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WIT the university. In 1685 he accompanied, in the capacity of chaplain, the embassy sent by the States of Holland to the British court, and was treated with great respect by the English divines. In 1688, on the death of Spanheim, he was elected professor of divinity in the university of Leyden, an appointment which received the marked approbation of William of Orange (who had now ascended the throne of Great Britain), and was indeed suggested by that prince. The learned and eloquent prelections of Witsius were attended by candidates for the ministry from all parts of the continent, and from Great Britain, and even from America. In 1699 he was induced, though with reluctance, by the States of Holland and West Friesland to accept the office of regent of the theological college in the room of Mark Essius. He resigned this situation however in 1707, on account of his advanced years and increasing infirmities, and was at the same time relieved from the public duties of his professorship. He died on the 22nd October, 1708, in the seventy-third year of his age. Witsius was a man of great talents and profound and extensive learning. He was no less distinguished for his candour, suavity of disposition, and benignity of manners. By his wife, the daughter of a merchant of Utrecht, whom he married in 1660, he had four children, three of whom survived him. He was a voluminous writer; his works till six quarto volumes. His best known writings are his treatise on the Covenants, and his dissertations on the Creed, and on the Lord's Prayer.—J. T.  WITTE. See.  WITTE,, a celebrated divine, was born at Ghent on the 21st of February, 1648. His youth was distinguished by a most vigorous application to study, his favourite pursuits being philosophy and theology. The scriptures and the most eminent of the christian fathers were the principal sources whence he drew his theological lore. In 1684 Alphonse de Bergnes, archbishop of Malines, appointed him dean and pastor of the church of Notre Dame au delà de la Dille in the town of Malines. The zeal with which he exercised his ministry, and the measures which he took to reform certain abuses that had grown to an intolerable height, procured him a great number of enemies. In 1685, on the occasion of a funeral service for a physician, he was invited to a repast, where he expressed himself in such a manner on the subject of the pope's infallibility as to cause a great commotion in the theological faculty. His opinions were publicly censured by the faculty, a circumstance which proved the beginning of a protracted controversy, in which De Witte had the happiness to be supported and defended by the celebrated jansenist Arnauld De Witte continued pastor of Notre Dame till the year 1691, when Humbert Precipiano, the new archbishop, published an order forbidding the reading of the holy scriptures to the faithful. This order De Witte could not in conscience submit to. He accordingly wrote three letters to the prelate, in which he stated his reasons for refusing to read the order, and in the last of which he demitted his cure sans reserve. This letter was dated 23rd of March, 1691. He conjured the archbishop to provide his cure with a priest nourished "non dans les relâchements et chicanes de la nouvelle theologie, mais dans la vénérable antiquité de l'Ecriture sainte, des règles de l'Eglise, et de la Doctrine uniforme des Peres." From this time he withdrew into private life, and devoted himself wholly to study and the composition of his numerous works. Of these some are in Latin, others in Flemish, and a few even in French. His greatest work was his translation of the Bible into the Flemish tongue, published in 1717. He died at Utrecht, where he had dwelt for several years, on the 7th of April, 1721, and was buried at Warmondt, near Leyden. His principal works, besides the translation of the Bible already mentioned, are a Flemish translation of the Imitation of Christ; "Panegyris Janseniana," 1698, the numerous attacks on which drew its author three several times into the field of controversy; "Augustinus Iprensis Vindicatus," 1711; to this work was added the "Dénonciation de la Bulle Vineam Domini," which he had published anonymously two years before. This "Dénonciation" was attacked with much vehemence by Fenelon and Father Quesnel, to both of which celebrated adversaries De Witte lost no time in replying. In his other writings, which we cannot here enumerate, he has travelled over the entire range of the doctrines of grace.—R. M., A.  WITTE,, called by the Italians Pietro Candido, was born at Bruges in 1548. While very young he was taken by his parents to Florence, where he learned painting. He was employed by Vasari to assist him in his fresco paintings at Florence and Rome, and by the duke of Tuscany to make cartoons for tapestry, and to execute some decorations in his palace at Florence. At the invitation of Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, he went to Munich, and there painted in the New palace and the galleries of the Hofgarten a great many frescoes, which were then much admired, but have for the most part been long since destroyed. De Witte remained at Munich till his death in 1628. His Munich pictures, representing the history of the Emperor Otho, Louis of Bavaria, &c., were engraved by Amling; his "Annunciation," "Christ and his Apostles at Emmaus," and other of his oil paintings, by Johann Sadeler.—J. T—e.  WITTE or WITTEN,, a German divine and biographer, was born in 1634. He was a professor of divinity at Riga, where he died in 1696, His biographies of eminent men of the seventeenth century form a kind of sequel to the well-known work of Melchior Adam, and have been praised by Morhoff. These biographies make five bulky volumes. The theologians, physicians, and jurists have each one, while the other two are devoted to philosophers, orators, poets, and others who had distinguished themselves in the belles lettres. His "Diarium Biographicum Scriptorum Seculi XVII." appeared in two vols. 4to, the first in 1688, and the second in 1691. Witte visited England in 1666, and made the acquaintance of the celebrated Pococke. It may be mentioned that the greater number of his biographies are of Germans, though he has also deigned to notice a few French and English. Italy and Spain are totally unrepresented in his big and somewhat prosy collections.—R. M., A.  WLADISLAUS: seven princes of this name, often written Vladislaus, reigned in Poland, four being of the house of Piast, the fifth and sixth Jagellons, and the seventh a Vasa:—

