Appendix III: Margery Kempe’s Meeting with Julian
Appendix III
Margery Kempe’s Meeting with Julian
And then she was commanded by our Lord to go to an anchoress in the same city [Norwich, where she took advice from the friar William Southfield] who was called Dame Julian. And so she did, and told her about the grace, that God had put into her soul, of compunction, contrition, sweetness and devotion, compassion with holy meditation and high contemplation, and very many holy speeches and converse that our Lord spoke to her soul, and also many wonderful revelations, which she described to the anchoress to find out if there were any deception in them, for the anchoress was expert in such things and could give good advice.
The anchoress, hearing the marvellous goodness of our Lord, highly thanked God with all her heart for his visitation, advising this creature to be obedient to the will of our Lord and fulfil with all her might whatever he put into her soul, if it were not against the worship of God and the profit of her fellow Christians. For if it were, then it were not the influence of a good spirit, but rather of an evil spirit. ‘The Holy Ghost never urges a thing against charity, and if he did, he would be contrary to his own self, for he is all charity. Also he moves a soul to all chasteness, for chaste livers are called the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost makes a soul stable and steadfast in the right faith and the right belief.
‘And a double man in soul is always unstable and unsteadfast in all his ways. He that is forever doubting is like the wave of the sea which is moved and borne about with the wind, and that man is not likely to receive the gifts of God.
‘Any creature that has these tokens may steadfastly believe that the Holy Ghost dwells in his soul. And much more, when God visits a creature with tears of contrition, devotion or compassion, he may and ought to believe that the Holy Ghost is in his soul. St Paul says that the Holy Ghost asks for us with mourning and weeping unspeakable; that is to say, he causes us to ask and pray with mourning and weeping so plentifully that the tears may not be numbered. No evil spirit may give these tokens, for St Jerome says that tears torment the devil more than do the pains of hell. God and the devil are always at odds, and they shall never dwell together in one place, and the devil has no power in a man’s soul.
‘Holy Writ says that the soul of a righteous man is the seat of God, and so I trust, sister, that you are. I pray God grant you perseverance. Set all your trust in God and do not fear the talk of the world, for the more contempt, shame and reproof that you have in this world, the more is your merit in the sight of God. Patience is necessary for you, for in that shall you keep your soul.’
Great was the holy conversation that the anchoress and this creature had through talking of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ for the many days that they were together.
NOTES
Popularly attributed to St Jerome, although no precise equivalent has been found in his writings. The Middle English treatise Speculum Christiani has St Jerome say, ‘Prayers please God but tears constrain him’, and St Bernard says, ‘Tears of a sinner torment the devil more than every kind of torture.’
Cf. 2 Corinthians 6:16; Apocalypse 21:3; also Ezekiel 37:27–8; and the texts from St John echoed in chapter 10 above [i.e. John 14:20; 15:4–5; 17:23; 6:57; also 1 John 4:1, 6, 12, 13].
(Text and notes from The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. B. A. Windeatt, Harmondsworth, 1985, pp. 77–9)