The life and works of Thomas Murner, Franciscan, humanist, educator, author of vernacular satire, and vociferous opponent of the Protestant Reformation, reflect the tumultuous changes that were taking place all around him. Murner was in many ways a man stranded between two eras. A representative of a thoroughly medieval institution, he was nonetheless an innovative educator and a humanist who took full advantage of a new technology--the printing press--to make his opinions known. An author of learned Latin texts on esoteric subjects, he was also a preacher and author of popular literature who insisted on speaking to the common people in the language they knew best: German. Murner's works present a veritable panorama of early modern life; as the eighteenth-century German author and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing said of the Strasbourg Franciscan, anyone who wishes to understand early modern German culture and language should become acquainted with Murner's...