Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff

(The Ship of Fools)

by Louis J. Overaker

Sebastian Brant, whose masterpiece, Das Narrenschiff, first appeared in Basel in 1494, was born in Strasbourg in 1457 into a family of modest means. His father, an innkeeper, died in 1468 and Brant was reared by his mother who had a marked influence on his character; Brant has been described as owning a "tender, almost effeminate nature" and has been credited with embracing "a deep respect for good women, a trait which sets him apart from his contemporaries." (Zeydel, p. 2) Brant entered the University of Basel in 1495 where he was graduated with a degree in law. He remained in Basel, teaching civil and can (on law and Latin poetry, and also served as editor of several printing presses. At this time, he began a literary career, writing poems in Latin with both religious and secular themes. In 1501, prompted by Basel's decision to leave the German Empire, Brant returned to Strasbourg where he became a legal advisor to the city government. He was appointed Imperial Counselor by Emperor Maximilian of the Holy Roman Empire, whose court he visited several times. He became the unofficial panegyrist of the emperor, lauding him in Latin hexameters. (Zeydel, p. 4) A staunch German patriot, Brant was chosen to represent Strasbourg in paying homage to the new emperor, Charles V, in Ghent, in 1520. (Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 179, p. 21) Brant died on May 10th the following year. … Political, philosophical and intellectual history always form a part of the profile of any writer, but these influences seem strikingly relevant in the case of Brant. Brant's life spans a period which includes the very end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of sixteenth century humanism and the Protestant Reformation. It was a period of enormous revolutionary changes in Germany and throughout Europe as well. For the first time, important books àwere coming from the printing presses, Columbus discovered the new world, Martin Luther, in 1517, posted his ninety-five theses and the doctrines of the Reformation soon began to spread. Although Brant did not live long enough to witness the full impact of the Reformation, it is perhaps a good thing for him, because, due to his reproof of clergy, the Reformation represented at least to a small degree "the dreaded change of the old order that he unwittingly may have helped to bring about." (Hoffmeister, p. 79)

If one were to seek to attach a label to Brant, the words "old order" would fit quite well. Although Brant represents a new spirit of didacticism associated with the northern Renaissance and is closely linked to certain innovative techniques such as writing in the vernacular (and even translating much of his own and other Latin poetry into German), he was definitely a conservative t ¸hinker who was deeply concerned about morality and in maintaining the orthodoxy of Church dogma. While contemporaries such as Luther, Erasmus and Zwingli sought to challenge the authority of the Church and to introduce new standards, Brant was more a "preacher in the wilderness," (Zeydel, p.8) pleading for souls not to forfeit eternal salvation in exchange for earthly pleasures. He preferred a literal interpretation of the words of the Bible and of the canonical writers, and he even felt the sale of indulgences was proper (Zeydel, p 8). It is true that in his Ship of Fools , Brant does adhere to certain progressive Renaissance ideas such as the faith in the power of education and the belief that man can be improved, but he is more closely associated with the maintenance of the status quo and with a fear of too rapid progress; even though his fools are supposed to mend their ways, it is the series of negative examples whi Ôch are reflected in the mirror he provides them which has a more lasting effect on the reader. T.H. Jamieson, the editor of a paraphrased version of The Ship of Fools remarks: "Brant's fools are represented as contemptible and loathsome rather than foolish, and what he calls follies might be more correctly described as sins and vices." (Barclay, Vol. 1 p. xv)

But even if Brant is closely associated with the more conservative spirit of the waning days of the Middle Ages, his characterization of the shipboard fools contains progressive elements as well, and had an enormous impact on Europe as the northern Renaissance began to flourish. The statistics regarding its publication attest to a widespread popularity. Copies of the original version spread throughout Germany in the first year of publication. Within three years , Low German and Latin translations began to appear and the book quickly became a European best seller as translations in French, Dutch and English quickly spread. Even Ïparaphrases of the work, a literary device more typical of the Middle Ages, began to appear. The most noteworthy are a French version by Pierre Riviere (1497) and one in English by Alexander Barclay (1508). No fewer than twenty-nine editions or reprints of the original text were distributed within one hundred twenty-five years after its publication. The Protestant Reformation, however, led readers in other directions and soon after the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the book almost disappeared. An edition of The Ship of Fools, however, was reprinted in 1839, and the work has been the focus of a great deal of critical attention ever since. (Zeydel, pp. 22-27) It is the first example of a piece of writing in German that can be considered a part of modern world literature and has the distinction of being the most widely read book in German between its appearance in 1594 and that of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. (Dictionary... p. 19).

