activity, famous all over Europe. He was the first to observe and calculate the motion of Uranus, showing that this star, already noticed by Flamsteed in 1699, could not be anything else than a planet. He also made careful observations of Mercury, by means of which the French astronomer Lalande was enabled to compose his celebrated tables of that planet. Fixmillner died August 24, 1791. His most notable works are—"Meridianus speculæ astronomicæ," Kremsmünster, 1765; "Decennium astronomicum ab ann. 1765-75," ib. 1776; "Acta astronomica Cremissamensia," 10 vols., ib. 1776-91.—F. M.
FIZACRE. See Fishacre.
* FIZEAU, Hippolyte Louis, an eminent cultivator of physics, was born in Paris on the 24th of September, 1819. His researches, which relate chiefly to the properties and action of light, have for the most part been published in the Annules de Chimie et de Physique at various dates from 1843 to the present time. The most remarkable of his discoveries is one which might previously have seemed almost incredible, that of a method of directly measuring the velocity of the transmission of light between two stations on the earth's surface.—(Ann. de Ch. el. de Ph. 1849.) The result of that measurement agrees very nearly with the velocity of light as previously deduced from astronomical observations, viz., 192,000 miles in a second. By a later series of experiments, M. Fizeau has shown, that the velocity of light is affected by that of a current in the medium through which it is transmitted.—W. J. M. R.
FIZES, Antoine, a French physician and mathematician, was born at Montpellier, where his father was professor of mathematics, in 1690, and died there in 1765. After completing his academical education he returned to his native town, where, in conjunction with Clapiers, he succeeded his father in the regius chair of mathematics. He was afterwards appointed first physician to the duke of Orleans, and again returned to Montpellier, where he continued to teach and practise medicine till his death. Fizes acquired a great reputation. He was a voluminous writer on subjects connected with his profession.—R. M., A.
FJELSTRUP, Soren August, born 2d September, 1773, at Hirschholm. He published various works connected with agriculture, especially his "Veiledning til et godt Jordbrug fer den danske Bondestand" (Guide to good husbandry for the Danish peasantry), 1820-21, which is much studied by the small peasant farmers of the moorlands; and his "Forsög til en Handbog fer den danske Landmand, indeholdende Koens, Fäarets og Svinets hensigtsmœssige Behandling og Pleie, 1829" (An attempt at a Handbook for the Danish husbandman, &c). He also did much to encourage planting in Jutland, as well as to introduce other great improvements, not only in the country, but in the domestic life of the people, and for this purpose made a journey to Belgium in 1852, when in his eightieth year, the result of which he communicated in the Journal of Landeconomie. From 1836 to 1840 he sat in the Stœnderforsamling of Jutland, as royal deputy, and was elected by the people from 1842 to 1846, when he retired from political life.—M. H.
FLACCUS, Caius Valerius: date of his birth unknown. He died in 88. He lived in the reign of Vespasian, and was addressed by Martial in an epigram. Nothing distinct is known as to his birthplace. His poem, "The Argonautics," left by its author unfinished, was found by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416, and was first printed at Bologna in 1472. There are metrical translations of it into English by Nicholas Whyte, 1565; into French, by Dureau de la Malle, 1811; into Italian, by Pindamonte, 1776; and into German by Wunderlich, 1805.—J. A., D.
