SOURCE: Zeydel, Edwin H. “Sebastian Brant and His Public.” In Germanic Studies in Honor of Edward Henry Sehrt, edited by Frithjof Andersen Raven, Wolfram Karl Legner, and James Cecil King, pp. 251-64. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1968.

[In the following essay, Zeydel surveys Brant's more important works as a writer and editor before discussing his use of language, both Latin and the vernacular German he used to reach a wider audience.]

We may assume that Sebastian Brant's oldest writings, dating from his early student days in Basel during the late fourteen seventies, consisted of Latin prose and poetry on topics of the day and subjects of interest to a young incipient humanist gradually turning his attention to the study of law. He may even have worked as early as this period as a tyro for some of the Basel publishers. Johann Heynlin a Lapide, who had come to that city in 1474 and was instrumental in promoting the art of printing there, may well have recommended young Brant, whom he had soon befriended, for that type of work. But these writings have been lost, and we can only conjecture about them. We do know, however, that later he furnished verses and prose as prefaces and epilogues to such works as Amerbach's edition of St. Augustine's De civitate Dei (1489) and to the same publisher's edition of the works of St. Ambrose (1493), to mention only two.

Brant's first works to be preserved are Latin exercises in verse recording natural phenomena of the day in a journalistic vein. Two, dated 1480 and written perhaps before he reached his twenty-third birthday,¹ deal with destructive floods of the Rhine in the Basel area. Verses of a different, humorous kind are those of 1482 on his election as king of a carnival. Two other Latin poems of 1485 and 1487 are concerned with a solar eclipse and a hailstorm, respectively. The poem of 1485 is of particular interest because Brant himself essayed a German translation—a weak, almost unintelligible effort.² It shows what a poor command he had of his native tongue at that time. When we compare this text with the Narrenschiff, written only nine years later, we realize how vastly he improved this skill in less than a decade. This early translation is also interesting because it reveals that even before he had turned thirty he attached importance to reaching a wider public than he could reach with Latin.

The Latin language was adequate for addressing the scholarly world, versed in law and theology, in which he moved. It was also suitable for such a learned, professorial textbook as his Expositiones sive declarationes omnium titulorum tam civilis quam canonici, published by Furter in 1490, and for another legal textbook, published in 1500, on how to study both canon and civil law—De modo studendi in utroque jure. It was adequate also for flattering verses on the election of Maximilian to the kingship in 1486.³ It served too for cursing the people of Bruges for imprisoning Maximilian in 1488 (Zarncke, Narrenschiff, p. 186). It was appropriate for reaching the clergy, especially the upper echelons, through verses in adoration of the Virgin Mary and the saints.

In writing German, on the other hand, Brant could address the masses of the people, who at that very time were emerging from their passivity and beginning to assume a more active role in Church and Empire. In setting himself this task, however, he realized that he was confronted with a new problem. It was that of deliberately writing on another level. Addressing his intellectual peers and superiors in Latin was a task not to be compared with that of instructing and holding the interest of the untutored multitudes, who could understand a picture but not a text even when read to them, unless it was couched in homely language and in the simplest frame of reference. This required a lucid, paratactic style, subject matter within the experience and ken of humble folk, and in general a transparency hardly characteristic of humanist craftsmanship.

Brant soon improved as a writer of the vernacular for this purpose, even before the Narrenschiff. A good example is found in his German rendering of the Latin Marian hymn “Ave praeclara” (probably before 1490). Although his translation is by no means a masterpiece, it conveys the reverent spirit of this 95-line sequence. To be sure, the style is still awkward and almost lapidary, and shows the influence of the Latin source. Brant's German version begins: “Ave durchlüchte // stern des mers on fürchte // entfangen / uffgangen // den heyden / zu fröuden.” Structural peculiarities continue to the end, e. g. “Schaff, uns den brunnen der güte // mit reinem gemüte // und augen / anschawen, // iunkfrowen.”⁴ Under the circumstances it is surprising that in a somewhat revised form this German “Ave praeclara,” accompanied by music, was handed down through the ages and appeared as late as the nineteenth century in two editions of Philip Wackernagel's well-known Das deutsche Kirchenlied (first edition, 1841).

