Caricature and Other Comic Art in All Times and Many Lands. James Parton
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the king and made Prime Minister. It is not necessary to discover allegory in this tale. What made it potent against the spell of priestly influence was the innocent and boisterous merriment which it excited, amidst which the gloom evoked by priestly arts began to break away. Innocent mirth, next to immortal truth, is the thing most hostile to whatever is mingled with religion which is hostile to the interests of human nature.
And "Reynard," we must remember, was only the best and gayest of a large class of similar fables that circulated during the childhood of Columbus and of Luther. In one of the Latin stories given by Mr. Wright in his "Selection," we have an account of the death and burial of the wolf, the hero of the tale, which makes a most profane use of sacred objects and rites, though it was written by a priest. The holy water was carried by the hare, hedgehogs bore the candles, goats rang the bell, moles dug the grave, foxes carried the bier, the bear celebrated mass, the ox read the gospel, and the ass the epistle. When the burial was complete, the animals sat down to a splendid banquet, and wished for another grand funeral. Mark the moral drawn by the priestly author: "So it frequently happens that when some rich man, an extortionist or a usurer, dies, the abbot or prior of a convent of beasts [i.e., of men living like beasts] causes them to assemble. For it commonly happens that in a great convent of black or white monks [Benedictines or Augustinians] there are none but beasts—lions by their pride, foxes by their craftiness, bears by their voracity, stinking goats by their incontinence, asses by their sluggishness, hedgehogs by their asperity, hares by their timidity (because they were cowardly when there was no fear), and oxen by their laborious cultivation of their land." Unquestionably this author belonged to another order than those named in his tirade.
A book with original life in it becomes usually the progenitor of a line of books. Brandt's "Ship of Fools," which was published when Luther was eleven years old, gave rise to a literature. As soon as it appeared it kindled the zeal of a noted preacher of Strasburg, Jacob Geiler by name, who turned Brandt's gentle satire into fierce invective, which he directed chiefly against the monks. The black friars, he said, were the devil, the white friars his dame, and the others were their chickens. The qualities of a good monk, he declared, were an almighty belly, an ass's back, and a raven's mouth. From the pulpit, on another occasion, he foretold a coming reformation in the Church, adding that he did not expect to live to see it, though some that heard him might. The monks taunted him with looking into the "Ship of Fools" for his texts instead of the Scripture; but the people heard him eagerly, and one of his pupils gave the public a series of his homely, biting sermons, illustrated by wood-cuts, which ran through edition after edition. Badius, a noted scholar of the time, was another who imitated the "Ship of Fools," in a series of satirical pieces entitled "The Boats of Foolish Women," in which the follies of the ladies of the period were ridiculed.
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