The Imitation of Christ is a Christian devotional book. It is a handbook for spiritual life arising from the Devotio Moderna movement, a movement for religious reform, calling for apostolic renewal through the rediscovery of genuine pious practices. With the exception of the Bible, no Christian writing has had so wide a vogue or so sustained a popularity as this. Its structure it owes largely to the writings of the medieval mystics, and its ideas and phrases are a mosaic from the Bible and the Fathers of the early Church. But these elements are interwoven with such delicate skill and a religious feeling at once so ardent and so sound, that it promises to remain, what it has been for five hundred years, the supreme call and guide to spiritual aspiration.
