Thomas a Kempis was plain Thomas Haemerken of Kempen, a small town near Cologne, the son of a poor mechanic, who had the great advantage of a mother of large heart and far more than the usual stock of book learning. Doubtless it was through his mother that Thomas inherited his taste for books and his desire to enter the church. He followed an elder brother into the cloister, spending his novitiate of seven years at the training school of the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer, in the Netherlands. Then he entered as postulant the monastery of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwolle, of which his brother John was prior. This monastery was ruled by the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, and it was filled by the Brothers of the Common Life. For another seven years he studied to fit himself for this life of the cloister, and finally he was ordained a priest in 1413. As he entered upon his religious studies at the tender age of 13, he had been employed for fourteen years in preparing himself for his life work in the monastery. The few personal details that have been handed down about him show that he was of unusual strength, with the full face of the people of his race, and that he kept until extreme old age the strength of his voice and the fire of his eye. For sixty years he remained a monk, spending most of his time in transcribing the Bible and devotional treatises and in teaching the neophytes of his own community. His devotion to books was the great passion of his life and doubtless reconciled a man of so much native strength of body and mind to the monotony of the cloister. His favorite motto was: "Everywhere have I sought for peace, but nowhere have I found it save in a quiet corner with a little book." The ideal of the community was to live as nearly as possible the life of the early Christians. The community had the honor of educating Erasmus, the most famous scholar of the Reformation. Thomas a Kempis drew most of the inspiration for _The Imitation of Christ_ from the Bible, and especially from the New Testament. The book is a series of eloquent variations on the great central theme of making one's life like that of Christ on earth. And with this monk, who lived in a community where all property was shared in common and where even individual earnings must be put into the general fund, this idea of reproducing the life of Christ was feasible. Cut off from all close human ties, freed from all thought of providing for food and shelter, the monastic life in a community like that of the Brothers of the Common Life was the nearest approach to the ideal spiritual existence that this world has ever seen. To live such a life for more than the ordinary span of years was good training for the production of the _Imitation_, the most spiritual book of all the ages.