SOURCE: Halporn, Barbara. “Sebastian Brant as an Editor of Juristic Texts.” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 59 (1984): 36-51.

In the following essay, Halporn discusses Brant's work as an editor of texts used by law students, which, the critic asserts, he did in part because he believed in making the law accessible to more people so that citizens could serve their own interests more effectively.

Sebastian Brant is best known to the modern world as the author of the didactic and satirical work, the Narrenschiff. Although this may be his most enduring and original work, it is only a small part of Brant's published contribution to the intellectual life of the Holy Roman Empire in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Throughout his adult life Brant worked as an editor for the press, first in Basel where he was a student and professor of law, then in Strassburg where he served as a...