There may have been no more exciting—and frightening!—time to be alive in Europe than on the eve of the invention of the printing press, with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation already blowing winds of change through the Church. Perhaps it is precisely because of those winds howling outside that the young Thomas à Kempis (his name simply means Thomas from Kempis) wanted above all a quiet life. He was determined, it is said, that nothing would happen to him in his life...