FABBRONI, ANGELO (1732-1803), Italian biographer, was born at Marradi in Tuscany on the 25th of September 1732. After studying at Faenza he entered the Roman college founded for the education of young Tuscans. On the conclusion of his studies he continued his stay in Rome, and having been introduced to the celebrated Jansenist Bottari, received from him the canonry of Santa Teresa in Trastevere. Some time after this he was chosen to preach a discourse in the pontifical chapel before Benedict XIV. and made such a favourable impression that the pontiff settled on him an annuity, with the possession of which Fabbroni was able to devote his whole time to study. He was intimate with Leopold I., grand-duke of Tuscany, but the Jesuits disliked him on account of his Jansenist views. Besides his other literary labours he began at Pisa in 1771 a literary journal, which he continued till 1796. About 1772 he made a journey to Paris, where he formed the acquaintance of Condorcet, Diderot, d’Alembert, Rousseau and most of the other eminent Frenchmen of the day. He also spent four months in London. He died at Pisa on the 22nd of September 1803.
The following are his principal works:—Vitae Italorum doctrina excellentium qui saeculis XVII. et XVIII. floruerunt (20 vols., Pisa, 1778-1799, 1804-1805), the last two vols., published posthumously, contain a life of the author; Laurentii Medicei Magnifici Vita (2 vols., Pisa, 1784), a work which served as a basis for H. Roscoe’s Life of Lorenzo dei Medici; Leonis X. pontificis maximi Vita (Pisa, 1797); and Elogi di Dante Alighieri, di Angelo Poliziano, di Lodovico Ariosto, e di Torq. Tasso (Parma, 1800).
FABER, the name of a family of German lead-pencil manufacturers. Their business was founded in 1760 at Stein, near Nuremberg, by Kaspar Faber (d. 1784). It was then inherited by his son Anton Wilhelm (d. 1819). Georg Leonhard Faber succeeded in 1810 (d. 1839), and the business passed to Johann Lothar von Faber (1817-1896), the great-grandson of the founder. At the time of his assuming control about twenty hands were employed, under old-fashioned conditions, and owing to the invention of the French crayons Contés of Nicolas Jacques Conté (q.v.) competition had reduced the entire Nuremberg industry to a low ebb (see [Pencil]). Johann introduced improvements in machinery and methods, brought his factory to the highest state of efficiency, and it became a model for all the other German and Austrian manufacturers. He established branches in New York, Paris, London and Berlin, and agencies in Vienna, St Petersburg and Hamburg, and made his greatest coup in 1856, when he contracted for the exclusive control of the graphite obtained from the East Siberian mines. Faber had also branched out into the manufacture of water-colour and oil paints, inks, slates and slate-pencils, and engineers’ and architects’ drawing instruments, and built additional factories to house his various industries at New York and at Noisy-le-Sec, near Paris, and had his own cedar mills in Florida. For his services to German industry he received a patent of nobility and an appointment as councillor of state. After the death of his widow (1903) the business was inherited by his grand-daughter Countess Otilie von Faber-Castell and her husband, Count Alexander.
FABER, BASIL (1520—c. 1576), Lutheran schoolmaster and theologian, was born at Sorau, in lower Lusatia, in 1520. In 1538 he entered the university of Wittenberg, studying as pauper gratis under Melanchthon. Choosing the schoolmaster’s profession, he became successively rector of the schools at Nordhausen, Tennstadt (1555), Magdeburg (1557) and Quedlinburg (1560). From this last post he was removed in December 1570 as a Crypto-Calvinist. In 1571 he was appointed to the Raths-gymnasium at Erfurt, not as rector, but as director (Vorsteher). In this situation he remained till his death in 1575 or 1576. His translation of the first twenty-five chapters of Luther’s commentary on Genesis was published in 1557; in other ways he promoted the spread of Lutheran views. He was a contributor to the first four of the Magdeburg Centuries. He is best known by his Thesaurus eruditionis scholasticae (1571; last edition, improved by J.H. Leich, 1749, folio, 2 vols.); this was followed by his Libellus de disciplina scholastica (1572).
See Wagenmann and G. Müller in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (1898).
(A. Go.*)
FABER, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1814-1863), British hymn writer and theologian, was born on the 28th of June 1814 at Calverley, Yorkshire, of which place his grandfather, Thomas Faber, was vicar. He attended the grammar school of Bishop Auckland for a short time, but a large portion of his boyhood was spent in Westmorland. He afterwards went to Harrow and to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1835 he obtained a scholarship at University College; and in 1836 he gained the Newdigate prize for a poem on “The Knights of St John,” which elicited special praise from Keble. Among his college friends were Dean Stanley and Roundell Palmer, 1st earl of Selborne. In January 1837 he was elected fellow of University College. Meanwhile he had given up the Calvinistic views of his youth, and had become an enthusiastic follower of John Henry Newman. In 1841 a travelling tutorship took him to the continent; and on his return a book appeared called Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples (London, 1842), with a dedication to his friend the poet Wordsworth. He accepted the rectory of Elton in Huntingdonshire, but soon after went again to the continent, in order to study the methods of the Roman Catholic Church; and after a prolonged mental struggle he joined the Roman Catholic communion in November 1845. He founded a religious community at Birmingham, called Wilfridians, which was ultimately merged in the oratory of St Philip Neri, with John Henry Newman as Superior. In 1849 a branch of the oratory—subsequently independent—was established in London, first in King William Street, and afterwards at Brompton, over which Faber presided till his death on the 26th of September 1863. In spite of his weak health, an almost incredible amount of work was crowded into those years. He published a number of theological works, and edited the Oratorian Lives of the Saints. He was an eloquent preacher, and a man of great charm of character. It is mainly as a hymn-writer, however, that Faber is remembered. Among his best-known hymns are:—“The Greatness of God,” “The Will of God,” “The Eternal Father,” “The God of my Childhood,” “Jesus is God,” “The Pilgrims of the Night,” “The Land beyond the Sea,” “Sweet Saviour, bless us ere we go,” “I was wandering and weary,” and “The Shadow of the Rock.” The hymns are largely used in Protestant collections. In addition to many pamphlets and translations, Faber published the following works: All for Jesus; The Precious Blood; Bethlehem; The Blessed Sacrament; The Creator and the Creature; Growth of Holiness; Spiritual Conferences; The Foot of the Cross (8 vols., London, 1853-1860).