The critical periods in the history of the world are best studied in the
lives of a few representative men. The history of the German Reformation
assumes a living, intelligible, and human character in the biographies of
the Reformers; and no historian would imagine that he understood the
secret springs of that mighty revolution in Germany without having read
the works of Hutten, the table-talk of Luther, the letters of Melancthon,
and the sermons of Zwingle. But although it is easy to single out
representative men in the great decisive struggles of history, they are
more difficult to find during the preparatory periods. The years from 1450
to 1500 are as important as the years from 1500 to 1550,—nay, to the
thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of
deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth century. But
where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent
the age in which they lived? It was an age of transition and preparation,
of dissatisfaction and hesitation. Like the whole of the fifteenth
century, “It was rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius,
and barren of strong thinkers.” We must not look for heroes in so unheroic
an age, but be satisfied with men if they be but a head taller than their
contemporaries.
One of the most interesting men in whose life and writings the history of
the preliminary age of the German Reformation may be studied, is Sebastian
Brant, the famous author of the famous “Ship of Fools.” He was born in the
year 1457. The Council of Basle had failed to fulfill the hopes of the
German laity as to a _reformatio ecclesiæ in capite et membris_. In the
very year of Brant’s birth, Martin Meyer, the Chancellor of Mayence, had
addressed his letter to his former friend, Æneas Sylvius,—a national
manifesto, in boldness and vigor only surpassed by the powerful pamphlet
of Luther, “To the Nobility of the German Nation.” Germany seemed to
awaken at last to her position, and to see the dangers that threatened her
political and religious freedom. The new movement which had taken place in
Italy in classical learning, supported chiefly by Greek refugees, began to
extend its quickening influence beyond the Alps. Æneas Sylvius, afterwards
Pope Pius II., 1458, writes in one of his letters, that poets were held in
no estimation in Germany, though he admits that their poetry is less to be
blamed for this than their patrons, the princes, who care far more for any
trifles than for poetry. The Germans, he says, do not care for science nor
for a knowledge of classical literature, and they have hardly heard the
name of Cicero or any other orator. In the eyes of the Italians, the
Germans were barbarians; and when Constantine Lascaris saw the first
specimen of printing, he was told by the Italian priests that this
invention had lately been made _apud barbaros in urbe __ Germaniæ_. They
were dangerous neighbors—these barbarians, who could make such discoveries
as the art of printing; and Brant lived to see the time when Joh. Cæsarius
was able to write to a friend of his: “At this moment, Germany, if she
does not surpass Italy, at least need not, and will not, yield to her, not
so much on account of her empire, as for her wonderful fecundity in
learned men, and the almost incredible growth of learning.”
This period of slow but steady progress, from the invention of printing to
the Council of Worms, is bridged over by the life of Sebastian Brant, who
lived from 1457 to 1521. Brant was very early the friend of Peter Schott,
and through him had been brought in contact with a circle of learned men,
who were busily engaged in founding one of the first schools of classical
learning at Schlettstadt. Men like Jac. Wimpheling, Joh. Torrentinus,
Florentius Hundius, and Johannes Hugo, belonged to that society. Brant
afterwards went to Basle to study law. Basle was then a young university.
It had only been founded in 1459, but it was already a successful rival of
Heidelberg. The struggle between the Realists and Nominalists was then
raging all over Europe, and it divided the University of Basle into two
parties, each of them trying to gain influence and adherents among the
young students. It has been usual to look upon the Realists as the
Conservative, and upon the Nominalists as the Liberal party of the
fifteenth century. But although at times this was the case, philosophical
opinions, on which the differences between these two parties were founded,
were not of sufficient strength to determine for any length of time the
political and religious bias of either school. The Realists were chiefly
supported by the Dominicans, the Nominalists by the Franciscans; and there
is always a more gentle expression beaming in the eyes of the followers of
the seraphic Doctor, particularly if contrasted with the stern frown of
the Dominican. Ockam himself was a Franciscan, and those who thought with
him were called _doctores renovatores_ and _sophistæ._ Suddenly, however,
the tables were turned. At Oxford, the Realists, in following out their
principles in a more independent spirit, had arrived at results dangerous
to the peace of the Church. As philosophers, they began to carry out the
doctrines of Plato in good earnest; as reformers, they looked wistfully to
the early centuries of the Christian Church. The same liberal and
independent spirit reached from Oxford to Prague, and the expulsion of the
German nation from that university may be traced to the same movement. The
Realists were at that time no longer in the good odor of orthodoxy; and,
at the Council of Constanz, the Nominalists, such as Joh. Gerson and
Petrus de Alliaco, gained triumphs which seemed for a time to make them
the arbiters of public opinion in Germany, and to give them the means of
securing the Church against the attacks of Huss on one side, and against
the more dangerous encroachments of the Pope and the monks on the other.