FLACCUS, Q. Fulvius, son of M. F. Flaccus, consul 264 b.c., was chosen consul for the first time in 237, when, with his colleague Lentulus, he successfully warred with the Ligurians in Italy. In 224 he was re-elected, and under his guidance, and that of the other consul, T. Manlius Torquatus, the Roman army for the first time crossed the Po. They were victorious over the Gauls and Insubrians, compelling their submission. In 216 he was chosen a pontifex, and in the next year became prætor urbanus. In 214 he was not only re-elected prætor, but the senate, by a special decree, conferred on him the city as his province, instead of leaving it to be settled by lot. In the succeeding year he acted as master of the horse to the dictator C. Claudius Centho. He was elected consul a third time in 212. Campania was allotted to him and his colleague, App. Claud. Pulcher. Marching thither with an army, after a determined resistance, they stormed the camp of Hanno, near Beneventum. The Carthaginian general was not in the camp at the time, but the blow compelled him to retire with the rest of his forces into Bruttium. The siege of Capua was then vigorously commenced by the consuls, and their term of command, on the expiry of their consulate, was continued till they should capture that city. The odium of the frightful cruelties inflicted on the citizens on account of their brave resistance rests with Flaccus. As dictator at the close of 211, he presided at the consular elections, and received the government of Capua for 210. In 209 he was invested with the consulship a fourth time. In that year he held Lucania and Bruttium as his province, and received the submission of the Lucanians, Hirpinians, and Bruttians. His command was continued during the succeeding year, but transferred to Capua. In 207 we again find him in Bruttium, at the head of an army. His military renown and successes during this second Punic war are tarnished by his cruelty.—R. B.
FLACCUS, Verrius: the date and place of his birth are unknown. He died in the reign of Tiberius. Verrius was a freedman, who had a high reputation as a grammarian. His reputation led to his being employed in the household of Augustus. His name is remembered in connection with a calendar, to which the name of Fasti Verriani has been given. Fragments of it were discovered at Præneste in the tenth century. The work exhibited the days and vacations of public business—"dies fasti, nefasti, et intercisi." From fragments found in 1770, Foggini reconstructed the months of January, a part of February, March, April, and December.—J. A., D.
FLACCUS. See Horace.
FLACH or FLACIUS, Matthias, commonly called Illyricus, from his birth-place, Albona in Illyria, became celebrated for his zeal, ability, and sufferings, as a defender of what he considered the pure doctrines of Luther against the teaching and proceedings of Melancthon and the Interimists. He received his early education in Venice, to which Albona then belonged; and in his eighteenth year, following the advice of his relative Lupetinus, who, although provincial of the minorites, was half a Lutheran in his views, he went first to Basle, where he was kindly received by Grynæus; and then to Tübingen in 1540, where he assisted for some time his learned countryman, Matthias Illyricus. In 1541 he repaired to Wittemberg, and supported himself by giving private instructions in Greek and Hebrew. Luther was extremely useful to him in helping him out of a state of spiritual distress, almost amounting to despair, into which he fell; and this was probably the main cause of his life-long attachment to Luther's principles, and of the vehement zeal which he ever afterwards displayed in their defence. Soon after his recovery he was made professor of Old Testament exegesis in Wittemberg; and in 1545 he married. But new troubles soon followed, and with few interruptions, continued to pursue him for the remainder of his life. In 1547 the siege of Wittemberg broke up the university, and he took refuge in Brunswick. On his return to Wittemberg the controversies of the Augsburg Interim and the Leipzig Interim began, in which he felt himself compelled to oppose the views of Melancthon and his other Wittemberg colleagues, and which ended in his abandoning the university and settling for a time at Magdeburg, from which he carried on the theological war against Melancthon, with the assistance of several other like-minded divines, with persevering vehemence and vigour. It was in Magdeburg that Flacius began his great historical works—his "Catalogus Testium Veritatis," and the "Magdeburg Centuries." In 1557 he was appointed to a chair of theology in the new university of Jena, which under Flacius became the stronghold of orthodox Lutheranism, as distinguished from Philippism or Melancthonianism, which now reigned at Wittemberg. In 1561 he was dismissed from Jena, and repaired to Regensburg. In 1566 he shifted to Antwerp, then to Frankfort and Strasburg; and, last of all, back to Frankfurt again, where he died in great poverty and affliction in the public hospital in his fifty-sixth year. In addition to numerous controversial tracts and the two works already named, his "Clavis Scripturæ Sacræ," laid the foundations of the science of sacred hermeneutics; and the principles of interpretation laid down in that work he applied exegetically in another, his "Gloss upon Holy Scripture." "The Centuries," in which he was assisted by several learned coadjutors, was brought down to the thirteenth century in thirteen folios; and the work, which is one of immense learning and research, was the first great production in church history of the protestant
