The Imitation of Christ

The Imitation of Christ, traditionally attributed to Thomas a Kempis and translated here by Betty I. Knott, is a primary devotional text from the fifteenth century Devotio Moderna movement, one of the most widely read and translated works in Christian history. As the actual text itself, it carries direct authority for what this specific strand of late medieval spirituality taught about humility, inner devotion and detachment from worldly concern. Its authorship is genuinely uncertain within scholarship, with the traditional attribution to Kempis debated against other candidates and against the possibility of composite authorship across the Devotio Moderna community, a manuscript question separate from and not affecting the text's own devotional content and historical influence across both Catholic and later Protestant readerships.