Mathematician, botanist, astronomer, personal physician to Emperor Maximilian, author of the first map of Moravia (Marchionatus Moraviae. Das Markgrafthum Mähren, 1569).
Fabricius worked without models and without assistance. His description of the landscape rested entirely on his own experience: he travelled through Moravia several times, and drew further information from its inhabitants. The map is thus imprecise as a whole in terms of the list of places, distances and descriptions of natural situation, but at least provided basic instruction on Moravia. It was published repeatedly, with corrections and additions. Comenius attempted to work the map over again – more precisely in terms of the enumeration of places, and with a thorough use of Czech place names (unlike Fabricius’ German annotation). Fabricius’ map was published in 1569, 1575 (smaller scale, without corrections), 1573 with corrections in the atlas Theatrum orbis terrarum. After the publication of Comenius’ map of Moravia, confusion arose: uncorrected copies of Fabricius’ map were printed bearing Comenius’ name (e.g. the edition of 1633).