Thomas à Kempis is one of the best known and most beloved medieval Christian spiritual writers. Millions of Christians have found his work The Imitation of Christ to be a treasured and constant source of edification, and it has been translated into an astonishingly wide range of languages.

Thomas Hammerken was born at Kempen in the Duchy of Cleves about 1380. He was educated at Deventer by the Brethren of the Common Life, and joined their order in 1399 at their house of Mount St. Agnes in Zwolle (in the Low Countries).

The Order of the Brethren of the Common Life was founded by Gerard Groote (1340–1384) at Deventer. It included both clergy and lay members who cultivated a biblical piety of a practical rather than speculative nature, with stress upon the inner life and the practiceof virtues. They supported themselves by copying manuscripts and teaching. Many have seen in them harbingers of the Reformation; but the Brethren had little interest in the problems of the institutional church. Their spirituality, known as the “New Devotion” (Devotio moderna), has influenced both Catholic and Protestant traditions of prayer and meditation.

In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas wrote: “A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences. Yet learning itself is not to be blamed, nor is the simple knowledge of anything whatsoever to be despised, for true learning is good in itself and ordained by God; but a good conscience and a holy life are always to be preferred. But because many are more eager to acquire much learning than to live well, they often go astray, and bear little or no fruit. If only such people were as diligent in the uprooting of vices and the panting of virtues as they are in the debating of problems, there would not be so many evils and scandals among the people, nor such laxity in communities. At the Day of Judgement, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how eloquently we have spoken, but how holily we have lived. Tell me, where are now all those Masters and Doctors whom you knew so well in their lifetime in the full flower of their learning? Other men now sit in their seats, and they are hardly ever called to mind. In their lifetime they seemed of great account, but now no one speaks of them.”

Thomas died on July 25th, 1471.