The Imitation of Christ

The authorship of the following treatise is commonly attributed to Thomas Kempis. There seems no doubt that this must be a mistake, but it will not be out of place to begin with some account of him.

Thomas Hemercker was born at Kempen, near Köln, about the year 1380. His father was a labouring man, and his mother the village schoolmistress. At twelve years old he was sent to a religious community at Deventer called “The Brothers of Common Life,” and there studied grammar and plain chant. In 1399 he entered as a novice among the canons regular of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwoll, where his brother was prior. In 1406 he made his profession, as appears from the following entry in the chronicle of the monastery:—“MCCCCVI in die Sacramenti investiti sunt duo fratres, Thomas Hemercker de Kempis civitate, dioecesis Coloniensis, germanus fratris Johannis Kempen, primi prioris quorum pater Johannes, mater Gertrudis vocabatur.” The special work to which he applied himself was transcription of MSS. He copied the Bible, the Missal, the works of St. Bernard. He was employed fifteen years in transcribing a Bible in four vols., folio, which Rosweide saw in the library of the canons regular of Köln, with the following note which Kempis had appended:—“Finitus et completus Anno Domini MCCCCXXXIX per manus fratris Thomae Kempis.” He then began copying some pious and ascetic treatises, among them the Imitatio Christi. To this he appended the same note as that at the end of the Bible, and thence arose the erroneous notion that he was its author, a notion which would be spread far and wide by the first printed editions. He died in 1471.

The work has also been attributed to John Gerson the famous Chancellor of the University of Paris, who took so praiseworthy a part at the period of the civil wars of Burgundy and Orleans, and whose influence was so mighty at the Councils of Pisa and Constance. In consequence of the persecution which he suffered from the party of Burgundy he retired to Bavaria, and there wrote his De Consolatione Theologicae, in imitation of Boethius. He died in 1429, at the age of sixty-six. The Imitatio has been attributed to him in consequence of some old copies bearing the name of John Gersen as the author. The first of these, printed at Köln in 1488, is headed thus:—“Incipit liber primus Johannis Gersen de Imitatione Christi de contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi.” A list of twenty-four such copies lies before me.1 And it has been hastily concluded that the “Gersen” here spoken of must be the Chancellor. Dean Milman rejects the opinion that he was the author on internal grounds (Lat. Chr. VI 304, n.) But external evidence is equally conclusive against him.

In a family diary kept by the Count Gustavus de Advocatis of Biella in the years 1345—1349, occurs the following passage (which is copied literally), under February 1349:—“15⁰ Die Dominica mensis Februarji post divisionem factam cum fratre meo Vincentio qui Ceridonji2 abitat in signum fraterni amoris quod hoc temporalibus tantum impulsus negotis feci dono ili preciosum Codicem de Imitatione Christi, quod hoc ab agnatis meis longa manu teneo nam nonnulli antenates mei hujus jam recordarunt.”

Here we have it stated that a copy of the Imitatio Christi has been for successive generations before 1349 in the possession of the family De Advocatis. If this work be identical with that before us, there is an end at once both of the Kempis and the Chancellor Gerson authorship. And we shall now show that there is a strong case in favour of the identity.