their own ideas as to the supreme authority of the Pope, the divine right
of the Emperor, or the immaculate conception of the Virgin (a dogma denied
by the Dominicans, and defended by the Franciscans), they were always
ready to point out abuses and to suggest reforms. The age in which they
lived was not an age of decisive thought or decisive action. There was a
want of character in individuals as well as in parties; and the points in
which they differed were of small importance, though they masked
differences of greater weight. At Basle, the men who were gathered round
Johannes a Lapide were what we should call Liberal Conservatives, and it
is among them that we find Sebastian Brant. Basle could then boast of some
of the most eminent men of the time. Besides Agricola, and Wimpheling, and
Geiler von Kaisersberg, and Trithemius, Reuchlin was there for a time, and
Wessel, and the Greek Kontablacos. Sebastian Brant, though on friendly
terms with most of these men, was their junior; and, among his
contemporaries, a new generation grew up, more independent and more
free-spoken than their masters, though as yet very far from any
revolutionary views in matters of Church or State. Feuds broke out very
soon between the old and the young schools. Locher, the friend of
Brant,--the poet who had turned his "Ship of Fools" into Latin
verse,--published a poem, in which he attacked rather petulantly the
scholastic philosophy and theology. Wimpheling, at the request of Geiler
of Kaisersberg, had to punish him for this audacity, and he did it in a
pamphlet full of the most vulgar abuse. Reuchlin also had given offense,
and was attacked and persecuted; but his party retaliated by the "Epistolae
Obscurorum Virorum." Thus the Conservative, or Realistic party became
divided; and when, at the beginning of a new century and a new era in the
history of the world, Luther raised his voice in defense of national and
religious freedom, he was joined not only by the more advanced descendants
of the Nominalistic school, but by all the vigor, the talent, and the
intellect of the old Conservatives.

Brant himself, though he lived at Strassburg up to 1521, did not join the
standard of the Reformation. He had learned to grumble, to find fault, to
abuse, and to condemn; but his time was gone when the moment for action
arrived. And yet he helped toward the success of the Reformation in
Germany. He had been one of the first, after the discovery of printing, to