Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/215

V E S V E S 195 the case, the supposed line of the road being really blocked by a very early structure. There is reason to believe that this formed part of the original Regia, which was rebuilt during the reign of Augustus in a more magnificent way by Domitius Calvinus, after his Spanish triumph. The Vestalia, or chief festival in honour of Vesta, was held on 9th June (Ovid, Fast., vi. 249), after which the temple was closed for five days for a ceremonial cleansing. 1 In private houses the feast was celebrated by a meal of fish, bread, and herbs, eaten, not on the usual triclinium, but by the domestic hearth, in front of the effigies of the Dii Penates (Ovid, Fast., vi. 309-310). The feast inaugu rated by Augustus in honour of Vesta Palatina was held on 28th April, the anniversary of its consecration. With regard to statues of the goddess, though the Greek Hestia was frequently represented in plastic art, yet among the Romans Vesta appears to have been rarely so treated. The Athenian prytaneum contained a statue of Hestia. But there was no effigy in the Roman temple of Vesta, although one is commonly shown on reverses of coins which have a representation of the temple, and it appears to have been commonly thought in Rome that a statue of Vesta did exist inside her shrine, a mistake which Ovid corrects (Fast., vi. 297-300). No Roman statue now known can be certainly considered to represent Vesta, though a very beautiful standing figure of a female with veiled head (in the Torlonia collection) has, with some probability, had this name given to it. The worship of Vesta appears to have died out slowly in the 4th century, after the adoption of Christianity as the state religion by Constantine. Zosimus (Hist. Nov., v. 38) tells an interesting story of a visit made to the Atrium Vestaa at the end of the 4th century by Serena, the wife of the Vandal Stilicho, who took a valuable necklace from one of the statues, in spite of the remon strances of an aged woman, the last survivor of the vestal virgins. Soon after that time the building appears to have fallen into decay, its valuable marble linings and other ornaments having been stripped from its walls. Literature. For further information the reader is referred, in addition to the works quoted above, to Lipsius, DC Vesta et Vestali- bus Syntagma, printed in Grrevius, Thes. Ant. Rom., vol. v. ; Cramer, Kleine Schriften, ed. by Ratjen, Leipsic, 1837, p. 89 sq. ; Klausen, sEneas und die Penaten, ii. p. 624 sq. ; Nardini, lloma Antica, ed. of 1818-20, ii. p. 185 sq. ; Brohm, De Jure Viryimim Vcstalium, Thorn, 1835; Premier, Hestia -Vesta, Tubingen, 1864; Jordan, Vesta und die Laren, Berlin, 1865, and more recent papers ; Maes, Vesta e Vestali, Rome, 1883 ; Lanciani, L Atrio di Vesta, Rome, 1884 ; and C. I. L., vi. p. 594, No. 2131 sq. (J. H. M.) VESTMENTS, in ecclesiastical law, are the garments worn during the church service by the officiating clergy. In England and Scotland before the Reformation the vestments in use were similar to those still worn by the Roman Catholic clergy, probably modifications of the dress of Roman citizens in their origin (see COSTUME) and were either sacrificial, as the chasuble, or non-sacri ficial, as the surplice. After the Reformation the question of vestments became of comparatively small importance in the Church of Scotland ; but in the Church of England it has in recent years been the cause of much controversy and litigation. The " ornaments rubric " at the beginning of the Book of Com mon Prayer, dating from 1662, provides "that such ornaments of the church and of the ministers thereof at all times of their minis tration shall be retained and be in use as were in this Church of England by the authority of parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI." The reference in this rubric is to the vestments enjoined by the first prayer book of Edward VI. (1549). The surplice (with the addition of the hood in cathedrals and colleges, and for preaching)- was the priest s dress for the service other than the communion. In the communion the bishop was to wear, besides a rochet, a surplice or alb, Avith a cope or vestment 1 The solemn decade of the Vestal ia began on 5th June and ended on the 15th, when the temple was closed. (also called a chasuble), and to have a pastoral staff borne by him self or his chaplain. The officiating priest was to wear a white alb, plain, with a vestment or cope, the assisting ministers albs with tunicles. The second prayer book of Edward VI. (1552) enjoined the use of the surplice only. The Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth (1 Eliz. c. 2) provided for the use of the 1549 vestments, " until other order shall be therein taken by the authority of the queen s Majesty, &c." In 1564 the Advertisements of Elizabeth were issued, under which the legal vestments were fixed to be the cope worn by the principal minister, with gospeller and epistoler agreeably, in the ministration of the communion, but at ordinary services and at prayers (other than those during the ministration of the communion) said at the communion table the surplice only. Deans and prebendaries were to wear hoods. The point which the judicial committee of the privy council has been called upon more than once to decide is whether the Advertisements of Elizabeth coupled with the Injunctions of 1559 and subsequent visitations were such taking of "other order" as to supersede the ornaments rubric. It has been held that they were, and the effect of the decisions has been to reduce the legal vestments to the surplice and hood for all ordinary purposes, with the addition of the cope for the administration of the communion on high feast days in cathedral and collegiate churches. The cope was also allowed by the canons of 1603-4. A bishop wears in addition a rochet. The chasuble, alb, and tunicle had, as has been said, post-Reformation authority, but the girdle, amice, stole, maniple, dalmatic, and biretta were never legally recognized since that time. The stole, however, is frequently worn, by deacons generally arranged as a scarf over the left shoulder. Much information on the subject will be found in the first Report of the Royal Commission on Ritual, issued in 1867. VESTRY. See PARISH, vol. xviii. p. 296. VESUVIUS, the most celebrated volcano in the world, rises from the eastern margin of the Bay of Naples in Italy, in the midst of a region which has been densely populated by a civilized community for more than twenty centuries. Hence it has served as a type for the general popular conception of a volcano, and its history has sup plied a large part of the information on which geological theories of volcanic action have been based. The height of the mountain varies from time to time within limits of several hundred feet, according to the effects of successive eruptions, but averages somewhere about 4000 feet above Plan of Vesuvius, together with north-and-south profile. the sea. Vesuvius consists of two distinct portions. On the northern side a lofty semicircular cliff , reaching a height of 3747 feet, half encircles the present active cone, and descends in long slopes towards the plains below. This precipice, known as Monte Somma, forms the wall of an ancient prehistoric crater of vastly greater size than that of the present volcano. The continuation of the same wall round its southern half has been in great measure obliter ated by the operations of the modern vent, which has built a younger cone upon it, and is gradually filling up the hollow of the prehistoric crater. At the time of its greatest dimensions the volcano was perhaps twice as high as it is now. By a colossal eruption, of which no histori

cal record remains, the upper half of the cone was blown