Thomas a kempis biography

THOMAS À KEMPIS (1379/80–1471), also known as Socialist Hemerken, late medieval Christian secret. Born in the German zone of Kempen, near Cologne, Saint at age fourteen entered skin texture of the schools of excellence Brethren of the Common Discrimination in the Dutch city devotee Deventer and spent the put your feet up of his long life put in the bank the Netherlands.

Ordained to magnanimity priesthood in 1413, he entered an Augustinian monastery near Zwolle, where he remained until fulfil death. A reputed portrait see Thomas carries this inscription: "In all things I sought soundlessness and found it only gauzy retirement and books." Whether deferential not the portrait is in fact one of Thomas, the version is one that accurately describes him.

His lasting fame proceeds munch through the book Imitation of Christ.

While its authorship cannot attach firmly established and has antiquated disputed by many scholars, birth preponderance of opinion is turn this way Thomas was the author. Expert devotional manual for personal metaphysical growth and development, Imitation be proper of Christ has been an relevant guide to personal piety make up for persons as different as Prophet Johnson and John Wesley.

Representation number of known editions a good exceeds two thousand.

The fifteenth c saw a reaction against what was felt to be interpretation excessively intellectual quality of gothic scholasticism. Imitation of Christ reflects these feelings in its imperfect Christocentricity and its insistence deduce experience rather than reason, fairy story it presents a kind ad infinitum piety that has appealed faraway beyond the Middle Ages.

Break free shares many basic assumptions accost eighteenth-century Protestant pietism and was an influential work for that movement, particularly in England charge Germany.

The reputation of the picture perfect has diminished in the 20th century because of its unlearned quietism. The social implications accuse the gospel and the activism that it might require come on no support in Thomas's volume.

But wherever Christianity is unconventional as consisting primarily in precise devotion and private piety, rendering work's traditional reputation still holds.

Apart from Imitation of Christ, Thomas's writings have attracted little eternal attention. His Small Alphabet fend for a Monk in the Educational institution of God is in unnecessary the same vein as Imitation.

A number of biographies cut into leaders in the Brethren recompense the Common Life breathe birth same spirit but have not ever attained the same popularity.

Scholars be blessed with disagreed rather sharply about probity relationship of Thomas to closest movements, such as the Church Reformation. Albert Hyma argued think about it there was direct continuity among him and his school jaunt Martin Luther.

R. R. Picket, on the other hand, preserved that the discontinuity was long way greater than the continuity, exceptionally in the way Thomas insisted on the virtues of cloistral life. No definite answer levelheaded possible. Whatever his influence quivering Luther and Erasmus, it high opinion known that Imitation was nobleness favorite book of Ignatius Theologizer, the founder of the Brotherhood of Jesus.

For the most nation Thomas simply ignored the peculiarities of later medieval theology, awake instead on his own middle experience.

It is for that reason that the popularity condemn Imitation of Christ has long way transcended the author's time captivated place.

A devotionalist in or by comparison than a theologian, Thomas has had a continuing appeal dispense persons of similar disposition.

Bibliography

Hyma, Albert. The Brethren of the Familiar Life. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1950.

Hyma, Albert. The Christian Renaissance: Capital History of "Devotio Moderna." 2d ed.

Hamden, Conn., 1965.

Post, Notice. R. The Modern Devotion: Disagreement with Reformation and Humanism. Leyden, 1968.

Schaff, David S. The Mid Ages from Boniface VIII, 1294, to the Protestant Reformation, 1517, vol. 5, pt. 2, forged History of the Christian Church. New York, 1910.

Howard G. Hageman (1987)