official fools and dwarfs. Both figured, like living caricatures, amid
the splendours of his Imperial court. One of the latter, who seems to
have been both dwarf and buffoon, a Pole grandiosely named Corneille
de Lithuanie, is spoken of as having figured with such distinction at
a tournament held in Brussels on the first Sunday in February 1545,
as to have carried off the second prize. The first was gained by the
Count d’Egmont, for having broken the greatest number of lances; but on
Corneille was conferred the second, for having been the next best in
the ranks, and for general gallantry.
Charles had native fools in his other dominions. In Spain, we meet
with that excellent jester, Don Francis; also with Pedro de San Erbas
and Zapata. There was another in the service of Charles, named Pape
Theun, who had originally exercised some office of trust. Of these,
Francis was the wittiest; but it is said that the sharpness of his wit
brought about his assassination. He was certainly mortally wounded by
assassins, but his wit kept by him to the last. He was assailed at his
own door, and his wife, hearing the consequent disturbance, cried out
from within to know what was the matter. “Nothing at all, mistress,”
exclaimed the fool, “they have merely killed your husband.” Another
fool, Perico de Ayala, who was a retainer in the house of the Marquis
de Vilena, attended on Don Francis while he was dying, and piously
asked him to pray for poor Perico in the next world. “I will, I will,”
said Francis; “but, Perico, suppose you tie a string round my little
finger, lest I forget it.”
This specimen of wit does not say much for the official fool; and it
is still worse in the case of Pedro de San Erbas, the only incident
connected with whose office, with which I am acquainted, reveals rather
the wit of his master than his own. Thus we are told, that after the
abdication of Charles, he held a court at Valladolid, to receive the
farewell compliments of the nobles and ladies of the vicinity. When
the ceremony had concluded, Pedro approached to take leave of his old
patron. At seeing him, Charles took off his hat, and Pedro thereupon
asked if the act was one of courtesy, or simply to indicate that he was
no longer Emperor. “Neither, Pedro,” answered the prince; “I do it to
signify that all I can give you now is this simple token of civility.”
Of Zapata nothing is known save his remark when Charles, who owed his
entire household a year’s salary, once observed to his courtiers, after
teasing the fool for a long time, “He will soon pay me back again.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Zapata, “what can I pay back, when not a soul under
your roof has received a doit of their salary for a twelvemonth?” This
remark showed the bold freedom rather than the wittiness of Zapata’s
tongue. As for Pape Theun, he seems to have been rather a practical
than a loquacious joker. He was insolent rather than witty of speech,
and when this insolence brought him into disgrace, the jokes he played
to recover the goodwill of his master were coarse jokes, acceptable
to coarse people in coarse times, but the repeating of which would
assuredly not be acceptable to my readers.
To return to the fools who exclusively belonged to the Imperial court
of Germany, the next remarkable individual of the class is Nelle,
attached to the household of Matthias II. Nelle not only attended
the celebrated meeting of the States, assembled at Ratisbon in 1613,
but he presented to the Emperor a volume, exquisitely bound, which
contained, as he said, the record of all that had been accomplished by
the statesmen. Matthias opened the book, and found it all blank paper,
“Why, there is nothing written here,” said the monarch. “Exactly so,”
answered the fool, “because there was nothing done _there_; and so my
record is truthful.” I cannot say, however, that this was so witty as
the reply of the Speaker of the Commons to Elizabeth, when the latter,
at the end of a session, asked him what they had passed; “An it please
your Majesty,” said Mr. Speaker, “we have passed two months and a half!”
Another story is told of Nelle. In his moody master’s reign Lutherans
and Papists were at open strife; and a Bishop Clesel, in Vienna, was
excessively indignant that the sheep of his own particular pasture
flocked every Sunday out of the capital, to listen to a Lutheran monk
in the neighbouring village of Hörnals. In great wrath, and open court,
he besought the Emperor to prohibit the people from leaving Vienna
on the Sabbath for the village in question. Matthias replied that he
did not know how this was to be effected; and looking at the fool, he
added, “Nelle, can your wit help us in this matter?” “It is the easiest
thing in the world,” rejoined Nelle; “you have only to send the Bishop
to Hörnals, and bring the Lutheran monk to preach in the capital, and
you will not find a soul desirous of leaving Vienna on the Sunday.”