'The literary convention of having a ship bearing fools each with a distinctive profile and a lesson to be learned by them and taught to us, the reader (or in Brant's case, more often than not, the listener) was not invented by Brant. Indeed, the distinction between fools and wise men dates as far back as ancient Greek and Roman literature and can found in the the Old Testament as well. Portraits of fools can be found in German texts which date from the twelfth century, where the erring are referred to as fools, and closer to home, a certain Hans Vintler translated into German, with adaptations, Pluemen der Tugend (Flowers of Virtue), from a fourteenth century Italian work by Tomasco Leoni which seeks to teach morals through the portraits of fools. (Zeydel, p. 9) This work was first published in Basel in 1486. Throughout Germany, during the formative years of Brant, Shrovetide plays, which presented many kinds of fools, were also very popular (Twayne, p. 7 ˆ4). Forerunners of "fools" literature existed in English literature as well, most notably John Lydgate's Order of Fools, which dates from the early fifteenth century.

It is in placing his fools on a ship, with allegorical implications, where Brant displays more originality. In the Middle Ages, floats, used during carnival time, usually resembled vessels or wagons and were filled with comical and fantastic characters. Even before Brant's time, there appeared from Austria to Holland, and in a variety of literary genres, portraits of careless livers, drinkers and the like, as companions on a sea voyage. In Strasbourg, in 1489, a friend of Brant named Wimpheling published a version of a humorous academic oration delivered in Latin, at Heidelberg, from a platform built to resemble a ship. It is a widely held belief that Brant's idea for The Ship of Fools found root in the work of his friend. (Zeydel, pp. 12-14)

Regarding the order in which Brant put his work together, there is st Ûrong evidence that he wrote the various chapters of The Ship of Fools as separate handbills, planned for individual publication and designed to be read as a device for instruction to an uneducated public. The idea of collecting all his tales and of putting his fools on a ship seems to have occurred to Brant somewhere near the end of his work. Although he refers to his ship in the Preface, it was clear that he wrote the Preface last , for in it, he refers to the work he has accomplished. (Preface, p. 60)

The ship motif plays only a minor role in the first 47 chapters (out of a total of 112). But in chapter 48, "A Journeyman's Ship," Brant introduces a second ship of fools:

A ship for journeymen sails by

With artisans from far and nigh,

With many trades diversifies,

And each with work tools by his side. (172)

and from that point on, references to the ship become more and more frequent, culminating in Chapter 103, which speaks of the threat of the Antichrist, and where the fate of ¹ the fool's ship, that of a possible shipwreck, is finally made clear:

But brief and sad will be their trip,

They will be wrecked with skiff and ship,

Though traveling everywhere for ay,

Distorting truth in every way.

Yet truth will live and ever be,

Expelling all their falsity

Which now from no estate is banned,

I fear the ship will never land.

St. Peter's ship is swaying madly,

It may be wrecked or damaged badly...(333)

Although both the woodcut and the words of Chapter 103 suggest great doom, with a vision of many fools drowning and only the lucky ones saved by St. Peter, Brant renders a more optimistic future in the introduction to a Latin version of the humanist Jacob Locher, published in 1497, but personally supervised by Brant. In Locher's introduction, we learn that most fools will survive the journey and will colonize the world after a safe arrival at the fictitious land of Narragonia; only the most lazy and sinful will drown. (Twayne, p. 83)

Regardless of the fate of the fools, by placing them on a ship, Brant was able to establish the allegorical nature of his work, namely that human endeavors are uncertain and mankind is tossed about by the stormy seas of fate and that a fool's aimless life is comparable to a sea voyage which lacks a rudder and a compass. (Zeydel, p. 15) His depiction of life as a voyage across unchartered waters may well find its roots in the fact that Brant lived during an era of great discoveries; indeed, the first mention,in literature, of the discovery of the new world by Columbus is found in The Ship of Fools. (Zeydel, p. v) In Chapter 66, which bears the title, "Of Experience of all Lands, " Brant makes the following reference:

They've found in Portugal since then

And in Hispania naked men,

And sparking gold and islands too

Whereof no mortal ever knew. (222)

The follies Brant studies have been classified under six general headings: 1) vicious or criminal offenses; 2) insolence; 3) riotousness 4) sloth; 5) presumptuousness and 6) mere perversities, foibles, or peccadilloes. (Twayne, p. 83). All of the seven deadly sins, which seemed to hold a grip on the Middle Ages, are mentioned by Brant. The following gives an idea of the variety of follies Brant addresses: "Of Attention to the Stars," "True Friendship," "On the Decline of Faith," "Quarreling and Going to Court," "Honor Father and Mother," "Of Cooks and Waiters," "Of Blaspheming God," "Of Gamblers," "Of Dancing." It is useless, however, to try to find meaning in the order Y in which the chapters appear. There is a tendency to see more serious follies being treated near the end, but to illustrate the haphazard arrangement, the titles of chapters 100-104 are the following: "Of Stroking the Fallow Stallion," "Of Blowing into Ears," "Of Falsity and Deception," "Of the Antichrist," and "Concealing Truth."

