History Focus for August 8

A short focus on a person or event associated with this day in History.

Thomas Kempis -

Thomas Kempis was born around 1379 or 1380. He died on August 8, 1471 near the age of ninety. His original name was Thomas Hemerken. He was born in Kempen, Prussia, near Dusseldorf, Germany. His monastic name of Thomas á Kempis indicates his place of birth. He was a dreamy, shy kind of boy of humble peasant birth. He grew into a retiring young man of pronounced mystical inclinations.

In 1407 he entered the Augustinian monastery of Mount Saint Agnes, near Zwolle, in the Netherlands, where his elder brother was prior. He was ordained a priest in 1413. He spent all the remaining many years of his life at Mount Saint Agnes, was chosen subprior on two occasions, and ultimately became prior. The greater part of his long life was passed in the seclusion of the cloister, where he copied manuscripts, counseled, and wrote. Thomas's writings are representative of the devotio moderna, a movement of spiritual reform centered in the Netherlands that stressed the moral example of Christ. Thomas also wrote sermons, religious biographies, and devotional books for the young.

He is generally accepted as the author of the Imitatio Christi or Imitation of Christ. The Imitation of Christ is so characteristic of the temperament of the highly ascetic, self-effacing, and even self-abasing characteristics of Thomas á Kempis. It was said that Thomas could not stay in a room where the conversation was too sprightly, for fear that it may be ascribed to him in spirit if not in actual fact. Imitatio Christi catches the otherworldliness which was so integral a part of the medieval intellect. The style of the writing is austere and simple. The book seems almost unaware of the contemporary world, but instead, is drenched in the flood of divinity. These qualities have made it a work of great appeal to all minds of an religious nature. The Imitation of Christ has been translated from its original Latin into all the languages of the Christian world. It is still being published and read today, nearly five hundred years after its writing

 

Sources: Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) | Compton's Pictured Enclclopedia

© Phillip Bower