history of the German Reformation
assumes a living, intelligible, and human character in the biographies of
the Reformers; and no historian would imagine that he understood the
secret springs of that mighty revolution in Germany without having read
the works of Hutten, the table-talk of Luther, the letters of Melancthon,
and the sermons of Zwingle. But although it is easy to single out
representative men in the great decisive struggles of history, they are
more difficult to find during the preparatory periods. The years from 1450
to 1500 are as important as the years from 1500 to 1550,--nay, to the
thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of
deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth century. But
where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent
the age in which they lived? It was an age of transition and preparation,
of dissatisfaction and hesitation. Like the whole of the fifteenth
century, "It was rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius,
and barren of strong thinkers." We must not look for heroes in so unheroic
an age, but be satisfied with men if they be but a head taller than their
contemporaries.

One of the most interesting men in whose life and writings the history of
the preliminary age of the German Reformation may be studied, is Sebastian
Brant, the famous author of the famous "Ship of Fools." He was born in the
year 1457. The Council of Basle had failed to fulfill the hopes of the
German laity as to a _reformatio ecclesiae in capite et membris_. In the
very year of Brant's birth, Martin Meyer, the Chancellor of Mayence, had
addressed his letter to his former friend, AEneas Sylvius,--a national
manifesto, in boldness and vigor only surpassed by the powerful pamphlet
of Luther, "To the Nobility of the German Nation." Germany seemed to
awaken at last to her position, and to see the dangers that threatened her
political and religious freedom. The new movement which had taken place in
Italy in classical learning, supported chiefly by Greek refugees, began to
extend its quickening influence beyond the Alps. AEneas Sylvius, afterwards
Pope Pius II., 1458, writes in one of his letters, that poets were held in
no estimation in Germany, though he admits that their poetry is less to be
blamed for this than their patrons, the princes, who care far more for any
trifles than for poetry. The Germans, he says, do not care for science nor
for a