Editions of the Ars in H. Keil, Grammatici Latini, vi., and separately by him (1885).
FORTUNATUS, the legendary hero of a popular European chap-book. He was a native, says the story, of Famagusta in Cyprus, and meeting the goddess of Fortune in a forest received from her a purse which was continually replenished as often as he drew from it. With this he wandered through many lands, and at Cairo was the guest of the sultan. Among the treasures which the sultan showed him was an old napless hat which had the power of transporting its wearer to any place he desired. Of this hat he feloniously possessed himself, and returned to Cyprus, where he led a luxurious life. On his death he left the purse and the hat to his sons Ampedo and Andelosia; but they were jealous of each other, and by their recklessness and folly soon fell on evil days. The moral of the story is obvious: men should desire reason and wisdom before all the treasures of the world. In its full form the history of Fortunatus occupies in Karl Simrock’s Die deutschen Volksbücher, vol. iii., upwards of 158 pages. The scene is continually shifted—from Cyprus to Flanders, from Flanders to London, from London to France; and a large number of secondary characters appear. The style and allusions indicate a comparatively modern date for the authorship; but the nucleus of the legend can be traced back to a much earlier period. The stories of Jonathas and the three jewels in the Gesta Romanorum, of the emperor Frederick and the three precious stones in the Cento Novelle antiche, of the Mazin of Khorassan in the Thousand and one Nights, and the flying scaffold in the Bahar Danush, have all a certain similarity. The earliest known edition of the German text of Fortunatus appeared at Augsburg in 1509, and the modern German investigators are disposed to regard this as the original form. Innumerable versions occur in French, Italian, Dutch and English. The story was dramatized by Hans Sachs in 1553, and by Thomas Dekker in 1600; and the latter’s comedy appeared in a German translation in Englische Komödien und Tragödien, 1620. Ludwig Tieck has utilized the legend in his Phantasus, and Adelbert von Chamisso in his Peter Schlemihl; and Ludwig Uhland left an unfinished narrative poem entitled “Fortunatus and his Sons.”
See Dr Fr. W.V. Schmidt’s Fortunatus und seine Söhne, eine Zauber-Tragödie, von Thomas Decker, mit einem Anhang, &c. (Berlin, 1819); Joseph Johann Görres, Die deutschen Volksbücher (1807).
FORTUNATUS, VENANTIUS HONORIUS CLEMENTIANUS (530-609), bishop of Poitiers, and the chief Latin poet of his time, was born near Ceneda in Treviso in 530. He studied at Milan and Ravenna, with the special object of excelling as a rhetorician and poet, and in 565 he journeyed to France, where he was received with much favour at the court of Sigbert, king of Austrasia, whose marriage with Brunhild he celebrated in an epithalamium. After remaining a year or two at the court of Sigbert he travelled in various parts of France, visiting persons of distinction, and composing short pieces of poetry on any subject that occurred to him. At Poitiers he visited Queen Radegunda, who lived there in retirement, and she induced him to prolong his stay in the city indefinitely. Here he also enjoyed the friendship of the famous Gregory of Tours and other eminent ecclesiastics. He was elected bishop of Poitiers in 599, and died about 609. The later poems of Fortunatus were collected in 11 books, and consist of hymns (including the Vexilla regis prodeunt, Englished by J.M. Neale as “The royal banners forward go”), epitaphs, poetical epistles, and verses in honour of his patroness Radegunda and her sister Agnes, the abbess of a nunnery at Poitiers. He also wrote a large poem in 4 books in honour of St Martin, and several lives of the saints in prose. His prose is stiff and mechanical, but most of his poetry has an easy rhythmical flow.
An edition of the works of Fortunatus was published by C. Brower at Fulda in 1603 (2nd ed., Mainz, 1617). The edition of M.A. Luschi (Rome, 1785) was afterwards reprinted in Migne’s Patrologiae cursus completus, vol. lxxxviii. See the edition by Leo and Krusch (Berlin, 1881-1885). There are French lives by Nisard (1880) and Leroux (1885).
FORTUNE, ROBERT (1813-1880), Scottish botanist and traveller, was born at Kelloe in Berwickshire on the 16th of September 1813. He was employed in the botanical garden at Edinburgh, and afterwards in the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Chiswick, and upon the termination of the Chinese War in 1842 was sent out by the Society to collect plants in China. His travels resulted in the introduction to Europe of many beautiful flowers; but another journey, undertaken in 1848 on behalf of the East India Company, had much more important consequences, occasioning the successful introduction into India of the tea-plant. In subsequent journeys he visited Formosa and Japan, described the culture of the silkworm and the manufacture of rice paper, and introduced many trees, shrubs and flowers now generally cultivated in Europe. The incidents of his travels were related in a succession of interesting books. He died in London on the 13th of April 1880.