The Emperors certainly allowed a license to their jesters which no one
else dared to take advantage of. Thus, at the court of Ferdinand II.,
we hear of a silly courtier who endeavoured to amuse the illustrious
circle by his imbecilities. Jonas, Ferdinand’s favourite fool, began
answering him according to his folly. But this so offended the noble
simpleton of half a hundred quarters, that he exclaimed, “Fellow,
be silent; I never stop to talk with a fool!” “Well, I do,” replied
Jonas, bending over the courtier’s seat as he stood behind the pompous
gentleman’s chair, “and therefore be good enough to listen to me in
your turn.”
This courtier did not resemble Charles VI., at whose court the greatest
favour was enjoyed, not indeed by a professional wearer of cap and
bells, but by a saucy wit of the name of Steffens. The latter had been
a clerk, and his readiness of repartee had so endeared him to the
monarch, that he elevated him to the rank of Count, and so entirely
surrendered himself to the jesting Count’s company, that none of the
ministers, not even Prince Eugene himself, could obtain an audience,
without being previously kept waiting an hour. I have read however
more of Steffens’ reputation for wit than examples of the wit itself.
Möser cites an instance which seems to me to have more impertinence
in it than true humour. For example, in 1724, Count von Mikosch died
of poison. “What is popularly said of Mikosch’s death?” asked Charles
of Steffens. “Well,” answered the latter, “I will tell you, if you
will make me a present.” The Emperor put some gold pieces in the hand
of this mercenary fellow, who rejoined: “The people say that it was
the devil who carried off Mikosch; and they add, that if he had lived
longer, and you had continued to trust him and follow his counsel, the
devil would speedily have come for your Majesty also.” It will be seen
by this, that whatever humour there may have been under the ancient
fool’s cap, there was not much of it to be found beneath the coronet of
this lackered Count Steffens.
The smaller courts of Germany, as a matter of course, followed the
fashion set by the Emperors. At Anspach the Margraves were ordinarily
their own fools; but towards the end of the last century the little
court found intense delight in the religious folly, if I may so speak,
of a poor ex-artist named Bayer. He was reasonable and witty on every
subject except prophecy and the Apocalypse; and it was precisely from
his madness on these points that the Margrave and his courtiers drew
most delight, till indeed they nearly drove the poor fellow mad on
every other subject as well.
Baden, too, had its fools of various degrees; and indeed the Margrave
Philip kept two, Lips and Hänsel von Gingen. The wit or fun of the
latter seems to have consisted in his pride, which would never permit
him to sit at meat with other jesters who accompanied their lords to
the court at Baden. Lips was so great a favourite that he sat in the
council-chamber when Philip was presiding. Lips was once asked his
opinion on a vexed question which the counsellors could not solve--the
admission of the Jews into Baden. “Oh, let them in, let them in,” said
Lips, “and then we shall have all religions among us, even a little
Christianity!”
The jester had occasionally to endure a very superabundant measure
of hardship, as for example, when policy or revenge brought about
the murder of Duke Ludwig of Bavaria, on the bridge over the Danube
at Kehlheim, in 1231. The great but hidden perpetrators of the deed
thought it convenient to lay the crime upon the Duke’s fool, Stich. He
was told that his ducal master having exasperated him by sundry bad
jokes, Stich had suddenly stabbed the Duke with his bread-knife. “Ah!”
said the poor fellow, as he stood at the gallows, “that some one ought
to be hanged for murdering the Duke, I can very well comprehend; but
that that some one should be _me_, I do not comprehend at all.”
To another of Louis of Bavaria’s fools, the King of Bohemia once gave
a goblet of such strong wine that the tipsy jester declared he could
be content to be a fool through eternity, if he might only always be
permitted to drink such wine. But this is far inferior to the quiet
observation of the Connaught man, after a long pull at a whisky flask;
that, had his mother first brought him up on such beverage, he would
never have been weaned. And the Bavarian is not less inferior in his
wit to another Hibernian, who, on hearing a senseless drunken man
pronounced dead, coolly remarked, “Dead is he? I wish I had half his
disease.”
