high mercy of our sovereign saviour, Christ Jesus, it was granted to this creature to behold so truly his
precious tender body, all rent and torn with scourges, more full of wounds than a dove-cote ever was of holes,
¹⁰
hanging upon the cross with the crown of thorns upon his head, his blessed hands, his tender feet nailed to the hard wood, the rivers of blood flowing out plenteously from every limb, the grisly and grievous wound in his precious side shedding out blood and water for her love and her salvation, then she fell down and cried with a loud voice, twisting and turning her body amazingly on every side, spreading her arms out wide as if she would have died, and could not keep herself from crying and these physical movements, because of the fire of love that burned so fervently in her soul with pure pity and compassion.
¹¹

It is not to be wondered at if this creature cried out and made astonishing expressions, when we may see every day with our own eyes both men and women – some for loss of worldly wealth, some for love of their family or for worldly friendships, through overmuch study and earthly affection, and most of all for inordinate love and physical feeling, if their friends are parted from them – who will cry and roar and wring their hands as if they were out of their wits and minds, and yet they know well enough that they displease God.

And if anybody advises them to leave off their weeping and crying, they will say that they cannot; they loved their friend so much and he was so gentle and kind to them that they may in no way forget him. How much more might they weep, cry and roar, if their most beloved friends were violently seized in front of their eyes and brought with every kind of reproof before the judge, wrongfully condemned to death, and especially so shameful a death as our merciful Lord suffered for our sake. How would they bear it? No doubt they would both cry and roar and avenge themselves if they could, or else people would say they were no friends.

Alas, alas for sorrow, that the death of a creature who has often sinned and trespassed against his Maker should be so immeasurably mourned and sorrowed over. It is an offence to God and a hindrance to other souls.

And the compassionate death of our Saviour, by which we are all restored to life, is not kept in mind by us unworthy and unkind wretches, nor will we support those whom our Lord has entrusted with his secrets and endued with love, but rather disparage and hinder them as much as we may.