Thomas à Kempis was a late Medieval Catholic

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 monk

Monk

A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...

 and the probable author of The Imitation of Christ, which is one of the best known Christian books on devotion. His name means, "Thomas of Kempen", his home town and in German he is known as Thomas von Kempen. He also is known by various spellings of his family name: Thomas Haemerkken; Thomas Hammerlein; Thomas Hemerken, and Thomas Hämerken.

Life

He was born at the Lower Rhine

Lower Rhine

The Lower Rhine flows from Bonn, Germany, to the North Sea at Hoek van Holland, Netherlands.Almost immediately after entering the Netherlands, the Rhine splits into many branches. The main branch is called the Waal which flows from Nijmegen to meet the river Meuse; after which it is called Merwede...

 region in Kempen, Germany, County of Cleves

Duchy of Cleves

The Duchy of Cleves was a State of the Holy Roman Empire. It was situated in the northern Rhineland on both sides of the Lower Rhine, around its capital Cleves and the town of Wesel, bordering the lands of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster in the east and the Duchy of Brabant in the west...

 ca.1380. His paternal

Surname

A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...

 name was Hemerken, Kleverlandish for little hammer. His father John was a blacksmith and his mother, Gertrude was a school-mistress.

In 1392 he followed his brother, Jan, to Deventer

Deventer

Deventer is a municipality and city in the Salland region of the Dutch province of Overijssel. Deventer is largely situated on the east bank of the river IJssel, but also has a small part of its territory on the west bank. In 2005 the municipality of Bathmen Deventer is a municipality and city in...

, Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 in order to attend the city school. While attending school in Deventer, Thomas encountered the Brethren of the Common Life

Brethren of the Common Life

The Brethren of the Common Life was a Roman Catholic pietist religious community founded in the 14th century by Gerard Groote, formerly a successful and worldly educator who had had a religious experience and preached a life of simple devotion to Jesus Christ...

, followers of Gerard Groote's Modern Devotion. He attended school in Deventer from 1392 to 1399.

After leaving school, Thomas traveled to Zwolle

Zwolle

Zwolle is a municipality and the capital city of the province of Overijssel, Netherlands, 120 kilometers northeast of Amsterdam. Zwolle has about 120,000 citizens.-History:...

, Netherlands to visit his brother again, after Jan had become the prior of the Mount St. Agnes monastery. Thereafter, Thomas was invested at the Mount St. Agnes monastery in 1406. He did not become ordained as a priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

, however, until almost a decade later. He became a prolific copyist and writer. Thomas received priest's orders

Holy Orders

The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....

 in 1413 and was made sub-prior of the monastery in 1429.

The monastery was disturbed for a time because of the pope's rejection of the bishop-elect of Utrecht, Rudolf van Diepholt

Rudolf van Diepholt

Rudolf van Diepholt was a bishop of Utrecht from 1423 to 1455 and bishop of Osnabrück from 1454 to 1455.Rudolf van Diepholt was one of the most influential Prince-Bishops of Utrecht in the late Middle Ages...

; otherwise, Thomas's life was a quiet one, his time being spent between devotional exercises, composition, and copying. He copied the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 no fewer than four times, one of the copies being preserved at Darmstadt

Darmstadt

Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

, Germany in five volumes. In its teachings he was widely read and his works abound in Biblical quotations, especially from the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

.

Kempis died in 1471 near Zwolle in the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Utrecht

The Archdiocese of Utrecht is an archdiocese of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. The archdiocese is the metropolitan for 6 suffragans, the dioceses of Breda, Groningen-Leeuwarden, Haarlem-Amsterdam, Roermond, Rotterdam, and 's-Hertogenbosch....

, seventy-five miles north of his birthplace.

Works

Thomas à Kempis was a copyist and writer. Kempis copied two Bibles, each in ten volumes. Kempis wrote the biographies of New Devotion members—Gerard Groote, Florens Randewijns, John van de Gronde, and John Brinckerinck. His important works include a series of sermons to the novices of St.Augustine monastery, including Prayers and Meditations on the Life of Christ, Meditations on the Incarnation of Christ, Of True Compunction of Heart, Soliloquy of the Soul, Garden of Roses, Valley of Lilies, and a Life of St. Lidwina of Schiedam. Kempis's 1441 autograph manuscript of The Imitation of Christ is available in the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

(catalog : MS 5455-61).

Quotations

The following quotes are attributed to him:

"Without the Way,

there is no going,

Without the Truth,

there is no knowing,

Without the Life,

there is no living."

"If thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faith, and seek not at any time the fame of being learned."

"At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done."

— The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 3

"For man proposes, but God disposes"

— The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 19

"If, however, you seek Jesus in all things, you will surely find Him. "

— The Imitation of Christ, Book II, ch. 7

"In angello cum libello" (with slight variations), "In a little corner with a little book"

— Shortened form of a motto often ascribed to, or associated with, Thomas a Kempis. The complete saying as reported by an early biographer is a mixture of Latin and Dutch and runs as follows: "In omnibus requiem quaesivi, sed non inveni, nisi in hoexkens ende boexkens", "I have sought everywhere for peace, but I have found it not save in a little nook and in a little book."

Veneration

A monument was dedicated to his memory in the presence of the archbishop of Utrecht in St. Michael's Church, Zwolle, on November 11, 1897. Because of the closing of this church, in 2006 his shrine was moved to a historical church in the centre of Zwolle.

External links

• Read Imitation of Christ online
• Thomas à Kempis at The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Quotes from Thomas à Kempis
• Imitation of Christ in PDF
• Imitation of Christ in downloadable MP3