This triumph, however, was of short duration. All the rights which the
Germans seemed to have conquered at the Councils of Constanz and Basle
were sacrificed by their own Emperor. No one dared to say again what
Gregory von Heimburg had said to the Italian clergy,—“Quid fines alienos
invaditis? quid falcem vestram in messem alienam extenditis?” Under Æneas
Sylvius, the power of the Pope in Germany was as absolute as ever. The
Nominalist party lost all the ground which it had gained before. It was
looked upon with suspicion by Pope and Emperor. It was banished from
courts and universities, and the disciples of the Realistic school began a
complete crusade against the followers of Ockam.
Johannes Heynlin a Lapide, a former head of a house in Paris, migrated to
Basle, in order to lend his influence and authority to the Realist party
in that rising university. Trithemius says of him: “Hic doctrinam eorum
Parisiensium qui reales appellantur primus ad Basiliensium universitatem
transtulit, ibidemque plantavit, roboravit et auxit.” This Johannes
Heynlin a Lapide, however, though a violent champion of the then
victorious Realist party, was by no means a man without liberal
sentiments. On many points the Realists were more tolerant, or at least
more enlightened, than the Nominalists. They counted among themselves
better scholars than the adherents of Ockam. They were the first and
foremost to point out the uselessness of the dry scholastic system of
teaching grammar and logic, and nothing else. And though they cherished
their own ideas as to the supreme authority of the Pope, the divine right
of the Emperor, or the immaculate conception of the Virgin (a dogma denied
by the Dominicans, and defended by the Franciscans), they were always
ready to point out abuses and to suggest reforms. The age in which they
lived was not an age of decisive thought or decisive action. There was a
want of character in individuals as well as in parties; and the points in
which they differed were of small importance, though they masked
differences of greater weight. At Basle, the men who were gathered round
Johannes a Lapide were what we should call Liberal Conservatives, and it
is among them that we find Sebastian Brant. Basle could then boast of some
of the most eminent men of the time. Besides Agricola, and Wimpheling, and
Geiler von Kaisersberg, and Trithemius, Reuchlin was there for a time, and
Wessel, and the Greek Kontablacos. Sebastian Brant, though on friendly
terms with most of these men, was their junior; and, among his
contemporaries, a new generation grew up, more independent and more
free-spoken than their masters, though as yet very far from any
revolutionary views in matters of Church or State. Feuds broke out very
soon between the old and the young schools. Locher, the friend of
Brant,—the poet who had turned his “Ship of Fools” into Latin
verse,—published a poem, in which he attacked rather petulantly the
scholastic philosophy and theology. Wimpheling, at the request of Geiler
of Kaisersberg, had to punish him for this audacity, and he did it in a
pamphlet full of the most vulgar abuse. Reuchlin also had given offense,
and was attacked and persecuted; but his party retaliated by the “Epistolæ
Obscurorum Virorum.” Thus the Conservative, or Realistic party became
divided; and when, at the beginning of a new century and a new era in the
history of the world, Luther raised his voice in defense of national and
religious freedom, he was joined not only by the more advanced descendants
of the Nominalistic school, but by all the vigor, the talent, and the
intellect of the old Conservatives.
