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 FRAUENBURO

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FRAUNHOFER

As there was agreement about the substance of the contract, this will, indeed, be valid, but inasmuch as the consent of the party who was deceived was ob- tained by fraud and would not otherwise have been given, the contract should be voidable at the option of the party deceived. It is a matter of importance for the public weal that no one should be able to reap benefit from fraud {Nejnini jraus sua patrocinari debet), as canonists and moralists never tire of repeat- ing. Moreover, the fraudulent party inflicted an injury on the other by inducing him by fraud to do what he would not have done otherwise. It is only equitable and right that one who has thus suffered should be able to rescind the contract and put himself again in the same position as he was in before — if that be pos- sible. Contracts, therefore, induced by the fraud of ope of the parties, even though there was no substan- tial mistake, are voidable at the option of him who was deceived, if the contract can be annulled. If the fraud was committed by a third person without the connivance of the other party to the contract, there will be no reason for annulling it.

Besides fraud committed against a person and against justice, canonists and moral theologians fre- quently mention fraud against law. One is said to act in fraud of the law when he is careful to observe the letter, but violates the spirit of it and the intention of the lawgiver. Thus one who is bound to fast would act in fraud of the Church's law if on a fasting day he undertook some hard and unnecessary work, such as digging, in order to be excused from fasting. On the other hand, there is no fraud against the law com- mitted by one who leaves the territory within which the law binds, even if he do this with the intention of freeing himself from the law. He is at liberty to go and live where he pleases, and he cannot act fraudu- lently in doing what he has a right to do. And so, on a fast day which is only kept in some particular diocese, one who lives in the diocese may without sin leave it even with the intention of escaping from the obligation of fasting, and when he is once outside the limits of the diocese he is no longer bound by a purely diocesan law. There are two celebrated declarations of the Holy See which seem at first sight to contradict this doctrine. The first occurs in the Bull "Superna" of Clement X (21 June, 1G70), where the pope says that a regular confessor may absolve strangers who come to him from another diocese from sins reserved therein unless he knows that they have come to him in fraud of the reservation. These words have caused great difficulty and have been variously interpreted by canonists and divines.

According to the common opinion they limit the power of the confessor only when the principal motive which induced the penitent to leave his diocese was to avoid the jurisdiction of his own pastor and to make his confession in a place where the sin was not reserved. By reserving the sin in question the ecclesiastical authority desired to compel a delinquent to appear before it and to receive the necessary correction; by leaving the diocese with a view to making his confes- sion elsewhere the penitent would circumvent the law and make it nugatory. If he left the diocese from some other motive, and while outside took the oppor- tunity to make his confession, he would not act in fraud of the law of reservation. Urban VIII (14 Aug., 1627) approved of a declaration of the Sacred Con- gregation of the Council according to which parties subject to the Tridentine law of clandestinity would not contract a valid marriage in a place where that law was not in force if they betook themselves thither with fraud. There was a similar difficulty as to the meaning of fraud in this decree. According to the more common view, the parties were guilty of fraud by the very fact of leaving the parish with the intention of contracting marriage without the assistance of the parish priest, whose right and duty it was to testify

to the valid celebration of the marriage of his parish- ioners. This question, however, is now only of his- torical interest, as the law has been radically changed by the papal decree " Ne temere " ( 2 Aug., 1 907 ) q. v.

St. Alphonscs, Thcologia Moralis (Turin. 1S25\ III 1046- VI. 589, 1080; Lehmkuhl, Thcologia Moralis (Freiburg, 1898) I. 156; II. 780; Reiffenstuei,. Jus canonicum (Rome. 1834)- Lessids, De JuMtid el Jure (Venice, 1625).

T. Slater. Frauenburg. See Ermland.

Frauenlob. See Heinrich op Meissen.

Fraunhofer, Joseph von, optician, b. at Straub- ing, Bavaria, 6 March, 17S7; d. at Munich, 7 June, 1S26. He was the tenth and last son of a poor glass- grinder who was unable to give his boy even the rudi- ments of knowledge. At the age of twelve he lost both parents and was apprenticed to a mirror-maker and lens-grinder for si.x years without pay. There he was not permitted to study or even to attend holiday school. The house where he worked collapsed in 1801, burying the boy under the ruins, but not injuring him fatally. This fortunate accident brought him to the notice of court^councillor von Utzschneider, who gave him books on mathematics and optics, and also inter- ested King Max Joseph in him, who made him a pres- ent of eighteen ducats. With this money Joseph ac- quired a grinding-machine and bought his release from the obnoxious apprenticeship. He tried to earn a liv- ing at his trade and also as an engraver on metal. Finally, in 1806, he was called to the mathematico- technical institute of Reichenbach, Utzschneider, and Liebherr as an assistant. There he did such excellent work that he became a partner and manager of the optical institute of the firm at Benediktbeuern. In 1814 Utzschneider gave him 10,000 florins and formed with him the new firm of Utzschneider and Fraunhofer. The optical institute was moved to Munich in 1819 and Fraunhofer was appointed professor royal. The Uni- versity of Erlangen gave him the degree of Ph.D., honoris causd, in 1822. The following year he was appointed conservator of the physical cabinet of the academy at Munich. Nobility, the order of merit, and the honorary citizenship of Munich were con- ferred upon him in 1824. The Imperial Leopoldina Academy, the Astronomical Society of London, and the Society for Natural Science and Medicine of Heidelberg elected him to membership. Shortly be- fore his death he was made a Knight of the Danish or- der of Danebrog.

The work of this self-taught mathematical and practical optician was chiefly in developing improved methods of preparing optical glass, of grinding and polishing lenses, and of testing them. His success de- privetl England of its supremacy in the optical field. He invented the necessary machines, constructed a spherometer, and developed the moving and measur- ing devices used in astronomical telescopes, such as the screw micrometer and the heliometer. His fame, however, rests above all on his initiation of spectrum analysis. While studying the chromatic refraction of different glasses he discovered the banded spectra of artificial lights and also the dark lines in the solar spectrimi, called now the Fraunhofer lines. He also accomplished an important theoretical work on diffrac- tion and established its laws; he placed the diffraction slit in front of the objective of a measuring telescope and later made and used diffraction gratings with up to 10,000 parallel lines to the inch, ruled by a specially constr\icted dividing engine. By means of these grat- ings he was able to measure the minute wave-lengths of the different colours of light. As a Christian, Fraunhofer was faithful and observant even in details. The simple inscription on his tomb reads: Approxi- marerii siilera. His important memoirs were first published in "Denkschriften" of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the one on refraction, spectra, and lines in 1817, and that on diffraction and its laws