Vita Christi

The Vita Christi (Life of Christ), also known as the Speculum vitae Christi (Mirror of the Life of Christ) 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.

Sr Mary Immaculate Bodenstedt mentions Ludolph's particular debt to the Meditations on the Life of Christ. Bodenstedt argues that Ludolph also follows Ps.-Bonaventure in his visual method of meditation.

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.

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