and his death is thus recorded in it by its continuator:
"In the same year (1471), on the feast of St. James the Less, after Compline, died our dearly loved Brother Thomas Haemerken,[1] born at Kempen, a town in the diocese of Cologne. He was in the ninety-second year of his age, the sixtythird [it was really the sixty-fifth] of his religious clothing, and the fifty-eighth of his priesthood. In his youth he was a disciple, at Deventer, ot Master Florentius, who sent him to his [Thomas's] brother, who was then Prior of Agnetenberg. He was then twenty years of age; he received the habit from his brother after six years probation,and throughout his monastic life he underwent great poverty, temptations, and labours. He copied our Bible and many other books, some for the use of the convent, and others for sale. Further, for the edification of the young he composed divers small
- ↑ In everyday life he was probably known as Thomas Kempis. In the monastery Chronicle he four times refers to himself by name; once (in the record of his Profession) as "Thomas Hemerken de Kempis," on the other three occasions as " Thomas Kempis." He signs his autograph copy of the *' Imitation "as *' Thomas Kempis," and four out of the five volumes of his copy of the Bible (cf. note 2, page xxi) are also thus signed: the fifth volume (the New Testament, and the earliest in date) is signed "Thomas de Kempis." In the British Museum Library the works of Thomas a Kempis and the literature connected therewith are catalogued under the name **Haemmerlein."
