De Imitatione Christi, Books I–IV (Lady Margaret Beaufort translation of Book IV)
De Imitatione Christi
Melius certe est humilis rusticus qui Deo servit, quam superbus philosophus qui sidera contemplatur.
Our renderingBetter truly is a humble peasant who serveth God, than a proud philosopher who watcheth the stars and neglecteth the knowledge of himself.
What it is
Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII and foundress of Christ's and St John's Colleges Cambridge, translated Book IV of the Imitation of Christ—on the Eucharist and penitential preparation—from a French intermediary; Cambridge fellow William Atkinson translated Books I–III. Published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1504, the combined work made Margaret one of the first named women to publish in England. Her translation was directly drawn upon by Katherine Parr's Prayers or Meditations, and successive printings ensured the Imitation's centrality to the spiritual formation of the entire early Tudor court. The original Latin text, composed c. 1418–1427, has never ceased to circulate and stands second only to the Bible in Christian readership across the centuries.
Why it still matters
The Imitation of Christ remains among the most widely read Christian devotional texts ever written; modern editions in every format are universally available, and any chapter of Books I–III repays slow, prayerful reading.
Kept alongside
The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul (Princess Elizabeth's Translation)
Le Miroir de l'âme pécheresse
Translated into English prose by the eleven-year-old Princess Elizabeth in December 1544 and presented as a New Year's gift to her stepmother Katherine Parr, with an embroidered binding probably worked by Elizabeth herself. The manuscript, now at the Bodleian Library Oxford (MS Cherry 36), renders Marguerite of Navarre's devotional poem on sin, repentance, divine grace, and the soul's union with God in the idiom of Evangelical Protestantism. It functioned simultaneously as a tutor's exercise demonstrating Elizabeth's humanist formation and as a genuine act of piety within the devotional atmosphere Katherine Parr cultivated in the royal household. The text draws on bridal mysticism and psalmic language to articulate the soul's unworthiness before a gracious God.
The Mirror of Gold for the Sinful Soul (Speculum Aureum Peccatorum)
Speculum aureum peccatorum / The Mirroure of Golde to the Synfull Soule
Lady Margaret Beaufort translated this 15th-century Netherlandish spiritual treatise from a French intermediary; the first edition was printed by Richard Pynson c. 1505–1506 during Beaufort's lifetime, with posthumous reprints in 1522 and 1526. The work meditates on the soul's spiritual poverty, the gravity of sin, and the inexhaustible mercy of God, forming a natural companion volume to Beaufort's translation of Imitation of Christ Book IV. Its publication at the end of Margaret's life reflects the sustained seriousness of her devotional program as foundress, patron, and translator in the early Tudor court.
Prayers or Meditations
Prayers or Medytacions, wherein the mynd is stirred paciently to suffre all afflictions here
Published by Queen Katherine Parr on 8 June 1545, this 60-page devotional compilation adapted Book III of Richard Whytford's English rendering of Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ, reoriented for the reforming Church of England. It was the first book published in England under the name of a reigning queen in the English language; Princess Elizabeth then translated it into Latin, French, and Italian as a New Year's gift to Henry VIII. It reached at least thirteen editions before 1600 and was widely known as 'the Queen's Prayers,' demonstrating its reception across the royal family and English Protestant households. Its Kempisian core—patience under affliction, contempt of worldly prosperity, longing for eternal life—gave it an audience far beyond the court.