Overseas Pilgrimages

Kempe was a pilgrim to foreign shrines. At a time when overseas travel was always arduous her personality and behaviour brought added hazards and hardships upon her.

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.

Maps of Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela and Wilsnack

Kempe’s second pilgrimage, two years later, was to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where she stayed for a fortnight and was richly blessed in body and spirit. On her return she attempted to visit shrines in various parts of England but was arrested and tried for religious sedition. Her nun-like garb and defiant tone raised hackles but by expounding and affirming Christian doctrine she secured her acquittal. Kings Lynn received her back with mixed feelings.

She was in her late fifties when she made her third and final pilgrimage. It was incidental to a stay in Danzig with her late son’s widow, who lived in the city. At the start of her journey home she sought the protective companionship of a man who was making a pilgrimage to a place called Bad Wilsnack, which was on the way to Calais, where Kempe would take ship for England.

Armed unrest in the Wilsnack area filled Kempe with terror. Remembering the marriage to the Godhead she supposedly contracted in Rome, she now imagines his husbandly words of reassurance: You know perfectly well that out of love for a good-looking, handsome husband a woman will go where he wants her to. There is no one as lovely, as attractive or as good as me and if you love me you won’t shrink from going wherever I want to take you. I brought you here and I shall see you safely back to England – just trust me.

By the time they reached Wilsnack Kempe, besides being lame from old age, was exhausted, too, the man having quickened his pace to try and shake her off (as others did later). Because I was ill, a cart was made ready and in penitence and great discomfort I was borne to the Holy Blood of Wilsnack – precious blood which had miraculously oozed from the blessed sacrament of the altar.

Kempe describes her arduous journey to Calais in detail, including the flea infestation she suffered near to Aachen: Out in the country, my companions sometimes removed their clothes and sat there naked, picking fleas off each other… I felt that it was beneath me to do the same, but mixing with them had given me a share of the vermin, too, and they bit and stung me horribly morning, noon and night.

As for the crossing to Dover, Kempe describes with smug satisfaction the sea-sickness suffered by a woman who’d snubbed her on the way to Calais. While the others were throwing up and spewing and making plenty of noise and mess I surprised them all by staying well. That woman suffered the worst of all so she was the one I did most to help and reassure. I acted out of kindness and love of our Lord – and for no other reason.

I welcome contact from fellow Kempe scholars and enthusiasts.