Ship of Fools (satire)

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Title page of a 1549 edition of Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools is a satire published 1494 in Basel, Switzerland, by Sebastian Brant, a conservative German theologian.

In a series of 114 brief satires, illustrated with woodcuts, it is notable for including the first commissioned work by the great Renaissance artist-engraver Albrecht Dürer. Much of the work was critical of the current state of the church. Brant here lashes with unsparing vigour the weaknesses and vices of his time. Here he conceives Saint Grobian, whom he imagines to be the patron saint of vulgar and coarse people.

The Ship of Fools was inspired by a frequent motif in medieval art and Literature, and particularly in religious satire, due to a pun on the Latin word "navis", which means a boat and also the Nave of a Church.

The concept of foolishness was a frequently used trope in the pre-Reformation period to legitimate criticism, as also used by Erasmus in his In Praise of Folly and Martin Luther in his Address to the Christian Nobility. Court fools were allowed to say much what they wanted; by writing his work in the voice of the fool, Brant could legitimate his criticism of the church.

The work immediately became extremely popular, with six authorised and seven pirated editions published before 1521. Brant did not support the Reformation movement, but many of the criticisms of the church expressed in his work mirrored themes which the reformers would pick up on.