Another type of German writing which Brant cultivated with success at a comparatively early age points directly to the Narrenschiff. It is represented by verse translations of four older Latin works on manners and table etiquette (Tischzuchten). His purpose is educational rather than satirical. The renderings probably date from the late eighties (perhaps prior to his securing the doctorate in 1489) and the early nineties. One, titled Thesmophagia, was published in 1490, the other three, Cato, Facetus, and Moretus, though apparently older, were printed later, the first without date (published by Michael Furter), the other two in 1496 (with the imprint of Bergmann von Olpe). Internal evidence indicates that of the four, Cato, the crudest, came first, Facetus and Moretus next, and Thesmophagia (or Phagofacetus) last.

Like the German translation of the broadside of 1485, and the German “Ave praeclara,” these four works reveal Brant practicing his German, experimenting with its use, and gradually winning his spurs in preparation for far more demanding original work in that language. His intention was to carry out an endeavor which his beloved mentor, Heynlin a Lapide, had cherished all his life, namely improving the manners and morals of the common people by example and precept.⁵ Heynlin finally despaired of success and in 1487 retired to the silence of the Carthusian monastery in Basel, where he spent the last nine years of his life. Brant, however, much younger and not yet disillusioned, took up the task that Heynlin had forsaken. It required close rapport with the masses. Heynlin had tried to reach them by word of mouth; Brant resolved to make the effort by means of secular books, often illustrated, which those who could not read might at least have read to them.

This is not the place for a discussion of the evidence that Cato was written years before its publication, the exact date of which, as noted above, is not known.⁶ Suffice it to say that its publisher was one of the first with whom Brant had dealings; as stated above, Furter also published his legal textbook Expositiones sive declarationes in 1490. Cato, a Latin version of which can be traced back to the eighth or ninth century, had already been translated into German in the thirteenth, but Brant was not aware of the translation. The important point, so far as he was concerned, is that it held a natural attraction for him as the future author of the Narrenschiff. Brant's version, written in doggerel verse, is just short of 675 lines.⁷ Though inferior to the Narrenschiff as a poem, it reminds one of his masterpiece in many respects. Subjects treated in the Narrenschiff—e. g. “Von ler der kind,” “Von bosen sytten,” “Nit achten uff all red,” and “Von tragheit und fulheit”—are found here too, as are the didactic-satirical vein, and the fondness for homely proverbs and saws. If much of this is not original with Brant, it helped at least to mould literary patterns which he later used independently. The spirit of the work, to which Brant subscribed wholeheartedly, is illustrated by the following sample: “Dein gmüt mit guten gboten ler / Zu leren die nümer uff hör / Dann on ler ist das leben wild / Und unnutz wie des todes bild // So wurst erlangen nutz und ere / Verachtest du aber myn ler / Darffstu daran nit schuldigen mich / Sunder hast selbs versumet dich.”⁸

If there were any doubts about Brant's success in reaching the public at which he aimed with this work, a study of its reception would dispel them. After the first edition at least sixteen printings appeared up to 1517, the printers including Bergmann in Basel, Hupfuff in Strasbourg, Anshelm in Pfortzheim, Höltzel in Nuremberg, Knoblouch in Strasbourg, Schönsperger in Augsburg, Lamparter in Basel, Gutknecht in Nuremberg, and Otmar in Augsburg. The numerous printings suggest a remarkable popularity.

Facetus, published by Bergman in 1796, is somewhat shorter than Cato, and a recapitulation of, rather than an addition to, it. But Brant does speak here of having supplemented Cato (gemert). In eleven Latin distichs at the end, addressed to “lads of studious disposition,” he advises them to read and reread the work if they would become “urbane.” Facetus, like Cato, proved highly successful. Charles Schmidt, in Histoire littéraire de l'Alsace (Paris, 1879; II, 348 f.) lists sixteen editions up to 1518, some printed as far away as Mayence and Leipsic.

Moretus was not nearly as successful as Cato and Facetus, appearing only four times up to 1508. The title page describes it as a supplement to Cato; it is also addressed to Onuphrius. Unlike the two previous works, it devotes sections to various callings, judges, physicians, soldiers, as well as to old men. Brant assures us in his Latin dedicatory verse that he strove to make his German translation as literal as possible.

Thesmophagia, of which no second printing has been noted, belongs in the category of satires on poor manners at table. It deals with such miscellaneous subjects as washing one's hands before a meal, proper conversation at table, eating soft boiled eggs, and dining with women. German literature of this age and of later periods is rich in this type.⁹ Brant himself added a chapter of 219 lines on the subject to the second edition of the Narrenschiff; it is entitled “Von disches unzucht.”

