Thomas à Kempis

Thomas à Kempis was born around 1380 in Kempen, Germany, and became a Catholic canon regular of the Augustinians. He joined the Congregation of Windesheim, an offshoot of the Brethren of the Common Life and part of the Modern Devotion, a reform movement that swept through the late medieval Church. There he followed the teachings of Geert Groote and Florens Radewyns, the movement's founders. Somewhere in those cloistered years he produced The Imitation of Christ, a work of devotional instruction that outlived its century by miles. He died on 1 May 1471, leaving behind a book that never quite we…