The chequered life of Ludolph the Carthusian (c. 1295-1378) found its spiritual contentment in the writing of his colossal work on the Vita Jesu Christi in Latin. The book on the Life of Christ occupied some forty years of Ludolph's life in a charterhouse in Mainz. It has been styled as a summa evangelica and as it contains a series of meditations, spiritual instructions and prayers, it has also served to many a medieval scholar as a collation of dogmatic and moral dissertations. These are still worthy of great note today as they were mostly prior to the pre-Reformation period of the Roman Church.

Since the early years of first going to the press in Latin the book has been printed in some sixty editions and translations. These have often served as an inspirational source of meditation, contemplation and prayer to several saintly figures. In this novel work the translator tends to offer a popular edition of a vivid picture of Jesus' life and that of his immediate followers as seen through the eyes of a medieval writer.

The book has also during the ages aroused reverential awe urged by the words, signs and doings of Jesus in a historical situation very much parallel to the convolutions of our times. With many a Christian presently desiring to return to the early Church founded by Jesus as witnessed in the Gospel, this is a source of inspirational beauty and practical activism as to what it means to follow Jesus. It is also a precious Speculum vitae Christi, or Mirror of the Life of Christ, for any present-day disciple's formative life in a community, like that of the early disciples and apostles who knew Christ very directly.