During the ten years after the composition of these works, i. e. until his departure from Basel and return to his native Strasbourg, Brant tried his skill at various types of writing addressed to different parts of his public. Among them, besides the German Narrenschiff and a similar work, Fuchshatz (1497), in which the fools are foxes, both of which were intended chiefly for the masses, were Latin works of a religious nature, such as Rosarium ex floribus vitae passionisque … Jesu Christi, a sort of poetic rosary which also was published in German, and Verbum bonum, variations on the theme of Ave Maria. Works of this type were probably read and chanted by parish priests. The five books of Decretals issued by Pope Gregory IX in the thirteenth century, with pertinent passages from Scripture, probably edited by Brant—and accompanied by a poem from his pen—, were published by Froben in 1494. This work, as well as the Decretum Gratiani (Froben, 1493), in a later edition dedicated to the archbishop of Besançon, was obviously addressed to the higher clergy and to scholars in canon law. Brant's numerous poems to Mary and to various saints, already alluded to, and his versified arguments in favor of the immaculate conception were for the most part probably meant for the same public and for devotees of moral philosophy. His edition of the Vulgate Bible in 1497 served the clergy in general. The decrees of the Church Council of Basel, which he edited for that city in 1499, were meant for scholars of theology. On the other hand, the broadside Vita sancti Onofrii, published in 1494 by Bergmann, to which are joined verses comparing this hermit saint with Hercules, contains classical allusions, and has humanist characteristics.

More clearly and exclusively humanistic are Brant's poems on Petrarch¹⁰ and Hrotsvith, the Saxon poet-nun,¹¹ also the humorous piece of prose to the Saxon statesman, scholar, and orator Heinrich von Büno, explaining why the Basel clocks were set an hour ahead of others.¹²

Often in his literary career Brant addressed the emperor Maximilian together with the princes of the realm; he knew the emperor personally and was honored by him several times. Two such poems of 1486 and 1488 have already been mentioned. In December of 1493 he edited for Bergmann the Oratio Jasonis Magni Legati … in nuptias Maximiliani et Blancae Mariae, adding a congratulatory poem of his own; it was reprinted in March of the next year at Innsbruck, the actual time and place of the nuptials. Brant continued for the rest of his life to write eulogistic poems addressed to Maximilian. In his edition of the Narrenschiff, Zarncke reprints many of these, dating from the earliest time to shortly after the emperor's death.¹³

But Brant's most ambitious work of this kind is a long Latin treatise in prose on Jerusalem, De origine et conversatione bonorum regum (1495). Its purpose is to arouse Maximilian and the princes to new activity with a view to reconquering the Holy Land from the infidels. An elaborate historical account of the world as Brant knew it, and of Jerusalem in particular, and a statement of the reasons for its loss by the Christians take up most of the space. In a concluding poem of over six hundred lines Brant's intention is summed up. Maximilian is reminded that he has been appointed by God as “the brash bolt of lightning against the Turks”—fulcrum acerbum Turcorum. Another Latin poem of about equal length, written as a preface to the third edition of Locher's Latin translation of the Narrenschiff and entitled “De corrupto ordine vivendi pereuntibus”—“On those who perish because they have corrupted the orderly manner of living”—is also a résumé of world history. It will be discussed below.

Even with these many works the list of Brant's numerous writings of his Basel period is not exhausted. However, those mentioned give one a good idea of the range of his interests.

During the last twenty years of his life in Strasbourg we can note an even wider range and a broadening of the scope of his public. His continuing interest in reaching the masses is evidenced by his edition (1513)—the first ever to be printed—and expansion of Freidank's thirteenth-century Bescheidenheit; it has much in common with the Narrenschiff, for it too deals with many kinds of fools. His continuing humanist concerns are shown by editions of Aesop (in Latin), Virgil, and Terence, and perhaps also by a German work on geography, Beschreibung etlicher Gelegenheit teutsches Landes, with special attention to Alsace and Strasbourg. It was published eighteen years after Brant's death in Caspar Hedio's Auserlesene Chronik von Anfang der Welt bis auf das Jahr 1539.¹⁴

