The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN INTO MODERN ENGLISH
Digitized by Harry Plantinga, whp@wheaton.edu, 1994.
This etext is in the public domain.
FOREWORD
IN PREPARING this edition of The Imitation of Christ,
the aim was to achieve a simple, readable text which would ring true to those
who are already lovers of this incomparable book and would attract others to it.
For this reason we have attempted to render the text into English as it is
spoken today rather than the cloudy, archaic terminology that encumbers so many
translations of Christian classics. The result, we feel, has achieved a
directness and conciseness which will meet the approval of modern readers. In
the second place, we have made use of the familiar paragraph form, doing away
with the simple statement or verse form of the original and of many
translations. This was done in the interest of easier reading, and in order to
bring out more clearly the connection between the single statements.
No claim of literary excellence over the many English versions
now extant is here advanced, nor any attempt to solve in further confusion the
problem of the book's authorship.
Theories most popular at the moment ascribe the Imitation
to two or three men, members of the Brethren of the Common Life, an association
of priests organized in the Netherlands in the latter half of the fourteenth
century. That Thomas Hemerken of Kempen, or Thomas À Kempis as he is now known,
later translated a composite of their writings, essentially a spiritual diary,
from the original Netherlandish into Latin is generally admitted by scholars.
This Thomas, born about the year 1380, was educated by the Brethren of the
Common Life, was moved to join their community, and was ordained priest. His
career thereafter was devoted to practicing the counsels of spiritual perfection
and to copying books for the schools. From both pursuits evolved The
Imitation of Christ. As editor and translator he was not without faults, but
thanks to him the Imitation became and has remained, after the Bible, the
most widely read book in the world. It is his edition that is here rendered into
English, without deletion of chapters or parts of them because doubts exist as
to their authorship, or because of variants in style, or for any of the other
more or less valid reasons.
There is but one major change. The treatise on Holy Communion,
which À Kempis places as Book Three, is here titled Book Four. The move makes
the order of the whole more logical and agrees with the thought of most editors.
THE TRANSLATORS
Aloysius Croft
Harold Bolton
Table of Contents
Book
One ---- Thoughts Helpful in the Life of the Soul
Book
Two ---- The Interior Life
Book
Three -- Internal Consolation
Book
Four --- An Invitation to Holy Communion
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