The Imitation of Christ

FOREWORDIN PREPARING this edition of The Imitation of Christ, the aim was to achieve asimple, readable text which would ring true to those who are already lovers of thisincomparable book and would attract others to it. For this reason we have attempted torender the text into English as it is spoken today rather than the cloudy, archaicterminology that encumbers so many translations of Christian classics. The result, wefeel, has achieved a directness and conciseness which will meet the...
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FOREWORDIN PREPARING this edition of The Imitation of Christ, the aim was to achieve asimple, readable text which would ring true to those who are already lovers of thisincomparable book and would attract others to it. For this reason we have attempted torender the text into English as it is spoken today rather than the cloudy, archaicterminology that encumbers so many translations of Christian classics. The result, wefeel, has achieved a directness and conciseness which will meet the approval ofmodern readers. In the second place, we have made use of the familiar paragraph form,doing away with the simple statement or verse form of the original and of manytranslations. This was done in the interest of easier reading, and in order to bring outmore clearly the connection between the single statements.No claim of literary excellence over the many English versions now extant is hereadvanced, nor any attempt to solve in further confusion the problem of the book'sauthorship.Theories most popular at the moment ascribe the Imitation to two or three men,members of the Brethren of the Common Life, an association of priests organized in theNetherlands in the latter half of the fourteenth century. That Thomas Hemerken ofKempen, or Thomas À Kempis as he is now known, later translated a composite of theirwritings, essentially a spiritual diary, from the original Netherlandish into Latin isgenerally admitted by scholars. This Thomas, born about the year 1380, was educatedby the Brethren of the Common Life, was moved to join their community, and wasordained priest. His career thereafter was devoted to practicing the counsels of spiritualperfection and to copying books for the schools. From both pursuits evolved TheImitation of Christ. As editor and translator he was not without faults, but thanks to himthe Imitation became and has remained, after the Bible, the most widely read book inthe world. It is his edition that is here rendered into English, without deletion of chaptersor parts of them because doubts exist as to their authorship, or because of variants instyle, or for any of the other more or less valid reasons.There is but one major change. The treatise on Holy Communion, which ÀKempis places as Book Three, is here titled Book Four. The move makes the order ofthe whole more logical and agrees with the thought of most editors.