A new endeavor of his later years grew out of his position as secretary of the city council of Strasbourg. It is exemplified by a new type of writing in the vernacular, not addressed to the masses, but to the upper bourgeoisie, whose knowledge of Latin was deficient. We find it in the official documents of the city government insofar as they were written by Brant, as well as in the report he wrote on the new bishop Wilhelm von Hoenstein, his election and formal installation in 1506 and 1507. This is an excellent example of good sixteenth-century German prose.¹⁵ Another example of the new type of writing is a collection of over fifty short German strophes or epigrams of a moralizing nature, known as Freiheitstafel, depicting the murals in the hall of the College of Thirteen in Strasbourg. Here Brant's verse is much more sophisticated than the work of his earlier period, and obviously written for a more literate public. No. 23, for instance, reads: “Troia wehrt sich Zehen Jahr / ehe das sie ihr freyheit verlohr, / wehr noch wohl lenger bliben frey / wehr nit gesin verrätherey. / Gott geb verräthern ihren lohn, / Sie handt viel Stetten wege gethon.”¹⁶

Similar to these are seventy-seven German epigrams headed by Latin quotations from the Old Testament or from Latin authors. They are composed in the vein of the Narrenschiff and Freidank's Bescheidenheit but again are meant for a more tutored public with some knowledge of the Latin writers quoted, better understanding of the many references to the history and mythology of antiquity, and ability to read.

Earlier in his career Brant had written all his legal works in Latin. But in Strasbourg he turned to German in this field, feeling that some knowledge of law would be useful to those not well versed in Latin. To this end he edited two German legal works, the Layen Spiegel in 1509 and the Clagspiegel in 1516. The former, dealing with legal aspects of civil and penal cases, was by a certain Ulrich Tengler. Brant furnished two German prefaces, the first in cumbersome prose typical of sixteenth-century legal language and of the then prevalent jargon of the German provincial chancelleries. Comparing his endless hypotactic periods with his elementary awkward attempts at writing German in the eighties, we appreciate not only the progress he made, but also the technique he developed in addressing various strata of his public. The second preface, in verse, is written for less sophisticated laymen in the style of the Narrenschiff. Two additional prefaces in Latin, supplied by Locher, through whom Brant had met Tengler, were meant for more educated readers. The author of the Clagspiegel is not known; its original edition may go back as far as the fourteen seventies. More practical than the Layen Spiegel, it gives useful advice on the best method of presenting to a court cases in civil and canon law. Brant's contribution consisted of revisions and corrections of the text, as well as some German verse explaining his intention of making the volume more useful by turning Latin expressions into German: “das jeder die mag lesen / Darausz nemen guten verstandt.” The dedication to the two Strasbourg councilmen Johann Bock and Peter Muszler shows the type of reader that Brant had in mind.¹⁷

One final literary activity of Brant should be mentioned; it grows out of his interest in dramatics. As early as 1482 Brant was “king of the bean carnival” at Twelfth Night and took the leading part in the procession. He composed a jolly Latin poem for the occasion, already referred to, in which he emphasized his poverty.¹⁸ Other indications of his interest in the drama and dramatic representations are his poem to Hrotsvith, in which he refers to her comica sancta, his edition of the plays of Terence (1503), and his dedicatory verses for Reuchlin's drama Henno, in which he states that the muse Thalia owes much to this friend.¹⁹ Later in Strasbourg Brant paid considerable attention to theatrical performances in Latin, some of which he himself arranged and sponsored. They were characterized by a moral-didactic purpose but were no doubt not as lyrical as those of his student Locher. It was Locher who initiated the humanist drama with his Historia de Rege Franciae, performed in the courtyard of the University of Freiburg in 1495. Among dramas possibly written by Brant was one on Hercules. It has not been preserved, but in a German play, Histori Herculi, by the Nuremberg humanist Pangratz Bernhaubt (alias Schwenter) we may have an adaptation of it in the vernacular.²⁰

In our survey of many of Brant's more important writings as author or editor or both, over a period of almost forty years, we have found a wealth of interests represented. It is not difficult to list over a dozen types: journalistic writings, introductions, epilogs, advertisements or “blurbs” for new books, works of a religious, political, legal, didactic, humanist, satirical, humorous, historical, geographical, and dramatic nature.

Naturally these numerous interests appealed to almost equally diversified strata. Works in the vernacular like the Narrenschiff—by no means the only one of Brant famous during his lifetime—appealed to the illiterate masses. The language and imagery, well suited to this purpose, are paratactic, picturesque, declarative, and straightforward. These works were illustrated so that the illiterate could enjoy them. Yet they often reached more than one stratum. Since the satire of the Narrenschiff is based upon ancient Roman models and its structure upon the post-Ciceronian rules of rhetoric, the work was also highly praised by humanists like Tritheim and publicists like Hutten. Ulrich Gaier's contributions are of great value here.

