[In the following essay, Gaier discusses the reception of The Ship of Fools by Brant's contemporaries.]

The place of Sebastian Brant in the intellectual currents of his time is far from settled. Many scholars¹ view him as an essentially medieval mind,² longingly and resignedly looking towards the past, and only accidentally helping to usher in the new age.³ Others, however, stress his desire to act immediately upon his time,⁴ even though several of his ideas are rooted in the past. Some consider him a Humanist,⁵ some a rationalist,⁶ some utterly medieval. Because of the divergence in the views of modern scholars, it seems appropriate to ask how he and his work were looked upon by his contemporaries. This brief discussion is limited to the reception of one of his works by a relatively small group of Humanists.

Brant, who lived between 1457 and 1521, published his Narrenschiff in 1494. This book consists of 113 chapters, most of which describe and satirize different kinds of human folly. The unprecedented number of editions and subsequent versions by other writers show that it was a best seller in its time.⁷

But it was not only the general public that liked the work: Brant's scholarly friends received it with genuine enthusiasm. Hutten praised him for his classical metrical treatment of a barbarian dialect, and for the use of a new structural principle in his poems or chapters.⁸ Jacob Wimpheling, the great educator, wrote: “He has written a book of satires in German which is called the Ship of Fools, and has interspersed it so adroitly with stories, fables and the wisdom of the greatest masters that I do not believe you can find a comparable book in our language.”⁹ Moreover, he recommended it for use in schools, a rare honour for a contemporary work. Johannes Trithemius, the learned abbot of Sponheim, wrote: “He should not have called his work a book of fools, but rather a Divina Satyra. I don't know whether one can read anything more salubrious or agreeable in our times.”¹⁰ He compared Brant with Dante because of his use of the native dialect for a work originating in the Latin tradition, and for his great achievement approximating Dante's Divina Commedia. There is no need to deal at any length with Jacob Locher's superabundant praise of Brant. As his pupil, Locher was responsible for a Latin version of the Narrenschiff which gained international acclaim for the work. But even Locher agreed with Trithemius in his dissatisfaction with the title. In the introductory poems and commentaries to his translation he hinted at satire four or five times and, in one place, wrote: “This little book of ours could very well be called a satire, but the novelty of the title pleased the author.”¹¹

So Brant's friends obviously wanted the book to be called “Satire” or “Divine Satire” and were reluctant to accept the title “Ship of Fools.” Is the title so misleading? It is, because everybody expects Brant to write a ludicrous story about the fools' gathering on the ship, their quarrels concerning important jobs, about their Odyssean journey, and about their death or arrival in the famous fools' country of Narragonia. The expectation is not completely false, for Brant deals with the journey in two out of 113 poems and hints at the ship occasionally in some of the others, so that the image of the ship can be considered present throughout the book. But it is far from dominating the work as a continuous narrative allegory. The unity of the work does not rest in this image. Almost every scholar who has dealt with Brant's Narrenschiff has regarded this fact as one of the works greatest weaknesses. But, to my knowledge, no one has succeeded in transcending the title to the extent of evaluating the work entirely as satire, in the manner recommended by Trithemius and Locher. The unity of a satire does not necessarily rest on a narrative, but may be based solely upon the judging personality of the satirist, and this appears to be the result for the Narrenschiff of Brant's ever-present persona. Thus, if Locher and Trithemius are right in attributing Brant's work to this genre, the Narrenschiff has been hitherto misjudged and should be reevaluated according to the formal standards of satire.

Locher goes on to specify the kind of satire he has in mind. Although the satiric spirit was evident in some late medieval narrative or allegorical works, Locher pays no attention to them. Rather, he links Brant's book directly with Roman satire and its four main exponents, Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. Jodocus Badius also points out the relationship between Brant and the Roman satirists in his introduction to a Latin work on foolish women inspired by the Narrenschiff.¹² Badius describes Brant's manner with the same words that Persius uses for Horace: “He teaches and castigates the infatuated and the foolish who are infinite in number, with his witty and pleasantly readable argumentation, so that they are attracted by his sharp and humorous conversational tone and do not notice that they themselves are the butts of his satire, until he has already crept in on them and is playing with their innermost feelings, as has been said about Horace. Thus he makes them regain their minds and forces them to accept the opinions of the wise, provided that there is any possibility of improvement in them.”¹³

Recognition that Brant's work was really written as a satire in the Roman tradition would necessarily have an important effect upon all criticism of the poem. Moreover, it would define Brant as a genuine Humanist in that he not only liked to show his classical learning by abundant quotations (this has been until now the basis for terming Brant a Humanist), but in that he was the first to revive an important classical genre for German letters. Since it is impossible to provide full proof of the satiric nature of the Narrenschiff within the limits of this paper, I propose to amplify the evidence that the work was looked upon as a Roman satire in its time.¹⁴

