FABER, JOHANNES. - Dominican preacher and polemicist, born at Augusta about 1475, died in 1530. He was prior of Augusta (1507), general vicar of the Congregation of Upper Germany (1511). At first, believing that Luther had repented, he judged him very favourably, as appears from his Consilium cuiusdam ex unima cupientis esse consultum et R. Pontificis dignitati et christianæ religionis tranquillitati, published anonymously in 1520; but when he realized Luther’s rebellious spirit, he changed his opinion and opposed him, also breaking away from the humanists, to whom he had previously been so closely attached.
Of his writings there survive only a Gratia funebris in depositione glorioissimi imperatoris Caesaris Maximiliani (Augusta 1519); an Epistola to the humanist Willibaldo Perkheimer (ed. in J. Heumann, Documenta litteraria varii argumenti, Altdorf 1758, pp. 87-93); and the Consilium, repeatedly reprinted and translated, which, attributed to Erasmus until 1896, was definitively restored to F. by Paulus (N. Paulus, Der Dominikaner J. F. und sein Gudachten über Luther, in Historisches polit. Jahrbuch, 17 [1896], pp. 39-60).