676 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
64 discourses, preached two years before his death, Geiler brought out the spiritual lessons to be derived from ants and in another series he elaborated the 25 sins of the tongue. In a course of 20 sermons to business men, he depicted the six market days and the devil as a pedler going about selling his wares. He preached 17 sermons on the lion in which the king of beasts was successively treated as the symbol of the good man, the worldly man, Christ and the devil; 12 of these sermons were devoted to the ferocious activities of the devil. A series on the Human Tree comprised no less than 163 discourses running from the beginning of Lent, 1495, to the close of Lent, 1496.
During the last two years of the 15th century, Geiler preached 111 homilies on Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools — Narren-scldff — all drawn from the text Eccles. 1 : 15 as it reads in the Vulgate, "the fools are without number." Through Geiler's intervention Brant had been brought to Strassburg from Basel, where he was professor. His famous work, which is a travesty upon the follies of his time, employed the figure of a ship for the transport of his fools because it was the largest engine of transportation the author knew of. Very humorously Brant placed himself in the moderator's chair while all the other fools were gathered in front of him. He himself took the role of the Book-fool. Among other follies which are censured are the doings of the mendicants, the traffic in relics and indulgences and the multiplication of benefices in single hands. ^ Geiler's homilies equal Brant's poetry in humor. Both were true to life. No preacher of the Middle Ages held the popular ear so long as Geiler of Strassburg and no popular poet, not even Will Langland, more effectually wrote for the masses than Sebastian Brant.
In_this^eriod^th^^ came to be g^uite general topreach
from the nave of the church instead of from the choir railing. Preachers limited their discourses by hour-glasses, a custom later transplanted toNew England. 2 Sermons were at times un-
1 See Lorenzi, II. 1-321.
2 Cruel, quoting Surc^ant, p. (5.3o. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 95, speaksof the preacher " spending his glass in telling pleasant stories."
§ 74. PREACHING. 677
duly extended. Gerhard Groote sometimes preached for three hours during Lent and John Gronde extended some of his discourses to six hours, mercifully, however, dividing them into two parts with a brief breathing-spell between, profitable as may well be surmised alike to the preacher and the hearers. Geiler, who at one time had been inclined to preach on without regard to time, limited his discourses to a single hour.
The criticisms wliich preachers passed upon the customs of the day show that human nature was pretty much the same then as it is now and that the " good old times " are not to be sought for in that age. All sorts of habits were held up to ridicule and scorn. Drunkenness and gluttony, the dance and the street comedy, the dress of women and the idle lounging of ricli men's sons, usury and going to church to make a parade were among the subjects dwelt upon. Again and again, Geiler of Strassburg returned to the lazy sons of the rich who spent their time in retailing scandals and doing worse, more silly in their dress than the women, fops who " thought themselves somebody because their fathers were rich." He also took special notice of women and their fripperies. He condemned thei r belts, sometimes made of silk and adorned with gold, costing as much as 40 or 50 gulden, their padded busts and their extensive wardrobes, enabling them to wear for a week at a time two different garments each day and a third one for a dancing party or the play. He launched out against their long hair, left to fall down over the back and crowned with ribbons or small caps such as the men wore. As examples of warning, Absalom and Holofernes were singled out, the former caught by his hair in the branches of the tree and Holofernes ensnared by the adornments of Judith. Geiler called upon the city authorities to come to the help of society and the preacher and legislate against such evils. ^
Another preacher, Hollen, condemned the long trails which women wore as "the devil's wagon," for neither men nor angels
1 See Cruel's chapter on pulpit polemics, pp. 617-629 and Janssen, 1. 440 sqq. A preacher in Ulm, John Capistran, about 1450, was put by the aldermen in the lock-up for his excessive vehemence in condemning the prevailing luxury in dress and other questionable social customs.