KEMPIS, Thomas A, was so called from Kempen (now a t. of 5,400 inhabitants in the Prussian Rhine province), where he was born in 1379. His family name was Hamerken (Latinized, _MaMeans, "little-hammer"). He was educated at Deventer, and in 1400 entered an Augustinian convent in the diocese of Utrecht, of which his brother John was prior. Here he took the vows iu 1400. IIe entered into priest's orders in 1413, and was chosen sub-prior in 1429, to which office he was re-elected in 1448. His whole life appears to have been spent in the seclusion of this convent, where he lived to an extreme old age. His death took place in 1471, at which time he certainly had attained his 90th year, and most 'probably his 92d. The character of Kempis for sanc tity and ascetic learning stood very high among his contemporaries, but his historical reputation rests almost entirely on his writings, which consist of sermons, ascetical treatises, pious biographies, letters, and hymns. Of these, however, the only one which deserves special notice is the celebrated ascetical treatise, On the Following (or Imitation) of Christ, the authorship of which is popularly ascribed to him. This celebrated book has had, next to the sacred Scripture itself, the largest number of readers of which sacred literature, ancient or modern, can furnish an example.- In its pages, according to Dean Milman (Latin Christianity, vi. 482), " is gathered and concentered all that is elevating, passionate, profoundly pious in all the older mystics. No book, after the holy Scripture, has been so often reprinted; none translated into so many languages, ancient and modern," extending even to Greek and Hebrew, or so often retranslated. Sixty distinct versions are enumerated in French alone, and a single collection, formed at Cologne within the present century, comprised, although confessedly incomplete, no fewer than 500 distinct editions. It is strange that the authorship of a book so popular, and of a date comparatively so recent, should still be the subject of one of the most curious controversies in literary history. The book, up to the beginning of the 17th c.,
had been ascribed either to Thomas a Kempis or to the celebrated John Gerson (q.v.), chancellor of the university of Paris, except in one MS., which, by.a palpable anach ronism, attributes it to St. Bernard; but in the year 1604 the Spanish Jesuit, Mauriquez, found a MS. in which it is attributed to the abbot John Gerson, or Gesell, whom he regarded as clearly a distinct person from the chancellor Gerson. From the time of this discovery three competitors have divided the voices of the learned—not alone individuals, but public bodies, universities, religions orders, the congregation of the Index, the Parliament of Paris, and even the French academy; and the asserters of these respective claims have carried into the controversy no trifling amount of polemical acrimony. The most recent and best account of the details of the discussion, as well as its history, will be found in 3lalou's Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur le Veritable Anteur rlu Litre de l'Imitation de Jesus Christ (Louvain, 1849). We shall only state that M. Malon gives his verdict in favor of the claim of Thomas a Kempis, an opinion in which the learned have now generally acquiesced. The first edition of the Imitation was primed at Augsburg, in 1846, and before the end of that century, it was reprinted upwards of 20 times in Germany. The most remarkable modern edition is a heptaglot, printed at Sulzbach (1837), containing, besides the original, later versions in Italian, Spanish, French, German, English, and Greek. The theology of the Imitation is almost purely ascetical, and (excepting the 4th book, which regards the eucharist, and is based on the doctrine of the real presence) the work has been used indiscriminately by Chris tians of all denominations.