c. 200–206
Latin
201–300
The Third Century
1 work
1001–1100
The Eleventh Century
2 works
c. 1030–1050
Latin
The Theological Confession
John of Fécamp · c. 990–1078
Prayer written in the first person, woven from Augustine and Gregory into a continuous address to God on longing, compunction, and the desire to see him.
Western Monastic · DevotionalRead elsewhere
c. 1070–1080
Latin
Prayers and Meditations
Anselm of Canterbury · 1033–1109
Prayers written for individuals to use alone and slowly, addressed to Christ and the saints with an emotional directness quite unlike the liturgy.
Western · DevotionalRead elsewhere
1401–1500
The Fifteenth Century
1 work
c. 1418–1427
Latin
The Imitation of Christ
De Imitatione Christi
Thomas à Kempis · c. 1380–1471
Four short books of counsel on self-knowledge, inner detachment, the consolations of the interior life, and the sacrament — written in aphorisms brief enough to stop a reader on almost every page.
1601–1700
The Seventeenth Century
1 work
published 1692
French
The Practice of the Presence of God
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection · c. 1614–1691
Conversations and letters collected after the death of a lay brother who worked in a monastery kitchen and claimed to possess God as peacefully among his pots and pans as on his knees.
1701–1800
The Eighteenth Century
1 work
1729
English
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
William Law · 1686–1761
An argument, carried by a gallery of sharply drawn character sketches, that the reason most Christians never become devout is not weakness but that they never seriously intended to.