Johannes Faber, “One of Italy's Seven Sages”

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Johannes Faber 85

CHAPTER 4 Johannes Faber, “One of Italy’s Seven Sages”

1 Johannes Faber’s Roman Career

In his polemical pamphlet, His Alarm to all Protestant Princes, directed against papal politics and power in Europe, Francis Broccard listed a number of apostates or “persons of learning” who in Rome were attempting to convince ultra- montani to embrace the Catholic faith. While – according to the pamphlet – the most favorable source of propaganda came from the conversion of no- bles and princes, it was also noted that the numerous travelers and foreigners already living in the city were likewise caught in this net. The “Apostates and Spies” were high-profile figures and were well-known throughout Europe. Among them were Gaspar Schoppe, Giusto Calvino, the nephew of the great reformer, who converted during the Holy Year of 1600, the Frenchman Guil- laume Reboul and Johannes Faber, “a Physician at the Hospital of the Holy Ghost.”1 Johannes Faber, a Lincean physician and papal herbalist, was one of Georg Fischer’s interlocutors in Rome to whom he had sent a dozen letters. And it is likely that he intervened with the Holy Office for the releaze from seizure of Cristoforo Pescatore’s inheritance and its transfer to Germany.2 They had lived in Rome during the same period of time, perhaps even met, and Faber would die three years after the goldsmith Cristoforo Pescatore. Faber was born in 1574 into a reformed family and, upon being orphaned, had been educated in the Catholic faith, a frequent case in the German territories and cities where the principle of interfaith and confessional coexistence applied. Having gained his medical degrees in Würzburg, under the guidance of the famous Adrian van Roomen, known as Adriano Romano, Faber had moved to Rome towards the end of the sixteenth century. In 1598 Rome became not only his new home: here he was early ingrained thanks also to van Roomen’s contacts with the Je- suits of the Roman College and in particular with the mathematician Christof Clavius. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Faber was already an assistant at the Archiospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, where he also played an important role in the investigation on medical intervention on both the body and soul of the patients. While Faber quickly became a target of

1 Broccard, His Alarm…. 2 See supra, p. 81.

Protestant propaganda, he nonethless considered his German origin of great importance to the Roman hospital “for the service of this place, it’s necessary that there be a foreign doctor for the various foreign countries that come there,” as he stated3. In 1600, Faber took on the chair of medicine at La Sapi- enza as well as lecturer in anatomy, in place of Andrea the former chief physician (archiatra) of Sixtus V. From 1601 to 1628 Faber held the position of extraordinary lecturer of “medical simples” (simplicia medicamenta) at La Sa- pienza University,4 and was appointed Simple of the pope and curator of the medicinal plants of the Vatican gardens. As Prefect of Gardens, Faber had frequent contact with the pope and the main exponents of his family and court, until his death in 1629.5 Between the 16th and 17th centuries, relations between Rome and the Holy Roman Empire were complex, characterized by tension and instability. At the court of the pope, imperial diplomatic representation appeared fragile and knowledge of the German language was lacking, even among those who carried out diplomatic duties in the nunciatures of Germany. The German natio, who also gathered Flemish and Dutch around the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima, was a visible pole of interest in the urban space that was Rome, united by the use of the German language but also lacking strong political and exclusive relations, owing to the absence of a recognizable imperial faction. In this difficult and nuanced communicative framework, the profile of the master of simples Faber and his medical experience of relationships marked by ten- sions, between conflict, attempts at mediation and coexistence, was considered strategic but not without ambiguity. The experience of Rome and the court offered the German doctor the possibility of taking action in favour of German princes. His contacts with cardinal entourages sensitive to the prob- lems of the Empire were not uncommon, so relations with institutional figures of the Holy Roman Empire passing through Rome intensified: Johannes Gode- fridus von Aschhausen, Prince-Bishop of Bamberg, who carried out the

3 BANL, Fondo Faber 420, c. 61r. 4 Silvia De Renzi, “Medical competence, anatomy and the polity in seventeenth-century Rome,” in Spaces, objects and identities in early modern Italian medicine, ed. Sandra Cavallo – David Gentilcore, “Renaissance Studies”, (2007): 551-567; Maria Conforti – Silvia De Renzi, “Sapere anatomico negli ospedali romani : formazione dei chirurghi e pratiche sperimentali (1620- 1720)”, in Rome et la science moderne: entre Renaissance et Lumières ed. Antonella Romano, (Rome: École française de Rome, 2008), 433-472; Candida Carella, L’insegnamento della filoso- fia alla “Sapienza” di Roma nel Seicento. Le cattedre, i maestri (Florence: Leo Olschki, 2007), which also mentions a petition sent by the German physician to Urban VIII requesting a raise. 5 For information on his life, see Gabriella Belloni Speciale, “Faber (Fabri, Fabro), Giovanni,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 43 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1993), 686-689.