Margery Kempe
&
The Fire of Love
Kisses and Confessions
Chapter 74 of The Book of Margery Kempe concerns her changing attitude to those disfigured by disease and her ministrations to one such woman in particular. This paper will consider their shared experience of guilt and of feeling beset by devils; it will also consider sacramental and other support for the sick and its possible deficiencies.
In her ‘ȝerys of worldly prosperite’ Kempe had found the sight of a sufferer’s ‘whelys & bloberys’ ‘lothful’ and ‘abhomynabyl.’ In her later years the same sight makes her cry and weep ‘as ȝyf sche had sen owr Lord Ihesu Crist wyth hys wowndys bledyng.’ The effect is especially strong if the sufferer, like Christ, has open wounds. On seeing such a one in the street Kempe feels tempted to hug and kiss them there and then ‘for þe lofe of Ihesu.’ She sees baby boys, as well as maimed women, as standing ‘in þe stede of Criste’ and describes herself (though not the babies!) as ‘cryin, roryn, & wepyn’ as she tries to kiss them.
On consulting her confessor about kissing adult sufferers she meets with great circumspection. He warns her ‘þat sche xulde kyssyn no men, but, ȝyf sche wolde al-gatys kyssyn, sche xuld kyssyn women.’
He seems not to sanction spontaneous kissing, even of women, so rather than seek them out in the street Kempe seeks them out in ‘a place wher seke women dwellyd which wer ryth ful of þe sekenes.’
The women she encounters seem cautious about accepting Kempe’s kisses. When she falls on her knees and begs their permission to kiss their lips only two consent. Perhaps they doubt that Kempe’s kisses confer any benefits on those who receive them, and Kempe never claims that they do. Rather, she offers or administers the kisses as adjuncts to her devotional life and its public display.
However, the offer of kisses may also have helped her to choose which women should have her further attentions. To the two who accept her kisses she immediately addresses ‘ful many good wordys’ and to one of the two she subsequently makes ‘many’ pastoral visits. Thus consent to the kisses identifies women as compliant to Kempe and amenable to her influence, with their fellow sufferers set aside.
Kempe’s pastoral visits to this woman give Kempe the opportunity to comfort and reassure her, tormented as she is with so many ‘fowle & horibyl thowtys’ that she cannot recount them and is fearful that if she undertakes an act of worship ‘þe Deuyl xuld a slayn hir.’
To some extent Kempe is taking on the role of a facilitative confessor and thus out-doing an impatient one of her own early adult experience. In chapter 1 she records that she was very ill after giving birth to her first child (which must have been in about 1394). She therefore ‘sent for hir gostly fadyr … in ful wyl to be schreuyn of alle hir lyfe-tym as ner as sche cowde.’ However, his brusqueness, as she was about to divulge a mortal sin, prevented her from revealing it and triggered months of insanity during which she experienced fiery devils tormenting her incessantly.
Thus both women knew the anguish of incomplete confession: confessions by the sick woman – whether to Kempe or a priest – were doomed to be incomplete by the sheer profuseness of her evil thoughts, while Kempe’s post-partum confession recorded in chapter 1 had left a crucial sin unabsolved. In addition, both women knew the torment of being assailed by devils.
Kempe’s Book shows her keen commitment to sacramental confession: Its failure costs her her sanity in chapter 1; in chapter 4 she records that ‘sche was schrevyn many tymes & oftyn, and dede hir penawns what-so-euyr hir confessor wold jn-joyne hir to do,’ while chapter 5 claims divine endorsement and motivation: 'I am þe same God þat haue browt þi synnes to þi mend & mad þe to be schreve þerof.' One may wonder, then, why Kempe makes no mention of the sick woman receiving this sacrament, or of being urged by Kempe to do so. (The ‘sacrament of the altar’ equally receives no mention.)
It is possible that the woman did receive sacraments and that she and Kempe simply took this for granted, as could well be the case if the woman was in the care of Bishop Lynn’s Hospital of St Mary Magdalen, a monastic institution.
