Fausto Veranzio

Fausto Veranzio, also written Faust Vrančić and Faustus Verantius, lived from about 1551 to 20 January 1617 and was a Croatian polymath, diplomat and bishop from Šibenik, then part of the Republic of Venice. Born into a noble Croatian family and raised partly under the care of his uncle Antun Vrančić, archbishop of Esztergom, he studied in Venice and then at the University of Padua, where he focused on law, physics, engineering and mechanics. He served at the court of Rudolf II in Prague as chancellor for Hungary and Transylvania and was in contact with Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe. In 1598 he received the title of bishop of Csanád, and in 1609 he joined the Barnabites in Venice and devoted himself to science. His masterwork, Machinae Novae, printed in Venice in 1615 or 1616 at his own expense, has 49 large plates showing 56 machines and technical concepts, among them mills, bridges, clocks, a lifebuoy-like float, a rotary printer and the Homo Volans, a forerunner of the parachute. A later account says he tested the parachute by jumping from the campanile of St Mark in Venice in 1617, though this rests on legend.