Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Devotion and Instruction
Devotional prose of the English fifteenth century — the age of the Imitation of Christ in English.
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Texts
A Ryght Profytable Treatyse — Thomas BetsonThomas Betson’s short English manual of devotion for religious and lay readers, printed about 1500 by Wynkyn de Worde in Caxton’s house, in the original spelling of the 1905 Cambridge facsimile with Francis Jenkinson’s note: the three truths of confession, the Pater noster, Ave and Creed in English, the virtues and vices, counsel to a new beginner, prayers, a Latin hymn to the saints, and instruction for those entering religion.The Earliest English Imitation of ChristThe mid-fifteenth-century Trinity College Dublin translation of the first three books of the Imitation of Christ, with Atkynson's 1502 printed version of the same books and Lady Margaret Beaufort's own 1504 translation of Book IV, from Ingram's 1893 EETS edition.