the coast of Sussex, and Rye and some other towns were burnt. In the following year he took several towns in Normandy which had fallen into the hands of the English, and in 1382 fought with great distinction at the battle of Rosbeck. Three years later he was despatched into Scotland with two thousand chosen men, "a complete garland of chivalry," as they are termed by Froissart, for the purpose of co-operating with the Scottish people in their hostilities with their common enemies the English. But heartburnings and misunderstandings speedily broke out between these ill-assorted allies; and although they united in making an incursion into England, and laid waste with fire and sword the northern districts, they found it impossible to combine in carrying on their warlike operations, and the expedition ended in mutual disappointment and recrimination. In 1388 the venerable warrior accompanied the duke of Bourbon to Barbary, and in 1396 he joined a body of young French nobles who went to the assistance of the Hungarians against the Turks, and fell in the battle of Nicopolis, where he commanded the vanguard, 26th September, 1396.—J. T.
VIEYRA, Antonio de, a celebrated Jesuit missionary, was born at Lisbon on the 6th of February, 1608. He was brought up, however, in Brazil, his father having meanwhile emigrated to that country. Having pursued his preliminary studies in the college either of Bahia or of St. Salvador—it is not certain which—he entered on his novitiate with the Jesuits at the latter town on the 5th of May, 1623. This step was taken against the wishes of his father, and in the face of other obstacles that would have shaken the resolution of a less determined spirit. His progress was so great that he was not required to attend the full time appointed for novices. The leisure he thus obtained was devoted to a thorough course of theological study. He mastered the Summa Theologiæ of Aquinas, read attentively the scriptures and patristic writings, and made himself a proficient in ecclesiastical history. At the expiry of his novitiate he was chosen professor in the college of Bahia. About this time George Mascaregnas, marquis of Montalvan, the viceroy of Brazil, completed the conquest of that colony. His son Fernand, whom he chose to carry the happy tidings to Juan IV., king of Portugal, was accompanied to the mother country by Vieyra. They arrived at Lisbon in 1641. Juan was so taken with the manners and accomplishments of the young Jesuit, that he prevailed with him to forego, in the meanwhile at least, his purpose of devoting himself to missionary labours among the savages of Brazil, and appointed him one of his chaplains-in-ordinary. He soon discovered that his new chaplain had also a decided turn for the management of public affairs. Vieyra was accordingly despatched on various diplomatic missions. On his return to Portugal in 1649, after having visited in his official capacity England, Holland, France, and Italy, the king pressed him to accept a bishopric; but the good father, whose thoughts and wishes were still with the heathen inhabiters of the forests of Maranham, declined the preferment, and asked, as the only reward of his services, to be allowed to return to his adopted country. His desire was at length granted in 1652. Vieyra went on board ship in the November of that year. But no sooner had the king parted with his favourite than he repented of having yielded to his wishes. The ship, however, had not sailed, and an order from the monarch was sent in all haste to Vieyra to disembark. But he was delayed only a few days. His entreaties were so urgent, and his urgency was so evidently the result of holy and disinterested motives, that the king, who was again forced to yield, instantly ordered a ship to be specially fitted up, in which Vieyra and a number of companions whom he had chosen to go and labour with him among the American savages, at length set sail from the port of Lisbon. It was not long, however, till he returned, having in the following year been sent to the Portuguese court to complain of the vexatious treatment which the missionaries were suffering at the hands of the colonists. Vieyra, as might certainly have been expected, procured the desired protection; but it might have been also as certainly predicted that he would not, at least without difficulty, be allowed to return; and so it was. After a detention—friendly of course, but selfish—of more than a year, he rejoined his fellow-labourers in Brazil in 1655. During the next five years these devoted missionaries laboured with much zeal and success among the Indians. But at the end of that period they again came into collision with the colonists, who at length forced them on board a vessel, and sent them back to Portugal. The