BRANT, SEBASTIAN (1457-1521)

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 431 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BOS-BRI

BRANT, SEBASTIAN (1457-1521) , German humanist and satirist, was born at Strassburg about the year 1457. He studied at Basel, took the degree of

doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

laws

LAWS

in 1489, and for some time held a professorship of jurisprudence there. Returning to Strassburg, he was made syndic of the town, and died on the loth of May 1521. He first attracted attention in humanistic circles by his Latin poetry, and edited many ecclesiastical and legal works; but he is now only known by his famous

satire

SATIRE (Lat. satira, satura; see below)

, Das Narrenschifff(1494), a

work

WORK

the popularity and influence of which were not limited to Germany. Under the form of an allegorya ship laden with

fools

FOOLS, FEAST OF (Lat. festum stultorum, fatuorum, follorum, Fr. fete des fous)

and steered by

fools

FOOLS, FEAST OF (Lat. festum stultorum, fatuorum, follorum, Fr. fete des fous)

to the fools' paradise of NarragcniaBrant here lashes with unsparing vigour the weaknesses and vices of his time. Although, like most of the German humanists, essentially conservative in his religious views, Brant's eyes were open to the abuses in the church, and the Narrenschiff was a most effective preparation for the

Protestant

PROTESTANT

Reformation. Alexander Barclay's Ship of Fools (1509) is a free imitation of the German poem, and a Latin version by
Jacobus Locher (1497) was hardly less popular than the German

original

ORIGINAL

. There is also a large quantity of other " fool literature."

Nigel

NIGEL (d. 1168)

, called Wireker (fl. 119o), a monk of Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, wrote a satirical Speculum stultorum, in which the ambitious and discontented monk figured as the ass Brunellus, who wanted a longer tail. Brunellus, who has been educated at Paris, decides to found an order of fools, which shall combine the good points of all the existing monastic orders. Cock Lovell's Bete (printed by Wynkyn de Worde, c. 1510) is another imitation of the Narrenschiff. Cock Lovell is a fraudulent currier who gathers round him a rascally collection of tradesmen. They sail off in a riotous fashion up hill and down dale throughout England. Brant's other works, of which the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

was a version of Freidank's Bescheidenheii (15o8), are of inferior

interest

INTEREST

and importance.
Brant's Narrenschiff has been edited by F. Zarncke (1854); by K. Goedeke (1872); and by F. Bobertag (Ki.irschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. xvi., 1889). A modern German translation was published by K. Simrock in 1872. On the influence of Brant in England see especially C. H. Herford, The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the 16th Century (1886).

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