The Bishop of Bamberg was less choice in his fool than his brother of Magdeburg. He kept a jester whose chief wit consisted in passing himself off as the brother of our Saviour. This poor wretch prattled incessantly of incidents in the household of his supposed family, and drew laughter from his reverend master by chatting with fearful familiarity of the events of a life, death, and resurrection which no Christian can ever think of without emotions of sympathy, love, and gratitude. This sorry fool, once seeing his godly patron treating with immense demonstration of friendship a deputation of Nurembergers whom he intended to fleece, imprison, and hang, the jester exclaimed, “Ay, ay! I remember how my good brother Jesus was superbly treated when he entered Jerusalem in triumph; but those rascally Jews plundered and executed him nevertheless!” The blasphemy certainly served the purpose of putting the Nurembergers on their guard; and the Bishop was only annoyed at it because it frustrated a cherished purpose. The bad taste of the Bamberg bishops with respect to their jesters, is illustrated in another diocesan, who lived in part of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. This exemplary divine maintained a coarse, strong, active, semi-savage peasant, who amused the episcopal court and guests by going about on all-fours, and often with a dwarf on his back, like a young knight on a huge steed. The fun consisted in the steed trying to unhorse the cavalier. Sometimes this huge fellow would leap on to the table without upsetting a goblet; at other times he was baited in the Bishop’s dining-room by dogs, and they generally had the worst of it. Springing at them in his wild attire, and uttering unearthly howls, he would pull down with his teeth even the fiercest bull-dogs, and so terribly maul them that they would not try a second attack. As for dogs of less ferocious breed, they flew at once from his terrific bellowing, seldom waiting to try the effect of his teeth. The agility of this savage was equal to his strength, and he would run along the uppermost parapet of the episcopal palace, and throw somersaults upon it as carelessly as if he had been on the ground, to the wild delight of the Bambergers, who were not very superior in moral qualities to the people of Munster. The latter had more regard for the fool of their Bishop than the fool had for them. One morning, the prelate’s jester was seen in a field belonging to his master, sowing pebbles. “It would be more profitable,” remarked a spectator, “if you could sow seed that should bring a crop of honest men.” “Ah,” answered the joker, “that’s a crop that the land of Munster is of too bad a quality to produce.”