It must be confessed, however, that it is difficult to place fairly
the German fools or joy-makers before a foreign public. Many of their
brightest sayings turn on the point of some sparkling pun which, when
rendered into English, is, as the Germans themselves would say, for a
translation, completely “overset.” On the other hand, the feats of some
of these joy-makers are incredible, although related in solemn Latin
by grave bishops, like Dubravius, the diocesan of Olmütz. This prelate
speaks at great length, in his ‘History of Bohemia,’ of a certain
Zytho, who was brought to the Bohemian court by the Emperor Wenceslaus,
in 1389. In that century, and in that which preceded as well as that
which followed it, the court at Prague took most delight, not in
witty jesters, but in astounding conjurors, jugglers, magicians, and
sorcerers. Individuals of this quality were retained in the sovereign’s
household, and their achievements were of a nature to do credit to
the professions which they exercised. It was when a body of these
were exhibiting in presence of Wenceslaus, then on a visit at Prague,
that the Emperor produced his own wonderful man, Zytho, ordering him
to excel, if he could, those rivals in his vocation. Zytho (so we are
seriously told by the episcopal historian) went quietly up to the most
accomplished of the wonder-workers, and--swallowed him! The Duke of
Bavaria was angry at thus being deprived of his principal performer;
and Zytho, at the command of Wenceslaus, reproduced him after a fashion
that stirred to thundering laughter that unrefined assembly. The Bishop
further tells us that Zytho could change his shape at will; produce any
animal required, out of any material, and, in short, work marvels in
which the prelate believes, and I do not. On one occasion, at a court
banquet, he changed the hands of various of the guests into hoofs, in
order to prevent their taking up the costly viands provided; and on
another occasion, seeing a courtier put his head out of window, Zytho
made spring from his forehead such a gigantic pair of antlers that
the poor gentleman could not draw his head in again, whereby, says
the right reverend historian, he produced such laughter as was _never
heard_ in Bohemia,--the which I can very well believe. I will repeat
one other tale recounted of him, as it gave rise to a proverb which
I have myself heard applied in Bohemia. Zytho, procuring some wisps
of straw, transformed them into swine, which he sold at a good price
to a baker named Michael. Zytho simply recommended the purchaser not
to take the swine down to the water, which of course Michael did on
the first opportunity, out of curiosity, to see the consequence. And
he saw it: the swine no sooner touched the water than they were all
again transformed into wisps of straw, and went floating away down the
stream. Away too went Michael in search of Zytho, whom he found fast
asleep on a bench, but at whose leg he pulled so lustily, in order to
arouse him, that the leg, thigh and all, came away, and the enraged
Zytho summoned him before a magistrate, who awarded him very competent
damages. Hence the proverb, applied by a Bohemian to any one who has
played him false or put a trick upon him, “You’ll get as much profit
from that, as Michael did from the swine.”
Such were the stories rather than the deeds which gave delight to the
Ducal court of Bohemia a few centuries ago. According to tradition,
Zytho was ultimately carried off by his arch-patron, the devil; not
however so much because of his sorcery and satanic deeds, as because
he fell into the heresy of John Huss, who, according to the Roman
Catholics of that day, and the _Univers_ of this, was himself an agent
of Lucifer.
My readers may remember that a pagan Roman Emperor left to a decision
of the Senate the question whether Christianity should or should not be
tolerated in the Roman dominions. In Iceland, too, the same question
was submitted to a similar process, and in both cases it was carried
in the affirmative, by narrow majorities. In Bohemia, one similar, but
less important in degree, was left to be decided by the issue of a
contest between two court fools. In 1461, the Hungarian King, Mathias
Corvinus, and the Bohemian King, George Podiebrad, met in conference
at Prague. The latter, a Reformer, was the father-in-law of Corvinus,
a Roman Catholic, and each had a capacious hut erected, in which, by
turns, the august parties, illustriously attended, carried on a course
of debates, disputes, hard words, and jollification. From the Pope’s
Nuncio down to the two court fools of their majesties, all took active
part in every circumstance of the conference. One of the knotty points
under discussion was that of religion,--the Reformed or the Roman
Catholic.
“Let the two fools fight, and decide it by single combat,” said the
Bohemian counsellor, Isdengo, who was secretly in the pay of Corvinus.
