Imitazione di Cristo (1418)

The prose is beautiful, but the content of this book? That is another matter altogether, particularly in the third section, when much of the content purports to be from the mouth of Christ. As a Christian within the Reformed tradition and confessionally holding to the Three Forms of Unity it was at this point the book went out-of-bound theologically. Do you want to imitate Christ as you live by faith? Then read the Bible and read the Puritans, for their writings contain many of the same general ideas but they do so with frequent scripture references and they never claim to be putting words into the mouth of our Savior that were not placed by His Spirit into the Bible. ( )

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with Practical Reflections and Prayers

While its authorship cannot be firmly established and has been disputed by many scholars, the preponderance of opinion is that Thomas was the author. A devotional manual for personal spiritual growth and development, Imitation of Christ has been an influential guide to personal piety for persons as different as Samuel Johnson and John Wesley.

The fifteenth century saw a reaction against what was felt to be the excessively intellectual quality of medieval scholasticism. Imitation of Christ reflects these feelings in its marked Christocentricity and its insistence upon experience rather than reason, and it presents a kind of piety that has appealed far beyond the Middle Ages. It shares many basic assumptions with eighteenth-century Protestant pietism and was an influential work for this movement, particularly in England and Germany. ( )

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