The Imitation of Christ emerged from the late-medieval Devotio Moderna, linked to the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life and the Windesheim reform. Its four books gather different kinds of formation: short counsels on spiritual life, instruction on the inner life, a long dialogue between Christ and the disciple, and teaching on the Eucharist.
The work circulated in manuscript and entered print early. A modern review of the translation history reports more than a hundred printed Latin and vernacular editions before 1530, a spread helped by communities that copied devotional books and by the new press. Versions could be adapted for local readers; some early English editions omitted Book IV, while the complete four-book structure later became familiar.
Thomas à Kempis is the traditional attribution, but the composition history is not settled. Benham’s own nineteenth-century note weighs medieval attributions to Bernard, Walter Hilton and Jean Gerson before favoring Thomas; recent scholarship emphasizes that the books may have been assembled from material with different origins. One scholarly account gives c. 1420–27 as a proposed date, not a secure year.