“Let the two fools settle it!” cried the counsellor. The Papal Nuncio
had the decency to protest against the proposition. But the two
sovereigns, lacking excitement, and weary with last night’s banquet,
thought the idea excellent. The fools were accordingly commanded to
fall-to and do their best in behalf of their respective forms of
faith. After exasperating each other by sallies of irritating wit,
they grappled and commenced wrestling. The spectators stood anxiously
looking on while, by such singular argument, the question of the
Sacrament in one or both kinds was being discussed. The Bohemian
Utraquists were in high spirits, for their champion was a gigantic
fellow, while his opponent, the little Hungarian, was not stouter built
than ordinary strong men. He maintained the contest, however, manfully,
and when the course of combat passed from wrestling to hard blows,
he dealt one so well placed, that it would have upset the Utraquist
champion, had he not been promptly upheld by a Bohemian in the rear.
Thereupon the whole Hungarian faction roared out, “Shame! Unfair!” etc.
The Bohemians shouted loudly in an opposite sense. From exclamations,
both parties fell to their swords, and the whole company were speedily
hacking at each other, while the fools sat down and laughed at both
sides. Their respective royal masters had great difficulty in appeasing
the tumult and postponing the debate. Meanwhile, many a good fellow
had got a hole in his side or his throat, from which his life-blood
went trickling; and, finally, Isdengo was banished for making the
proposition, by which he had left a Sacramental question to the
arbitrement of a couple of jesters.
The fool still meddled with religious matters, and Killian, the jester
of King Ladislaus of Hungary, once lectured the Bohemian sovereign
George von Podiebrad, as the Hussite monarch stood by the side of
the Roman Catholic Ladislaus, at a mass in the cathedral at Breslau.
“I see,” whispered Killian to George, “with what sort of a face you
look at our service; but I cannot see your heart. So tell me, do you
not think our religion better than your own? See the nobles, princes,
kings, who follow it. Had you not better join with them than with
your Bohemian Reformers? Can a few men like these be of more sound
understanding than the whole Christian Church? Let noble knight as you
are join with noble knight, and not with the dirty mob of Reformers.”
“Friend Killian,” said George, “if you say this unprompted by others,
you are not such a fool as you pretend to be; but if you have been
moved to it by others, tell them from me, that I act according to my
conscience, am responsible to God only for my belief, and that my
trust is in Him alone. What I profess, I firmly believe; and were I
to change, I should be not only fool, but knave; and I see no cause,
cousin Killian, why I should either make myself like unto you or unto
those who moved you to this bold step of yours. Keep to your folly,
Fool, and I will keep to my belief.”
It is certain that, as late as the sixteenth century, the court or
house fool was still a serf or thrall, and could be bought and sold.
We have a well-known instance of this, which may be mentioned here.
When Louis II. of Hungary (Louis I. of Bohemia) visited Erlau, in 1520,
he found that the governor there possessed one of the best trained
hawks and one of the merriest fools that Louis had ever seen; and so
well pleased was he with them, that he offered to purchase both. We
can only approximately judge of the value of the fool, as the price
given for him and the bird is set down in the sum total. There was a
good deal of haggling, but the money paid down by the King was 40,000
gulden--between three and four thousand pounds.
Looking in at another minor court, we discover that “Frederick with the
bitten cheek,” a Thuringian prince, was partly indebted to a court fool
for the scar from which he got his name. It happened that his father,
Albert, Landgrave of Thuringia, loved a lady, Cunegunda, better than
he did his wife, Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Frederick II. The
court fool seems to have been a menial, since I find him described as
a carrier of wood and water to the Wartburg, where Margaret resided.
Cunegunda so wrought upon the fool by terror, that he consented to
murder the Landgrave’s wife; but he only entered her room to reveal to
her the conspiracy, and to ask forgiveness. Poor Margaret, aware that
her life was not safe, since her rival, Cunegunda von Eisenberg, had
resolved to take it, resolved on immediate flight; and it was in her
eagerly kissing her little son Frederick before she escaped, that she
bit his cheek, and left for ever thereon the testimony of her terror
and affection.
“She, wanting wit, and frantic with affright,
Would fain have kiss’d, but, mad with grief, did bite.”
The name of the faithful fool is not given; but he is said to
have lived in her service, during the few months she survived, at
Frankfort-on-the-Maine.
