Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471) · CatalogThomas à KempisThomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471) · CatalogGerman-born Augustinian canon of the Netherlands, traditionally credited with The Imitation of Christ.
Author
Thomas à Kempis
c. 1380-1471 · German-born Augustinian canon of the Netherlands, traditionally credited with The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471) was born Thomas Hemerken in Kempen, near Düsseldorf. As a boy he went to school at Deventer in the Netherlands, where he came under the influence of the Brethren of the Common Life, a movement of lay and clerical communities founded by Geert Groote that stressed inward devotion, simple living and the copying of books. In 1399 he entered the Augustinian monastery of Mount St Agnes near Zwolle, where he was ordained priest and spent almost all of his long life as a copyist, novice master and writer of sermons, biographies and devotional treatises. He died there in 1471. The Imitation of Christ, which circulated anonymously, is generally attributed to him.
The Imitation of Christ is a book of short devotional chapters written in Latin in the early fifteenth century and generally attributed to Thomas à Kempis, a canon of the monastery of Mount St Agnes in the Netherlands. It grew out of the Devotio Moderna, a reform movement among clergy and lay people in the Low Countries that valued humility, prayer, simple living and personal knowledge of Christ above learned debate.