Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/324

Rh 300 v o s v o w received the appointment of professor of rhetoric and chronology, and subsequently of Greek, in the university. In 1624: the university of Cambridge offered him a professorship, which he declined. Two years afterwards another unsuccessful effort was made to induce him to settle in England, but he accepted from Archbishop Laud a prebend in Canterbury cathedral of the value of 100 per annum, without residence, coming over to England to be installed in 1629, when he was made LL.D. at Oxford. In 1632 he left Leyden to take the post of professor of history in the newly founded Athenaeum at Amsterdam, which he held till his death, March 17^1649. He was one of the great scholars of the world, and his character added lustre to his learning. His works, of which a complete edition appeared at Amsterdam, 1695-1701, in 6 vols. fol., are philological, historical, and theological. He made invaluable con tributions to the correct study of Latin grammar and of the Greek and Latin historians. He was amongst the first to treat theoiogical dogmas and the heathen religions from the historical point of view. His principal works are Hiatoria Pdagiana (1618) ; Etymologicum Linguie Latinse (1662); Commentariorum Rhetor icorvm Libri VII. (1606); De Historicis Grascis Libri III. (1624); DeHistoricis Latinis Libri III. (1627); De Theologia Gentili (1642); Dissertationes Trcs de Tribus Symbolis, Apostolico, Atlianasiano, et Constantinopolitano (1642). See Nice ron, Memoires pour serrii a I Histoire des Homines Illtistres, vol. xiii., Paris, 1730; Herzog s Realencyk/cpaJie, art. &quot; Vossius.&quot; VOSSIUS, ISAAC (1618-1689), son of the preceding, was born at Leyden in 1618, and was carefully educated by his father. After three years spent on a learned tour through England, France, and Italy, which he used in making the acquaintance of the first scholars and the great libraries of those countries, and from which he brought back many valuable MSS., he accepted in 1648 an invitation to the court of the brilliant Queen Christina of Sweden, whom he taught Greek. He declined the offer of the chair of history at Amsterdam vacated by his father s death, and continued for some years in Sweden, with occasional visits to Holland. In 1658 he finally left Sweden. His father s merits and his own learning pro cured him favour with Louis XIV. of France and in England. In 1670 he came to reside in England, was made LL.D. of Oxford, and in spite of notorious looseness of morals and levity of character received a canonry at Windsor from Charles II. in 1673, residing in the castle, where he died in February 1689. His learning was great, and he rendered valuable services in connexion with ancient history, antiquities, chronology, and geography, though they were marred by the admixture of great levity and want of judgment. To him is owing the first Greek- text of the six shorter epistles of Ignatius (1646). He published valuable editions of the geographer Scylax (1639), of Justin (1640), of Pomponius Mela (1648), and of Catullus (1684). In his various dissertations on chronology he maintained the greater accuracy of the system of the Septuagint in comparison with that of the Hebrew text, and generally asserted the greater genuineness of the Greek translation as compared with the Massoretic text. He in herited his father s valuable library, which, to the great sorrow of Evelyn, went after his death back to Holland. Comp. Nicdron s Memoires, vol. xiii. VOTKINSK, an iron-work in the Urals, in the Russian government of Vyatka, 47 miles north of Sarapul, and 8 miles from the Kama, was founded in 1756. Its popula tion reached 15,480 in 1885. Together with the Kamsk iron-work, Votkinsk was till lately one of the chief Govern ment establishments for the construction of steamers for the Caspian flotilla, as well as of locomotives for the Siberian railway, and it has long been renowned for its excellent tarantasses and other smaller iron-wares, as well as for its knitted goods. JSTo large orders having been received from the Government, a number of workmen recently united into an &quot; artel &quot; or co-operative society for the manufacture of agricultural machinery, already known throughout Russia for its excellence and cheapness. VOUET, SIMON (1590-1649), French painter, born at Paris, January 9, 1590, passed many years in Italy, where he married, and established himself at Eome, enjoying there a high reputation as a portrait painter. Louis XIII. recalled him to France, lodged him in the Louvre with the title of First Painter to the Crown, and gave him a considerable salary. All royal work for the palaces of the Louvre and the Luxembourg was placed in his hands ; the king became his pupil ; he formed a large school, and renewed the traditions of that of Fontainebleau. Amongst his scholars was the famous Lebrun (who raised on the foundations laid by his master the tyranny by which he dominated the whole artistic world during the reign of Louis XFV.), Lebrun s rival Errard, Louis Lerambert, the two Testelins, Poerson, and Dorigny. Vouet was an exceedingly skilful painter, especially in decoration, and executed important works of this class for Cardinal Richelieu (Rueil and Palais Royal) and other great nobles. His better easel pictures bear a curious resemblance to those of Sassoferrato, but, being much in demand, he fell into mannerisms, and of the enormous quantity of work produced by himself or with the aid of his pupils little has survived worth study. Almost everything he did was engraved by his sons-in-law Tortebat and Dorigny. VOW, a solemn undertaking to do something which is held to be acceptable to the Deity. In the antique re ligions mere prayer, without some material expression of homage, was not held to be a complete or normal act of worship (cf. SACRIFICE). Supplications, therefore, were generally presented to the Deity in connexion with a sacrifice, or, if the moment of need was one at which a ritual offering could not well be presented, the prayer for help was naturally accompanied by a promise to present a gift at a future time. Thus prayer together with a vow is a sort of imperfect act of worship, which has to be com pleted by the discharge of the vow at the sanctuary. So in Greek the same word eu^ is equally applicable to the prayer which opened a service of sacrifice and to a vow taken at the commencement of an enterprise or in other time of need. So too the Latin votum means both &quot; vow &quot; and &quot; desire.&quot; In the Old Testament, in like manner, it is generally a sacrifice or gift at the sanctuary which is promised in vows, and the word &quot;vow&quot; (neder) means also &quot;a votive sacrifice,&quot; as distinguished from obligatory sacrifices (piacular offer ings and stated festal sacrifices; 1 Sam. i. 21). The vows of which we read in the Old Testament and in classical authors are generally conditional on the fulfil ment of the petition with which they are coupled. Such vows are made on occasions of special need, or difficulty (Ps. Ixvi. 13 sq.; Pliny, H. N., viii. 21 [57], &quot;turn prsecipuus votorum locus est cum spei nullus est&quot;), as before a peril ous enterprise (Gen. xxviii. 20 ; Judg. xi. 30). The pay ment offered may be a victim for the altar, or any other gift which the ritual of the religion acknowledges as acceptable. But, as vows are generally made on extra ordinary occasions, the thing promised will often be excep tional in kind or magnitude. The vow of Jephthah (Judg. xi.) is a case in point, and also illustrates by an extreme example the principle that a vow once taken must be ful filled at any cost. This principle was so far modified in later times, in Israel, that exceptional vows were by law redeemed at a valuation (Lev. xxvii.). Hannah s vow, de voting her unborn son to the service of the sanctuary (1 Sam. i. 11), would have fallen under this law. Moreover, the law provided that the vow of an unmarried daughter or of a wife might be disallowed by the father or husband respectively (Numb. xxx.). On the other hand, a widow or a divorced woman was free to make what vow she pleased. These provisions are important evidence of the legal posi tion of woman in Hebrew society, and also, ex silentio, as implying that Hebrew sons (at least after infancy) were not subject to patria potestas of the Roman kind.