The Book of Margery Kempe (13 page)

When this creature saw she was abandoned, and ejected from amongst those good men, she was very miserable, most of all because she had no confessor and could not then be shriven as she wished. Then, with great abundance of tears, she prayed to our Lord, of his mercy, that he would dispose for her as was most pleasing to him.

And later she called to her Richard with the broken back, asking him to go over to a church opposite the Hospital
¹
and inform the parson of the church of her manner of behaving, and what sorrow she had, and how she wept because she might not be shriven or receive communion, and what compunction and contrition she had for her sins.

Then Richard went to the parson and told him about this creature, and how our Lord gave her contrition and compunction with great abundance of tears, and how she wanted to receive communion every Sunday if she could, and she had no priest to be shriven to. And then the parson, hearing of her contrition and compunction, was very glad and bade that she should come to him in the name of Jesus and say her ‘
Confiteor',
and he would give her communion himself, for he could not understand any English.

Then our Lord sent St John the Evangelist to hear her confession,
²
and she said ‘
Benedicite',
and he said ‘
Dominus
' truly in her soul, so that she saw him and heard him in her spiritual understanding as she would have done another priest by her bodily sense. Then she told him all her sins and all her un-happiness with many sorrowful tears, and he heard her very meekly and kindly. And afterwards he enjoined on her the penance that she should do for her trespass, and absolved her of her sins with sweet and humble words, highly strengthening her to trust in the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, and bade her that she should receive the sacrament of the altar, in the name of Jesus. And then he passed away from her.

When he was gone, she prayed with all her heart all the time, as she heard mass, ‘Lord, as surely as you are not angry with me, grant me a well of tears,
³
through which I may receive your precious body with all manner of tears of devotion to your worship and the increasing of my merit; for you are my joy, Lord, my bliss, my comfort, and all the treasure that I have in this world, for I covet no other worldly joy, but only you. And therefore, my dearest Lord and my God, do not forsake me.'

Then our blessed Lord Christ Jesus answered to her soul and said, ‘My beloved daughter, I swear by my high majesty that I will never forsake you. And, daughter, the more shame, contempt and rebuke that you suffer for my love, the better I love you, for I behave like a man who greatly loves his wife: the more envy that other men have of her, the better he will dress her to spite his enemies. And just so, daughter, shall I behave with you. In
anything that you do, daughter, or say, you cannot please God better than by believing that he loves you; for if it were possible for me to weep with you, I would weep with you, daughter, for the compassion that I have for you. The time shall come when you will consider yourself well pleased, for in you shall be proved true the common proverb that men say: “He is blessed indeed who can sit in his chair of happiness and talk about his chair of unhappiness.” And so shall you do, daughter, and all your weeping and your sorrow shall turn into joy and bliss which you shall never lack.'

Another time, while this creature was at the church of St John Lateran, before the altar, hearing mass, she thought that the priest who said mass seemed a good and devout man. She was greatly moved in spirit to speak with him. Then she asked her man with the broken back to go to the priest and ask him to speak with her. The priest understood no English and did not know what she was saying, and she knew no other language than English, and therefore they spoke through an interpreter, a man who told each of them what the other said.

Then she prayed the priest, in the name of Jesus, that he should make his prayers to the blessed Trinity, to our Lady, and to all the blessed saints in heaven, also urging others who loved our Lord to pray for him, so that he might have grace to understand her language and her speech in such things as she, through the grace of God, would say to him.

The priest was a good man, German by birth, a good clerk and a learned man, highly beloved, well esteemed and much trusted in Rome, and he had one of the greatest offices of any priest in Rome.

Desiring to please God, he followed the advice of this creature, and he prayed to God as devoutly as he could every day, that he might have grace to understand what this creature would say to him, and he also got other lovers of our Lord to pray for him. They prayed in this way for thirteen days. And after thirteen days the priest came back to her to test the effect of their prayers, and then he understood what she said in English to him, and she understood what he said. And yet he did not understand the English that other people spoke; even though they spoke the same words that she spoke, he still did not understand them unless she spoke herself.

Then she was confessed to this priest of all her sins, as near as her memory would serve her, from her childhood up until that hour, and received her penance very joyfully. And afterwards she told him about the secret things of revelations and of high contemplations, and how she had such thought of his Passion, and such great compassion when God would give it, that she fell down because of it and could not bear it. Then she wept bitterly, she sobbed violently and cried out so loud and horribly that people were often afraid and greatly astonished, thinking she had been troubled with some evil spirit or a sudden illness – not believing it was the work of God, but rather some evil spirit, or a sudden illness, or else pretence and hypocrisy, something she put on deceitfully herself.

The priest had great trust that it was the work of God and, when he had doubts, our Lord sent him such tokens through this creature of his own misconduct and his manner of living – which nobody knew but God and he, as our Lord showed her by revelation and bade her tell him – that he knew very well because of this that her feelings were true.

