The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, is a Christian devotional book first composed in Medieval Latin as De Imitatione Christi (c.

[1] The Imitation of Christ is a handbook for the spiritual life arising from the Devotio Moderna movement, which Thomas followed.

[10][11] Saint Francis of Assisi believed in the physical as well as the spiritual imitation of Christ, and advocated a path of poverty and preaching like Jesus who was poor at birth in the manger and died naked on the cross.

[14][15] Against this backdrop, the Devotio Moderna movement was started by Geert Groote who was highly dissatisfied with the state of the Church and what he perceived as the gradual loss of monastic traditions and the lack of moral values among the clergy.

[16] The initial focus of Devotio Moderna was the rediscovery of genuine pious practices and conversion and re-conversion of the lukewarm clergy.

[17][18] The Imitation was written within the Devotio Moderna community, as it was flourishing in Northern Europe, but grew far beyond that movement which came to an end with the Protestant Reformation.

[18] The Imitation was written anonymously in Latin in the Netherlands c. 1418–1427,[1][2][19] and until the seventeenth century, was attributed without much dispute to Thomas à Kempis who, according to Mabillon, was still assumed to be the author in 1651.

Taking advantage of the anonymous nature of the book, however, and driven by an esprit de corps exaggerated by national sentiment, Italian Benedictines attributed the Imitation to Giovanni Gersen, the abbot of Saint Etienne de Verceil c. 1250, and French scholars claimed it to be the work of Jean Gerson, the renowned chancellor of the University of Paris.

[27][28] The book received an enthusiastic response from the very early days, as characterized by the statement of George Pirkhamer, the prior of Nuremberg, regarding the 1494 edition: "Nothing more holy, nothing more honorable, nothing more religious, nothing in fine more profitable for the Christian commonwealth can you ever do than to make known these works of Thomas à Kempis.

"[33] Book One deals with the withdrawal of the outward life—so far as positive duty allows and emphasizes an interior life by renouncing all that is vain and illusory, resisting temptations and distractions of life, giving up the pride of learning and to be humble, forsaking the disputations of theologians and patiently enduring the world's contempt and contradiction.

[33][34] Kempis stresses the importance of solitude and silence, "how undisturbed a conscience we would have if we never went searching after ephemeral joys nor concerned ourselves with affairs of the world..." Kempis writes that the "World and all its allurements pass away" and following sensual desires leads to a "dissipated conscience" and a "distracted heart" (Chap.

[37] Kempis writes one must remain faithful and fervent to God, and keep good hope of attaining victory and salvation, but avoid overconfidence.

Kempis gives the example of an anxious man who, oscillating between fear and hope and with grief went to the altar and said: "Oh, if only I knew that I shall persevere to the end."

[42][43] Kempis writes we must place our faith in Jesus rather than in men and "...Do not trust nor lean on a reed that is shaken ...All flesh is grass, and all its glory shall fade like the flower in the field" (Chap.

Kempis writes that by ourselves we cannot bear the cross, but if we put our trust in the Lord, He will send us strength from heaven (Chap.

Shut out the whole world and all its sinful din and sit as a solitary sparrow on a housetop and, in the bitterness of your soul, meditate on your transgressions" (Chap.

[7] The book was admired by the following individuals: Saint Thomas More, Chancellor of England and renowned humanist who was executed by King Henry VIII of England; Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus; Erasmus of Rotterdam; and twentieth-century American Catholic author and monk Thomas Merton.

Kempis' Imitatio Christi was in close parentage with Ignatius of Loyola of the Devotio moderna movement, and also it was affirmed and practiced by St. Francis de Sales, profoundly influencing his Introduction to the Devout Life.

José Rizal, the Philippine polymath and national hero, reportedly read the book whilst incarcerated within Fort Santiago in Intramuros, Manila, shortly before the Spanish colonial government executed him by firing squad for sedition on 30 December 1896.

[62] Swami Vivekananda, the 19th-century Hindu philosopher and founder of the Vedanta Society, drew a number of parallels between the teachings of the Imitation and the Bhagavad Gita.

The theologian Shailer Mathews wrote that the Imitation presents an accurate description of the Christ of the Gospels, and gives an unbiased reading of the words of Jesus.

[68] He also wrote "For centuries men have found in it inspiration to sacrifice and humility, and to severest self-examination...He who has never come under its influence has missed something that would have made him more humble and more ambitious for purity of life.

"[68] The Spanish crypto-Muslim writer known as the Young Man of Arévalo included adaptations of many passages from the Imitation in his Islamic devotional work Summary of the Account and Spiritual Exercise.

[71] The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote: It rejects and eliminates every speculative element not only of scholasticism but also of mysticism, and yet, at the same time, it abstracts from the colourful multiplicity of the Bible and—since it is written for those who have turned from the world—disregards the world, in all its richness, as a field for Christian activity...

In place of the openhearted readiness of a Catherine of Siena, a subdued and melancholy resignation runs through the book.... [T]here is an excess of warnings about the world, the illusions of egoism, the dangers of speculation and of the active apostolate.

[72]René Girard wrote: "Neither does Jesus propose an ascetic rule of life in the sense of Thomas à Kempis and his celebrated Imitation of Christ, as admirable as that work may be".

[73] Friedrich Nietzsche stated that this was "one of those books which I cannot hold in my hand without a physiological reaction: it exudes a perfume of the Eternal-Feminine which is strictly for Frenchmen—or Wagnerians".