The Book of Margery Kempe
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Important Quotations Explained
1. She greeted the Vicar, asking him if she could—in the afternoon,
when he had eaten—speak with him for an hour or two of the love of God. He,
lifting up his hands and blessing himself, said, “Bless us! How could a
woman occupy one or two hours with the love of our Lord? I shan’t eat a
thing till I find out what you can say of our Lord God in the space of an
hour.”
2. Therefore I must be intimate with you, and lie in your bed with
you. Daughter, you greatly desire to see me, and you may boldly, when you
are in bed, take me to you as your wedded husband. . . .
3. When her crying was passed, she came before the Archbishop and
fell down on her knees, the Archbishop saying very roughly to her, “Why do
you weep so, woman?”
She answering said, “Sir, you shall wish some day that you had wept
as sorely as I.”
4. [She] many times met with men of that district who said to her,
“Woman, give up this life that you lead and go and spin, and card wool, as
other women do, and do not suffer so much shame and so much unhappiness. We
would not suffer so much for any money on earth.”
Then she said to them, “I do not suffer as much sorrow as I would do
for our Lord’s love, for I only suffer cutting words, and our merciful Lord
Christ Jesus. . . . suffered hard strokes, bitter scourgings, and shameful
death at the last, for me and for all mankind, blessed may he
be.”
5. Then the lady’s priest came to her, saying, “Woman, Jesus is long
since dead.”
When her crying ceased, she said to the priest, “Sir, his death is
as fresh to me as if he had died this same day, and so, I think, it ought to
be to you and to all Christian people.”
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