And then the priest received her very meekly and reverently, as if she were his mother and his sister, and said he would support her against her enemies. And so he did, as long as she was in Rome, and endured much evil talk and much tribulation. And also he gave up his office, because he wanted to support her in her sobbing and in her crying when all her countrymen had
abandoned her; for they were always her greatest enemies, and caused her much unhappiness in every place they went, because they wanted her never to sob or cry. And she was quite unable to choose; but that they would not believe. They were always against her, and against the good man who supported her.

Then this good man, seeing this woman sobbing and crying so astonishingly, and especially on Sundays when she was to receive communion amongst all the people, made up his mind to prove whether it were the gift of God, as she said, or else her own hypocritical pretence, as people said. He took her alone on another Sunday into another church when mass was over and everybody gone home, no one knowing about it except himself and the clerk. And when he was about to give her communion, she wept so copiously, and sobbed and cried so loud that he was astonished himself, because it seemed to his hearing that she had never previously cried so loud. And then he fully believed that it was the working of the Holy Ghost and neither any pretending nor hypocrisy of her own.

Then afterwards he was not embarrassed to take her part and to speak against those who wanted to defame her and speak evil of her, until he was detracted by the enemies of virtue almost as much as she was, and it pleased him very much to suffer tribulation for God's cause. Many people in Rome who were disposed to virtue loved him all the more, and her too, and often invited her to meals and made her very welcome, asking her to pray for them.

Her own countrymen were always obdurate, and especially a priest who was amongst them. He stirred up many people against her and said many evil things about her, because she wore white clothing more than did others who were holier and better than she ever was, as he thought. The cause of his malice was that she would not obey him. And she well knew it was against the health of her soul to obey him as he wanted her to do.

Then the good man, the German priest who confessed her, through the agitating of the English priest who was her enemy, asked her if she would be obedient to him or not.

And she said, ‘Yes, sir.'

‘Will you then do as I shall order you to do?'

‘Very willingly, sir.'

‘I charge you then to leave off your white clothes and wear your black clothes again.'

And she did what he commanded, and then she felt that she pleased God with her obedience. But then she endured much scorn from women in Rome. They asked her if highwaymen had robbed her, and she said, ‘No, ma'am.'

Afterwards when she went on pilgrimage she happened to meet the priest who was her enemy, and he greatly rejoiced that she had been deflected from her intention, and said to her, ‘I am glad that you go about in black clothes as you used to do.'

And she answered him, ‘Sir, our Lord would not be displeased though I wore white clothes, for he wills that I do so.'

Then the priest replied to her, ‘Now I well know that you have a devil inside you, for I hear him speak in you to me.'

‘Ah, good sir, I pray you, drive him away from me, for God knows I would very gladly do well and please him if I could.'

And then he was very angry, and said very many sharp words to her,

And she said to him, ‘Sir, I hope I have no devil within me, for if I had a devil within me I should be angry with you, you know. And sir, I don't think I am at all angry with you for anything that you can do to me.' And then the priest went away from her with a very gloomy expression.

Then our Lord spoke to this creature in her soul and said: ‘Daughter, do not be afraid of whatever he says to you, for though he ran every year to Jerusalem, I have no liking for him; for as long as he speaks against you he speaks against me, for I am in
you and you are in me. And from this you may know that I endure many sharp words, for I have often said to you that I should be crucified anew in you by sharp words, for you shall be slain in no other way than by suffering sharp words. As for this priest who is your enemy, he is just a hypocrite.'

Then the good priest, her confessor, ordered her by virtue of obedience, and also as part of her penance, that she should serve an old woman, a poor creature, in Rome. And so she did for six weeks. She served her as she would have done our Lady. And she had no bed to lie in, nor any bedclothes to be covered with except her own mantle. Then she was full of vermin and suffered a lot of pain as a result. She also fetched home water and sticks on her neck for the poor woman, and begged for both meat and wine for her; and when the poor woman's wine was sour, this creature herself drank that sour wine, and gave the poor woman good wine that she had bought for her own self.

As this creature was in the church of the Holy Apostles at Rome
¹
on St Lateran's Day,
²
the Father of Heaven said to her, ‘Daughter, I am well pleased with you, inasmuch as you believe in all the sacraments of Holy Church and in all faith involved in that, and especially because you believe in the manhood of my son, and because of the great compassion that you have for his bitter Passion.'

The Father also said to this creature, ‘Daughter, I will have you wedded to my Godhead, because I shall show you my secrets and my counsels, for you shall live with me without end.'

Then this creature kept silence in her soul and did not answer to this, because she was very much afraid of the Godhead; and she had no knowledge of the conversation of the Godhead, for all
her love and affection were fixed on the manhood of Christ, and of that she did have knowledge and would not be parted from that for anything.