The process of popularization normally involves translation of a text from a scholarly language into the idiom of the general public. The fact that Brant's work was translated in the reverse direction suggests that its original conception reflects a provenience within the scholarly tradition and that only a special consideration led Brant to formulate his work in the vernacular. Brant's reason clearly involved a desire to have maximum influence through his Narrenschiff on all classes of people, that is, to contribute to that inner reformation of the German people which he and his friends felt essential in their perilous era. So, since Brant himself attempted a translation into Latin and later left it to Locher,¹⁵ he himself must have considered the work as belonging to the Latin literary tradition. Brant knew Roman satire well, as proved by a series of some hundred quotations in the Narrenschiff directly adapted from practically all of the satires of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. Some of the chapters are even based on the structure of a Roman satire.

Furthermore, Locher and Badius had nearly all the information about Roman satire which we have today and used it freely in their definitions. Locher quoted the pertinent passages in Horace, Persius, and Quintilian;¹⁶ and Badius drew on the fullest discussion of satire in antiquity about which we know: the historical and etymological definition given by Diomedes the grammarian.¹⁷ Thus, when Locher and Badius relate Brant to the Roman satirists, it is not just a friendly compliment but has the ring of scholarly identification.

The circumstantial evidence given shows that Humanist friends within and outside of Germany saw in Brant's work a satire in the Roman tradition. For them, it marked the rebirth of a revered classical genre, whose thread had been dropped at the end of all good literature, namely the demise of ancient Rome. In picking up the thread of satire, Brant became for the German Humanists the first authentic German poet. One may assume, moreover, that a great part of the unprecedented proliferation of Ship of Fools throughout Europe was due to its Renaissance character. Indeed, Locher's introduction to his translation stresses precisely this Renaissance aspect in the short outline of the history of classical satire to which he then links Brant's work.

The literary and poetical point of view that has revealed a purely Humanistic intent and outlook in the Narrenschiff facilitates our dealing with a question which Edwin Zeydel has termed “the most important remaining problem in Brant research,” namely “the relation of the Narrenschiff to the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus.”¹⁸ Zeydel himself has given valuable hints concerning this relation in the preface to his fine translation of the Narrenschiff,¹⁹ to which some corroborating evidence can now be added.

The points which Zeydel makes are, briefly, the following: Erasmus knew Brant's Narrenschiff, at least by way of his friend Jodocus Badius.²⁰ “He follows Brant in a very great number of his subjects and uses him as a source, without mentioning him.”²¹ Finally, Brant wrote a poem on the occasion of the public appearance of the Encomium Moriae in 1511. The content of this poem, not specified by Zeydel, is important.²² Brant says that he is satisfied to have carried in his ship vulgares stultos, common fools who speak dialect and belong to the lower classes of society, and that this is why he has not been attacked. Now comes the Moriae, which satirizes high officials of Church and State, philosophers and priests; for Erasmus' work he predicts trouble, bloodshed, gall, and anger. Brant is obviously comparing the Narrenschiff directly to the Moriae. Whereas Brant attacked only the lower ranks of the Church and remained silent or cautious about the Pope and the bishops, Erasmus had no such reservations. Brant predicted rightly: he came off unscathed while Erasmus was compelled to conduct a lifelong defense of himself.²³ Brant's comparison of the Ship of Fools with the Praise of Folly is justified by the fact that both works are satires. I have shown this for the Narrenschiff, and Erasmus, in his preface, defends the Encomium as a satire, mentioning Lucian and Ancient Comedy,²⁴ the token reference for Roman satire used by Horace, Persius, and Locher. This is how the Praise of Folly was understood, greeted, and resented in its time.²⁵ There are additional similarities. Erasmus uses no names and castigates folly in general; so does Brant. Erasmus confesses to satirizing his own follies under various headings; likewise Brant counts himself among the fools in various places in his book.

