Thomas Hemerken was born about 1380 at Kempen in the Rhineland and is known by the name of his town. As a boy he went to school at Deventer, in the Netherlands, where he came under the influence of the Brethren of the Common Life, followers of Geert Groote's “Modern Devotion”, who sought a simple, inward life of prayer and work. Florens Radewijns, Groote's successor, took him into his house.
In 1399 he joined his elder brother John at the new house of Augustinian canons of Mount St Agnes, near Zwolle, in the congregation of Windesheim. He received the habit in 1406 and was ordained priest in 1413. He served as subprior and as master of novices, preached, wrote, and copied books by hand, among them the whole Bible. He spent the rest of his long life there and died in 1471, aged over ninety.
Thomas à Kempis in the library (2 works)
- The Imitation of Christ — 19th-century Benham translation
The most widely read Christian devotional book after the Bible. - Imitación de Cristo — 1827 (Burdeos, Beaume) · en español
El libro de devoción más leído después de la Biblia, en una traducción española impresa en 1827.