The fool still meddled with religious matters, and Killian, the jester of King Ladislaus of Hungary, once lectured the Bohemian sovereign George von Podiebrad, as the Hussite monarch stood by the side of the Roman Catholic Ladislaus, at a mass in the cathedral at Breslau. “I see,” whispered Killian to George, “with what sort of a face you look at our service; but I cannot see your heart. So tell me, do you not think our religion better than your own? See the nobles, princes, kings, who follow it. Had you not better join with them than with your Bohemian Reformers? Can a few men like these be of more sound understanding than the whole Christian Church? Let noble knight as you are join with noble knight, and not with the dirty mob of Reformers.”
“Friend Killian,” said George, “if you say this unprompted by others, you are not such a fool as you pretend to be; but if you have been moved to it by others, tell them from me, that I act according to my conscience, am responsible to God only for my belief, and that my trust is in Him alone. What I profess, I firmly believe; and were I to change, I should be not only fool, but knave; and I see no cause, cousin Killian, why I should either make myself like unto you or unto those who moved you to this bold step of yours. Keep to your folly, Fool, and I will keep to my belief.”
It is certain that, as late as the sixteenth century, the court or house fool was still a serf or thrall, and could be bought and sold. We have a well-known instance of this, which may be mentioned here. When Louis II. of Hungary (Louis I. of Bohemia) visited Erlau, in 1520, he found that the governor there possessed one of the best trained hawks and one of the merriest fools that Louis had ever seen; and so well pleased was he with them, that he offered to purchase both. We can only approximately judge of the value of the fool, as the price given for him and the bird is set down in the sum total. There was a good deal of haggling, but the money paid down by the King was 40,000 gulden—between three and four thousand pounds.
Looking in at another minor court, we discover that “Frederick with the bitten cheek,” a Thuringian prince, was partly indebted to a court fool for the scar from which he got his name. It happened that his father, Albert, Landgrave of Thuringia, loved a lady, Cunegunda, better than he did his wife, Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Frederick II. The court fool seems to have been a menial, since I find him described as a carrier of wood and water to the Wartburg, where Margaret resided. Cunegunda so wrought upon the fool by terror, that he consented to murder the Landgrave’s wife; but he only entered her room to reveal to her the conspiracy, and to ask forgiveness. Poor Margaret, aware that her life was not safe, since her rival, Cunegunda von Eisenberg, had resolved to take it, resolved on immediate flight; and it was in her eagerly kissing her little son Frederick before she escaped, that she bit his cheek, and left for ever thereon the testimony of her terror and affection.
“She, wanting wit, and frantic with affright,
Would fain have kiss’d, but, mad with grief, did bite.”
The name of the faithful fool is not given; but he is said to have lived in her service, during the few months she survived, at Frankfort-on-the-Maine.
The most renowned fool of the following century was Jenni von Stocken, who was attached to the household of Leopold the Pious. He was greatly esteemed by his master, and often gave him counsel which would have profited him had he been more ready to follow it. Jenni strongly advised Leopold against entering the Swiss defiles before securing his return therefrom, in case of accident. The issue of the battle of Sempach, A.D. 1386, showed that a fool’s advice would have been worth taking.
Nearly all von Stocken’s sayings and doings are attributed to various jesters of succeeding centuries. This, too, was the case with Killian, the fool of Albert of Austria. But there is one saying which is undoubtedly Killian’s own. He was a strangely eccentric fellow, and some one asked him why, being so profoundly wise a personage, he should play the fool. “Ah! there it is,” said Killian; “The more thoroughly I play the fool, the wiser do men account me; and there is my son, who thinks himself wise, and whom everybody knows to be a fool.”
It may perhaps be safely asserted, that of all the court jesters at the lesser courts of Germany, Klaus von Ranstadt, or Klaus Narr, “the fool,” was the most famous. He flourished at the electoral court of Saxony at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. He served as fool to four successive Electors. The first of these, the Elector Ernest, met with Klaus when he was keeping geese. The Prince was passing through Ranstadt with a great number of horses, men, and waggons, when Klaus, wishing to see the sight, and unwilling to leave his geese, tied all the young ones by the neck to his girdle, and with two old geese under his arms, he stood to view the procession. The Prince laughed, questioned the goosekeeper, who had strangled his young charge, and was so delighted at the sharp replies he received, that he engaged him at once as his fool, to the great delight of the grave elders of the place, who declared that Klaus kept the whole district in a continual uproar of idle laughter by his tricks and waggery.
His tricks and his waggery, however, have frequently a coarse and sometimes an unintelligible character. They have been published at various times, and one sample will serve to show how Klaus performed his office.