The Book of Margery Kempe

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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