Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/363

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311

FRU0TU0SU3


311


FUHRIOH


abbot, about the year 1 142, to succeed St. Adelhelm in the newly estabhshed monastery of Engelberg (q.v.) in the Canton of Unterwalden, Switzerland. As abbot Frowin was conspicuous for sanctity, learning, and administrative ability. Through his eiforts the possessions and privileges, civil and ecclesiastical, of the abbey were greatly increased, while its renown as a home of learning, art, and piety spread far and wide. Himself a man of great intellectual endowments, thoroughly versed in all the science, sacred and pro- fane, of his time, he established a famous school in his abbey, in which besides the trivium and quadrivium, philosophy and theolog}' were likewise taught. The library which he collected possessed, for those days, a vast nimiber of manuscripts. According to a list that he himself has left us, it contained Homer, Cicero. Cato, Ovid and other authors of antiquity. This rich collection perished in 1729, when the abbey was destroyed by fire. Blessed Fromn not only copied books for his library, but composed several. Two of these, a commentary on the Lord's Prayer, and a treatise in seven books, "De Laude Liberi Arbitrii" ("In Praise of Free Will", but in reality a discussion of the chief theological questions of his day. directed, it is thought, against the errors of Abelard) are still extant, ha\-ing been discovered by Mabillon in the archives of Einsiedeln. Frowin's other works. Com- mentaries on the Ten Commandments and various parts of Holy Scripture, are lost. Though never formally beatified. Frowin has commonly been styled "Blessed" by the chroniclers (see "Act. SS.", March, IX, 683). Petin ("Dictionnaire Hagiographique", I, iiii) gives 7 March as his feast day, and credits him with manv miracles.

P. L.. Ci.XXIX, 1801; Gottwald in Kirchenlex., s. v.; HuRTER, NomcJlclator.

John F. X. Murphy.

Fructuosus of Braga, Saint, Archbishop, d. 16 April, c. 665. He was the son of a Gothic general, and studied in Palencia. After the death of his parents, he retired as a hermit to a desert in Galicia. Numerous pupils gathered around him, and thus originated the monastery of Complutum (Compludo), over which he himself at first presided; later, he appointed an ab- bot and again retired into the desert. In the course of time, he founded nine other monasteries, also one for 80 virgins imder the saintly abbess Benedicta. In 654, Fructuosus was called to the Bishopric of Dum- ium, and on 1 December, 656, to the Archbishopric of Braga. The life of this greatest of Spanish monastic bishops was written by Abbot Valerius, and based on the accounts of his pupils. In 1102, his relics were transferred to Compostela. The feast day is the 10 of April. Fructuosus is depicted with a stag, which was devoted to him, because he had been saved by Fruc- tuosus from the himters. There are still extant two monastic rules written by Fructuosus. The first (25 chapters) was destined for the monastery of Complu- tum; it has an appendix (called pactum), containing the formulse of consecration and the vows. The sec- ond, called the "common" rule, which consists of 20 chapters and refers to a union of monasteries governed by an abbot-bishop, is addressed chiefly to superiors of monasteries.

Gams, Kirchengesch. von Spanien (1874). II, 152-1.58; Her- WEGEN, Das Pactum des hi. Fructuosus v. Braga; 2ur Geschichle Jes M'inchtums (Stuttgart, 1907). The rules of Fructuosus are in P. L., LXXXVII, 1099-1130. See Zockler, Askese nnd Monchlhum, 2nd ed. (1897), 378-81.

Gabriel Meier.

Fructuosus of Tarragona, Saint, bishop and mar- tyr; d. 21 Jan., 259. During the night of 16 Jan., he, together with his deacons .\ugurius and Eulogius, was led into prison, and on 21 Jan. tried by the judge jEmUianus. He confessed that he was a Christian and a bishop, whereupon all three were sentenced to be burnt alive. They underwent the ordeal courageously,


and, praying and with outstretched hands, gave up the ghost. In this position they are also depicted. St. Augustine mentions them in one of his sermons (cclxxiii), and the Spanish poet Prudentius has cele- brated them in a hymn (Peristephanon, hymn 6).

Acta SS., Jan., II, 340; Ruinart, Acta Marlyrum (Ratisbon, 1857); Gams, Kirchengesch. von Spanien (1862), I, 265-276.

Gabriel Meier. Frumentius, Saint. See Edesius and Frumen-

TIUS.

Fuchs, Johann Nepomok von, chemist and miner- alogist; b. at Mattenzell, near Bremberg, Lower Ba- varia, 15 May, 1774; d. at Munich, 5 March, 1856. He originally studied medicine, but after the year 1801 devoted himself to chemistry and mineralogy. Following the custom of his country, he pursued his studies at various universities: Heidelberg, Berlin, Freiburg, and Paris. In 1805 he taught chemistry and mineralogy at the LTniversity of Landshut, and at Munich in 1826. In 1823 he was nominated a mem- ber of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1854 conserva- tor of the Museum of Mineralogy of Munich; two years before his death, the honour of nobility was con- ferred upon him by the King of Bavaria. He re- ceived many other honours. His memoirs, which are numerous, and play an important part in the develop- ment of the sciences of mineralogj' and chemistry, are given in the collections of the Alunich Academy, in Kastner's "Archives", Poggendorff's 'Wjinalen", Dingler's "Journal", and other publications.

He wrote several books, among others one "On the Present Influence of Chemistry and Mineralogy " (Mu- nich, 1824); one on the "Theories of the Earth" (Munich, 1824); "Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom" (Kempten, 1842); and a work on the preparation, properties, and uses of soluble glass (Munich, 1857). His name is to this day associated with soluble glass, an alkaline silicate used in a special kind of fresco painting, called stereochromy, so much so that sometimes it is called Fuchs 's soluble glass. To-day soluble glass is also used in the application of bandages in surgery. His discovery of water glass was published in 1823. He pursued his researches in other departments of technical knowledge, his work on cement being particularly valuable. He retired from active life in 1852.

His collected works, produced by the committee of the central administration of the polj-technic union in the Kingdom of Bavaria, were edited, with his necrol- ogy, by Kaiser (Munich, 1856). His work included investigations on the replacement of one chemical group by another in minerals; the discovery of the amorphic state of several bodies; the artificial pro- duction of ultramarine and improvements in the dye- ing industry, in the manufacture of beet-root sugar, and in brewing. A variety of muscovite, containing nearly four per cent of chromium (chrome mica), is named "Fuchsite" after him. Fuchs, who owed his early education to Frauenzell and the suppressed Jesuits at Ratisbon, was throughout his life a prac- tical and earnest Catholic.

Kneller, Das Chri^tenturn u. die Vertreter der neueren Natur- wissenschajt, 241-244; Kobell, Memorial oration on Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs, read in tlie public raeetinK of the Royal Academy of Sciences, 22 March, 1856 (Munich, 1856); Cala- logue of Scientific Papers of the Royal Society (London, 1868).

T. O'Conor Sloane.

Fiihrich, Joseph, b. 1800; d. 1876, was as Catholic in his art as in his Hfe. He was fond of avowing his principles on art with great emphasis ; he declares that religion, art, and nature are harmoniously combined in his mind, that he does not admit that ecclesiastical art is its own end, but that its end is to be serviceable in God's house, not as mere decoration, but as a means of instruction, in order to manifest to the heart as far as possible by means of the senses the life of faith. As a painter his works, like Overbeck's, were inspired