Thomas à Kempis
Author biography. Trumpet Publishing House Authors Directory.
Who he was
Thomas à Kempis was born around 1380 at Kempen in the Rhineland and died in 1471 near Zwolle in the Low Countries, having lived more than seventy of those years inside the same religious community. He copied manuscripts by hand, including the entire Bible more than once, wrote, instructed novices, and stayed put.
He belonged to the movement known as the Devotio Moderna, a reform of ordinary religious life that distrusted cleverness and theological display and wanted practice instead. That distrust is audible on every page he wrote.
Why he wrote it
The Imitation of Christ was written for men inside a religious house, not for the public, and it was circulating by the early 1400s. Attribution to him is the long-standing consensus but has been questioned, since the work first appeared anonymously.
It was never meant to be admired. It was meant to be used, a chapter at a time, by someone trying to govern his own temper and vanity and failing regularly.
The book we publish, and why
We publish The Imitation of Christ because it has outlasted nearly everything printed since, and it has done so without a single clever line.
The subject is the inner life and how to keep it steady. Humility, patience, the handling of praise and of insult, the refusal to be impressed by yourself, the willingness to be thought less of than you are. It is bracing rather than comforting. It tells you that your reputation is not your business and that most of what agitates you will not matter shortly.
For a reader worn out by being shouted at all day, by argument and noise and the constant demand for an opinion, this is the opposite instrument. You get something that holds still while you do.
How to read it
A chapter at a time, and not many. The chapters are short on purpose. Reading thirty pages at a sitting will blunt it; reading two pages a day for a year will not.
Expect it to be uncomfortable. It was written for monks and it does not soften its demands for anyone else. Some passages ask for a withdrawal from the world that is not available to a person with a job and four children. Take those as the direction rather than the instruction.
Book One is the most quoted and the easiest entry. Book Three, a dialogue between the believer and Christ, is the longest and the one most readers end up returning to.
Pair it with
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. A pagan emperor and a Dutch monk, twelve hundred years and an entire worldview apart, writing almost the same book about self-command.
- St. Thomas Aquinas, for the reasoning underneath what à Kempis simply asks you to do.
- Baltasar Gracián, as a deliberate contrast. Both deal with living among people. One tells you how to navigate them, the other how not to need them.
His works
- The Imitation of Christ, four books, circulating by the early fifteenth century.
- Sermons to the novices of his community.
- Biographies of Gerard Groote, founder of the Devotio Moderna, and of others in the movement.
- A chronicle of the monastery of Mount St. Agnes, where he spent his life.
- Devotional tracts, including The Soliloquy of the Soul and On Solitude and Silence.
General reference on Thomas à Kempis. External links open outside Trumpet Publishing House.
Our editions
This collection grows as further editions and formats are added, so it is worth returning to.
All Trumpet editions by Thomas à Kempis
The Imitation of Christ, Hardcover