Of The Imitation of Christ

george Barrie's and sons, 1890-01-01. Hardcover. Good. 1891 George Barrie (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 5 3/8 x 7 1/2 inches tall white hardcover in publisher's purple cloth dust jacket, silver ruling and design to boards, top page edges gilt, white moire endpapers, illustrated with engraved frontispiece and nine other full-page engravings by Flameng from paintings by J. Paul Laurens (all with tissue guards), xviii, [1], 265 pp. Slight to moderate soiling, rubbing and edgewear to covers, with staining to the lower edges of the front board. Residue of label to front pastedown. A couple of pages with slight age toning. Otherwise, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked - in a moderately soiled and edgeworn (and quite uncommon) cloth dust jacket. ~EEE~ [2.0P] An uncommon turn-of-the-century Philadelphia issue of The Imitation of Christ, Christendom's most popular devotional treatise, with an introduction by W. Wilberforce Newton. The Imitation was written (or at a minimum, transcribed) by Catholic monk Thomas Kempis, as four separate books completed between 1420 and 1427, at Mount Saint Agnes monastery, in the town of Windesheim, located in what is now the Netherlands. He wrote these works for the instruction of novices of his Augustinian monastic order, followers of Geert Groote's Brethren of the Common Life. But the writings quickly became popular among all the literate faithful. They were copied together in one manuscript as early as 1427, by Kempis, and copied (and later printed) together fairly consistently thereafter. Soon after hand-copied versions of the Imitatio Christi initially appeared, the printing press was invented, and it was among the first books after the Bible to be printed. There is probably no other book other than the Bible which has been printed in so many editions and translations. In the past six hundred years, the work has been translated from Kempis' medieval Latin into nearly every language in the world.