Innocent XII., and occupied many other eminent situations with honour to himself and to science. The numerous works he has left in Latin, display a consummate knowledge of that language, and vast archæological erudition. Fabretti died at Rome on the 7th of January, 1700.—A. C. M.
FABRI, Honoré, a distinguished member of the Society of Jesus, was born in the province of Bugey in France, in 1607, and died at Rome in 1688. He was not only a profound theologian, but had studied anatomy and medicine with great success. The discovery of the circulation of the blood has been claimed for him. Father Regnault states that he had maintained this great doctrine in a discussion in 1638, but it must be remembered that Harvey had announced the same fact ten years before. The chief works of Fabri are—"An Essay on Peruvian Bark, as a specific against fever," Rome, 1655; "An Essay on Plants and the Generation of Animals;" and another on "Man," published at Paris in 1666. An edition of the latter work was published at Nuremberg in 1677.—T. J.
FABRI DE PEIRESC. See Peiresc.
FABRIANI, Severino, a distinguished literary man, and christian philanthropist, was born at Spelamberto, a small village in the duchy of Modena, on the 7th of January, 1792. Having lost his father when yet a child, he was brought up by an uncle, who sent him to the seminary of Modena, where he took the degree of D.D. Having been introduced to the famous Baraldi, he became his collaborator in the work entitled "Memorie sulla religione, sulla letteratura, e sulla morale" His charitable disposition made him anxious to alleviate the sufferings of humanity, and he devoted a great portion of his time to the instruction of deaf and dumb children, contributing in a great measure to the perfecting of a method of teaching such pupils, which has now been universally adopted. Fabriani is also the author of many biographies. He published a work on Italian grammar, and statistics relative to the deaf and dumb in the duchy of Modena. He died at his native place on the 27th April, 1849.—A. C. M.
FABRIANO, Gentile di Niccolo da, one of the most distinguished Italian painters of the fifteenth century, and of the Umbrian school, was born at Fabriano in the march of Ancona, about 1470. He was the scholar of a fellow-townsman in painting, known as Gritto da Fabriano. Having distinguished himself in his own province, his reputation gradually extended itself to the greatest cities of Italy, and he executed many works at Orvieto, Florence, Siena, Venice, and Rome. He painted in fresco and in tempera; and though he devoted much attention to costume and gilding, showed a fine taste, and was one of the first to venture to deviate from the almost exclusively formal religious art of his time. His pictures are richly coloured and well executed, or sufficiently so to draw the well-known compliment from Michelangelo, that his works were like his name—gentile. He is styled in the register of the cathedral of Orvieto, 1425, egregius magister magistrorum. At Venice he was presented by the senate with a patrician toga, and granted a pension of a ducat daily, for his fresco of the victory of the Venetians over Barbarossa in 1177, painted in the grand council hall; it fell to pieces through damp, about a century and a half after it was painted. Gentile had been instructed by his father in the physical and mathematical sciences, and was as distinguished in the theory as in the practice of his art. He wrote some books on the origin and progress of painting, and on the mixing of colours, &c., now lost. His works are very rare; a few may be seen at Fabriano, Florence, Milan, and in the Louvre. He died at Rome about the year 1450. Gentile da Fabriano, Fra Angelico da Fiesole, and Massaccio, were the foremost masters of the Italian renaissance in painting. He sometimes signed his name Gentilis, and sometimes Franciscus Gentilis.—(Vasari; Ricci, Memorie storiche delle arti, &c.; della marca di Ancona.)—R. N. W.
FABRICE, Friedrich Ernst, a Swedish politician who lived in the second half of the eighteenth century; was appointed by Duke Christian Augustus of Holstein administrator of that duchy. He was the author of "Anecdotes respecting the residence of Charles XII. at Bender."—J. T.
FABRICIUS. See Fabrice, F. E.
