Abstract

This essay investigates the use of Scripture in The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. It discusses some of the conditions during the time of its appearance, focussing on the Devotio Moderna as reform movement, the life of Thomas. It then discusses the Imitation and its use of Scripture in detail.

Highlights

  • The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were a time of sharp contrasts

  • The spirituality of the Devotio Moderna finds its best expression in the book The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

  • Such a goal could have been to withdraw from the social structures of the period in order to be purified through silence and solitude. This working goal is found on the level of that which we can do. It is at this level that we find much of organised religious life: the common liturgy or prayer of the hours, the structured silence and the following of the particular rules of an order or congregation

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were a time of sharp contrasts. The Low Countries were affected by the plague, failed harvests and flooding. The life of the church and the religiosity of the masses suffered under pressures from ecclesiastical taxes, simony, the secularisation of the clergy, the decline of the religious life, the dislocation of the hierarchy, conciliarism and the western schism. From the beginning of the 12th century the poor of Christ (pauperes Christi) presented Christ through their personal poverty. They were themselves poor with the poor Christ. The women’s movement (mulieres religiosae or Beguines) was closely linked with the monastic reforms of the Premonstratensians and the Cistercians. Beguines and other mystics became heralds of Divine Love. The ecclesiastical decline called forth a need for a religious deepening that enabled the counter voices of the reforming synods to be heard.

The Devotio Moderna as reform movement
The life of Thomas a Kempis
The Imitation of Christ
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST AS PROGRESSIVE EXTERIORISATION OF SCRIPTURE
To meditate within the life of Christ
Being conformed to Christ
The love of God
Vanity of vanities
The disregard for the vanities of the world
Vanity is to forget our true destiny
Synthesis
CONCLUSION

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