Fausto Veranzio

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Portrait of Fausto Veranzio

Fausto Veranzio (also Faustus Verantius , Serbo-Croatian  Faust Vrančić / Фауст Вранчић , Hungarian Verancsics Faustus ) (* 1551 in Šibenik , Republic of Venice ; † January 20, 1617 in Venice ) was a diplomat , clergyman , polymath and inventor , who made posterity in particular through his work Machinae Novae became known.

Life

The result of the marriage of the diplomat and poet Michele Vrančić and his wife Catherine Dobroević, Veranzio came from a noble family who lived in Šibenik, but had a summer residence in Šepurine on the nearby island of Prvić . Various church dignitaries belonged to the family. His uncle Antun Vrančić (Antonius Verantius), an influential statesman, acquaintance of Philipp Melanchthon and Erasmus of Rotterdam and later Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Esztergom , took care of his education and sent him to study philosophy and law in Padua (1568– 1570). Fausto Veranzio was also very interested in fortress construction and supervised construction work on the fortress in Eger in Hungary.

In 1579 Veranzio became commander of the fortress of Veszprém in Hungary, but two years later he was summoned to the Hradschin in Prague by Rudolph II , Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire , Archduke of Austria and King of Hungary and Croatia . Veranzio, who was fluent in seven languages, was thus a diplomat from 1581 to 1594 in the service of the Emperor in Prague and of Archduke Ernst in Vienna. As far as his obligations allowed, he studied mathematics and mechanics.

Preface from Fausto Veranzio's dictionary

During this time he also worked on his dictionary of the five noblest languages ​​in Europe ( Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europeae linguarum; Latinae , Italicae , Germanicae , Dalmaticae et Hungaricae ), which was printed in Venice in 1595. It contains around 5000 terms in the five languages ​​and is considered to be one of the first and most important dictionaries of the Dalmatian (Serbo-Croatian) and Hungarian languages, as well as the forerunner of numerous other dictionaries that were inspired by it.

Veranzio left the position at court in 1594 and lived in Dalmatia and Italy, mainly in Venice, until 1598. In 1598 he was appointed Bishop of Csanád , an honorary title because Csanád was then occupied by the Ottoman Empire . At the same time he worked as a consultant for Hungarian and Transylvanian affairs for Rudolph II, but left the court in Prague in 1605 and joined the Barnabites in Rome .

In Rome, he certainly had the opportunity to see many of Leonardo da Vinci's technical drawings . During this time he himself made a number of drawings and copperplate engravings using new machines . Although he received permits to publish a book about the machines in 1614 and 1615, he was unable to do so due to a serious illness. On the advice of his doctors, he left Rome to return to Šibenik, but interrupted the trip in Venice. There he published a treatise on logic and a large volume of his Machinae novae in 1616 . Hindered by his illness, he died on January 20, 1617 in Venice.

At his express request, he was buried in the church of Sveta Marija u Luci on the island of Prvić.

Machinae Novae

Fausto Veranzio's best-known work is probably his Machinae Novae , of which only a few have survived. It consists of the title page, 49 panels with illustrations and explanations in five languages ​​(Latin, Italian, Spanish, French and German). The specimens preserved are not completely identical. Since some of his friends thanked him for the book in July 1616, it can be assumed that it was printed in early 1616.

Pons ferreus - chain bridge

Veranzio dealt with hydrological problems such as the possibility of preventing flooding by the Tiber or supplying Venice with drinking water. Other representations relate to sundials , wind , water and tide mills , a cable car , a chain bridge and a parachute . One of the panels shows a wooden, massive segment arch bridge made of beams with tongue and groove connections , an arch bridge with a false arch with the underlying track serving as a tie and with truss struts as stiffening, as well as a lens-shaped arch bridge that was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1859 Royal Albert Bridge in Saltash, Cornwall. Some of these ideas weren't entirely new, but first appeared in print, and others were way ahead of their time.

Homo volans , parachute in his Machinae Novae

According to widespread information, Veranzio is said to have personally tested the parachute in 1617 by jumping from the Campanile di San Marco in Venice or from the bell tower of the 86 m high St. Martin's Cathedral in Bratislava or from a bridge in Venice , depending on the source . He is therefore considered by many to be the first person to have developed a parachute to the stage of actual use. As evidence, it is cited that his jump was documented in the work Mathematical Magick or, The wonders that may by performed by mechanichal geometry by John Wilkins , published 30 years later .

However, it seems more than doubtful that the 65-year-old, seriously ill Veranzio embarked on such an adventure and that the still very small parachute could have slowed a fall sufficiently. Nor is there any discussion of how someone from a tower could get the frame of the parachute in a horizontal position in the air and get himself under that frame.

In fact, in the book Mathematical Magick , John Wilkins deals, among other things, with the possibility of flying, but in no way with a parachute or other means of slowing a person's fall. Veranzio is also not mentioned at all in the work, not even an event from the year 1617. Obviously an early, modern legend was born with this story .

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Faust Vrančić  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e M. D. Grmek: Verantius, Faustus (also known as Fausto Vrančić or Veranzio) , accessed on February 6, 2012
  2. ↑ Richard Wolf: Vrancic, Faust (1551-1617) , accessed February 6, 2012
  3. ↑ According to other sources, he was born in the family's summer house on Prvić and died on January 17 or February 27, 1617
  4. ↑ According to Jonathan Bousfield: The Rough Guide to Croatia , 2003, he also studied in Bratislava , the then capital of the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia .
  5. ↑ Darko Zubrinic: History of Croatian Science, 15th-19th centuries , accessed February 6, 2012
  6. ↑ Nikola Roßbach: Poiesis of the machine. Baroque configurations of technology, literature and theater. Akad. Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-05-006368-3 , p. 105 .
personal data
SURNAME Veranzio, Fausto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Verantius, Faustus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Author of the first dictionary in five languages
DATE OF BIRTH 1551
PLACE OF BIRTH Šibenik
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1617
Place of death Venice