The structure of the verses falls into two groups. The first 73 chapters of The Ship of Fools are made up of a three line motto which introduces the nature of the vice or sin to be examined (and often the moral), a woodcut which provides a visual image of the tale, and then 34 more rhyming couplets. After Chapter 73, the mottoes and the woodcuts remain, but the length of the tales becomes varied, some still with 34 lines, but most much longer with a few being over 200 lines. The woodcuts are extremely important to the success of the work; in depicting the faults of the average person of the time, they provide a sort of rudimentary drama, are a good teaching device, and, together with the motto, provide a solid framework and helpful introduction to the text of the tales. They serve as early examples of emblematic poetry, a genre which became extremely popular in the sixteenth century. (Hoffmeister, p. 71) Indeed, the motto and the woodcut, standing alone, could provide a story and a moral by themselves. The woodcuts are the work of several artists and although there is a variety of opinion regarding their provenance (and the quality varies from that of the work of a master to that of an apprentice), most critics are in agreement that some, and perhaps many, are the work of Al ûbrecht Durer. The famous artist was a journeyman apprentice in Basel at the time Brant was completing his work. (Twayne 86-87).

Most of the chapters are faithful in expressing Brant's major theme, namely that all sins are reducible to forms of folly, (Zeydel p.9) and his major goal, to correct human behavior by providing, often through the use of satire, a mirror of sin and of attitudes destructive to personal happiness and to the health of society. Regarding his stylistic techniques, a careful examination of his writing reveals that Brant is faithful in following patterns of ancient and medieval rhetoricians, specifically the use of the "expolitio" whereby an idea is treated from different points of view stressing the truthfulness of the lesson to be taught, the "ratiocinatio," a pattern of argument that begins with a general point of departure and leads to a definite conclusion, and thirdly, t þhe "narratio," a more simple approach providing a pure and direct satire of the foolish world around us. (Twayne 79-80) No matter what the subject, it is hard to find a tale which is not replete with references to biblical characters, canon law, Church Fathers, and ancient history and literature whose words and example fortify the case for virtue which Brant is tying to argue. Finally, a reader will often find topics which, being the exact opposite, enhance the teaching of the other; the glutton, for example, who loves his food, is no less a fool than the miser who hoards his gold.

Any study of The Ship of Fools which looks beyond the immediate text leads inevitably to a comparison between two contemporaries both of whom examined the fools and folli es of their time: Brant and Erasmus. These two great humanists might have even studied under the noted educator, Dringenberg, in Lower Alsace, and they met on several occasions. It is certain that Erasmus, who was eight yearsyounger than Brant, was familiar with The Ship of Fools . Erasmus was a close friend of Jodocus Badius, one of Brant's earlier translators. And Brant was a leader of the Strasbourg Literary Society which hosted Erasmus in 1514 while the latter was traveling from England to Basel. Erasmus allegedly embraced Brant, praised him as the the "incomparable Brant" and later honored him in a poem. The two met again, in 1519, in Antwerp, when Brant attended the funeral of Emperor Charles V. The list of themes which both authors tre Çat is strikingly similar numbering no fewer than twenty topics, among them: drunkenness, self-love, flattery, sloth, women as fashion slaves, ill-found jealousy and suspicion of wives, nobility of character as superior to nobility of birth, quack doctors, dicing and gaming and begging as a trade. It can not be argued persuasively that Erasmus did not use Brant as a source, even if he did so without acknowledgment. (Zeydel p. 43)

The two are, however, widely different in their thinking and writing. Erwin Panofsky makes the distinction clear:

If one wants to perceive, at one glance, the difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance one may compare Sebastian Brant's Fool's Ship in 1494 with Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Folly of 1512. Brant, without a trace of tolerance or irony, inveighs against more than a hundred kinds of human folly, firmly con 7vinced that he is right and thateverybody else is wrong. ( p. 234)

Brant has been called superior to Erasmus in his steadfastness of purpose and nobility of ideals, but with Brant, there is very little "gray." One might say that Brant's strength is also his weakness. A staunch patriot, who admired the common people, Brant was interested in inspiring moral regeneration to a whole society, namely, the Holy Roman Empire, so that it might live more intelligently and guarantee the stability of its government. He was as parochial as Erasmus was cosmopolitan and his audience ranged from the upper middle class to the listening peasants while Erasmus was writing for scholars.

Erasmus was more influenced by the Italian Renaissance. More volatile, more fickle, and more flippant than Brant, Erasmus is, at the same time, an author of much more skill, providing us with rich ideas and perspective, with subtle judgment and brilliant style. And Erasmus was writing to help us to understand ourselves, with all our foibles, as individuals, and not so much as members of a community.

