IMITATION OF CHRIST (Lat. De 'mita ticale ('hristi). The 111(1.4 Widely read, after the Bible. of all spiritual books. It is a series of Counsels tor the attainment of perfection. written in a spirit of sincere and humble piety. inter and egelloquies between t hrist and the devout soul. It is strange that the authorship of n book so popular and com paratively so recent should have been the subject of one of the most curious controversies in lit erary history. Following his own counsels of humility, the author concealed his name. Tho oldest certainly dated manuseripts—the Wolfen Mittel (142r), the Caesdonck (1427), and the PooIf (1131)—nre all anonymous. The book was attributed with more or less to as many as thirty-five different authors, inelml ing Saint Bernard, Innocent 11I., and John Scotus Erigena. The choke finally narrowed to three —Thomas it Kempis, the great Chancellor Cerson (q.v.). and a person of the name of John Cersen, a Benedictine abbot of Vercelli. :Most of the fifteenth century printed copies bear the Chancellor's name; hot the proportion alters in the sixteenth, and the claimant Gersen or Cesen appears for the first time in 1601. The
emitroversy raged acrimoniously in religious orders, universities, and even the Parliament of Paris. Between 1015 and 1837 no less than 150 works devoted to the question appeared in France alone. The weight of evidence, both internal and external, has for a long time been considered to test on the side of Thomas it Kempis (q.v.). The book was finished in 1421, and first printed nt Augsburg probably between 1470 and 1472. The hest critical edition of the text is by C. Ilirsehe (Berlin, 1874: 2d ed. 1891). Consult: Kettlewell, The Juthorship of the Dc Dnitatione enristi (London, 1777) ; Malou, Recherches his• t,,riques et critiques sur le veritable autrur du Here de l'Imitation (3d ed., Louvain, 1858) ; Wheatley, The Story of the Imitatio Christi (London, 1891) ; and an excellent bibliography by a learned modern defender of the Gersen theory, Wolfsgruber, in Giovanni Gersen, Rein Leber and seen Werk De Imitatione Christi (Augsburg., 1880).