Description

The Imitation of Christ (or De imitatione Christi), by Thomas à Kempis, is a widely read Catholic Christian spiritual book. It was first published anonymously, in Latin, ca. 1418; several other authors have been proposed, but Kempis' authorship is now generally accepted.
Imitation of Christ is a writing of the mysticist German-Dutch school of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and is widely considered one of the greatest manuals of devotion in pre-Reformation Catholic Christianity. Not only Catholics, but now many Protestants also join in giving it praise, Moody Press having published an edition. The Jesuits give it an official place among their "exercises". John Wesley and John Newton listed it among the works that influenced them at their conversion. General Gordon carried it with him to the battlefield. It is said Pope John Paul I was reading a copy when he died. Filipino national hero Jose Rizal reportedly read this book while in prison at Intramuros, Manila in the Philippines before his execution by a Spanish squad of soldiers. It was the last book read by Rizal before he was executed.
The number of counted editions exceeds 2000; 1000 different editions are preserved in the British Museum. The Bullingen collection, donated to the city of Cologne in 1838, contained at the time 400 different editions. De Backer [1] enumerates 545 Latin and about 900 French editions. A critical edition was published in 1982.[2]
The book was written in Latin. A manuscript from 1441 survives and there is a French translation from 1447. The first printed edition is a Catalan edition from 1482 (Barcelona, Pere Posa), translated into Catalan by Miquel Peres. The first printed French copies appeared at Toulouse in 1488. The earliest German translation was made in 1434 by J. de Bellorivo and is preserved in Cologne. The editions in German began at Augsburg in 1486. The first English translation (1502) was by William Atkinson and Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, who did the fourth book. Translations appeared in Italian (Venice, 1488; Milan 1489), Spanish (Seville, 1536), Arabic (Rome, 1663), Armenian (Rome, 1674), Hebrew (Frankfort, 1837), and other languages. Pierre Corneille produced a poetical paraphrase in French in 1651.