The most renowned fool of the following century was Jenni von Stocken,
who was attached to the household of Leopold the Pious. He was greatly
esteemed by his master, and often gave him counsel which would have
profited him had he been more ready to follow it. Jenni strongly
advised Leopold against entering the Swiss defiles before securing
his return therefrom, in case of accident. The issue of the battle of
Sempach, A.D. 1386, showed that a fool’s advice would have been worth
taking.
Nearly all von Stocken’s sayings and doings are attributed to various
jesters of succeeding centuries. This, too, was the case with Killian,
the fool of Albert of Austria. But there is one saying which is
undoubtedly Killian’s own. He was a strangely eccentric fellow, and
some one asked him why, being so profoundly wise a personage, he should
play the fool. “Ah! there it is,” said Killian; “The more thoroughly I
play the fool, the wiser do men account me; and there is my son, who
thinks himself wise, and whom everybody knows to be a fool.”
It may perhaps be safely asserted, that of all the court jesters at
the lesser courts of Germany, Klaus von Ranstadt, or Klaus _Narr_,
“the fool,” was the most famous. He flourished at the electoral court
of Saxony at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
centuries. He served as fool to four successive Electors. The first
of these, the Elector Ernest, met with Klaus when he was keeping
geese. The Prince was passing through Ranstadt with a great number of
horses, men, and waggons, when Klaus, wishing to see the sight, and
unwilling to leave his geese, tied all the young ones by the neck to
his girdle, and with two old geese under his arms, he stood to view
the procession. The Prince laughed, questioned the goosekeeper, who had
strangled his young charge, and was so delighted at the sharp replies
he received, that he engaged him at once as his fool, to the great
delight of the grave elders of the place, who declared that Klaus kept
the whole district in a continual uproar of idle laughter by his tricks
and waggery.
His tricks and his waggery, however, have frequently a coarse and
sometimes an unintelligible character. They have been published at
various times, and one sample will serve to show how Klaus performed
his office.
The Elector Frederick, finding his dominions threatened with invasion,
was inclined to treat with the enemy, but first asked the fool what he
thought of the matter. “Give me your best mantle,” said Klaus, “and
I will tell you.” This having been done, Klaus withdrew, tore the
mantle in two, and reappeared with one of the halves hanging from his
shoulders. The Elector, enraged at the damage done to his best cloak,
asked what was meant by such a joke. “It means,” said Klaus, “that if
you treat with the foe, you will soon look as ridiculous with half your
dominions, as I do with half a cloak.”
This was a more cumbersome sort of wit than was exercised by a
contemporary fool, Peter Bärenhaut, at the court of Philip, Landgrave
of Baden. The latter complained of headache on the morrow of a terrible
drinking-bout, and the fool said he knew a cure for it. “What is your
remedy?” asked the Landgrave, “Drink again today,” answered Peter.
“Then I shall only suffer more tomorrow,” said the Prince. “Then,”
rejoined Peter, “you must drink still more.” “But in what would such a
remedy end?” asked the Landgrave. “Why,” said Peter, “in your being a
bigger fool than I am!”
The jesters to small potentates rivalled the _Narrs_ of the Imperial
Court in their boldness. It would seem that at grave ecclesiastical
discussions, where a common man would not dare to make a remark, nor
a courtier to venture on a comment, the fool spoke and acted without
restraint. Eck has left an account of the great controversy on Articles
of Faith which he held against Luther at Leipsic in 1519. “The
citadel,” he says, “was prepared as our battle-field; the place was
guarded by seventy-six soldiers, to protect us, in case of need, from
the insults of the people of Wittemberg.” Against the wit or anger,
however, of the fool of George, Duke of Saxony, who was present with
his master, no precaution was thought necessary. To the jester, some of
the courtiers whispered that Luther and Eck were disputing about his
marriage, the former being for and the latter against it. The ducal
fool had but one eye, but that was fired with indignation against the
supposed opponent of his marriage. Eck bore his angry looks for a time
with some patience. At length, annoyed at and not comprehending them,
the grave churchman took to mimicking the infirmity of the fool, by
screwing up one eye closely, and rolling the other at him in a sort
of comical defiance. This drove the Saxon joker out of all bounds of
moderation. He started up, pummelled old Eck with hard words, called
him rogue, liar, and thief, and after overwhelming him with a torrent
of similar amenities, took an indignant hop, skip, and jump out of the
hall, amid the universal laughter of the delighted audience.