KEMPIS, Thomas à; STANHOPE, George (translator).
[The Imitation of Christ]. The Christian's pattern: or, a treatise of the imitation of Jesus Christ. In four books. Written originally in Latin by Thomas à Kempis. Now rendered into English. To which are added, meditations and prayers. For sick persons.
London, Printed for D. Browne et al., 1759.
Kempis (d.1471) was born in Kempen, in the Diocese of Cologne, but received his education at Deventer, in the Low Countries where he came into contact with the Fratres Vitae Communis, a majority lay confraternity founded by the Dutch deacon Gerard Groot, a leading figure in the Devotio Moderna movement. Members took no irrevocable vows, but lived according to the monastic principles of poverty, obedience and chastity, with all earnings put into a common fund.
Having completed his studies, Kempis joined the reformed monastery of the Augustinian Canon Regulars at Mount Saint Agnes, near Zwolle, where he was ordained priest in 1413, later becoming Sub-Prior in 1429. From here he wrote lives of Groot and his associate Florentius Radwyn, and composed the four disparate mystical tracts, together forming the Imitation, which began to circulate in manuscript in the 1430s. The first printed edition appeared in 1473, and the first English-language translation in 1503 — it has never been out of print since and remains a mainstay in the canon of Western literature.
8vo (21 x 13.5 cm); 4 engraved plates including frontispiece, occasional minor spotting, gift inscription in pen to rear free endpaper verso, occasional light spotting, slight offsetting to frontispiece and title, small puncture hole to A5 with slight loss of text to verso; contemporary sprinkled calf, covers ruled in gilt, spine in 6 gilt banded compartments, a little rubbed, very good; [12], 339, [3], 45, [1]pp.
Stock code 115317
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[The Imitation of Christ].
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[GENEVA VERSION]; STERNHOLD & HOPKINS (Psalmes).
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A handsome sixteeth-century edition of the Geneva Bible, finely bound in eighteenth-century gilt-panelled calf, without the Concordance, but with the Booke of Common Prayer and metrical Psalmes
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KEMPIS, Thomas à.
[Imitatio Christi].
1677.
A near fine example of an English semi-sombre binding enclosing Thomas à Kempis' great spiritual meditation, De Imitatione Christi in English translation
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