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State Library of New South Wales
Nauicula siue speculu[m] fatuor[um]

Nauicula siue speculu[m] fatuor[um]

1511
Bound volume
Argentorati [ie Strassburg]: J Otmar, [1511]
Bequest of Sir William Dixson, 1952
SAFE/ 51/1

A man of austere morality, Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg was one of the most popular preachers in Europe in the 15th century. His forceful and unusual sermons, delivered with ‘extraordinary daring … in the language of ordinary life’* were renowned for attracting and holding the public’s attention as he sought to turn them away from their lives of vice, sin and moral decay. He was also a prolific writer, and his writings provide an enduring source of information about the lives and beliefs of common people of the day.

In 1511 he published this collection of sermons inspired by Brandt’s hugely popular satire Ship of Fools. The volume also includes the woodcut illustrations used by Brandt in his original publication, many of which are thought to have been carved by Albrecht Dürer during a short stay in Basel in 1494. Each woodcut provides a literal or allegorical interpretation of the particular sin or vice featured in that chapter. Most feature a fool wearing a fool’s cap decorated with bells, engaging in the activity being ridiculed. The image shown on this spread, one of those attributed Dürer, is titled ‘Of Crude Fools’.

Ship of Fools

Based around the story of a ship setting sail for Narragonia, the island ‘fools’ paradise, Ship of Fools satirises an assortment of follies and vices, each embodied by a different fool. Brandt devotes verses to such attributes as ‘the falshode [falsehood] of Antichrist’ and ‘disordered love’.


Sebastian Brandt was a devout Catholic and a supporter of Maximilian I, the German king who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1491. Brandt believed that the Holy Roman Empire came into German hands because Germany was divinely ordained to lead the Christian world. But to maintain this primacy, he believed the German people would need to cast off decadence and live in a moral fashion.

Alexander Barclay, a poet and priest, translated the text into English in 1509. The English edition was as popular as it was in Germany, as Barclay used vernacular language and references to English stories and historical figures.  Barclay freely admitted that the English version:

"… is not translated word by worde according to the verses of my aucthour, for I have but onely drawen into our mother tonge, in rude langage the sentences of the verses as nere as parsitie of my wit will suffer me, sometime adding, sometime detracting and taking away such".*

Footnotes
* Prologue, Alexander Barclay, The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde, 1509

Of newe fassions and disgised Garmentes

Drawe nere ye Courters and Galants disgised

Ye counterfayt Caytifs, that ar nat content
As god hath you made: his warke is despysed
Ye thynke you more crafty than God onipotent.
Unstable is your mynde: that shewes by your garment.
A fole is knowen by his toyes and his Cote.
But by theyr clothinge nowe may we many note.
Aparayle is apayred. Al sadness is decayde
The garmentes ar gone that longed to honestye.
And in newe sortes newe Foles ar arayede
Despisynge the costom of good antiquyte.
Mannys fourme is disfigured with euery degre
As Knyght Squyer yeman Jentilman and knaue,
For al in theyr goynge vngoodely them behaue
The tyme hath ben, nat longe before our dayes
Whan men with honest ray coude holde them self content.
Without these disgised: and counterfayted wayes.
Wherby theyr goodes ar wasted, loste, and spent.
Socrates with many mo in wysdom excellent.
Bycause they wolde nought change that cam of nature
Let growe theyre here without cuttinge or scissure.
At that tyme was it reputed to lawde and great honour.
To haue longe here: the Beerde downe to the brest
For so they vsed that were of moste valour.
Stryuynge together who myht be godlyest
Saddest, moste clenely, discretest, and moste honest.
But nowe adayes together we contende and stryue.
Who may be gayest: and newest wayes contryue ...

Sebastian Brandt, Ship of Fools, volume 1, translation by Alexander Barclay, 1509

Footnotes

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20179/20179-h/20179-h.htm