Thomas à Kempis

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The spiritual writer Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380-1471) was a Roman Catholic monk in Holland whose "The Imitation of Christ" became a classic in religious literature.

Thomas à Kempis, whose family name was Hammercken, was born in the Rhineland town of Kempen near Düsseldorf in Germany. The school he attended at nearby Deventer in Holland had been started by Gerard Groote, founder of the Brothers of the Common Life. These were men devoted to prayer, simplicity, and union with God. Thomas of Kempen, as he was known at school, was so impressed by his teachers that he decided to live his own life according to their ideals. When he was 19, he entered the monastery of Mount St. Agnes, which the Brothers had recently started near Zwolle in Holland and which was then being administered by his older brother John. He spent the rest of his long life behind the walls of that monastery.

The pattern of Thomas's life remained the same over the years. He devoted his time to prayer, study, copying manuscripts, teaching novices, offering Mass, and hearing the confessions of people who came to the monastery church. From time to time Thomas was given a position of authority in the community of monks, but he consistently preferred the quiet of his cell to the challenge of administration. He was pleasant but retiring. The other monks eventually recognized Thomas's talent for deep thought and stopped troubling him with practical affairs.

Thomas wrote a number of sermons, letters, hymns, and lives of the saints. He reflected the mystical spirituality of his times, the sense of being absorbed in God. The most famous of his works by far is The Imitation of Christ, a charming instruction on how to love God. This small book, free from intellectual pretensions, has had great appeal to anyone interested in probing beneath the surface of life. "A poor peasant who serves God," Thomas wrote in it, "is better than a proud philosopher who … ponders the courses of the stars." The book advised the ordering of one's priorities along religious lines. "Vain and brief is all human comfort. Blessed and true is that comfort which is derived inwardly from the Truth." Thomas advised where to look for happiness. "The glory of the good is in their own consciences, and not in the mouths of men." The Imitation of Christ has come to be, after the Bible, the most widely translated book in Christian literature. Thomas died in the same monastic obscurity in which he had lived, on Aug. 8, 1471.

Further Reading

The most convenient modern edition of The Imitation of Christ is the translation by Justin McCann (1952). There are no modern works on the life of Thomas à Kempis, but several older books are still valuable: Francis R. Cruise, Thomas à Kempis (1887), and J. E. G. De Montmorency, Thomas à Kempis: His Age and Book (1906).

Thomas à Kempis, real name Thomas Hemerken (Kempen nr. Cologne, 1379 or 1380-1471, St Agnetenberg, Holland), sometimes called Thomas von Kempen, was educated at a monastery at Deventer, Holland, and became a monk at the monastery at St Agnetenberg near Zwolle, Holland, where he spent almost his whole life. He is internationally known through translations of the devotional book, written in medieval Latin, De imitatione Christi, which is generally, though not with complete certainty, attributed to him (published with German translation by P. Mons, 1959). He also wrote De elevatione mentis and a number of Latin hymns. Opera omnia (7 vols.), ed. M. J. Pohl, appeared in 1901-22.

Quotes:

"Adversities do not make a man frail. They show what sort of man he is."

"As iron put into the fire loseth its rust and becometh clearly red-hot, so he that wholly turneth himself unto God puts off all slothfulness, and is transformed into a new man."

"Activate yourself to duty by remembering your position, who you are, and what you have obliged yourself to be."

"The enemy is more easily overcome if he be not suffered to enter the door of our hearts, but be resisted without the gate at his first knock."

"Scruples, temptations, and fears, and cutting perplexities of the heart, are often the lot of the most excellent persons."

"Don't flatter the rich, or appear to willing before the great."

See more famous quotes by Thomas Kempis