If these parallels seem plausible, it is appropriate at this point to deal with some of the major objections to such a juxtaposition. The first objection is raised by Zeydel himself, namely that Erasmus is “far superior to Brant in carrying out his theme artistically.”²⁶ Zeydel is probably referring to the generally held assumption that Brant's chapters are formless, being pieced together from epigrams written on different occasions or translated from various sources. Erasmus, on the other hand, is known to have written his Encomium in brilliant Latin, in the form of a regular rhetorical oratio. But the assumption about Brant is deceptive. In an effort to write for everybody, he used a paratactic, terse, unlinked style for his Narrenschiff, whereas in his Latin poetry he rounded and balanced his periods. What he achieved in his poetry by lengthy and polished explanation, he grasped in the Narrenschiff by a striking image or proverb drawn from the idiom of the simple people.²⁷ He did not, however, neglect the educated: when they read his chapters, their trained minds could detect behind the series of apparently unlinked epigrams patterns of thought and argumentation, techniques and structures of oratory which delighted them. This was noticed by Brant's contemporaries. Hutten, for example, praised him for the new principle upon which he constructed his poems.²⁸ Investigation now discloses that Brant exploited the full range of rhetorical techniques throughout his work, from very elementary devices up to the form of the complete oratio also used by Erasmus.²⁹ In view of the fact that his work was intended to please everybody, Brant's writing is an artistic achievement quite comparable to that of Erasmus which, because it was intended for a small, select group, could maintain unity of approach, an elevated style, and a specific Lucianic irony.

A second major objection to juxtaposing the two works has been raised by Rainer Gruenter in an article on folly in Brant's Narrenschiff.³⁰ He says: “Brant's Ship of Fools appears to be separated from Erasmus's Praise of Folly by an unbridgeable gulf. To be sure, Brant, too, looks upon life as folly; but his way of thinking would never have allowed him to compose a praise of folly even if he had been capable of the ironic device of placing the praise in Folly's own mouth. Erasmian duplicity would shock him, he would, following his nature, have to pursue it with satiric wrath as he did folly herself, if a mind like his were permitted to notice and to grasp the ominous properties of Erasmian duplicity. The decisive difference between Brant and Erasmus is probably the following: with Brant, folly never affects thinking (as Erasmus is conscious that it does), but remains in the objects thought about.”³¹

We can divide the objection into a problem of artistic presentation and a problem of ideas. The problem of presentation deals with Erasmus' letting Folly speak for herself, and thereby gaining the so-called Erasmian duplicity, of which Brant is allegedly incapable. The technique of letting characters or inanimate objects speak for themselves was common practice in rhetorical training. So, the young student of rhetoric had to imagine, for instance, what words Achilles would use speaking over his dead friend Patroklos, mourning and at the same time thinking of revenge and war.³² Using this device frequently in his Narrenschiff, Brant makes the fools talk about, give good reasons for, and carry to an extreme their own folly.³³ This is exactly what Erasmus does, except that his Folly pronounces a eulogy upon herself. Brant's fools are not actually praising their folly, but indulging in a kind of complacent rumination of their views of life and means of gain. So we may say that Erasmus, in using a similar technique of self-interpretation, went one step beyond Brant in irony: Brant exposes the fools by letting them talk about themselves, and Erasmus made Folly praise herself. He might actually have got the idea of putting Folly on the rostrum from Brant's Ch. xxii where Wisdom praises herself. Hence, from the point of view of artistic presentation, Gruenter's contention regarding an unbridgeable gulf between Brant and Erasmus does not hold. Both authors use the same rhetorical device; Erasmus simply employs it more ironically.

Gruenter's second argument is that Brant could never grasp the ironic Erasmian duplicity, that whereas for Brant folly is in objects, for Erasmus it is in the process of thinking itself. This is a modern misunderstanding that can be disproved by again referring to the rhetorical nature of the device of self-interpretation or ethopoiia and prosopopoiia. In his Achilles speech, the rhetoric student was told to project his mind into Achilles' specific character and situation, to find words of mourning and revenge which had nothing in common with his own situation, character, experience, and outlook. This was a game by which the mind was supposed to gain versatility, psychological insight, and an ability to find arguments and correct expressions for every situation or point of view. Erasmus makes it clear that he looks upon the Praise of Folly as ingenii lusum,³⁴ an intellectual game, an experiment in finding the best arguments for Folly. If he thus lends his mind to the personification, he does not at all identify his personal convictions with the arguments Folly expresses. We all know that our minds are capable of many more thoughts and ideas than we would accept as personally true. Thus, Erasmus can choose from a much greater store of possibilities than just his personal convictions. Rhetoric had taught him that he could not merely slip an Achilles-mask over his face and talk from under it as Erasmus; he had to rearrange the relationship and delineation between personal truths and possibilities within himself in order to make an Achilles of an Erasmus. This is also the relationship between Erasmus and Folly, which at the end of his preface he calls decoro personae serviendum fuit, “I had to observe what befitted the character.”³⁵ The Humanist readers for whom it was written accepted it as such, and only some members of the Church, made suspicious by the rising tide of the Reformation, blamed him for playing with sacred ideas—they blamed him not for the ideas uttered by Folly, but for his intellectual play upon them.³⁶

