IMITATION OF CHRIST, THE (Imitatio Christi), the title of a famous mediaeval Christian devotional work, much used still by both Catholics and Protestants and usually ascribed to Thomas a Kempis. The prolonged controversy over the author ship of the work has at the present time been narrowed down to the issue, "either Thomas a Kempis, or an unknown author." The following is a statement of the facts that may be received as certain:— I. It is the verdict of the most competent modern expert opinion that there is no palaeographical reason for suspecting that any known ms. of the Imitation (or any part of it) is earlier than the first quarter of the 15th century. The earliest dated ms. is of Bk. I. only (1424)• 2. A Latin letter of a Dutch canon regular, named Johann van Schoonhoven, exhibits such a close connection with Bk. I. that plagiarism on the one side or the other is the only possible ex planation. It is capable of demonstration that the author of the Imitation was the borrower, and that the opposite hypothesis is inadmissible. Now, this letter can be shown to have been written after 1382. Therefore Bk. I. was beyond controversy written between the years 1382 and 1424.
3. It is not here assumed that the four parts of the work formed a single work, or even that they are all by the same author; and the date of the other three books cannot be fixed with the same certainty. But, on the one hand, before the beginning of the 15th century there is no trace whatever of their existence—a strong argument that they did not yet exist ; and on the other hand, after 1424 nearly each year produces its quota of mss. and other signs of the existence of these books become frequent. Moreover, as a matter of fact, the four treatises did commonly circulate together. The presumption is strong that Bks. II., III., IV., like Bk. I., were composed shortly before they were put into circulation.
It may then be taken as proved that the Imitation was com posed between 138o and 1425, and probably towards the end rather than the beginning of that period. Having ascertained the date, we must consider the birthplace.
4. A number of idioms and turns of expression throughout the book show that its author belonged to some branch of the Teutonic race.
5. Of the 40o mss. of the Imitation 34o come from the Teutonic countries—another argument in favour of its Teutonic origin. Again, 'no of them, including the earliest, come from the Nether lands. This number is quite disproportionate to the relative size of the Netherlands, and so points to Holland as the country in which the Imitation was first most widely circulated and pre sumably composed.
6. There is a considerable body of early evidence, traceable before 145o, that the author was a canon regular.
7. Several of the mss. were written in houses belonging to the Windesheim Congregation of canons regular, or in close touch with it. Moreover, there is a specially intimate literary and spirit ual relationship between the Imitation and writings that emanated from what has been called the "Windesheim Circle." 8. There can be no question that in the Windesheim Congrega tion itself there was already, during Thomas a Kempis's lifetime, a fixed tradition that he was the author of the Imitation. The most important witness to this tradition is Johann Busch, who passed a great part of his life in Windesheim, only a few miles from Mount St. Agnes, the monastery of which Thomas was an inmate. It would be hard to find a more authentic witness. An other witness is Hermann Rhyd, a German member of the Windesheim Congregation, who also had personally known Thomas. Moreover, the tradition existed in Thomas a Kempis's own monastery shortly after his death; for John Mauburne became a canon in Mount St. Agnes within a few years of Thomas's death, and he states more than once that Thomas wrote the Imitation.
9. The earliest biographer of Thomas a Kempis was an anony mous contemporary : the Life was printed in but it exists in a ms. of 1488. The biographer says he got his information from the brethren at Mount St. Agnes, and he states in passing that Bk. III. was written by Thomas. Moreover, he appends a list of Thomas's writings, 38 in number, and 5-8 are the four books of the Imitation.
Internal arguments have been urged against Thomas's author ship. It has been said that his certainly authentic writings are so inferior that the Imitation could not have been written by the same author. It may be granted that Thomas was a prolific writer, that his writings vary very much in quality and that the Imitation surpasses all the rest, and that some are on a level very far below it ; still, when at their best, some of the other works are not unworthy of the author of the Imitation.
It has been said that the Imitation of Christ has had a wider religious influence than any book except the Bible, and if the statement be limited to Christendom, it is probably true. The Imitation has been translated into over fifty languages, and is said to have run through more than 6,000 editions. The other state ment, often made, that it sums up all that is best of earlier Western mysticism—that in it "was gathered and concentered all that was elevating, passionate, profoundly pious in all the older mystics" (Milman) is an exaggeration. It depreciates unduly the elder mystics and fails to do justice to the originality of the Imitation. For its spiritual teaching is different from the mysti cism of Augustine in the Confessions, or of Bernard in the Ser mons on the Song of Songs; from the scholastic mysticism of the St. Victors or Bonaventura; and from the mysticism of the Ger man school of Eckhart, Suso, Tauler and Ruysbroek. Again, it is different from the later school of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, and from the introspective methods of what may be called the modern school of spirituality. The Imitation stands apart, unique, as the principal and most representative utterance of a special phase of religious thought—non-scholastic, non-platonic, positive and merely religious in its scope—herein reflecting faith fully the spirit of the movement initiated by Gerhard Groot (q.v.), and carried forward by the circles in which Thomas a Kempis lived. In contrast with many mystical writings it is of limpid clearness, every sentence being easily understandable by all whose spiritual sense is in any degree awakened. No doubt it owes its universal power to this simplicity, to its freedom from intellec tualism and its direct appeal to the religious sense and to the extraordinary religious genius of its author.
BIBLIOGRAPHY .—The best account in English of the Controversy is Bibliography.—The best account in English of the Controversy is that given by F. R. Cruise in his Thomas a Kempis (1887). Works produced before 188o are in general, with the exception of those of Eusebius Amort, superannuated, and deal in large measure with points no longer of any living interest. A pamphlet by Cruise, Who was the Author of the Imitation? (1898) contains sufficient information on the subject for all ordinary needs; it has been translated into French and German, and may be regarded as the standard handbook.