BRANT, or BRANDT, bruint, SEBASTIAN (c.1458-1521). A German satiric poet and hu manist. He was born in Strassburg, the son of a wealthy burgher. He studied philosophy and jurisprudence at the University of Basel, taught there, and rose to eminence through writings that induced Emperor Maximilian to make him Im perial Couneilor and Count Palatine. He took an important part in negotiations with the Holy See. He is the author of Das Xarrenschiff ("The Ship of Fools"). published in 1494, one of the most remarkable and popular books of the time. This work, as an artist, he illustrated himself, as well as editions of Terence (1496) : Boethius (1501) Vergil (1502) ; and a volume of ser mons, Quadragesimale (1496). The Ship of Fools (Narrenschiti) is supposed to have suggested Erasmus's famous Praise of Folly, and was a sort of Pilyrines Progress to its generation. It was a mirror to those perplexed times, and carried the spirit of the Reformation far beyond the borders of Germany, and into quarters where thewritings of Luther would have found no hearing. It is thought to have been suggested by a passage in a chroniele which describes a carnival procession at Aix-la-Chapelle in the Twelfth Century. Here a ship was borne about the country, followed by a train of gayly-dressed men anil women singing and dancing. Brant saw in this 'pagan wor
ship,' as the chronicler calls it. the possibilities of a social satire. Ile invites to passage repre sentatives of every class—the misers. the glut tons, the church-goers for show and the •hu•ch goers for respectability, the pedantic and the frivolous. -from beardless youth to crooked age," knights and ladies, cooks and butlers, gamesters. drunkards, spendthrifts, merchants. alchemists, and lovers. in motley and ever-chang ing, throng. So all classes saw themselves in his picture, and read with a twinge at their own and a smile at others' folly, ''the first printed book that dealt with contemporary events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French knights" (Max SItiller). Contem porary writers made constant allusions to it: monks preached from its texts: three rears after its appearance it was turned into Latin by Locker, fifteen years after into English by Bar clay (London, 1509), and again by Henry Wat son, as The Crete Sllyppe of Poole's of the Worlde (1517). Barclay's edition has been edited by Ja mieson (Edinburgh, 1874). The best German edi tions are by Zarncke (Leipzig, l85.1), with an extensive commentary, and by Goedeckc (Leip zig, 1872).