Sebastian Brant (Brant Sebastian)

(1457-1521)
Born in 1457 in Strasbourg. He studied in Basel, the same in 1484 received the right to teach, in 1489 - the degree of Doctor of Laws. In 1501 became a syndic in Strasbourg, in 1503 - municipal Chancellor of the city. Brant died at Strasbourg, 10 May 1521.
Brant composed Latin verses (Varia carmina; Latin. - Different verses; 1498) and amounted to codes of law, but is best known poem earned him an essay on German Ship of Fools (Das Narrenschiff, 1494). Refined ingenuity, supported by the illustrations - the book was 75 engravings, blshey part of the excellent, in the spirit of the early works of Durer, - has made this work a kind of secular Bible.

Ship of Fools was transferred to the Low German in 1497 and at the same time in Latin. In the Latin version was based French (1498) and English (1509) transcriptions have been significantly influenced the literature and thought of the Renaissance. There were Flemish (1500) and Dutch (1548) version of the book. Ship of Fools repeatedly reprinted in various languages - we know that by the end of 17. were approximately. 30 publications. Besides, . in this work the first of the well-known in the literature of an indirect reference to the discovery of America by Columbus H.: Ship of Fools to the text of the Basel publisher Bergmann von Olpe put, . possibly at the insistence of Brant, . printed in 1493 a letter of Columbus,
. Erasmus was familiar with Branthomme and his creativity, and in the Praise of Folly, Erasmus shows the influence of the Ship of Fools