Finally, as satirists, Brant and Erasmus are very different both in their approaches to writing and in their philosophies. Brant exposes the follies of his voyagers by allowing them to use their own words to express their individual failings. Erasmus is much more complex and subtle. With three points of view operating at once, that of Erasmus, Folly and wisdom, Erasmus personifies folly and then, ironically, lets her praise herself. And they provide opposite points of view in their thinking on the subject of foolishness. Brant does not suffer fools lightly. For him, fools, with their penchant for folly, must mend their ways. He is determined to make foolish men more wise and for him, unlike for Erasmus, self-decepti Æon is never relatively harmless. In contrast, it could be said that Erasmus wants to make wise men more foolish, or at least more in tune with the benefits, nay, even the absolute necessity, of folly, so that we might understand better our nature and find nourishment. Folly describes her role as follows:

But I shouldn't claim much by saying that I'm the seed and source of existence unless I could prove that whatever advantages there are all throughout life are all provided by me. Whatwould this life be, or would it seem worth callinglife at all, if its pleasure was [sic] taken away? (Erasmus, p. 21)

Two of Brant's fools, he who marries for the sake of goods and he who is self-complacent, are treated by Erasmus in an entirely different way. Reading them helps us to understand how the equation changes when folly enters the scene.

Perhaps the most striking difference between the two is their idea of what it means to be a Christian. Brant is, at all times, a religious conservative with a mission. Although he can be critical of abuses in the church, directing occasional disparaging remarks toward humble priests and monks, he almost never censures a bishop. Brant represents a straight-forward, medieval morality, one marked by an accusing finger and closely in tune with the thinking at the dawn of the Northern Renaissance. And his Ship of Fools is replete with references to scripture.

Erasmus, in marked contrast, almost never quotes the Bible and is very outspoken in his criticism of ecclesiastical abuses. And certainly, on the surface of things, he gives a much different sermon from that of Brant. Erasmus feels that agonizing over the dogmas of faith can lead to absurdity and that the concept of heavenly bliss is insane because meditation gives us a foretaste of that bliss here on earth, (Huizanga, p. 75), an idea entirely °foreign to Brant who could never see folly and Christ as allies. In contrast, Erasmus defines for us the "Christian Fool." By employing irony and ambiguity, Erasmus makes a most artful case regarding the sacrifice of Christ, leading him to conclude: "Nor did he wish them to be redeemed in any other way save by the folly of the cross and through his simple, ignorant apostles, to whom he unfailingly preached folly. (Erasmus, p. 126) In short, both Brant and Erasmus preach the necessity of devotion to Christ and the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven; for Brant, the gate is narrow, for Erasmus, it is open to the simple hearted if they can embrace the folly of the world. A reading of Brant's tale "Contempt of Eternal Joy" helps to illustrate the difference.

Erasmus may be the better writer, the more sophisticated thinker, and a man of the Renaissance who exerted a far greater influence on the centuries to follo w. But The Ship of Fools stands as a masterpiece of literature in its own right, and not as just a poor relative to The Praise of Folly. Labeled a "secular Bible which nourished an entire age," (Zeydel, p. 24) Brant's work provides us a veritable kaleidoscope of the daily life, the customs, mores and superstitions of the early Renaissance in northern Europe. If that were not enough, he offers us a great deal of entertainment within a very interesting and successful stylistic framework. The revival of interest in The Ship of Fools is a good thing. Brant's masterpiece will receive a great deal of critical attention in the years ahead, assuring it an even more prominent place in the literary history of the Renaissance for generations to come.

Brant, Sebastian. The Ship of Fools. trans. Alexander Barclay. 2 Vols. New York: ANC Press, 1966.

 

_____________. The Ship of Fools. ed. Edwin H. Zeydel. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1962.

 

Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 179. eds, James Hardin and Max Reinhardt. Detroit: Gale Research, 1977.

 

The Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Vol. 1. ed. Paul F. Grendler. New York: Charles Scribner, 1999.

 

Erasmus, Desiderius. Praise of Folly and Letter to Maarten VanDorp. trans. Betty Radice. New York: Penuin Books, 1971.

 

Hoffmeister, Gerbart (ed.) The Renaissance and Reformation in Germany. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1977.

 

Huizanga, Johan. Erasmus of Rotterdam. London: Phaidon Press, 1975.

 

Panofsky, Erwin. "Renaissance and Renascences," Kenyon Review 6 (1944). 132-44.

 

Pompen, Fr. Aurelius Pompen. The English Version of the Ship of Fools. New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1967.

 

Zeydel, Edwin. Sebastian Brant. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967.

First published June 10, 2002; last updated June 12, 2002

Copyright 2002, GJL