The Hidden Wisdom of Fabris’ 1601 Manuscript

—J. Christoph Amberger, 7/24/2025

In my eagerness to get to the meat of the Manuscript that Salvator Fabris gave to Johann Friedrich von Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf—Archbishop of Bremen, Fürstbischof of Lübeck and Bishop of Verden—on September 30, 1601, I’ve been overlooking a few things. And from my cursory review of the literature, others may have, too:

First, in the dedication to Johann Friedrich, Fabris already calls himself a Knight of the Order of the Seven Hearts:

GKS 1868 kvart
Salvator Fabris (1544-1618)
Sientia et pratica del’Arme di Salvator Fabris Padovano

In three years of intensive research, I still have not located another reference to this organization. Was it a secret society? Then Fabris certainly is a most incompetent keeper of a secret!

And who exactly awarded it to him? We’ve assumed that was Christian IV, King of Denmark.

But if Fabris indeed gave the Manuscript to his soon-to-be-former host that September Sunday at Verden (or Bremervörde), chronology contradicts that assumption: Fabris wasn’t accepted into Danish services until October 12, 1601, 12 days after the manuscript is dated. And the Copenhagen court record shows him listed among the Hofjunker—by all measures a subordinate at the beck and call to teach all kinds of weapons Octsaa tit og ofte Kongen begaerer—as often as the King desires. If Fabris is already a Knight of the Seven Hearts before he arrived in Denmark, it surely can’t be a Danish honor, because he’d had no opportunity to earn even before his arrival.

There still may be a familial tie-in, Christian and Johann Friedrich being cousins. Christian had 9 hearts in his personal coat of arms.

But the North German town of Celle (top left) has a blue lion rampant… surrounded by Seven Hearts—rather skimpy considering that the Principality of Lüneburg (later also referred to as of Celle) was a territorial division of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg had 11 hearts!

And for January 1, 1601, we can place Fabris in Lüneburg. Lüneburg jail, specifically.

Interestingly enough, the additional portrait included in the 1624, posthumous edition of the Scienza shows a younger Salvator—unadorned with his order of the seven hearts. Instead, there’s virtually a bouquet of heraldic elements, the central one three lions with seven hearts—three held in the paws of the lions, the remaining four scattered around. There’s also a Lion with nine hearts on the right.

The second oddity I noticed can be found on the second page of the manuscript. From afar, at a lower resolution, or for someone with poor eyesight, it has the appearance of the fuzzy, washed-out outline of a coat-of-arms. Whose? Compare it to the Gottorf’s coat-of arms (see top, painted on behalf of Johann Friedrich’s father in the Heidelberg university Matrikel). It indicates that it may not have been Fabris who commissioned the copy—he certainly didn’t write it himself: His handwriting was terrible! But that Fabris had a German calligrapher in Johann Friedrich’s employ make a copy of a (probably far less legible) manuscript.

But that’s not all: A closer look at the coat-of-arms shows that it is not washed out at all, but that the outlines of all the graphical elements consist of German mottos and sayings, written IN GERMAN, in a neat miniscule hand! And while Fabris is on the record professing his love for the German people (at least the paying ultramontani fencing students in Padua and his German patrons), we have no inclination that he spoke let alone wrote German. (Modern parallels exist.)

“Erstlich wilt das dies iwol gelinge so schaue selbst zu eim jeden dinge Verlas dich nicht auff dein gesind da treu gesind man selten find.”

Again, I may not be the first person to notice that. If you know of an existing transcription, please let me know. Because I will have to defer deciphering and transcribing what appear to be nuggets of wisdom accumulated by the Gottorfs to someone with more time and focus than I can muster right now. Even though I should take heed of the first horizontal line in the coat of arms, which translates as:

“First, if you want something to turn out well, pay attention to everything yourself. Don’t rely on your staff, because good staff is hard to find.”

Amen to that.