Muenster, Texas, in Cooke County, began in 1889 through efforts of German-American colonizing entrepreneurs who attracted settlers from other German-American colonies in the United States. The community, founded on the premise of maintaining cultural purity, survived and prospered for a century by its reliance on crops, cattle, and oil. In its political conservatism and economic ties to the land, Muenster resembled its neighboring Anglo-American communities. Its Germanic heritage, however, became pronounced in the community's refusal to accommodate to the prohibitionism of North Texas regarding alcoholic beverages and in the parishioners' fidelity to the Roman Catholic faith. These characteristics are verified in unpublished manuscripts, governmental documents, local records, and interviews with Muenster residents.

Girolamo Savonarola lived at the apex of the Renaissance, but most of his biographers regard him as an anachronism or a precursor of the Reformation. Savonarola, however, was influenced by the entire milieu of Renaissance Florence, including its humanism. Savonarola's major work, Triumph of the Cross, is a synthesis of humanism, neo-Thomism and mysticism. His political reforms were routed in both the millennialist dreams of Florence and the goals of civic humanism. Hoping to translate the abstract humanist life of virtue into the concrete, he ultimately failed, not because the Renaissance was rejecting the Middle Ages, but because the former was reacting against itself. Florence, for all its claims of being the center of the Renaissance, was not willing to make humanist reform a reality.

Boethius, a late Roman philosopher, composed his last work, De Consolatione Philosophiae, while in prison. His final effort crowned a lifetime of philosophical achievement, and the work was influential throughout the Middle Ages. Frequently translated, the Consolation was one of the books which was chosen by Alfred, a ninth century Anglo-Saxon king, for use in the rebuilding of his kingdom after the Danish invasions. Although intended for an audience which was heavily influenced by a lively pagan tradition, the book was re-interpreted during the Carolingian period to conform to a strict Christian standard. Alfred's own interpretation is indicative of this amalgamation of ancient learning in the milieu of an emerging European culture, as well as his own pragmatic personality.