Another possibility is that the woman and her companions were living as outcasts. Kempe’s mention of finding them in ‘a place wher seke women dwellyd’ (rather than naming the Hospital) certainly admits of this.
In any event, it may be that Kempe’s ministrations to the woman created a deeply confessional atmosphere that supplanted the formal sacrament and drew on their shared experience of an unquiet conscience and imagined demonic visitations. Despite her practice of formal confession, Kempe may have had some sympathy with the proto-Protestant Lollards, who held that a sinner’s true contrition was sufficient and that lay individuals could encourage one another in this.
In 1396/7 the Lollards had published twelve ‘Conclusions’ or tenets of their faith. The fourth found in the doctrine of transubstantiation and the eighth in the practice of pilgrimage a flagrant resort to idolatry, while the ninth condemned sacramental confession because priests ‘welen selle þe blisse of heuene’ ‘for a busschel of qwete.’
In the 1390s Kempe’s parish priest (and possibly her impatient confessor) was William Sawtry. Sawtry inclined to Lollard views and was burned at the stake for heresy in 1401. Kempe’s failure to mention his name in her Book suggests that she feared the taint of association, though her steadfast resort to pilgrimage and sacramental confession establish that she was not a Lollard, as does her reverence for ‘the sacrament of the altar’ (chapter 20) and the orthodox view of this sacrament which she expressed at her trial in Leicester (chapter 48).
The fact remains that Kempe’s attitude to confession may have been tempered by Lollard views. In this connection it is worth comparing two key acts of confession two decades apart and enclosing the time when the Lollard voice was at its most strident. The first was Kempe’s postpartum confession of about 1394, intended to be complete and unsparing; the second was the confession she made in Rome in 1414, when she at last ‘confessyd … alle hir synnes as ner as hir mende wold seruyn hir fro hir childhode vn-to þat owre’ (presumably, then, including the sin which had been so problematic).
Kempe uses similar wording to speak of these two key confessions and in each case has the same determination to make the confession definitive. However, within this consistency lurks a deviation from orthodoxy. The postpartum confession may have ended short of absolution but Kempe mentions many other confessions prior to the definitive one in Rome, which must therefore have covered instances of sin that had been absolved already. As a ‘wel lernyd’ priest, Kempe’s confessor in Rome, a man called Wenslawe, surely understood that no instance of sin can be absolved more than once. Absolution is absolute and in Kempe’s case had been pronounced not just by priests but (as she believed) by God himself, as recorded early in chapter 22.
It seems, then, that by her middle years (and her time in Rome) confession for Kempe has little to do with relieving guilt or culpability. Having featured her early guilty secret and the sexual temptations of chapter 4, she describes a life full of virtue and divine endorsement, with frequent recourse to confession but with little or no admission of any wrongdoings committed. (Chapter 31 seems to record a false accusation made by Kempe regarding the loss of her ring but it leaves the matter obfuscated.)
After Kempe’s earliest adult years she possibly saw confession as a virtuous act in itself and a way of strengthening her bonds with her confessors (who, like Wenslawe, were often also spiritual advisors). Her frequent confessions may also have reflected feelings of guilt that even God’s assurances and accolades could not keep at bay, though she seems to have come to terms with her early guilty secret.
This paper has noted that the sick and guilt-ridden woman of chapter 74 seemed devoid of sacramental or other priestly ministrations. The newly delivered mother who was ‘owt her mende’ (chapter 75) seemed likewise to lack any priestly or sacramental support. Kempe’s own postpartum derangement of about 1394 had similarly been a time when ecclesiastical support was lacking, with healing apparently brought by Jesus Christ in person. From these examples, wide-ranging in date, one may well infer that many sick people were institutionally neglected for much or all of Kempe’s adult life. Kempe herself was cared for in a prosperous home and some were cared for in hospital settings; but others, perhaps of lesser means, were treated like the newly-delivered mother of chapter 75: consigned to ‘þe forthest ends of town … þat þe pepil xulde not heryn hir cryin.’