With other works too Brant reached several strata of his public. His collection of poems, Varia Carmina (1498), soon pirated by the publisher Grüninger in Strasbourg, offers pieces for the emperor Maximilian, bishop Dalburg of Worms, deans and canons of the church, the clergy in general, humanists like Reuchlin and Locher, and nobles like Heinrich von Büno. As was noted, the epigrams as well as the Freiheitstafel address educated laymen, Strasbourg councilmen, and humanists alike. The geographical Beschreibung etlicher Gelegenheit, we found, was meant for geographers, humanists, and the upper class in general. In each type of work we discover a different type of language.

We shall examine several of these language levels among his German writings. In the Narrenschiff the directness and simplicity of the sententious language which Brant uses, enriched by facile rhymes, make it easy to follow, even for the most untutored mind. Chapter I, “Von unnutzen Buchern,” lines 1-8, will serve as an example: “Das jch sytz vornan jn dem schyff / Das hat worlich eyn sundren gryff / On ursach ist das nit gethan / Uff myn libry ich mych verlan / Von buchern hab ich grossen hort / Verstand doch dryn gar wenig wort / Und halt sie dennacht jn den eren / Das ich jnn wil der fliegen weren …” But in the German verses of the Freiheitstafel, written perhaps a decade later for the upper classes, who no doubt knew some Latin, Brant uses constructions which echo the Latin idiom. No. 6 (Zarncke, Narrenschiff, p. 158) is an example: “Dienstbarkeit ist ein schweresz Joch / viel härter dann ein eyszenbloch, / menschlicher Natur zwider gar / so sie nichts thun noch laszenn gthar / dann dasz ein ander will unndt gbüth / sich schinden laszenn alle Zeit.” This is true also of the German poem of 1520 in which he prophesies the decline of the empire (ibid., p. 162): “Gott well mit gnad unsz sehen an, / dasz Römisch reich würdt uff steltzen gan, / leider! der dütschen er zergan. / Doch mag Gott wenden wasz er will, / syn macht unnd krafft ist nützs zuvil; / aber alsz man sich schickht uff erdt / mit laster, sündt, schandtlicher geberdt, / besorg dasz es böszer werdt.”

But when Brant records the election of Wilhelm von Hoenstein as bishop in 1506, he contributes a historical report for posterity written in straightforward narrative prose (ibid., p. 200): “Und da es ward uff die halb stund zwüschen zwölfen und ein uren, da khamen sie harusz, und brachten grave Wilhelmen von Honstein, den furt der dechan bey dem rechten arm, und der thumprobst bey dem lincken arm, und gingen die anndern thumherren alle hernach, und da sie inn den chor khamen, da knüten die drey herren uff die stafflen vor dem fronaltar, doch der erwelt ein staffel hoher dann der dechant und der thumprobst.” For the jurists, on the other hand, he writes an introduction to the Layen Spiegel in 1509 which is a classical example of turgid, interminable hypotaxis. The first sentence, for instance, extending to 42 lines, begins (ibid., p. 169): “Wie wol vil hoher leere und rumbs mäner so bisz her aintzige gedicht unn erscheinung irer wissenhait, vernunfft unn naygung zum gemainen nutz in allen Nacionen und getzungen bey unsern yetz schwebenden meer dann zu den verganngen zeitten an das liecht bracht, und durch mittel d'edeln kunst des Buchdruckens in die menig alles volcks auszgesprayt haben …”

However, Brant adjusts not only his language but also his argument to the intellectual level, capacity, and needs of his public. The German works, written for the masses, in particular the Narrenschiff, stress religion much more than the Latin works do, for Brant feels that the masses require the greater emphasis more than the upper classes. In the Latin writings, on the other hand, political matters are stressed more strongly.

