Thomas à Kempis

Thomas à Kempis was born about 1380 at Kempen, a small town on the lower Rhine in Germany; his father was a craftsman. As a boy he went to study at Deventer in the Netherlands and joined the Devotio Moderna, a religious revival then spreading that stressed inner devotion, simple living and the imitation of Christ. At about twenty he entered the monastery of Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle, where he spent more than seventy years copying manuscripts, guiding novices and writing works of devotion, scarcely ever leaving it.