FABRICIUS is the name of a Roman gens or family, supposed to have been of Hernician origin. The Hernici were a Sabine people, settled in the northern frontiers of Latium; and as several of their towns were admitted to the Roman franchise in the fourth century b.c., it is not unlikely that the Caius Fabricius Luscinus, after-mentioned, returned to Rome about that period, and founded the family. History mentions, besides him, Lucius Fabricius Luscinus, who built the Fabrician bridge 62 b.c.; Quintus Fabricius, a friend of Cicero; and Fabricius Veiento, a satirist of the time of Nero. But more particular notice must be taken of—
Caius Fabricius Luscinus, the first and most distinguished of the family. He was consul in 282 b.c., and undertook the relief of Thurii, a Greek town in the south-east of Italy, then besieged by the confederated Lucanians and Bruttians. The few troops which he led to its assistance are reported to have owed their success to the favour of the god Mars, who appeared in the form of a gigantic warrior, and placed the first ladder against the ramparts of the enemy's entrenched camp. The victory, at all events, was decisive; and the spoil which the consul gathered from his subsequent operations in Lucania and Samnium sufficed, after liberally rewarding the troops, to refund the war-tax of the year to the citizens, and to place a large surplus in the treasury. Fabricius himself seems to have reckoned the statue erected to him at Thurii, and the triumph awarded to him on his return home, sufficient recompense. The poverty in which he cheerfully spent his whole life, proves that he cared not to reap personal aggrandisement from his victories. The Tarentines afterwards obtained the assistance of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who defeated the Romans under Valerius Lævinus, near Heraclea, 280 b.c. But his own loss was so great, and his position in Italy so precarious, that he speedily sent his favourite, the orator Cineas, to Rome with proposals of peace; and when the acceptance of these was negatived in the senate, through the spirited appeal of the aged Appius Claudius, he received courteously the embassy which came to negotiate the ransom of his prisoners. Fabricius was one of the envoys; and he is reported to have resolutely rejected, on that occasion, magnificent offers of wealth and preferment at the Epiran court. Another victory in the following year did not greatly improved the position of the invader; and in 278 b.c., Fabricius being again consul, won his increased esteem by sending him a letter, in which the king's physician had offered to poison his master. Pyrrhus thereupon liberated his prisoners without ransom, and turned aside to the conquest of Sicily, leaving Fabricius to gain a new series of successes in Samnium and Lucania, for which he was again honoured with a triumph. He was censor a few years later along with Æmilius Pappus, and degraded a wealthy senator, Cornelius Rufinus, for having more than ten pounds of silver plate on his table.—W. B.
FABRICIUS, Andrew, a learned divine of the church of Rome, was born in 1520 at Hodege, near Liege. He early acquired a reputation for learning, and became professor of theology and philosophy in the university of Louvain. The fame of his abilities reached the ears of Otho Truchses, cardinal-bishop of Augsburg, who induced him to enter his service. Otho sent him as his agent to Rome, in which capacity he remained there six years. He afterwards became counsellor to the dukes of Bavaria, through whose influence he obtained the provostship of Ottingen in Suabia, where he died in 1581. He wrote "Harmonia Confessionis Augustanæ," published after his death.—R. M., A.
FABRICIUS, David, a German astronomer, was born at Essen in 1564, and died in 1617. He studied, probably at Heidelberg, and became a preacher at the age of twenty. Having a predilection, however, for astronomy, he resided for some time with Tycho Brahe at Uranienburg. Subsequently he became pastor of Resterhäfe, but still pursued his astronomical studies. He was so poor that he could not afford to purchase the necessary implements, and was obliged to draw upon his ingenuity. In spite of all his disadvantages, he made himself a name in science which is not yet quite forgotten. Fabricius like many of his scientific contemporaries, addicted himself also to astrology. He wrote "Epistolæ ad Keplerum," and some other things. His son, Johann, was also an astronomer. He made some valuable observations, and wrote "De Maculis in Sole observatis, et apparente earum cum sole conversione, Narratio," 1611, which was reprinted by Lalande.—R. M., A.
FABRICIUS, FABRICE, or LE-FEVRE, François, born at Duren in 1525; died in 1573. He studied at Paris in the schools of Turnebus and Peter Ramus. On his return home in 1550 he was appointed rector of the school of Düsseldorf, an office which he held till his death. He did something by his
