Thomas a Kempis Biography Quotes 5 Report mistakes

Early Life and Origins
Thomas a Kempis, born Thomas Hemerken around 1380, came from Kempen in the Rhineland, then within the Holy Roman Empire. The byname "a Kempis" simply means "from Kempen". He grew up near the borderlands of the Low Countries and Germany, and as a youth moved north into an environment that was reshaping religious life in northwestern Europe. An older brother, commonly identified as Johannes (John) Hemerken, preceded him into the circles that nurtured his vocation. Through familial example and personal inclination, Thomas gravitated toward a form of lay and clerical piety that stressed interior reform and practical devotion rather than public disputation.

Education and the Brethren of the Common Life
In the 1390s he studied at Deventer, where the Brethren of the Common Life maintained a noted Latin school and houses of religious discipline. This milieu, founded by Geert Groote (also known as Gerardus Magnus), and organized after Groote's death by Florens Radewijns, sought a renewal of Christian life by combining learning, communal discipline, humble work, and meditative prayer. At Deventer Thomas encountered a circle that prized copying and reading Scripture, attentive lectio, and the cultivation of conscience. Leaders such as Radewijns and Jan Brinckerinck shaped the school's ethos; the writings of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, a principal theorist of the movement, articulated its ideals of inwardness and simplicity. Though Thomas arrived after Groote's death, Groote's memory and example animated the community's daily rhythms and aims.

Entrance to the Canons Regular and Mount St. Agnes
From the Brethren's schooling Thomas moved into a more stable canonical life. He entered the Canons Regular of St. Augustine connected with the Congregation of Windesheim, a reforming federation inspired by the same ideals as the Brethren. Thomas settled at the house of Mount St. Agnes (Agnetenberg), near Zwolle. In this cloister he professed vows, was ordained priest, and spent the great bulk of his long life. He served the community in practical roles: as a copyist of manuscripts, spiritual counselor, and guide of novices. The house's discipline, its modest scale, and its links to the Windesheim network provided him a framework for steady labor and reflection. The monastery's annals, associated with him in the Chronicon Montis Sanctae Agnetis, record the quiet perseverance and occasional trials of a community striving to live the devout life amid the unsettled currents of the time.

Works, Authorship, and Intellectual Setting
Thomas's literary reputation rests above all on The Imitation of Christ (De imitatione Christi), a series of meditative books composed in Latin and circulated first in manuscript. The text advances a sustained program of interior imitation: humility, detachment, purity of heart, patience in adversity, and a steady turning of the mind and affections toward Christ. Over the centuries some debate has touched its authorship, but the attribution to Thomas a Kempis has been widely accepted and remains the standard view in scholarship and devotion alike. His style is aphoristic and practical, designed for slow reading, memorization, and use in personal prayer or in the refectory.

Beyond this single work, Thomas wrote and copied extensively. He composed edifying treatises and sermons for the instruction of novices and for the encouragement of lay readers sympathetic to the Devotio Moderna. He prepared lives of key figures in the movement, notably the Vita Gerardi Magni (Life of Geert Groote) and the Vita Florentii Radewini (Life of Florens Radewijns), honoring the founders who had provided him and his companions with a model of disciplined discipleship. He took part in the painstaking manual labor that characterized the Brethren and the Windesheim canons, copying Scripture and devotional texts for use within and beyond Mount St. Agnes.

People and Communities Around Him
The most formative influences on Thomas were not courtly patrons or university masters but the leaders and communities of the Devotio Moderna. Geert Groote's fervent preaching and vision of communal reform, preserved by his followers, gave Thomas a touchstone for life-long practice. Florens Radewijns, whose prudence stabilized and spread Groote's initiatives, shaped the institutions that formed Thomas's youth. Jan Brinckerinck extended the movement's piety into houses for women and men and sustained the Deventer milieu in which Thomas matured. Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen provided a theological and pastoral vocabulary for the movement's insistence on Scripture, meditation, and moral seriousness. Within the Windesheim Congregation, reform-minded canons supported one another through visitations, common statutes, and shared texts; in this network Thomas's monastery found both correction and encouragement. His brother John, associated with the same devotional circles, offered familial continuity within this world of common prayer and work.

Spiritual Themes and Method
Thomas's writing distills the Devotio Moderna's core convictions. He privileges the interior acts of compunction, recollection, and humble self-knowledge; he urges constant examination of conscience; he counsels reverent reception of the Eucharist, taken not as a spectacle but as the Church's daily bread. He avoids scholastic intricacy in favor of short, pointed chapters designed for meditation. The Imitation of Christ, divided into books on prudential counsel, inward life, interior consolation, and the sacrament, guides readers through a school of affective piety. In all of this he echoes the atmosphere of Deventer and Zwolle, where reading, copying, and quiet conversation reinforced a rhythm of life oriented to God.

Historical Context
Thomas lived through a period marked by ecclesial turmoil and efforts at reform. The memory of the Western Schism and the debates that culminated in councils formed part of the background to his emphasis on the primacy of personal conversion over polemical victory. The Windesheim and Brethren networks embodied a concrete response to these conditions: small-scale communities of disciplined life, education for boys and young men, and texts aimed at cultivating steady virtue. Thomas's own monastery, neither famous nor wealthy, exemplified this patient, local renewal.

Later Years and Death
Advancing age did not greatly alter Thomas's pattern of life. He remained at Mount St. Agnes, writing, copying, and advising younger members. His reputation for practical wisdom drew correspondents and visitors within the Windesheim orbit, but he rarely traveled and left few traces beyond his manuscripts and the memories of his brethren. Around 1471 he died at Mount St. Agnes, closing a long life nearly coextensive with the formative decades of the Devotio Moderna. His burial, like his life, belonged to the modest ceremonies of a canonical house that prized humility and continuity over display.

Legacy
Thomas a Kempis became one of the most widely read spiritual authors in the Latin West. The Imitation of Christ circulated rapidly in manuscript and early print, nourishing lay confraternities, religious communities, and solitary readers. The schools of the Brethren of the Common Life, which educated later figures of the Northern Renaissance, carried forward the habits of reading and devotion that his works exemplified. Within monastic and canonical reforms, and later among various movements of Catholic and Protestant devotion, his pages continued to offer a reliable path to interior renewal. The men who shaped his world, Geert Groote, Florens Radewijns, Jan Brinckerinck, and Gerard Zerbolt, persist in memory largely through communities and texts that Thomas helped preserve. His life at Mount St. Agnes, steady and almost hidden, became the best commentary on the pages he wrote: a testimony that durable reform begins where he placed it, in the heart turned quietly toward Christ.

Our collection contains 5 quotes who is written by Thomas, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Mortality - Self-Discipline - Time - Self-Improvement.