Brant himself, though he lived at Strassburg up to 1521, did not join the
standard of the Reformation. He had learned to grumble, to find fault, to
abuse, and to condemn; but his time was gone when the moment for action
arrived. And yet he helped toward the success of the Reformation in
Germany. He had been one of the first, after the discovery of printing, to
use the German language for political purposes. His fly-sheets, his
illustrated editions, had given useful hints how to address the large
masses of the people. If he looked upon the world, as it then was, as a
ship of fools, and represented every weakness, vice, and wickedness under
the milder color of foolery, the people who read his poems singled out
some of his fools, and called them knaves. The great work of Sebastian
Brant was his “Narrenschiff.” It was first published in 1497, at Basle,
and the first edition, though on account of its wood-cuts it could not
have been a very cheap book, was sold off at once. Edition after edition
followed, and translations were published in Latin, in Low-German, in
Dutch, in French, and English. Sermons were preached on the
“Narrenschiff;” Trithemius calls it _Divina Satira_, Locher compares Brant
with Dante, Hutten calls him the new lawgiver of German poetry. The
“Narrenschiff” is a work which we may still read with pleasure, though it
is difficult to account for its immense success at the time of its
publication. Some historians ascribe it to the wood-cuts. They are
certainly very clever, and there is reason to suppose that most of them
were, if not actually drawn, at least suggested by Brant himself. Yet even
a Turner has failed to render mediocre poetry popular by his
illustrations, and there is nothing to show that the caricatures of Brant
were preferred to his satires. Now his satires, it is true, are not very
powerful, nor pungent, nor original. But his style is free and easy. Brant
is not a ponderous poet. He writes in short chapters, and mixes his fools
in such a manner that we always meet with a variety of new faces. It is
true that all this would hardly be sufficient to secure a decided success
for a work like his at the present day. But then we must remember the time
in which he wrote. What had the poor people of Germany to read toward the
end of the fifteenth century? Printing had been invented, and books were
published and sold with great rapidity. People were not only fond, but
proud, of reading books. Reading was fashionable, and the first fool who
enters Brant’s ship is the man who buys books. But what were the books
that were offered for sale? We find among the early prints of the
fifteenth century religious, theological, and classical works in great
abundance, and we know that the respectable and wealthy burghers of
Augsburg and Strassburg were proud to fill their shelves with these portly
volumes. But then German aldermen had wives, and daughters, and sons, and
what were they to read during the long winter evenings? The poetry of the
thirteenth century was no longer intelligible, and the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries had produced very little that would be to the taste of
young ladies and gentlemen. The poetry of the “Meistersänger” was not very
exhilarating. The romances of “The Book of Heroes” had lost all their
native charms under the rough treatment they had experienced at the hand
of their latest editor, Casper von der Roen. The so-called “Misteries”
(not mysteries) might be very well as Christmas pantomimes once a year,
but they could not be read for their own sake, like the dramatic
literature of later times. The light literature of the day consisted
entirely in novels; and in spite of their miserable character, their
popularity was immense. Besides the “Gesta Romanorum,” which were turned
into German verse and prose, we meet with French novels, such as “Lother
and Maler,” translated by a Countess of Nassau in 1437, and printed in
1514; “Pontus and Sidonia,” translated from the French by Eleanor of
Scotland, the wife of Sigismund of Austria, published 1498; “Melusina,”
equally from the French, published 1477. The old epic poems of “Tristan,”
and “Lancelot,” and “Wigalois,” were too long and tedious. People did not
care any longer for the deep thoughts of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the
beautiful poetry of Gottfried von Strassburg. They wanted only the plot,
the story, the dry bones; and these were dished up in the prose novels of
the fifteenth century, and afterwards collected in the so-called “Book of
Love.” There was room, therefore, at that time for a work like the “Ship
of Fools.” It was the first printed book that treated of contemporaneous
events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French
knights. People are always fond of reading the history of their own times.
