How to Be a Medieval Woman by Margery Kempe

Author:Margery Kempe [Kempe, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241252284
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Not for a Hundred Pounds

Another time this creature’s companions wanted to go to the River Jordan and would not let her go with them. Then this creature prayed our Lord that she might go with them, and he bade that she should go with them whether they wanted her to or not. And then she set forth by the grace of God and didn’t ask their permission. When she came to the River Jordan the weather was so hot that she thought her feet would be burnt because of the heat that she felt.

Afterwards she went on with her fellow pilgrims to Mount Quarentyne, where our Lord fasted for forty days. And there she asked her companions to help her up the mountain, and they said ‘no,’ because they could scarcely help themselves up. Then she was very miserable because she could not get up the mountain. And just then a Saracen, a good-looking man, happened to come by her, and she put a groat into his hand, making signs to him to take her up the mountain. And quickly the Saracen took her under his arm and led her up the high mountain where our Lord fasted forty days. Then she was dreadfully thirsty and got no sympathy from her fellow pilgrims, but then God, of his high goodness, moved the Grey Friars with compassion, and they comforted her, when her fellow countrymen would not acknowledge her.

And so she was ever more strengthened in the love of our Lord and the more bold to suffer shame and rebukes for his sake in every place she went, because of the grace that God wrought in her of weeping, sobbing and crying out, which grace she could not withstand when God would send it. And always she proved her feelings to be true, and those promises that God had made her while she was in England, and in other places also, came to her in effect just as she had sensed before, and therefore she dared the better receive such speeches and conversation, and act the more boldly in consequence.

Afterwards, when this creature had come down from the Mount, as God willed, she went on to the place where St John the Baptist was born. And later she went to Bethany, where Mary and Martha lived, and to the grave where Lazarus was buried and raised from death to life. And she visited the chapel where our blessed Lord appeared to his blessed mother before all others on the morning of Easter Day. And she stood in the same place where Mary Magdalene stood when Christ said to her, ‘Mary, why are you weeping?’ And so she was in many more places than are written here, for she was three weeks in Jerusalem and in places thereabouts. And she always had great devotion as long as she was in that country.

And the friars of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were very welcoming to her and gave her many great relics, wanting her to remain among them if she had wished, because of the belief they had in her.

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