Venerabilis Thomae a Kempis, Opera Omnia, Volumen Primum, Opuscula [Venerable Thomas a Kempis, Complete Works, Volume 1, Minor Works]

In Aedibus Ed. Groppe (Augustae Treverorum), 1868-01-01. Hardcover. Good. In Latin. 1868 Augustae Treverorum: In Aedibus Ed. Groppe (Trier, Germany), 4 x 5 7/8 inches tall black cloth hardbound, viii, 465 pp. plus two page 'Corigenda' (errata). Covers mildly rubbed and soiled, and the front cover is moderately warped. A bit of very light soiling to the title pages and next couple of pages. Otherwise, a very good copy of this scarce and important collection of the 'Opuscula,' or minor works, of Thomas a Kempis, the medieval author best known for his likely authorship of the devotional classic, 'The Imitation of Christ.' This collection was edited by Franz Xaver Kraus (1840-1901), a German Catholic priest, scholar and ecclesiastical and art historian. Though intended to be one of multiple volumes in the a Kempis Opera Omnia (complete works), this was the only volume, and only edition, which appeared. It contains some 25 'minor works,' including the Soliloquy of the Soul, Garden of Roses, Valley of Lilies, The Three Tabernacles, The Spiritual Exercises and others of a Kempis' more obscure works. It is among the few editions where this wide range of Kempis' minor works may be found in modern Latin, apart from the early 20th century seven-volume Opera Omnia, a critical edition edited by Michael Joseph Pohl. ~KMP~ Fr. Kraus was a man of brilliant and versatile talents, a scholar of great learning, a clever and elegant writer, and, in spite of ill-health and the acute bodily sufferings of his closing years, an author of wonderful productivity, who delighted in his work. He was a man of deep religious feeling and Catholic faith, but, from association with the Liberal Catholics in France, Italy, and Germany, he became imbued with their views on ecclesiastical polity. At the time of the Vatican Council, he entered into close connections with the opposition party, and kept up these relations for some time. He remained in the Church, but the strife had engendered in his mind a certain bitterness. In many anonymous or pseudonymous articles written for the liberal press, he gave vent to his dissatisfaction with certain ecclesiastical conditions, and these works created a great sensation within the Church. It is to Fr. Kraus that we owe the distinction between 'religious' and 'political' Catholicism, a formula in which he imagined he had found the solution of many difficulties. He died at San Remo in 1901. Thomas a Kempis (circa 1380-1471) was a German canon regular of the late medieval period and the most probable author of 'The Imitation of Christ,' one of the best known Christian devotional works.