She had so much feeling for the manhood of Christ, that when she saw women in Rome carrying children in their arms, if she could discover that any were boys, she would cry, roar and weep as if she had seen Christ in his childhood. And if she could have had her way, she would often have taken the children out of their mothers' arms and kissed them instead of Christ. And if she saw a handsome man, she had great pain to look at him, lest she might see him who was both God and man. And therefore she cried many times and often when she met a handsome man, and wept and sobbed bitterly for the manhood of Christ as she went about the streets of Rome, so that those who saw her were greatly astonished at her, because they did not know the reason.

Therefore it was not surprising if she was still and did not answer the Father of Heaven, when he told her that she should be wedded to his Godhead. Then the Second Person, Christ Jesus, whose manhood she loved so much, said to her, ‘What do you say to my Father, Margery, daughter, about these words that he speaks to you? Are you well pleased that it should be so?'

And then she would not answer the Second Person, but wept amazingly much, desiring to have himself still, and in no way to be parted from him. Then the Second Person in Trinity answered his Father for her, and said, ‘Father, excuse her, for she is still only young and has not completely learned how she should answer.'

And then the Father took her by the hand ‘spiritually' in her soul, before the Son and the Holy Ghost, and the Mother of Jesus, and all the twelve apostles, and St Katherine and St Margaret and many other saints and holy virgins, with a great multitude of angels, saying to her soul, ‘I take you, Margery, for my wedded wife, for fairer, for fouler, for richer, for poorer, provided that you are humble and meek in doing what I command you to do. For, daughter, there was never a child so kind to its mother as I shall be to you, both in joy and sorrow, to help you and comfort you. And that I pledge to you.'

And then the Mother of God and all the saints that were present there in her soul prayed that they might have much joy together. Then this creature with high devotion, with great abundance of tears, thanked God for this spiritual comfort, holding herself in her own feeling very unworthy of any such grace as she felt, for she felt many great comforts, both spiritual comforts and bodily comforts. Sometimes she sensed sweet smells in her nose; they were sweeter, she thought, than any earthly sweet thing ever was that she smelled before, nor could she ever tell how sweet they were, for she thought she might have lived on them if they had lasted.

Sometimes she heard with her bodily ears such sounds and melodies that she could not hear what anyone said to her at that time unless he spoke louder. These sounds and melodies she had heard nearly every day for twenty-five years when this book was written, and especially when she was in devout prayer, also many times while she was at Rome, and in England too.

She saw with her bodily eyes many white things flying all about her on all sides, as thickly in a way as specks in a sunbeam; they were very delicate and comforting, and the brighter the sun shone, the better she could see them. She saw them at many different times and in many different places, both in church and in her chamber, at her meals and at her prayers, in the fields and in town, both walking and sitting. And many times she was afraid what they might be, for she saw them at night in darkness as well as in daylight. Then when she was afraid of them, our Lord said to her, ‘By this token, daughter, believe it is God who speaks in you, for wherever God is, heaven is, and where God is, there are many angels, and God is in you and you are in him. And therefore, don't be afraid, daughter, for these betoken that you have many angels around you, to keep you both day and night so that no devil shall have power over you, nor evil men harm you.'
³

Then from that time forward she used to say when she saw them coming: ‘
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
'
⁴

Our Lord also gave her another token which lasted about
sixteen years, and increased ever more and more, and that was a flame of fire of love – marvellously hot and delectable and very comforting, never diminishing but ever increasing; for though the weather were never so cold she felt the heat burning in her breast and at her heart, as veritably as a man would feel the material fire if he put his hand or his finger into it.
⁵

When she first felt the fire of love burning in her breast she was afraid of it, and then our Lord answered in her mind and said, ‘Daughter, don't be afraid, because this heat is the heat of the Holy Ghost, which will burn away all your sins, for the fire of love quenches all sins. And you shall understand by this token that the Holy Ghost is in you, and you know very well that wherever the Holy Ghost is, there is the Father, and where the Father is, there is the Son, and so you have fully in your soul all of the Holy Trinity. Therefore you have great cause to love me well, and yet you shall have greater cause than you ever had to love me, for you shall hear what you never heard, and you shall see what you never saw, and you shall feel what you never felt.

‘For, daughter, you are as sure of the love of God, as God is God. Your soul is more sure of the love of God than of your own body, for your soul will part from your body, but God shall never part from your soul, for they are united together without end. Therefore, daughter, you have as great reason to be merry as any lady in this world; and if you knew, daughter, how much you please me when you willingly allow me to speak in you, you would never do otherwise, for this is a holy life and the time is very well spent. For, daughter, this life pleases me more than wearing the coat of mail for penance, or the hair-shirt, or fasting on bread and water; for if you said a thousand
paternosters
every day you would not please me as much as you do when you are in silence and allow me to speak in your soul.'