Johannes Stabius

John Stabius ( * before about 1468 in Hueb in Steyr, Austria Duchy; † January 1, 1522 in Graz) was a humanist, scientist and historian.

Background and Career

John Stabius (of browsers are not of Staff) was born in Hueb, an unidentified place in Steyr in Upper Austria, allegedly the son of a forestry servant. Of his youth we hardly news. 1482 he matriculated at the University of Ingolstadt, in 1484 he received his baccalaureate. After years of wandering, which took him to Nuremberg and Vienna, he taught since 1498 as a professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt. As a priest he had in 1500, the parish Karlstetten in Lower Austria.

Konrad Celtis, who taught in Ingolstadt since 1492, Stabius took in 1502 at the University of Vienna. Thither was his pupil Georg Tannstetter. This added in 1514 his edition of astronomical tables also a history of Viennese mathematician and astronomer under the title Viri Mathematici at. In it, he described himself as a student of Stabius and led his " mathematical inventions" to.

In the summer of 1503 came Stabius in the service of Emperor Maximilian I., whom he accompanied on trips and he advised on scientific and literary matters. The university moved there probably soon in the background.

Stabius as a writer and historian

Stabius was acquainted with many humanist scholars and poets such as Ladislaus Sunthaym or Jakob Mennel and friends with Albrecht Dürer. Dürer has his coat of arms designed and repeatedly portrays him. He pressed himself as a poet. In 1502 he was therefore crowned by Celtis for poet laureate. He went with Oden out to the emperor and on Austrian 's patron saint and designed together with Willi Pirckheimer the allegorical framework to triumph and triumphal arch, in which the political concept of Maximilian I. was propagated. For example, the verses were written to the triumphal arch, the illustrated Albrecht Dürer, from Stabius.

He also worked as editor or contributor of numerous works of humanistic and concerned an issue of Jordanes. Non-critical historical research, he refused and exposed the works of Johannes Trithemius as partially fictitious. Stabius worked with Ladislaus Sunthaym and Konrad Celtis with the officious Habsburg historical work and created among others a genealogy of the Habsburgs on source basis.

Stabius also seems good relations with the monastery of Reichenau entertain to have. In any case, he borrowed during a visit to John Cuspinian a Carolingian manuscript collection with texts of the Church Fathers (the disappeared since then ).

Stabius as a geographer and astronomer

But he rendered his most important achievement in the field of cartography with the first equal-area representation of the globe. This so-called rod - wernersche heart-shaped projection was indeed first published in 1514 by Johannes Werner ( 1468-1528 ) in print, but already used by Martin Waldseemüller for his world map of 1507. As John Werner known self, comes the main part in this, for the first time via the method of presenting the ancient beyond novelty of Stabius. She found frequent application in the first half of the 16th century, but was then replaced by the Mercator projection.

1515 appeared the world map of Dürer and Stabius ( Stabius Durer map ) and the star maps by Dürer, Stabius and Conrad Hein Fogel.

Also the calculation of sundials is based on a similar projection task. Together with John Werner he calculated the sundial on the east choir of St. Lorenz Church in Nuremberg.

The last years

Although Stabius was a clergyman - he had a rich benefice at St. Stephen's Cathedral - he was knighted for his services in 1515 by Maximilian. After the emperor's death in 1519, he still came for a short time in the service of Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg. During this time he mostly lived in Augsburg, Ingolstadt and Nuremberg. He died on January 1, 1522 in Graz.