I select him, because even so eminent an authority in our own time as Dr. Edward Robinson declares him to have been the most thorough, thoughtful, and enlightened traveler of that century.
Fabri is greatly impressed by the wonders of the Dead Sea, and typical of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the Dead Sea fruit; he describes it with almost perfect accuracy, but adds the statement that when mature it is "filled with ashes and cinders."
As to the salt statue, he says: "We saw the place between the sea and Mount Segor, but could not see the statue itself because we were too far distant to see anything of human size; but we saw it with firm faith, because we believed Scripture, which speaks of it; and we were filled with wonder."
To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his readers that "God is able even of these stones to raise up seed to Abraham," and goes into a long argument, discussing such transformations as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion's statue, with a multitude of others, winding up with the case, given in the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a log of wood, which was then burned.
He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot's wife received her peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the food of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short sermon in which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food, so the salt statue of Lot's wife "gives us a condiment of wisdom."[1]
There were indeed many discrepancies in the testimony of travelers regarding the salt pillar—so many, in fact, that at a later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook his belief in the whole matter; but, during this earlier time, under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for faith.
For, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious excursion; did it happen that one statue was washed out one year in one place and another statue another year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that Lot's wife still walked about; did it happen that a salt column was undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but another sign of life; did
- ↑ For Bernhard of Breydenbach, see marked pages in the Latin edition, Mentz, 1486, in the White collection, Cornell University, also in German edition in the "Reyssebuch"; for John of Solms, Werli, and the like, see the "Reyssebuch," which gives a full text of their travels. For Fabri (Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson, also Tobler, "Bibliographia," 53 et seq.; and for texts the "Reyssebuch," 122b et seq., but best the "Fratris Fel. Fabri Evagatorium," ed. Hassler, Stuttgart, 1813, iii, 172 et seq.
