until they each had slain an enemy. Robertson Smith (Religion of the Semites, ed. 1901, p. 483) with much probability explains such usages from the widespread primitive belief that a man’s life lurks in his hair, so that the devotee being consecrated or taboo to a god, his hair must be retained during the period of taboo or purification (as it is called in Acts xxi. 26) lest it be dissipated and profaned. The hair being part and parcel of the votary, its profanation would profane him and break the taboo. The same author remarks that this is why, when the hair of a Maori chief was cut, it was, being like the rest of his person sacred or taboo, collected and buried in a sacred place or hung on a tree. And we meet with the same scruple in the initiation rite, called σχῆμα, of Eastern monks. First, the novice is carefully denuded of the clothes, shoes and headgear, which he wore in the world, and which, being profane or unclean, would violate the taboo about to be set on him. His hair is then polled crosswise by way of consecrating it; and in some forms of the rite the presiding monk, called “the father of the hair,” collects the shorn locks and deposits them under the altar or in some other safe and sacred place. Greek nuns used to keep the hair thus shorn off, weave it into girdles, and wear it for the rest of their lives round their waists, where close to their holy persons there was no risk of its being defiled by alien contact. The rest of this rite of σχῆμα especially as it is preserved in the old Armenian versions, smacks no less of the most primitive taboo. For the novice, after being thus tonsured, advances to the altar holding a taper in either hand, just as tapers were tied to the horns of an animal victim; the new and sacred garb which is to demarcate him henceforth from the unclean world is put upon him, and the presiding father laying his right hand upon him devotes him with a prayer which begins thus:—
“To thee, O Lord, as a rational whole burnt-offering, as mystic frankincense, as voluntary homage and worship, we offer up this thy servant N. or M.”
From the same point of view is to be explained the prohibition to one under a vow of flesh diet and fermented drinks; for it was believed that by partaking of these a man might introduce into his body the unclean spirits which inhabited them—the brute soul which infested meat, especially when the animal was strangled, and the cardiac demon, as the Rabbis called it, which harboured in wine.
The same considerations help to explain the custom of votive offerings. Any popular shrine in Latin countries is hung with wax models of limbs that have been healed, of ships saved from wreck, or with pictures representing the votary’s escape from perils by land and sea. So Cicero (de Deorum Natura, iii. 37) relates how a friend remarked to Diagoras the Atheist when they reached Samothrace: “You who say that the gods neglect men’s affairs, do you not perceive from the many pictures how many have escaped the force of the tempest and reached harbour safely.” Diagoras’s answer, that the many more who had suffered shipwreck and perished had no pictures to record their fate does not concern us here. It is only pertinent to remark that these votivae tabellae and offerings may have had originally another significance than that of merely recording the votary’s salvation and of marking his gratitude. The model ship may be a substitute for the entire ship which is become sacred to the god, but cannot be deposited in the shrine; the miniature limbs of wax are substitutes for the real limbs which now belong to the god. In other cases the very objects which are taboo are given to the god as when a sailor deposits his salt-stained suit before the idol.
The general idea, then, involved in vows, whether ancient or modern, is that to express which the modern anthropologist borrows the Polynesian word taboo. The votary desirous to “antedate his future act of service and make its efficacy begin at once,”[1] formally dedicates through spoken formula and ritual act a lifeless object such as a ring, an animal, his hair or his entire person to the god. He so either makes sure of future blessings, or shows gratitude for those already conferred. Most of the ritual prescriptions that accompany vows arc intended to guard inviolate the sanctity or taboo, the atmosphere of holiness or ritual purity, which envelops the persons or objects vowed or reserved to the god, and thereby separated from ordinary secular use.
The consideration of the moral effect of vows upon those who take them belongs rather to the history of Christian asceticism. It may, however, be remarked here that monkish vows, while they may lend to a man’s life a certain fixity of aim and moral intensity, nevertheless tend to narrow his interests, and paralyse his wider activities and sympathies. In particular a monk binds himself to a lifelong and often morbid struggle against the order of nature; and motives become for him not good or bad according to the place they occupy in the living context of social life, but according as they bear upon an abstract and useless ideal. (F. C. C.)
VOZNESENSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Kherson, on the left bank of the river Bug, at the head of navigation, 55 m. N.W. from Nikolayev, to which steamers ply regularly. Pop. 14,178. It is a river port of some importance, and holds four large fairs annually. It contains a cathedral, a public garden and distilleries and breweries.
VRANCX, SEBASTIAN, born about 1572, was a painter of the Antwerp school, of very moderate ability. Most of his pictures represent scenes of war, such as the sack of towns, cavalry combats and the like. Though occasionally vigorous in drawing, his paintings are dull and heavy in tone. The date of his death is uncertain.
VRANYA, or Vranyé, the most southerly town of the
kingdom of Servia, 71 m. from the Macedonian frontier, on a
slope descending from Mount Placevitza to the plain of the
Upper Morava, in a picturesque and fertile country. Pop.
(1900) 11,921. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 it was
captured by the Servian army from the Turks, and subsequently
was incorporated in the kingdom. It is the capital of a department
of the same name, and is an important station on the
railway from Nish to Salonica, with a custom house, principally
for merchandise imported into Servia via Salonica.
Its inhabitants are employed chiefly in the cultivation of flax
and hemp, and in the making of ropes.
There is a much
frequented summer resort 412 m. E., called Vranyska Banya,
with baths of hot sulphurous mineral water.
VRATZA, the capital of the department of Vratza, Bulgaria, on the northern slope of the Stara Planina and on a small
sub tributary of the Danube.
Pop. (1906) 14,832. Vratza
is an archiepiscopal see and the headquarters of a military
division. Wine, leather and gold and silver filigree are manufactured,
and there is a school of sericulture.
VRIENDT, JULIAEN JOSEPH DE (1842–), and ALBRECHT FRANÇOIS LIEVEN DE (1843–1900), Belgian painters, both born at Ghent, sons of a decorative painter. The two brothers were close friends, and their works show marked signs of resemblance. Having received their early training from their father at Ghent, they removed to Antwerp, where they soon yielded to the influence of the painter Baron Henri Leys. Albrecht became director of the Academy of Fine Arts at Antwerp and was succeeded by his brother. Albrecht’s principal works are “Jacqueline of Bavaria imploring Philip the Good to pardon her Husband” (1871, Liége Gallery), “The Excommunication of Bouchard d’Avesnes” (1877, Brussels Gallery), “The Angelus” (1877, acquired by Leopold II., king of the Belgians), “Pope Paul III. before Luther’s Portrait” (1883, Antwerp Gallery), “The Citizens of Ghent paying homage to the child Charles V.” (1885, Brussels Gallery), “Philip the Handsome swearing fidelity to the privileges of the Town of Fumes” (1893, Furnes town hall), “The Virgin of St Luc” (1894, triptych in Antwerp Cathedral), and the decoration of the municipal hall at Bruges, which was completed by his brother. Among Juliaen’s more notable works are “The Citizens of Eisenach driving out St Elizabeth of Hungary” (1871, Liége Gallery), “Jairus’s Daughter” (1888, Antwerp Gallery), mural paintings in the Palais de Justice at Antwerp (1893), and “The Christmas Carol” (1894, Brussels Gallery).
- ↑ Religion of the Semites, Lect. ix.
