The Franciscan preacher and satirist, Thomas Murner (1475-1537), earned his distinctive feline caricature (image below) by engaging in sixteenth-century public controversy. Murner’s extensive education, his prowess in effective ridicule, and his native command of the German language made him especially equipped to be one of Martin Luther’s most forceful opponents during the Reformation. A dedicated humanist and educator, Murner even wrote catchy, popularized satirical songs in opposition to those created by some of Luther’s ardent supporters.
As a result of his spirited public discourse, Thomas Murner earned himself a reputation for being a bit of a yowler, and his political opponents depicted him as a robed tomcat, which in German is a word play on “murr-narr,” meaning “cat fool” or “grumbling fool.”
However peppery in temperament, Murner knew how to engage an audience, and his subject matter was anything but foolish. And as a teacher, specifically a teacher of logic, engaging his student audience became an important part of his pedagogical strategy. Contemporary educators will likely sympathize with Murner’s professorial instincts. What is an effective means of engaging students in the classroom? Turn learning into a game.
The Rare Book and Special Collections Division has a copy of Thomas Murner’s Logica Memorativa: Chartiludium logicae, a book printed in Strasbourg in 1509 that uses 51 images as visual tools for remembering aspects of a formal logic course as it was taught at the turn of the sixteenth century.
In effect, the 51 woodcut images resemble flash cards, which can be flipped over to show the reader the numbered explanatory sentences if the symbolic elements of the image are not immediately apparent. The text contains sixteen treatises, and each treatise begins with an image that served as an epitome of the content contained within. Individual aspects of the image are numbered, as shown in the image below, and the numbers correspond to sentences in the book that briefly describe the significance of the imagery.
