Johann Fabri

Vicar General of Constance, later Bishop of Vienna · 1478–1541 · Switzerland and Austria

Johann Heigerlin, called Fabri or Faber after his father’s trade as a smith, was born at Leutkirch in Swabia. A humanist and admirer of Erasmus, he became vicar general of the diocese of Constance in 1518 and corresponded warmly with Zwingli. A visit to Rome in 1521–1522 turned him into an enemy of the Reformation.1

At the First Zurich Disputation in January 1523, Fabri spoke for Bishop Hugo. Zwingli laid his Sixty-Seven Articles and the Bible on the table and challenged anyone to refute him from Scripture. Fabri declined:

I was not sent here to dispute, but merely to listen!2 Johann Fabriat the First Zurich Disputation, January 29, 1523

The assembly laughed, and Zurich went over to the Reformation. Fabri spent the rest of his life fighting it. His Hammer against the Lutheran Heresy (1524) gave him the title malleus haereticorum, the hammer of heretics. With Eck he managed the Disputation of Baden in 1526, which condemned Zwingli in his absence. As counselor to King Ferdinand of Austria he pressed for the execution of Anabaptists, including Balthasar Hubmaier, burned at Vienna in 1528. He helped prepare the Catholic answer to the Augsburg Confession, became Bishop of Vienna in 1530, and died there on May 21, 1541.

Catholic Opponents

Sources

  1. J. G. Hess, The Life of Ulrich Zwingle, the Swiss Reformer, trans. Lucy Aikin (London, 1812), on Fabri and Zwingli. Summarized. ↩
  2. J. H. Merle d’Aubigné, History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, trans. H. White, vol. 3, bk. 11, ch. 1, on the Zurich Disputation, with the quotation. ↩