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Why would a Protestant scholar translate and publish, at his own expense, a work by a Jewish scholar containing all the most important teachings of the Jewish faith? It’s quite simple: to advance his own career. By doing so, Friedrich Wilhelm Bock hoped to secure a professorship.

The title of Johannes Stumpf’s account would translate to “A chronicle of all cities, cantons, and people of the commendable Confederacy and a description of its impressive deeds“ in today’s English. With this work, Christoph Froschauer gave Protestant Switzerland its own history.

Chivalrousness was fashionable at tournaments – those who wrote about these events, on the other hand, often lacked this virtue. Georg Rüxner for example, a herald of the 16th century, showed a very lax approach to the truth in his famous tournament book. But what is a tournament book in the first place?

They have fallen out of fashion - those old prayer books that accompanied the life of their owners just a few generations ago the way smartphones do today. Even though the word “selfie” was not yet known at the time, some prayer books were, in fact, used to immortalize the most important moments in their owners’ lives.

Throughout cultural history money was often associated with vice: gambling addiction, greed, fraud, vanity, hedonism. In his satirical novel, Thackeray brings these ideas to life.