But even there they were right only as far as dogmatic and ecclesiastical matters are concerned: there remains an area untouched even by Folly who is grasping for arguments everywhere. This area can be tested for its delineations in the figure of Christ. Christ was, according to Folly, a fool insofar as he took upon himself the nature of man while being at the same time the Wisdom of the Father.³⁷ But while everything that Christ teaches is infected by folly, the wisdom of God remains untouched;³⁸ and this is what the Apostles, and mankind with them, should rely on. Thus, everything human is subject to folly, but there remains the final basis of divine wisdom accessible to human beings not through intellect, which is folly, but through pure belief, a reliance upon Christ. If Erasmus had not maintained this firm balance, he could not have executed his play of wit so gracefully. And here again is a possibility of comparison with Brant. For Brant, everything—including human intellect—is worthless folly if it is not filled with divine wisdom or striving toward it.³⁹ This is the attitude Brant wishes to teach, and this is what Erasmus implies.

There remains a final difference: that Erasmus has lent himself to play whereas Brant wants to teach. But now that we have seen on how many points of content, genre, literary form, and even ideas, the two authors agree, this seems more a difference of intention than a fundamental divergence in kind. Surely, we are justified in perceiving a firm link between Brant's humble and purposeful satura and Erasmus' unparalleled Humanistic masterpiece of serious joking.

Notes

1. Friedrich Zarncke, Narrenschiff (Leipzig, 1854; Darmstadt, 1964), p. xviii; Karl Goedeke, Das Narrenschiff (Leipzig, 1872); Deutsche Dichter des 16. Jahrhunderts, VII, v; Charles Schmidt, Histoire littéraire de l'Alsace à la fin du XV^eet au commencement du XVI^esiècle, I (Paris, 1879), 189; Henry Dexter Learned, The Syntax of Brant's Narrenschiff (Philadelphia, 1917), p. 49; Hans Henrich Eberth, Die Sprichwörter in Sebastian Brants Narrenschiff (Greifswald, 1933), p. 5; Mary Alvarita Rajewski, Sebastian Brant, Studies in Religious Aspects of His Life and Works with Special Reference to the ‘Varia Carmina’ (Washington, 1944), p. 40; Barbara Könneker, “‘Eyn wis man sich do heym behalt.’ Zur Interpretation von Sebastian Brants Narrenschiff,” GRM, XLV (1964), 46-77, 76.

2. William Gilbert, “Sebastian Brant, Conservative Humanist,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, XLVI (1955), 145-167; 146.

3. Goedeke, p. v; Schmidt, p. 190.

4. Goedeke, p. xii; Eberth, p. 5; Rajewski, p. 9.

5. E.g., Rajewski, p. 9.

6. Wolfgang Stammler, Von der Mystik zum Barock, 1400-1600, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1950), p. 204; Ruth Westermann, “Brant,” in Wolfgang Stammler, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon, I (Berlin and Leipzig, 1933), col. 288; Könneker, p. 76.

7. Cf. the description of editions, translations, etc., in Zarncke, pp. lxxx-cxxxvii.

8. “Qui germana nova carmina lege facit Barbaraque in numeros compellit verba ligatos,” quoted by Zarncke, p. lxxv.

9. “Sebastianus Brant Argentinensis, maximi vir ingenii et omnis doctrinae splendor, sathyras germanica lingua scripsit quas navem stultorum appellant, historiis fabulis et sapientissimorum sententiis adeo respersit, ut in nostra populari lingua minime mihi persuadeam librum huic esse parem.” Quoted by Adam Walther Strobel, Das Narrenschiff von Dr. Sebastian Brant, nebst dessen Freiheitstafel (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1839), pp. 54-55.

10. “… ut non iure stultorum librum, sed divinam potius satyram opus illud appellasset. Nescio enim si quid tempestatis nostrae usibus salubrius aut iucundius legi posset.” (De script. eccl. p. 222, quoted by Schmidt, p. 313.)

11. “… potuisset praesens hic noster libellus, non inconcinne satyra nuncupari: sed auctorem nouitas tituli delectauit.” (Argumentum in Narragoniam, printed by Zarncke, p. 213b.)

12. “Stultiferae naviculae, seu scaphae, fatuarum mulierum: circa sensus quinque exteriores fraude navigantium.” (Paris, 1500; Straßburg, 1502.)

