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BY THOMAS À KEMPIS
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN INTO MODERN ENGLISH
Digitized by Harry Plantinga, planting [a] cs . pitt . edu, 1994.
This etext is in the public domain.
Foreword
IN PREPARING this edition of The Imitation of Christ, the aim was to
achieve a simple, readable text which would ring true to those who are
already lovers of this incomparable book and would attract others to it.
For this reason we have attempted to render the text into English as it
is spoken today rather than the cloudy, archaic terminology that encumbers
so many translations of Christian classics. The result, we feel, has achieved
a directness and conciseness which will meet the approval of modern readers.
In the second place, we have made use of the familiar paragraph form,
doing away with the simple statement or verse form of the original and
of many translations. This was done in the interest of easier reading,
and in order to bring out more clearly the connection between the single
statements.
No claim of literary excellence over the many English versions now extant
is here advanced, nor any attempt to solve in further confusion the problem
of the book's authorship.
Theories most popular at the moment ascribe the Imitation to two or three
men, members of the Brethren of the Common Life, an association of priests
organized in the Netherlands in the latter half of the fourteenth century.
That Thomas Hemerken of Kempen, or Thomas À Kempis as he is now known,
later translated a composite of their writings, essentially a spiritual
diary, from the original Netherlandish into Latin is generally admitted
by scholars. This Thomas, born about the year 1380, was educated by the
Brethren of the Common Life, was moved to join their community, and was
ordained priest. His career thereafter was devoted to practicing the counsels
of spiritual perfection and to copying books for the schools. From both
pursuits evolved The Imitation of Christ. As editor and translator he
was not without faults, but thanks to him the Imitation became and has
remained, after the Bible, the most widely read book in the world. It
is his edition that is here rendered into English, without deletion of
chapters or parts of them because doubts exist as to their authorship,
or because of variants in style, or for any of the other more or less
valid reasons.
There is but one major change. The treatise on Holy Communion, which
À Kempis places as Book Three, is here titled Book Four. The move makes
the order of the whole more logical and agrees with the thought of most
editors.
The Translators
Aloysius Croft
Harold Bolton
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