§ 01 · Introduction
Thomas Hemerken of Kempen spent nearly seventy years in a monastery near Zwolle in the Netherlands, copying manuscripts and directing novices. The Imitation is what he told them. It was circulated anonymously at first and belongs to the Devotio Moderna — a movement that prized plain, practical holiness over speculation.
Book One gives counsel for the spiritual life. Book Two turns to the interior life. Book Three, the longest, is a dialogue between Christ and the disciple. Book Four is on the Sacrament. The chapters are short, sometimes only a paragraph, and they were written to be read a little at a time and turned over during the day.
It is not a comfortable book. Its advice — to think little of yourself, to expect suffering, to distrust your own cleverness — cuts against almost everything modern life rewards. That is why people keep coming back to it.