The Fool at Freiburg's Minster Church in his Context

or "On the Resilience of Stupidity" was the title of Professor Werner Mezger's lecture.

Oh, those gargoyles. Red Baron took some close-up photos of a few of them. 

Prof. Mezger started his lecture with the motto of Freiburg's medieval Collegium Sapientiae:

"The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." This verse from Psalm 111.10 and the spolia is all that remains of the former student burse.

Furthermore, we read in Proverbs 10:14, "Wise men lay up knowledge: but the mouth of the foolish is near destruction," and, even stronger, in Proverbs 1:7, "Fools despise wisdom and instruction."

To make his point, Prof. Mezger inverted the Collegium's motto to Initium insipientitiae contemptus: "The beginning of folly is contempt for God."

Showing a fool with his marotte and a bread:
Dei Stultitia aversio a Deo

A fool in his foolishness turns away from God, as can be read in Psalm 14.1: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

Dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est Deus

It must have been a sensual fool that misguided King David, for as is said in Proverbs 10:23: "It is as sport to a fool to do mischief."

A fool in traditional costume (yellow and red) with his face reflected in his marotte.

Around 1540, woodcut by Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, three authors made the figure of the fool a central element of their works.

Around 1540, woodcut by Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger

Sebastian Brant published his Ship of Fools in Basel in 1494. The work became a major bestseller of the pre-Reformation era and laid the foundation for European fool literature.

The work by Erasmus of Rotterdam, which he recently revised himself,
is available for purchase at the Ascensius printing shop

Erasmus of Rotterdam followed with his Moriae Encomium (Praise of Folly) in 1509, first published in Paris and Strasbourg in 1511.

The personified Folly Moria* lectures its followers.

*A pun on the name of Thomas More to whom Erasmus dedicated his book.

Quare valete, plaudite, vivite, bibite, Moriae celeberrimi Mystae.

At the end, Folly dismisses its astonished and displeased listeners with a festive blessing:
Therefore farewell, applaud, live, drink, you most renowned initiates of Folly.

Of the Great Lutheran Fool, as Described by Dr. Murner

In 1522, Thomas Murner published the third "folly" book, "On the Great Lutheran Fool," as a polemical satire against Martin Luther and the Reformation.

The clergy still generates the greatest fools ...

... but the greatest folly of all was the bite into the apple which ...

 

... as is well known, led to the mortality of men and women. 

Death as a fool

The fool becomes a messenger of death.

Omnem in homine venustatem mors abolet

In 1540, the "godless" Hans Sebald Beham engraved "The Fool and the Girl" on copper. In 1541, when his beloved younger brother Barthel died in Italy, Beham revised the engraving, added the text "Death destroys all beauty in human beings," and gave the fool the grimace of death.

The Mother of Fools and Her Seven Sons
https://www.schlossambras-innsbruck.at/object/90962

Toward the end of his lecture, Prof. Mezger gave a detailed description of the "Fools' Plate," which Jörg de Breu the Elder painted in Augsburg in 1528. The plate is on display at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck.

The season of fools is not over.

 

Let the "Mappa Mundi of the Fool," created in the Paris workshop of Jean de Gourmont in the late 15th century, serve as a reminder: "The number of fools is infinite."

Stultorum infinitus est numerus

Therefore, let us heed this insight and follow Ephesians 5:15: "Walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise." 

**