13. “… Sebastiano Brant Aleman̄o … qui faceta iucundaque comentatione fatuos ac stultos, quorum infinitus est numerus, ita erudit et castigat, ut salibus eius atque festivissimo sermone illecti non prius in se animadvertere eum sentiant, quam (ut de Flacco dicitur) admissus circum praecordia ludat, eosque resipiscentes (si quidem sese curabiles exhibeant) in prudentium sententiam concedere cogat.” (Foreword, quoted by Strobel, p. 55.) The reference to Horace is taken from Persius, Satire I, ll. 116-117.

14. The 3rd chapter in my book Satire: Studien zu Neidhart Wittenwiler, Brant und zur satirischen Schreibart (Tübingen, 1967) furnishes this proof by (a) showing that the Narrenschiff is not a medieval moral satire, nor an allegoric epic as has been suggested, and by (b) comparing in detail the Narrenschiff with the Roman satires on matters such as approach, purpose, methods of presentation, and style.

15. Cf. his addition to Locher's translation of 1497 Ad Jacobū Philomusum, ll. 5-12 (printed by Zarncke, p. 118a).

16. See esp. the Prologus Iacobi Locher: Philomusi: in Narragoniam, partly printed in Zarncke, p. 212b.

17. In the prose introduction to his Latin version of Brant's Narrenschiff, Paris, 1505 (printed in Zarncke, p. 217b). For the passage from Diomedes see Heinrich Keil, Grammatici Latini, I (Leipzig, 1857), pp. 485-486.

18. Edwin H. Zeydel, “Notes on Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff,” MLN, LVIII (1943), 346.

19. Edwin H. Zeydel, The Ship of Fools, Translated into Rhyming Couplets with Introduction and Commentary (New York, 1962), pp. 43-45.

20. “Erasmus, who knew his Brant in Latin and perhaps in one or two other tongues as well …” (H. H. Hudson in his translation of The Praise of Folly, Princeton, N. J., 1951, p. xvii). Cf. also P. S. Allen, The Praise of Folly, tr. John Wilson (Oxford, 1913-31), p. xviii: “Erasmus must have seen Brant's Narrenschiff and Badius' Stultiferae Naves, but his Praise of Folly is in no sense an imitation.”

21. Zeydel, The Ship of Fools, p. 43. I have tabulated references in the Praise of Folly to more than one-third of the “fool” chapters in Brant's work.

22. Vulgares nostra stultos vexisse carina
              Contenti, intactam liquimus ire togam.
    Moria nunc prodit, quae byrrhum, syrmata, fasces
              Taxans, philosophos convehit et druidas.
    Heu mihi, quas turbas, quas sanguinis illa lituras
              Eliciet, biles, cum stomachisque ciens.

    (Quoted by Schmidt, I, 315, n. 172)

23. Johan Huizinga, Europäischer Humanismus: Erasmus (Hamburg, 1958), p. 70.

24. Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Colloquia Familiaria etc. (Leipzig, 1736); Encomium Moriae, pp. 1169-1292, p. 1171: “nosque clamitabunt, veterem Comoediam, aut Lucianum quempiam referre, atque omnia mordicus arripere.”

25. Huizinga, p. 68.

26. Zeydel, The Ship of Fools, p. 43.

27. Eberth, pp. 103-107, demonstrates Brant's concern for his style and his ability to adapt it to the specific public for which he wrote.

28. See n. 8.

29. Cf. my book Studien zu Sebastian Brants Narrenschiff (Tübingen, 1966), Ch. ii, in which I show that the whole of this work constitutes a regular Quintilianic oratio. Thus, the two works are equal in form.

30. “Die ‘Narrheit’ in Sebastian Brants Narrenschiff,” Neophilologus, XLIII (1959), 207-221.

31. Gruenter, pp. 217-218.

32. Cf., e.g., Priscianus Grammaticus Caesariensis, Praeexercitamina, N° 9, in Heinrich Keil, Grammatici Latini, III (Leipzig, 1859), 438.

33. Cf. Narrenschiff, Chs. i, v, lxxxi, cviii, where almost the whole chapter uses ethopoiia. Many other instances, where ethopoiia is mixed with other forms of presentation, cannot be quoted here.

34. Erasmus, Praefatio, p. 1170.

35. Erasmus, p. 1173.

36. Huizinga, p. 70.

37. “… ipsum quoque Christum, quo stultitiae mortalium subueniret, cum esset sapientia patris, tamen quodammodo stultum esse factum, cum hominis assumpta natura, habitu inventus est vt homo” (p. 1284).

38. “… cum esset sapientia patris, tamen …” (loc. cit.).

39. Sydt als das vnder der sunnen ist
    Vnnütz ist / vnd dem wißheit gbrist

    (Brant, NS, LIV, 22-23)