page_title: Vita Christi
section_title: Influence
hierarchical_section_title: Vita Christi / Influence
caption_attribution_description: English: De Vita Christi. (The Book of the life of Jesus Christ). Ludolph of Saxony's (c.1300-1378). This is an original, incunable woodcut leaf guaranteed published on November 3, 1487. It was published in Antwerp by Gerard Lieu. The color is quite old if not original. The text is in Dutch. Published thirteen years after the printing of the first book in the southern Netherlands. Text in two columns of Gothic type.
context_page_description: The Vita Christi, also known as the Speculum vitae Christi is the principal work of Ludolph of Saxony, completed in 1374.
  The book is not just a biography of Jesus, but also a history, a commentary borrowed from the Church Fathers, and a series of dogmatic and moral dissertations, spiritual instructions, meditations, and prayers. It was so popular in its time that it has been called a summa evangelica.
context_section_description: The great popularity of the Vita Christi is demonstrated by the numerous manuscript copies preserved in libraries and the manifold editions of it which have been published, from the first two editions of Strasbourg and Cologne, in 1474, to the last editions of Paris: folio, 1865, published by Victor Palme (heavily criticised by Father Henry James Coleridge, SJ; see below), and 8vo, 1878.  It has also been translated into Catalan (Valencia, 1495, folio, Gothic), Castilian (Alcala, folio, Gothic), Portuguese (1495, 4 vols., folio), Italian (1570), French, "by Guillaume Lernenand, of the Order of Monseigneur St. François", under the title of the "Great Life of Christ" (Lyons, 1487, folio, many times reprinted), by D. Marie-Prosper Augustine (Paris, 1864), and by D. Florent Broquin, Carthusian (Paris, 1883).
  The Vita Christi had significant influence on the development of techniques for Christian meditation. Although Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1167) had introduced  the concept of immersing and projecting oneself into a Biblical scene in his De institutione inclusarum,  and St. Bonaventure (d. 1274) had borrowed heavily from that work in his Lignum Vitae, Ludolph's massive work (which quoted Aelred extensively but credited his work to Anselm) helped to spread this devotional practice into the Devotio Moderna community and to Ignatius of Loyola (as discussed below). The Vita Christi was translated into Spanish in 1502 by Ambrosio Montesino and was printed in Alcala. The methods of meditation in the Vita Christi thus entered Spain and were known in the early part of the 16th century. St Teresa and St Francis de Sales frequently quote from it.
caption: Vita Christi by Ludolph of Saxony. Woodcut. 1487.
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