Ship of Fools (satire) in the context of "University of Edinburgh"

Usury (/ˈjuːʒəri/) is the practice of making loans that are seen as unfairly enriching the lender. The term may be used in a moral sense—condemning taking advantage of others' misfortunes—or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is charged in excess of the maximum rate that is allowed by law. A loan may be considered usurious because of excessive or abusive interest rates or other factors defined by the laws of a state. Someone who practises usury can be called a usurer, but in modern colloquial English may be called a loan shark.

In many historical societies including ancient Christian, Jewish, and Islamic societies, usury meant the charging of interest of any kind, and was considered wrong, or was made illegal. During the Sutra period in India (7th to 2nd centuries BC) there were laws prohibiting the highest castes from practising usury. Similar condemnations are found in religious texts from Buddhism, Judaism (ribbit in Hebrew), Christianity, and Islam (riba in Arabic). At times, many states from ancient Greece to ancient Rome have outlawed loans with any interest. Though the Roman Empire eventually allowed loans with carefully restricted interest rates, the Catholic Church in medieval Europe, as well as the Reformed Churches, regarded the charging of interest at any rate as sinful (as well as charging a fee for the use of money, such as at a bureau de change). Christian religious prohibitions on usury are predicated upon the belief that charging interest on a loan is a sin.

The ship of fools (Modern German: Das Narrenschiff; Latin: Stultifera Navis) is an allegory, first appearing in Book VI of Plato's Republic, about a ship with a dysfunctional crew. The allegory is intended to represent the problems of governance prevailing in a political system not based on expert knowledge.

Images of the ship became popular, especially in German-speaking lands, especially after the publication of Sebastian Brant's satirical book Ship of Fools (1494), which served as the inspiration for Hieronymus Bosch's painting, Ship of Fools. Normally, the images show a ship crowded with men mostly wearing traditional jester or fool's costume with cloth ears ending in bells, many quarreling, drinking, and fighting. In the book a ship—an entire fleet at first—sets off from Basel, bound for the Paradise of Fools. In it, Brant conceives Saint Grobian, whom he imagines to be the patron saint of vulgar and coarse people. In literary and artistic compositions of the 15th and 16th centuries, the cultural motif of the ship of fools also served to parody the "ark of salvation", as the Catholic Church was styled.