The volume De origine et conversatione bonorum regum, we noted, is devoted in great part to the task of convincing the emperor and the princes of the need for a new crusade to reconquer the Holy Land. In the Narrenschiff the same subject is treated in a single section of 212 lines: Chapter 99, “Von abgang des glouben.” Here suasion and concern about the church lead the writer to lament: “Wann ich gedenck sümnisz, und schand / So man yetz spürt, jn allem land / Von fürsten, herren, landen, stett / Wer wunder nit, ob ich schon hett / Myn ougen gantz der Zähern voll …” (lines 1-5) The many lands already lost to Christianity, and others about to be lost, are listed. Significantly, in the historical survey in the Narrenschiff chapter, written chiefly for the masses, the period of the Roman republic is singled out for praise: “O Rom, do du hatst künig vor / Do waszt du eygen, lange jor, / Dar noch jnn fryheit wardst gefürt / Als dich eyn gmeyner rott regiertt …” (lines 95-98), while the eras of kings and emperors are decried. Maximilian is deemed worthy of the Roman crown, but his princes are chided and urged to awaken: “Wachen, und dunt von üch all schand” (line 176). While the learned De origine et conversatione …, then, is an elaborate, direct political plea, the Narrenschiff chapter, besides being written down to the people, is little more than an oblique and futile cry of despair about the decline of the faith, as the title indicates.

Another striking example of how Brant approaches his German readers differently from the Latin readers is to be found in a comparison of the German Narrenschiff and the prefatory poem “De corrupto ordine vivendi pereuntibus,” which he wrote for the third edition of Locher's Latin Navis. The German readers learn that folly imperils their eternal salvation. Moreover Brant concludes the first German edition with Chapter 112: “Der wis man”—a restatement of the contents of the pseudo-Virgilian poem “Vir Bonus,” in which he recommends wisdom as the best means of banishing folly.²¹

“Der wis man,” leading a harmonious life and looking forward to ideals which did not crystallize until the Renaissance, derives his wisdom directly from divine sources. He must achieve a place for himself as a microcosmic image of God and bring his influence to bear upon the world of fools. In the Latin poem, “De corrupto ordine …,” however, this in the final analysis religious solution of the problem of folly is ignored. Instead Brant offers political reasons for the downfall of one nation after another as the result of folly. They go back to the teachings of two of his Thomist professors of canon law at Basel, Peter von Andlau and Johann Hugonis (the latter of whom Brant served for a while as famulus). The burden of his argument, harking back to the Middle Ages, is that lack of what he calls ordo (orderliness, fitness of things) has been responsible for the destruction of human society, and indeed of entire nations, among them Assyrians, Medes, Jews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. Referring to the fools whom he himself depicts in the Narrenschiff, Brant writes in this introduction to Locher's Navis: “Perspicimus cunctos sine lege atque ordine, remos / Traxisse: et velis non posuisse modum / Atque ideo in Scyllam, Syrtes, brevia, atque charybdim / Vortice detrusos naufragiumque pati” (lines 9 ff.).²²

Brant continues: “stultos / Invenio cunctos hoc periisse modo: / Quod praetergressi legemque modumque, viamque / Quam deus et rerum dictitat ordo decens” (lines 13-16).²³ Later in the poem, when he philosophizes and generalizes, we find this most significant passage: “Ordo est qui cunctas res crescere cogit in horas: / Ordo est qui parvos tollit in astra lares. / Horror adest, errorque frequens ubi deficit ordo: / Ordine perverso nil placet usque deo” (lines 521 ff.).²⁴

This philosophical observation also goes far in explaining why Brant in the Narrenschiff pays so much attention to petty follies and foibles such as book collecting as a status symbol, or overdressing. He deems them serious enough to lump them together with major follies. But he tells only the Latin, not the German readers the reason.

The difference of approach is typical of Brant. He invariably addresses a given stratum of his public, and always on a level consonant with what he feels they need to know and are able to understand. In general we may distinguish between the Latin and the German writings by characterizing the former as medieval in their outlook, and the latter as pointing toward the Renaissance.

Much of what has been said here has sociological implications. They play an important, though often neglected role in literary criticism, especially when applied to such a transitional figure as Brant. Sociology can shed light upon many aspects of the literature of an epoch like his. It can make clear the processes by which the ever-changing literary tastes and styles develop, as the noted Leipsic scholar Levin Schücking has asserted.²⁵ Similarly, as new social classes arise, it can help to explain their impact upon literature. Few of his contemporaries realized the importance of these new classes of readers and listeners as fully as did Brant.

Notes

1. New light is cast upon the probable time of Brant's birth (between late March and early May, 1457) in my article “Wann wurde Sebastian Brant geboren?” in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, XCV, 4 (October, 1966), 319-320.

