the “Contestation” is over, and that Thomas à Kempis’s claims to the authorship of the Imitation have been solidly established.
The best account in English of the Controversy is that given by F. R. Cruise in his Thomas à Kempis (1887). Works produced before 1880 are in general, with the exception of those of Eusebius Amort, superannuated, and deal in large measure with points no longer of any living interest. A pamphlet by Cruise, Who was the Author of the Imitation? (1898) contains sufficient information on the subject for all ordinary needs; it has been translated into French and German, and may be regarded as the standard handbook.
It has been said that the Imitation of Christ has had a wider religious influence than any book except the Bible, and if the statement be limited to Christendom, it is probably true. The Imitation has been translated into over fifty languages, and is said to have run through more than 6000 editions. The other statement, often made, that it sums up all that is best of earlier Western mysticism—that in it “was gathered and concentered all that was elevating, passionate, profoundly pious in all the older mystics” (Milman) is an exaggeration that is but partially true, for it depreciates unduly the elder mystics and fails to do justice to the originality of the Imitation. For its spiritual teaching is something quite different from the mysticism of Augustine in the Confessions, or of Bernard in the Sermons on the Song of Songs; it is different from the scholastic mysticism of the St Victors or Bonaventure; above all, it is different from the obscure mysticism, saturated with the pseudo-Dionysian Neoplatonism of the German school of Eckhart, Suso, Tauler and Ruysbroek. Again, it is quite different from the later school of St Teresa and St John of the Cross, and from the introspective methods of what may be called the modern school of spirituality. The Imitation stands apart, unique, as the principal and most representative utterance of a special phase of religious thought—non-scholastic, non-platonic, positive and merely religious in its scope—herein reflecting faithfully the spirit of the movement initiated by Gerhard Groot (q.v.), and carried forward by the circles in which Thomas à Kempis lived. In contrast with more mystical writings it is of limpid clearness, every sentence being easily understandable by all whose spiritual sense is in any degree awakened. No doubt it owes its universal power to this simplicity, to its freedom from intellectualism and its direct appeal to the religious sense and to the extraordinary religious genius of its author. Professor Harnack in his book What is Christianity? counts the Imitation as one of the chief spiritual forces in Catholicism: it “kindles independent religious life, and a fire which burns with a flame of its own” (p. 266).
The best Latin edition of the Imitation is that of Hirsche (1874), which follows closely the autograph of 1441 and reproduces the rhythmical character of the book. Of English translations the most interesting is that by John Wesley, under the title The Christian’s Pattern (1735). (E. C. B.)
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, THE. This dogma of the
Roman Catholic Church was defined, as “of faith” by Pope
Pius IX. on the 8th of December 1854 in the following terms:
“The doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, from
the first instant of her conception, was, by a most singular
grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of
Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the human race, preserved from
all stain of Original Sin, is a doctrine revealed, by God, and therefore
to be firmly and steadfastly believed by all the faithful.”[1]
These words presuppose the distinction between original, or
racial, and actual, or personally incurred sin. There is no dispute
that the Church has always held the Blessed Virgin to be
sinless, in the sense of actual or personal sin. The question
of the Immaculate Conception regards original or racial sin only.
It is admitted that the doctrine as defined by Pius IX. was not
explicitly mooted before the 12th century. But it is claimed
that it is implicitly contained in the teaching of the Fathers.
Their expressions on the subject of the sinlessness of Mary are,
it is pointed out, so ample and so absolute that they must be
taken to include original sin as well as actual. Thus we have
in the first five centuries such epithets applied to her as “in
every respect holy,” “in all things unstained,” “super-innocent”
and “singularly holy”; she is compared to Eve before the
fall, as ancestress of a redeemed people; she is “the earth
before it was accursed.”[2] The well-known words of St Augustine
(d. 430) may be cited: “As regards the mother of God,”
he says, “I will not allow any question whatever of sin.”[3]
It is true that he is here speaking directly of actual or personal
sin. But his argument is that all men are sinners; that they
are so through original depravity; that this original depravity
may be overcome by the grace of God, and he adds that he does
not know but that Mary may have had sufficient grace to overcome
sin “of every sort” (omni ex parte).
It seems to have been St Bernard who, in the 12th century, explicitly raised the question of the Immaculate Conception. A feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin had already begun to be celebrated in some churches of the West. St Bernard blames the canons of the metropolitan church of Lyons for instituting such a festival without the permission of the Holy See. In doing so, he takes occasion to repudiate altogether the view that the Conception of Mary was sinless. It is doubtful, however, whether he was using the term “Conception” in the same sense in which it is used in the definition of Pius IX. In speaking of conception one of three things may be meant: (1) the mother’s co-operation; (2) the formation of the body, or (3) the completion of the human being by the infusion of the rational or spiritual soul. In early times conception was very commonly used in the first sense—“active” conception as it was called. But it is in the second, or rather the third, sense that the word is employed in modern usage, and in the definition of Pope Pius IX. But St Bernard would seem to have been speaking of conception in the first sense, for in his argument he says, “How can there be absence of sin where there is concupiscence (libido)?” and stronger expressions follow, showing that he is speaking of the mother and not of the child.[4]
St Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval scholastics, refused to admit the Immaculate Conception, on the ground that, unless the Blessed Virgin had at one time or other been one of the sinful, she could not justly be said to have been redeemed by Christ.[5] St Bonaventura (d. 1274), second only to St Thomas in his influence on the Christian schools of his age, hesitated to accept it for a similar reason.[6] The celebrated John Duns Scotus (d. 1308), a Franciscan like St Bonaventura, argued, on the contrary, that from a rational point of view it was certainly as little derogatory to the merits of Christ to assert that Mary was by him preserved from all taint of sin, as to say that she first contracted it and then was delivered.[7] His arguments, combined with a better acquaintance with the language of the early Fathers, gradually prevailed in the schools of the Western Church. In 1387 the university of Paris strongly condemned the opposite view. In 1483 Pope Sixtus IV., who had already (1476) emphatically approved of the feast of the Conception, condemned those who ventured to assert that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was heretical, and forbade either side to claim a decisive victory until further action on the part of the Holy See. The council of Trent, after declaring that in its decrees on the subject of original sin it did not include “the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God,” renewed this prohibition.[8] Pope Paul V. (d. 1651) ordered that no one, under severe penalties, should dare to assent in public “acts” or disputations that the Blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin. Pope Gregory XV., shortly afterwards, extended this prohibition to private discussions, allowing, however, the Dominicans to argue on the subjects among themselves. Clement XI., in 1708, extended the feast of the Conception to the whole Church as a holy day of obligation. Long before the middle of the 19th century the doctrine was universally taught in the Roman Catholic Church. During the reign of Gregory XVI. the bishops in various countries began to press for a definition. Pius IX., at the beginning of his pontificate, and again after 1851, appointed commissions to investigate the whole subject, and he was advised that the doctrine was one
- ↑ From the Bull Ineffabilis Deus.
- ↑ See Passaglia’s work, referred to below.
- ↑ De natura et gratia, cap. xxxvi.
- ↑ S. Bernardi Epist. clxxiv. 7.
- ↑ Summa theologia, part iii., quaest. 27, art. 3.
- ↑ In librum III. sententiarum distinct. 3 quaest. i. art. 2.
- ↑ In librum III. sententiarum dist. 3 quaest. i. n. 4; Cfr. Distinct. 18 n. 15. Also the Summa theologia of Scotus (compiled by a disciple), part iii., quaest. 27, art. 2.
- ↑ Sess. v. De peccato originale.
