In 1494, humanist Sebastian Brant published Das Narrenschiff, or The Ship of Fools, a long, moralistic poem written in the German language. Born in Strasbourg, Germany circa 1457, Brant earned degrees in philosopy and law at the University of Basel, then continued there as a lecturer. He wrote a law textbook and several poems prior to Das Narrenschiff, as well as editing books and broadsides for local printers. Brant was a loyalist to the Holy Roman Empire, and when Basel joined the Swiss Confederation in 1499, Brant returned to imperial Strasbourg. There he worked for the city in various administrative capacities until his death in 1521.
In Das Narrenschiff, Brant describes 110 assorted follies and vices, each undertaken by a different fool, devoting chapters to such offenses as Arrogance Toward God, Marrying for Money, and Noise in Church. Some of the chapters are united by the common theme of a ship which will bear the assembled fools to Narragonia, the island of fools. Das Narrenschiff proved so popular that it went through multiple editions, and was translated into Latin, French, English, Dutch, and Low German.
Das Narrenschiff's author was both a devout Catholic and a supporter of Maximilian I, the German king who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1491. Brant believed that the Holy Roman Empire had come into German hands because Germany was divinely ordained to lead the temporal Christian world. But he felt that in order to maintain this primacy, the German people would need to cast off decadence and live in the moral fashion appropriate to their role. His Narrenschiff was an attempt to reach the German people in their own language and using the tool of satire to encourage them to discard their sins and vices.
Brant's message was enhanced by a set of stunning woodcuts, most of them believed to have been carved by a young Albrecht Dürer during a short stay in Basel in 1494. Each woodcut illustrates a chapter from Das Narrenschiff, giving either a literal or allegorical interpretation of that particular sin or vice. Most of them feature a fool in a foolscap decorated with bells engaging in the activity being ridiculed. Dürer's detailed backgrounds show interiors furnished with slanted desks and diamond-paned windows, and hilly landscapes dotted with rocks and plants. Additional woodcuts are the work of the Haintz-Nar-Meister, the Gnad-Her-Meister, and two anonymous artists.
The first edition of Das Narrenschiff was printed by Johann Bergmann von Olpe, a former fellow student of Brant's at the University of Basel. Bergmann also printed a number of later editions of Das Narrenschiff, including the 1497 Latin edition known as Stultifera Navis which is owned by the University of Houston Libraries. This edition was translated into Latin by a former student of Brant's named Jacob Locher, with full approval from the classicist Brant. Locher did not follow the text closely, but substantially embellished on it in the translation.
Das Narrenschiff remains an affecting work today. While the modern reader might not find the moralism of Brant appealing in the way that his contemporaries did, his cataloging of medieval vices gives us a fascinating window into the way people really lived. And Dürer's woodcuts retain their vitality and immediacy, drawing a world of fools, tricksters, and profaners with surprising delicacy.
This book was a gift of the Rockwell Fund, in memory of James Wade Rockwell.
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