The
Ship of Fools was published in
1494 in
Basel, Switzerland, by
Sebastian Brant. It was printed by
Michael Furter for Johann Bergann von Olpe. The book consists of a prologue, 112 brief satires, and an epilogue, all illustrated with woodcuts. Brant takes up the
ship of fools trope, popular at the time, lashing with unsparing vigor the weaknesses and vices of his time. He conceives
Saint Grobian, whom he imagines to be the
patron saint of vulgar and coarse people. The concept of foolishness was a frequently used
trope in the pre-Reformation period to legitimize criticism, as also used by
Erasmus in his
Praise of Folly and
Martin Luther in his "" (
Address to the Christian Nobility).
Court fools were allowed to say much what they wanted; by writing his work in the voice of the fool, Brant could legitimize his criticism of the church. The abbot of
Sponheim Johannes Trithemius lamented Brant's title choice and would have preferred the book to be called
Divina Satyra. He compared the work to
Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia for the use in both of their local languages. The book was translated into
Latin by in
1497, into French by in 1497 and by in 1498, into English by
Alexander Barclay and by in
1509. Of the 103 woodcuts, two-thirds are attributed to the young
Albrecht Dürer, and the additional wood-cuts are the work of the so-called , the
gnad-her-Meister and two other anonymous artists. An allegorical painting by
Hieronymus Bosch, The
Ship of Fools, a fragment of a triptych said to have been painted by Bosch between 1490 and 1500, may have been influenced by the frontispiece for the book. The painting is on display in the
Louvre Museum in
Paris. ==Modern interpretations==