I., surnamed, was a son of Casimir I., and the younger brother of the brave but misguided Boleslas II. He was raised to the throne in 1082, after a year's interregnum, consequent on the flight of Boleslas and the interdict laid on the kingdom by the pope. When the latter consented to the accession of Wladislaus, he withheld from him the regal dignity, sanctioning only the title of duke, which was transmitted to succeeding Polish sovereigns for a period of two hundred years, to the great detriment of the kingdom. Wladislaus was a humane, unwarlike prince, ill-fitted to quell the revolts of the subject Russians and Prussians. Family dissensions aggravated the trouble caused by national disasters. The duke's natural son Sbignieff headed a rebellion against him, and though defeated and afterwards pardoned, he disputed with Boleslas, the duke's legitimate son and heir, the succession to the crown. These misfortunes might, perhaps, have been prevented had the duke been able to throw off the influence of his unpopular favourite, Sieciech. Wladislaus married first, Judith, daughter of the king of Bohemia; and secondly, Judith, sister of the Emperor Henry IV. He died in 1102, after an unhappy reign of twenty years. His grant to Sbignieff of an extensive apanage was the first step towards a ruinous partition of the monarchy, and led to great disasters in the sequel.

II., grandson of the preceding, succeeded in 1139 to a share only of the ancient duchy of Poland, his father, Boleslas, having endowed his younger sons with apanages so large that, together, they more than equalled the inheritance of Wladislaus the eldest son. Dissensions ensued. At the instigation of his ambitious wife, Agnes, Wladislaus took forcible possession of his brothers' territories; but in a conflict which ensued he was completely defeated, and fled to the court of the Emperor Conrad, his wife's brother. Agnes was captured, but allowed subsequently to follow her husband. Wladislaus never recovered his throne, spite of the assistance he obtained from Conrad and from his successor, Frederic Barbarossa. He died an exile in 1163.

III., surnamed, the son of Mieceslas, and nephew of the preceding, was raised to the throne in 1203 by the influence of the nobles of Cracow, in opposition to the claims of the more popular prince, Lesko the White, son of Casimir the Just. When Lesko, after a great victory over the Russians, was called to reign by general acclamation in 1207, Wladislaus appears to have cheerfully ceded a crown which was a source of continued disquiet. In the government of his apanage, after abdicating the paramount authority, Wladislaus is charged with violence and oppression. He certainly brought upon himself the enmity of the clergy, the historians of the time, and his reputation has not been spared. Twice he was 