Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Rome

Kempe’s most prolonged and most far-reaching pilgrimage was her first, undertaken from 1413 (when she was 40) to 1415. She crossed the North Sea from Great Yarmouth and then, with other pilgrims, trekked overland to Venice. This took several weeks, during which she alienated her companions by always talking about our Lord’s love and goodness, both at meal times and at other times, too.

Ostracised, and beset by illness, Kempe had a lonely three months as they awaited their ship to the Holy Land. However, she coped well with the weeks’-long voyage and arrived in good health. A few days later – perched on an ass – she had her first glimpse of Jerusalem, a gleaming treasure of Christian and Muslim holiness.

I nearly fell off, for the God-given sweetness and grace in my soul were too much to bear, [but] two German pilgrims … managed to save me. And when I arrived where Christ had suffered the torment of his passion I wept and sobbed as profusely as if I could see our Lord before my very eyes, in agony there and then. Falling to the ground, I writhed and tossed, … yelling as though my heart would burst.

Similar extremes in front of Christ’s crib at Bethlehem brought mixed reactions from those around her, but Kempe thought God was on her side. ‘Daughter,’ she imagined him saying, ‘I shall make the whole world wonder at you. Many men and women will worship me through their love for you, and will worship me in you.

Sea-sickness made it especially hard for Kempe’s companions to cope with her during the voyage back to Venice. After a night in boarding houses they saddled up early and set off for Rome – their next place of pilgrimage – leaving Kempe to make her own way there. Helped on the two-week journey by a hunchback beggar, a pair of friars and a wealthy lady with a statuette of Jesus Christ, she had the satisfaction of entering the city a day or two ahead of the others.

Kempe spent months in Rome, making no attempt to journey home with either her original party or subsequent ones. She was housed at an English-speaking hostel, except when she was briefly expelled due to evil talk, whereupon she gave her money away and begged on the streets for food and shelter, either as a spiritual exercise or to shame those who had turned her out. (She can generally pay her way on her travels, even if her companions go begging.)

It is in Rome that Kempe imagines herself conjoined to the Godhead in holy matrimony. No matter how great a lord and how poor a woman they are when they marry – she imagines God saying – they must

nonetheless lie together in bed and live together in joy and peace.

Kempe makes little mention of Rome’s holy places and fails to explain her long stay in the city. However, a reason can be inferred from a conversation she had just after returning to England. An anchorite she meets in Norwich asks her about a child she’d supposedly conceived and borne while overseas, and Kempe disputes the date of conception but not the birth.

Thus her stay in Rome was presumably perinatal (and her indisposition in Venice possibly morning sickness). Kempe and her husband had taken a vow of celibacy in the summer of 1413. Her pregnancy may reflect a mutual failure to adhere to this; adultery seems most unlikely. Nonetheless, her insistence on wearing nun-like virginal white for much of her time abroad, even when evidently pregnant, must have increased the hostility she provoked.

Kempe tells the anchorite she brought the child home and this may be the son she features towards the end of her Book.

Kempe's subsequent overseas treks were to Santiago and Wilsnack.

I welcome contact from fellow Kempe scholars and enthusiasts.