Second Only to the Bible in Printings, and Still Contested in Authorship

Tradition attributes the Imitation of Christ to Thomas a Kempis, a canon of the Devotio Moderna community at Mount St Agnes near Zwolle, and this remains the most widely accepted attribution, though the question was disputed for centuries, with other candidates, including the French theologian Jean Gerson, proposed at various points, and no surviving manuscript evidence settles the matter beyond all doubt.

Whatever its precise authorship, the book became one of the most reproduced texts in the history of Christian publishing, commonly cited as the most translated and most printed Christian work after the Bible itself, appearing in editions across essentially every European language and many others besides, from the fifteenth century onward without significant interruption. Its plain, aphoristic style translates unusually well across languages compared with more elaborate theological prose, which is likely part of why it has traveled so far beyond its original Dutch and Latin milieu, and it remains in active devotional use today, still printed in new editions and still commonly recommended as an introductory text of Christian spiritual formation. Its short chapters, often only a page or two, made it especially well suited to the daily devotional reading practised within Devotio Moderna communities.