IN PREPARING this edition of The Imitation of Christ, the aim was to achieve a simple, readable text which would ring true to those who are already lovers of this incomparable book and would attract others to it. For this reason we have attempted to render the text into English as it is spoken today rather than the cloudy, archaic terminology that encumbers so many translations of Christian classics. The result, we feel, has achieved a directness and conciseness which will meet the approval of modern readers. In the second place, we have made use of the familiar paragraph form, doing away with the simple statement or verse form of the original and of many translations. This was done in the interest of easier reading, and in order to bring out more clearly the connection between the single statements.
No claim of literary excellence over the many English
versions now extant is here advanced, nor any attempt to solve in further
confusion the problem of the book's authorship. Theories most popular at the
moment ascribe the Imitation to two or three men, members of the
Brethren of the Common Life, an association of priests organized in the
Netherlands in the latter 
half of
the fourteenth century. That Thomas Hemerken of Kempen,
or Thomas À Kempis as he is now known, later translated
a composite of their writings, essentially a spiritual diary, from the original
Netherlandish into Latin is generally admitted by scholars. This Thomas, born
about the year 1380, was educated by the Brethren of the Common Life, was moved
to join their community, and was ordained priest. His career thereafter was
devoted to practicing the counsels of spiritual perfection and to copying books
for the schools. From both pursuits evolved The Imitation of Christ. As
editor and translator he was not without faults, but thanks to him the Imitation
became and has remained, after the Bible, the most widely read book in the
world. It is his edition that is here rendered into English, without deletion
of chapters or parts of them because doubts exist as to their authorship, or
because of variants in style, or for any of the other more or less valid
reasons.
There is but one major change. The treatise on Holy Communion, which À Kempis places as Book Three, is here titled Book Four. The move makes the order of the whole more logical and agrees with the thought of most editors.
The Translators
Aloysius Croft
Harold Bolton