Explore two crucial texts in Christian theology and history, the Confessions of St. Augustine and Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.
In this volume, you can examine one of the most important and enduring works of ascetic, Bishop of Hippo, and Church Father, St. Augustine. As the introduction to this volume notes, “[t]he Confessions . . . speaks for itself. The earliest of autobiographies, it remains unsurpassed as a sincere and intimate record of a great and pious soul laid bare before God.”
Though there is some debate as to its authorship, the treatise The Imitation of Christ appears to have been originally written in Latin early in the fifteenth century by Thomas à Kempis. “With the exception of the Bible, no Christian writing has had so wide a vogue or so sustained a popularity as this. And yet, in one sense, it is hardly an original work at all. 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.”
The Harvard Classics
Journey through “Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf.” This massive collection, designed to provide the elements of a liberal education, was compiled by distinguished Harvard University president Charles Eliot in the early 1900s. Packed with the essential works of the Western classical tradition, the Harvard Classics collection remains one of the most comprehensive and well-researched anthologies of all time—a must-have library for students and lovers of the classics.