If the good qualities of their age are brought out, they think of
themselves or their friends; if the dark features of their contemporaries
are exhibited, they think of their neighbors and enemies. Now, the “Ship
of Fools” is just such a satire which ordinary people would read, and read
with pleasure. They might feel a slight twinge now and then, but they
would put down the book at the end, and thank God that they were not like
other men. There is a chapter on Misers,—and who would not gladly give a
penny to a beggar? There is a chapter on Gluttony,—and who was ever more
than a little exhilarated after dinner? There is a chapter on
Church-goers,—and who ever went to church for respectability’s sake, or to
show off a gaudy dress, or a fine dog, or a new hawk? There is a chapter
on Dancing,—and who ever danced except for the sake of exercise? There is
a chapter on Adultery,—and who ever did more than flirt with his
neighbor’s wife? We sometimes wish that Brant’s satire had been a little
more searching, and that, instead of his many allusions to classical fools
(for his book is full of scholarship), he had given us a little more of
the _chronique scandaleuse_ of his own time. But he was too good a man to
do this, and his contemporaries no doubt were grateful to him for his
forbearance.
Brant’s poem is not easy to read. Though he was a contemporary of Luther,
his language differs much more from modern German than Luther’s
translation of the Bible. His “Ship of Fools” wanted a commentary, and
this want has been supplied by one of the most learned and industrious
scholars of Germany, Professor Zarncke, in his lately published edition of
the “Narrenschiff.” This must have been a work of many years of hard
labor. Nothing that is worth knowing about Brant and his works has been
omitted, and we hardly know of any commentary on Aristophanes or Juvenal
in which every difficulty is so honestly met as in Professor Zarncke’s
notes on the German satirist. The editor is a most minute and painstaking
critic. He tries to reëstablish the correct reading of every word, and he
enters upon his work with as much zeal as if the world could not be saved
till every tittle of Brant’s poem had been restored. He is, however, not
only a critic, but a sensible and honest man. He knows what is worth
knowing and what is not, and he does not allow himself to be carried away
by a desire to display his own superior acquirements,—a weakness which
makes so many of his colleagues forgetful of the real ends of knowledge,
and the real duties of the scholar and the historian.
We have to say a few words on the English translation of Brant’s “Ship of
Fools.” It was not made from the original, but from Locher’s Latin
translation. It reproduces the matter, but not the manner of the original
satire. Some portions are added by the translator, Alexander Barclay, and
in some parts his translation is an improvement on the original. It was
printed in 1508, published 1509, and went through several editions.
The following may serve as a specimen of Barclay’s translation, and of his
original contributions to Brant’s “Navis Stultifera:”—
“Here beginneth the ‘Ship of Fooles,’ and first of unprofitable books:—
“I am the first foole of all the whole navie,
To keep the Pompe, the Helme, and eke the Sayle:
For this is my minde, this one pleasure have I,
Of bookes to have great plentie and apparayle.
I take no wisdome by them, not yet avayle,
Nor them perceave not, and then I them despise:
Thus am I a foole, and all that sue that guise.
“That in this Ship the chiefe place I governe,
By this wide Sea with fooles wandring,
The cause is plaine and easy to discerne,
Still am I busy, bookes assembling,
For to have plentie it is a pleasant thing
In my conceyt, and to have them ay in hande:
But what they meane do I not understande.
“But yet I have them in great reverence
And honoure, saving them from filth and ordure,
By often brusshing and much diligence,
Full goodly bounde in pleasant coverture,
Of Damas, Sattin, or els of Velvet pure:
I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost,
For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.
“But if it fortune that any learned men
Within my house fall to disputation,
I drawe the curtaynes to shewe my bokes then,
That they of my cunning should make probation:
I kepe not to fall in alterication,
And while they comment, my bookes I turne and winde,
For all is in them, and nothing in my minde.”
In the fourth chapter, “Of newe fassions and disguised garmentes,” there
is at the end what is called “The Lenvoy of Alexander Barclay,” and in it
an allusion to Henry VIII.:—
“But ye proude galants that thus your selfe disguise,
Be ye ashamed, beholde unto your prince:
Consider his sadness, his honestie devise,
His clothing expresseth his inwarde prudence,
Ye see no example of such inconvenience
In his highness, but godly wit and gravitie,
Ensue him, and sorrowe for your enormitie.”