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A moral satire in twelve portraits

The Nest of Fools

by Abraham a Sancta Clara (1644–1709)

In a dream, a traveller named Gaudentius Hilarion climbs an oak in a garden at Narbonne to see what is chirping in an enormous nest, and finds not birds but twelve fools: the simple, the lovesick, the covetous, the angry, the drunken, the lazy, and six more. One by one he takes them out and shows them to the reader, who may find a familiar face among them.

Abraham a Sancta Clara was the Imperial court preacher at Vienna and the most famous German-speaking preacher of the baroque age: quick, comic, merciless, and devout. This is a fresh English translation from the Salzburg printing of 1705, with Scripture in the Douay-Rheims.

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Front matter

The twelve fools

  1. I. The Simple Fool
  2. II. The Lovesick Fool
  3. III. The Covetous Fool
  4. IV. The Angry Fool
  5. V. The Drunken Fool
  6. VI. The Lazy Fool
  7. VII. The Lying Fool
  8. VIII. The Fearful Fool
  9. IX. The Proud Fool
  10. X. The Boorish Fool
  11. XI. The Jealous Fool
  12. XII. The Praiseworthy Fool