reason, or at least pretended reason of this bold measure, was an alleged conspiracy between the missionaries and the Dutch settlers to drive the Portuguese out of the country. Meanwhile Juan IV. had died before the arrival of Vieyra and his companions at Lisbon, but they found a protectress in Louisa de Guzman, the queen regent. Their innocence having been clearly established, they returned ere long to their possessions and pious labours. Vieyra, however, remained in Portugal, for what reason we know not. It is said that he drew up the remonstrance which was about this time presented to King Alfonso by his ministers, and probably this was the cause of his being exiled in 1663 to Porto. From Porto he was, after a few months, carried to Coimbra, where he was handed over to the inquisition on an accusation of heresy. Though his orthodoxy was absolutely unquestionable, he was not liberated till the 24th of December, 1667. Vieyra then returned to Lisbon, where he remained till 1679, when he was called to Rome by the general of his order, at the solicitation of Christina, ex-queen of Sweden. That learned princess would have been glad to retain him as her confessor, but the climate did not suit his delicate constitution. Before his departure from the Eternal City, the pope, Clement X., to repair in some manner the injustice he had borne, issued a brief, freeing him from the jurisdiction of the Portuguese inquisition, and placing him immediately under the Roman congregation of cardinals president on the tribunal of the holy office. Vieyra returned to Lisbon in 1676, and two years afterwards embarked for Brazil. The rest of his life was spent in academical labours in the college of Bahia, where he died on the 18th of July, 1697, at the advanced age of eighty-nine. His works, which are all in Portuguese, were published at Lisbon in fifteen vols., 4to, between the years 1679 and 1718.—R. M., A.
VIETA, the Latinized name adopted by François Viete, the founder of modern algebra, who was born at Fontenai-le-Comte, near Rochelle, in 1540, and died about 1603. He appears to have been a member of a legal family, and was master of requests during the reign of Henry III.; he afterwards was attached in an official capacity to the household of Marguerite de Valois, the first queen of Henry IV. He rendered important services to the French government by deciphering Spanish diplomatic despatches; the Spanish court, convinced that their cipher was impenetrable to merely human skill, accused him of sorcery in a formal complaint to the pope, and got themselves laughed at. He occupied his leisure in the study and advancement of pure mathematics, to which science his services can be paralleled amongst his contemporaries by those of Napier alone. He introduced for the first time the practice of representing known as well as unknown quantities by symbols; and thereby founded the science of algebra, properly so called. He made a most important step in trigonometry, by his discovery of the relations amongst the circular functions of multiple arcs. He was the first who extended the arithmetical process of the extraction of roots to the solution of equations of the higher orders. His life was cut short while he was engaged upon a proposal for the reformation of the calendar.—W. J. M. R..
VIGILANTIUS, a presbyter of Spain, and a bold and enlightened protestant, as he may properly be called, who gave his testimony against the growing superstitions and the absurd practices of the fourth and fifth centuries. Of this witness for truth we know little or nothing more than what may be gathered by inference, taken in a contrary sense, from out of the malignant language of one of the most virulent of controvertists, the Saint Jerome of Bethlehem. Jovinian, some while before, had been anathematized, scourged, and banished to a desolate island, in attempting to raise a voice against the popular delusions, and the idolatries promoted by the church at that time. Vigilantius gave his testimony clearly and openly on the side of scripture and reason; but he retired from the storm. Vigilantius, in like manner as his predecessor Jovinian, brought into question the honours which then were paid to the ashes and relics of the martyrs, the vigils of the saints, the practice of praying to the dead, the asserted merits of celibacy, and the propriety of other ascetic practices; and he doubted the reality of the miracles alleged to be wrought at the shrines of the saints. What may be known concerning this witness and his testimony, may be seen in Jerome's intemperate tracts (adversus Jovinianum, and adversus Vigilantium); in his Epistles in defence of these tracts, addressed to Pammachius, and to Riparius. Ambrose and Augustine follow nearly in the same strain.—I. T.
