De Imitatione Christi Libri Quatuor [The Imitation of Christ, in Four Books, here attributed to John Gersen, Supposed Benedictine Abbot of Vercelli, Italy]

Joannis Gersen (John Gersen); Thomas a Kempis

Edité par Joannem Eberhardum Kalin, 1748

A propos de cet article

In Latin. 1748 Joannem Eberhardum Kalin (Einsiedeln, Switzerland), 2 1/4 x 4 inches tall full leather bound, blind stamped floral design to covers, all page edges red, floral pastedowns, engraved printer's devices, [10], 329, [12] pp., complete. Covers rubbed and edgeworn, especially to tips. Extensive ink notations to front free-endpaper. Cracking between verso of title page and first page of text, but all holds firmly. Otherwise, apart from occasional minor staining or foxing, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked - of this scarce Benedictine Dom Francis Valgrave edition, with authorship of the Imitation ascribed to Abbot John Gersen. OCLC (Nos. 7495584, 604433851 and 84073980) only locates four extant copies of this particular edition in the US (Benedictine St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, Vincentian Fathers' St. John's University in New York, Harvard's Houghton Library and the Methodist Candler School of Theology in Atlanta), one in Mexico, one in Lyon, France and four in the Netherlands. ~KMP~ Early in the 20th century, some scholars concluded not only that the supposedly Benedictine Abbot John Gersen of Vercelli, Italy, did not author the Imitation, but that he never existed at all! Although some controversy still remains - and likely always will - the Imitation of Christ is now widely believed to have been written (or at a minimum, transcribed) by Catholic monk Thomas Kempis (circa 1380-1471), as four separate books completed between 1420 and 1427, at Mount Saint Agnes monastery, in the town of Windesheim, located in what is now the Netherlands. He wrote these works for the instruction of novices of his Augustinian monastic order, followers of Geert Groote's Brethren of the Common Life. But the writings quickly became popular among all the literate faithful. They were copied together in one manuscript as early as 1427, by Kempis, and copied (and later printed) together fairly consistently thereafter. Soon after hand-copied versions of the Imitatio Christi initially appeared, the printing press was invented, and it was among the first books after the Bible to be printed. There is probably no other book apart from the Bible which has been printed in so many editions and translations.

N° de réf. du vendeur KMP-0641-876

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: De Imitatione Christi Libri Quatuor [The Imitation of Christ, in Four Books, here attributed to John Gersen, Supposed Benedictine Abbot of Vercelli, Italy]
• Éditeur: Joannem Eberhardum Kalin
• Date de parution: 1748
• Reliure: Leather Bound
• État de l'article: Good
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Kempis