[77] A neat and useful edition of these two jest-books, with the other most curious books of the same class, published during the Elizabethan period, has recently been published in two volumes, by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.
THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION.--THOMAS MURNER; HIS GENERAL SATIRES.--FRUITFULNESS OF FOLLY.--HANS SACHS.--THE TRAP FOR FOOLS.--ATTACKS ON LUTHER.--THE POPE AS ANTICHRIST.--THE POPE-ASS AND THE MONK-CALF.--OTHER CARICATURES AGAINST THE POPE.--THE GOOD AND BAD SHEPHERDS.
The reign of Folly did not pass away with the fifteenth century--on the whole the sixteenth century can hardly be said to have been more sane than its predecessor, but it was agitated by a long and fierce struggle to disengage European society from the trammels of the middle ages. We have entered upon what is technically termed the _renaissance_, and are approaching the great religious reformation. The period during which the art of printing began first to spread generally over Western Europe, was peculiarly favourable to the production of satirical books and pamphlets, and a considerable number of clever and spirited satirists and comic writers appeared towards the end of the fifteenth century, especially in Germany, where circumstances of a political character had at an early period given to the intellectual agitation a more permanent strength than it could easily or quickly gain in the great monarchies. Among the more remarkable of these satirists was Thomas Murner, who was born at Strasburg, in 1475. The circumstances even of his childhood are singular, for he was born a cripple, or became one in his earliest infancy, though he was subsequently healed, and it was so universally believed that this malady was the effect of witchcraft, that he himself wrote afterwards a treatise upon this subject under the title of "De Phitonico Contractu." The school in which he was taught may at least have encouraged his satirical spirit, for his master was Jacob Locher, the same who translated into Latin verse the "Ship of Fools" of Sebastian Brandt. At the end of the century Murner had become a master of arts in the University of Paris, and had entered the Franciscan order. His reputation as a German popular poet was so great, that the emperor Maximilian I., who died in 1519, conferred upon him the crown of poetry, or, in other words, made him poet-laureat. He took the degree of doctor in theology in 1509. Still Murner was known best as the popular writer, and he published several satirical poems, which were remarkable for the bold woodcuts that illustrated them, for engraving on wood flourished at this period. He exposed the corruptions of all classes of society, and, before the Reformation broke out, he did not even spare the corruptions of the ecclesiastical state, but soon declared himself a fierce opponent of the Reformers. When the Lutheran revolt against the Papacy became strong, our king, Henry VIII., who took a decided part against Luther, invited Murner to England, and on his return to his own country, the satiric Franciscan became more bitter against the Reformation than ever. He advocated the cause of the English monarch in a pamphlet, now very rare, in which he discussed the question whether Henry VIII. or Luther was the liar--"Antwort dem Murner uff seine frag, ob der künig von Engllant ein Lügner sey oder Martinus Luther." Murner appears to have divided the people of his age into rogues and fools, or perhaps he considered the two titles as identical. His "Narrenbeschwerung," or Conspiracy of Fools, in which Brandt's idea was followed up, is supposed to have been published as early as 1506, but the first printed edition with a date, appeared in 1512. It became so popular, that it went through several editions during subsequent years; and that which I have before me was printed at Strasburg in 1518. It is, like Brandt's "Ship of Fools," a general satire against society, in which the clergy are not spared, for the writer had not yet come in face of Luther's Reformation. The cuts are superior to those of Brandt's book, and some of them are remarkable for their design and execution. In one of the earliest of them, copied in the cut No. 139, Folly is introduced in the garb of a husbandman, scattering his feed over the earth, the result of which is a very quick and flourishing crop, the fool's heads rising above ground, almost instantaneously, like so many turnips. In a subsequent engraving, represented in our cut No. 140, Folly holds out, as an object of emulation, the fool's cap, and people of all classes, the pope himself, and the emperor, and all the great dignitaries of this world, press forward eagerly to seize upon it.