from The Book of Margery Kempe

MARGERY KEMPE

Margery Kempe, born around 1373, is among the most famous and important of medieval English mystics. Her Book is the first autobiography written in English and one of the earliest works in English by a woman. It recounts her long and variegated life, first as a wife and mother of fourteen children, then as a religious mystic and pilgrim who communed with the Lord, wept uncontrollably, and wore the white habit of a virgin (despite the kids).

The excerpt from Margery’s Book presents a familiar situation: a wife denying her husband sex, claiming to have no interest when in fact she has a lover on the side who gets all her attention. It’s a Hollywood story line, but Margery Kempe’s version has a few twists. The first is that the piece was written in the beginning of the fifteenth century; the second is that her paramour is no ordinary man, nor does he use ordinary means for the seduction of the good woman.

The lover, the reader soon discovers, is the Lord, and he’s got the moves. It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for religious mystics to have forms of spiritual union with the Man, but what is particularly interesting about Margery’s tale is that God does not simply arrive in a visitation (like Zeus in the golden rain), but speaks to Margery in her soul and gets her to fall for him. But I, for one, can’t help feeling for the poor husband—talk about being outmatched!

So, in the Christian spirit of trinity within unity, you should read the piece below for the humor, the sexiness, and to see the Almighty’s unique version of the flowers/chocolates/sweet-nothings approach to the age-old art of MacDaddyism. God can definitely make time.

One night, as this creature lay in her bed with her husband, she heard a sound of a melody so sweet and delectable, she thought she had been in Paradise. And then she got out of her bed and said, “Alas that I ever did sin, for it is truly joyous in heaven!” . . . And after this time she never had desire to have sex with her husband, for the debt of matrimony was so abominable to her that she thought she would rather eat or drink the muck in the channel than consent to any fleshly commingling . . .

And so it happened one Friday . . . that her husband asked his wife a question: “Margery, if there came a man with a sword and would smite off my head unless we had sex together as we used to, tell me according to your conscience—for you say you will not lie— whether you would rather my head be cut off or that I play with you like we used to do?” . . .

“Truly I would rather you be slain that we should turn again to our uncleanness”

And he said to her: “You are no good wife.”

[Some time later] as this creature was in the Apostles Church in Rome, the Father of Heaven said to her, “Daughter, I am quite pleased with you . . . I will have you wedded to my Godhead, for I shall show you my secrets and my counsels, and you shall live with me without end.” . . .

Our lord also gave her a token which endured about sixteen years and increased more and more. That was a flame of fire wonderfully hot and delectable and comfortable, not diminishing but ever increasing, of love, for, though the weather be cold she felt the heat burning in her breast and her heart, as truly as a man would feel the material fire if he put his hand or finger in it. When she felt first the fire of love in her breast, she was afraid of it, and then our Lord answered in her mind and said, “Daughter, be not afraid, for this heat is the heat of the Holy Ghost . . . And therefore you shall have greater cause than ever to love me, and you shall hear what you’ve never heard, and you shall see what you’ve never seen, and feel what you’ve never felt…

[And then the Lord spoke in her soul:] “It is convenient for the wife to be intimate with her husband. No matter how great a lord he is or how poor a woman she is when he weds her, yet they must lie together and rest together in joy and peace. And such it must be between you and me . . . Therefore I must be intimate with you and lie in bed with thee. Daughter, you desire greatly to see me, and you may bodily, when you are in your bed, take me to yourself as your wedded husband, as thy dearest darling, and as thy sweet son, for I will be loved as a son should be loved by the mother and you will love me, daughter, as a good wife ought her husband. And therefore you may bodily take me in the arms of your soul and kiss my mouth, my head and my feet as sweetly as you wish.

—modernized by Jack Murnighan