Johann Albert Fabricius - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Johann Albert Fabricius (November 11, 1668 – April 30, 1736) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

classical scholar and bibliographer.

Biography

Fabricius was born at Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, son of Werner Fabricius, director of music in the church of St. Paul at Leipzig, who was the author of several works, the most important being Deliciae Harmonicae (1656). The son received his early education from his father, who on his deathbed recommended him to the care of the theologian Valentin Alberti

Valentin Alberti

Valentin Alberti was a Lutheran, orthodox philosopher and theologian from Silesia and was the son of a preacher.He is known for defending Lutheran orthodoxy against the natural law views of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, and being an active polemicist against Roman...

.

He studied under J. G. Herrichen, and afterwards at Quedlinburg

Quedlinburg

Quedlinburg is a town located north of the Harz mountains, in the district of Harz in the west of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. In 1994 the medieval court and the old town was set on the UNESCO world heritage list....

under Samuel Schmid

Samuel Schmid

Samuel Schmid is a Swiss politician who was a member of the Swiss Federal Council from 2000 to 2008. He was the head of the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sports .He was elected to the Federal Council on 6 December 2000...

. It was in Schmid’s library, as he afterwards said, that he found the two books, Kaspar von Barth

Kaspar von Barth

Kaspar von Barth was a German philologist and writer.Barth was born at Küstrin in the Neumark region of Brandenburg. A precocious child, he was looked upon as a marvel of learning. After studying at Gotha, Eisenach, Wittenberg, and Jena, he travelled extensively, visiting most of the countries of...

's compendium Adversariorum libri LX (1624) and Daniel Georg Morhof

Daniel Georg Morhof

Daniel Georg Morhof was a German writer and scholar.He was born at Wismar. He first studied jurisprudence and then literae humaniores at the University of Rostock, where his elegant Latin versification procured for him in 1660 the chair of poetry...

's Polyhistor (1688), which suggested to him the idea of his Bibliothecæ, the kind of works on which his great reputation was ultimately founded.

Having returned to Leipzig in 1686, he published anonymously (two years later) his first work, Scriptorum recentiorum decas, an attack on ten writers of the day. His Decas Decadum, sive plagiariorum et pseudonymorum centuria (1689) is the only one of his works to which he signs the name Faber. He then applied himself to the study of medicine, which, however, he relinquished for that of theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

; and having gone to Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

in 1693, he proposed to travel abroad, when the unexpected tidings that the expense of his education had absorbed his whole patrimony, and even left him in debt to his trustee, forced him to abandon his project. His 1693 doctoral dissertation De Platonismo Philonis Judaei contributed to Philo of Alexandria's losing his position as an "honorary Church Father".

He therefore remained at Hamburg in the capacity of librarian to Johann Friedrich Mayer (1650–1712). In 1696 he accompanied his patron to Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

; and on his return to Hamburg, not long afterwards, he became a candidate for the chair of logic and philosophy. The suffrages being equally divided between Fabricius and Sebastian Edzardus, one of his opponents, the appointment was decided by lot in favour of Edzardus; but in 1699 Fabricius succeeded Vincent Placcius in the chair of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

and ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

, a post which he held until his death, refusing invitations to Greifswald

Greifswald

Greifswald , officially, the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald is a town in northeastern Germany. It is situated in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, at an equal distance of about from Germany's two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg. The town borders the Baltic Sea, and is crossed...

, Kiel

Kiel

Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...

, Giessen, and Wittenberg

Wittenberg

Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is a city in Germany in the Bundesland Saxony-Anhalt, on the river Elbe. It has a population of about 50,000....

. He died at Hamburg.

Fabricius is credited with 128 books. He was a celebrated bibliographer and collector of manuscripts, and many of his volumes are compilations, editions, or anthologies. One of the most famed and laborious of these is the Bibliotheca Latina (1697, republished in an improved and amended form by J.A. Ernesti

Johann August Ernesti

Johann August Ernesti was a German Rationalist theologian and philologist.He was born at Bad Tennstedt in Thuringia, where his father, Johann Christoph Ernesti, was pastor, besides being superintendent of the electoral dioceses of Thuringia, Salz and Sangerhausen...

, 1773). The divisions of the compilation are: (1) the writers to the age of Tiberius

Tiberius

Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...

, (2) to that of the Antonines, (3) to the decay of the language, and (4) fragments from old authors, and chapters on early Christian literature. A supplementary work was Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae Aetatis (1734–1736; supplementary volume by Christian Schottgen, 1746; ed. Mansi, 1754). His chef-d'oeuvre, however, is the Bibliotheca Graeca (1705–1728, revised and continued by G. C. Harles

Gottlieb Christoph Harless

Gottlieb Christoph Harless was a German classical scholar and bibliographer.-Biography:He was born at Culmbach in Bavaria. He studied at the universities of Halle, Erlangen and Jena...

, 1790—1812), a work which has justly been denominated maximus antiquae eruditionis thesaurus. Its divisions are marked off by Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

, Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

, Constantine

Constantine I

Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...

, and the capture of Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

in 1453, while a sixth section is devoted to canon law, jurisprudence and medicine.

Of his remaining works we may mention: Specimen elencticum historiae logicae, a catalogue of the treatises on logic known by him (1699); Bibliotheca Antiquaria, an account of the writers whose works illustrated Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Christian antiquities (1713); Centifolium Lutheranum, a Lutheran bibliography (1728); Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica (1718). In addition, he wrote the Preface to Vincent Placcius's Theatrum anonymorum et pseudonymorum (1708).

Fabricius was also influential in articulating current scholarly notions of the "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" and "New Testament Apocrypha

New Testament apocrypha

The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that claim to be accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. These writings often have links with books regarded as "canonical"...

", through his compilation of collections of texts and excerpts in Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti (1703), Codex pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti (1713), and Codicis pseudepigraphi Veteris Testamenti Volumen alterum accedit Josephi veteris Christiani auctoria Hypomnesticon (1723). These volumes remain widely cited and consulted, even to this day.

The details of the life of Fabricius are to be found in De Vita et Scriptis J. A. Fabricii Commentarius, by his son-in-law, H. S. Reimarus

Hermann Samuel Reimarus

Hermann Samuel Reimarus , was a German philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment who is remembered for his Deism, the doctrine that human reason can arrive at a knowledge of God and ethics from a study of nature and our own internal reality, thus eliminating the need for religions based on...

, the well-known editor of Dio Cassius

Dio Cassius

Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus , known in English as Cassius Dio, Dio Cassius, or Dio was a Roman consul and a noted historian writing in Greek...

, published at Hamburg, 1737; see also C. F. Bähr in Ersch

Johann Samuel Ersch

Johann Samuel Ersch was a German bibliographer, generally regarded as the founder of German bibliography.-Biography:...

and Gruber

Johann Gottfried Gruber

Johann Gottfried Gruber was a German critic and literary historian.-Biography:Gruber was born at Naumburg on the Saale....

's Allgemeine Encyclopaedie, and J. E. Sandys

John Edwin Sandys

Sir John Edwin Sandys FBA , was a classical scholar.He was born at Leicester on 19 May 1844, a son of the Reverend Timothy Sandys of the Church Missionary Society and Rebecca . Living at first in India, he returned to England at the age of eleven, and was educated at the Church Missionary Society...

, Hist. Class. Schol. iii (1908).

External links

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