In his day Nicodemus Frischlin was probably the most influential Neo-Latin writer in the German territories. He adapted the classical imagination to late-sixteenth-century concerns, whether literary or curricular, religious or political. His contemporaries regarded him as a latter-day Terence, and even a century after his death schoolmasters stipulated that his dramas be performed. While his reputation as a man of letters dimmed thereafter, his person remained unforgotten. His tumultuous life still fascinates scholars and recently has led to a reevaluation of his accomplishments as an important representative of the late Renaissance in Germany.

The Protestant Reformation was still young when Philipp Nicodemus Frischlin was born on 22 September 1547 in Balingen, a small walled city dominated by a centrally situated church and the modest half-timbered residence of the Hohenzollern dynasty. His father, Jakob Frischlin, was a Lutheran clergyman and, as such, a person of some importance in the community of...