Nuremberg (Part 2)

It can’t be forgotten though that Nuremberg is a city of the Middle Ages, has its share of castles (as we crossed a wide moat to enter the old fortifications of Nuremberg), and was considered the unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire. The Black Plague visited the city many times, at least eight times over the course of about a hundred years. We were walking towards the central square and there, in a cobbled road going to nowhere in particular, stood a sculpture called the  Ship of Fools.   It stands about 10 feet hight and must be viewed from all sides to understand all the stories it tells. It is a sculpture of a boat with seven people, a skeleton  and a dog in it. It is based upon an Albrecht Durer woodcut, itself illustrating the 1497 edition of Das Narrenschiff by Sabastian Brant (who lived in the late 1400's). It depicts a boat, actually a nutshell with a fool's mask at each end. It is a metaphor for the threatened world. I looked up what all the characters mean:

On the left side the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, brought in despair by laughing death, with Cain, still as a child, but with a knife in his hand. Behind them the tree of wisdom, already withered, serves as the mast.

On the right side three figures - a choleric muscular man with a club, standing for violence; a handyman with a wrench, representing a realist from the present time; and a limp mocker for resignation, who empties the cup.

There are two text bands that make an appeal agains environmental destruction, war and violence. Very ironic considering where we had been in the morning.

A little later, as we watch ducks swim below a low, Middle Ages bridge, loud pealing bells ring from the cathedral on the square. Forgiveness for Sunday morning church-goers.  Self-forgiveness seems a ways off yet for this city.