2. The Latin: Bis dedit octo dies forte et tot Martius horas: / Versus ad occiduas sol tenebrosus aquas. The corresponding German: Nach zehen sexs Mertz stund ouch tag / Vil kleines schins die sunn hie pflag. See Friedrich Zarncke's edition of the Narrenschiff (Leipzig, 1854), p. 194. It is possible that these and similar verses appeared as broadsides, with illustrations in the form of woodcuts. See Zarncke, “Zur Vorgeschichte des Narrenschiffs”: 1. Mitteilung in Serapium 29 (1868), 49-54; 2. Mitteilung (Leipzig, 1871). Cornell University possesses Zarncke's own copy of this. It should be noted that only rarely does Brant simply translate. In translating he adapts the material to a new public. As was typical of the German humanists, he continued translating all his life. See Zarncke's edition of the Narrenschiff, p. 173.

3. Two such poems on Maximilian's election are preserved; they were published by Zarncke (Narrenschiff, p. 181).

4. Ibid., pp. 163 ff.

5. This endeavor goes far in explaining Heynlin's desire to abandon scholarship and devote himself to preaching in Basel, Bern, and Baden, his subordination of humanism to Christian morality, and his attempt to influence the civil authorities in Baden (to be discussed below). See Zeydel, Sebastian Brant, 1457-1521, Author of the Ship of Fools (New York, 1967), p. 31.

6. See Zeydel, Sebastian Brant, pp. 39 ff. and 66 ff., for a discussion of this subject.

7. The eight Latin distichs preceding the work, as well as the German introduction of 58 lines, are addressed to Brant's oldest son, Onuphrius, born in 1486, and were probably added at the time of publication. Perhaps Brant's desire to dedicate it to him, at about the age of ten, explains why he unearthed it from among his early literary papers and gave it to Furter.

8. Lines 368-375. Zarncke, Narrenschiff, p. 135.

9. See the Höfische Tischzuchten, edited by Thomas P. Thornton according to the plans of the late Arno Schirokauer, and the Grobianische Tischzuchten, by the same editor, both in the series Texte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Nos. 4 and 5 (Berlin, 1957).

10. Zarncke, Narrenschiff, p. 188.

11. Ibid., p. 189.

12. Ibid., pp. 192 ff.

13. Ibid., pp. 186-187 and 196-198.

14. In connection with this concern with geography, mention should be made of the fact that Bergmann had published the famous Columbus letter in 1494, probably at Brant's suggestion; it appeared as a supplement to a volume entitled In laudem Ferdinandi Hispaniarum regis. If Brant seems to belie this interest in the first voyage of Columbus in Chapter 66 of the Narrenschiff, it should be borne in mind that his negative attitude here is directed only against exploration.

15. It was not published during Brant's time but appeared in the Code historique et diplomatique de la ville de Strasbourg, I, 2^me partie (1843), from a copy made after Brant's death.

16. Zarncke, Narrenschiff, p. 159.

17. On the Layen Spiegel and Clagspiegel see R. Stintzing, (1) Geschichte der populären Literatur des römisch-kanonischen Rechts in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1867), and (2) Geschichte der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft, I (Munich and Leipzig, 1880), pp. 93 ff.

18. Zarncke, Narrenschiff, p. 190.

19. Ibid., p. 195.

20. But see Brant's Tugent Spyl (probably his Hercules), published by H. G. Rolaff in Ausgaben deut. Lit. d. XV.-XVIII. Jhs. (Berlin: de Gruyter)

21. See also Chapters 22 (“Die ler der wisheit”), 42 (“Von spott vogelen”), and 107 (“Von lon der wisheit”).

22. Translation: “We see all the fools plying their oars without rule or order and not controlling the sails, and thus hurled by the waves against Scylla, the Syrtes, the narrows, and Charybdis, suffering shipwreck.”

23. Translation: “I find that all fools perished in this manner: they flouted law, proper measure, and the path which God and the decent orderliness of things dictate.”

24. Translation: “It is orderliness that makes things grow apace, it is orderliness that raises even the trifling things in life to the stars [note the parvos lares, the household gods, the humble everyday things]; there is horror and frequent aimlessness when orderliness is missing. When orderliness is subverted, nothing pleases God.”

25. Die Soziologie der literarischen Geschmacksbildung, 3rd rev. ed. (Bern, 1961) The first edition appeared in 1922.