Three pages from Stultifera Navis [The Ship of Fools]

Written in German by the distinguished humanist Sebastian Brant (1458-1521) in 1494 and titled the Narrenschiff, The Ship of Fools was one of the most successful published works of its age. There was such a demand for it that it was translated into all the leading European languages of the time. Brant's friend Jacob Locher translated it into Latin in 1497, giving it the title Stultifera Navis. This page is from a pirated 1497 edition, published in Nuremberg by Georg Stuchs. The work immediately became extremely popular: six authorised and seven pirated editions (as here), were published before Brant's death in 1521.

In the book Brant describes 110 assorted follies and vices, each undertaken by a different fool or fools, devoting chapters to such offences 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. Each chapter is illustrated by a woodcut giving either a literal or allegorical interpretation of the particular sin or vice.

This item comprises three pages from The Ship of Fools. Fol. CXVI (p. 116) has a woodcut depicting an ignorant fool preaching to (and hiding the truth from) an unruly crowd who wield cudgels.  Fol. CXVII (p. 117) has a hand-coloured woodcut depicting the kneeling figure of St Peter holding his symbolic key and a boatload of believers in the foreground, another boat with two figures including a fool, and dominating the composition a figure of the Antichrist holding a moneybag and a lashed birch scourge. Beside him a devil figure blows bellows. This is followed by a page of text (Fol. CXVIII) relating to 'De Antichristo' (the Antichrist).

See:  'Ship of Fools (satire)', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Fools_(satire)

Dr Mark Stocker      Curator, Historical International Art        March 2017