Viso, Fray Cristobal del, a Spanish painter of the 17th century, resided at Madrid, and at one time held the office of commissary -general of the Indies. He painted all the saints of the Order of San Francisco for the chapter-house of the convent of that order at Cordova. He was a monk of the same order, and died at Madrid about 1700. See Spoouer, Biog. llist.ofthe Fine A rts, s. v.
Vispered, in the Parsee philosophy, is a book of the Zendavesta (q. v.).
Visscher, Cornklis, a celebrated Dutch designer and engraver, was born at Haarlem about IGIO. He studied under Peter Soutman, but adopted a style of his own, formed by a combination of the point with the graver, in which he has hardly been equalled. His works are very numerous, and those from his own de- signs are the most esteemed. He died in 1670. Among his prints of sacred subjects may be named. The Ant/el Directing the Departure of Abraham, af lev Bassano : — .4 braham's A rricnl at Sichem, id. : — Susanna and the Elders, after Guido : — Magdalen Penitent, design doubt- ful:—T'Ae Entombment of Christ, at'ter Paul Veronese: — The Last J udginent, at'tar Kubens: — and The Holy Family. See Spooner, Biog. JJist. of the Fine Arts, s. V.
Visucius and Visiacia were Gallico- Germanic gods, of which the first, i<lentical with JNIercury, appears on a strange tablet recently found on the Neckar.
Viswamitra ( Sanscrit visn-a, " all," and mitrn, •• friend," i. e. I'riend of all the gods), an interesting char- acter in the mytht)logical history of India, was the au- thor of many hymns of the Rigveda [see Veda]; but Ids fame, which pervades all the periods of Sanscrit lit- erature, is chiefl}' founded on the remarkable fact that, though by birth a Kshattriya, or man of military caste, he succeeded in having himself admitted into the Brali-
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manic caste, after a lone contest which he had to wage a^^ainst the Kishi Vasishtha (q. v,\ From the epic poems and the Puranas, it would seem that the result of tliis contest was the elevation of Viswamitra to the rank of a Brahraana. But the later traditions rolatinc; to tins contest are otlierwise accounted fir. It is thounlit that, since the rivalry between Viswamitra and Vasishtha is alluded to in several of the Kigveda hymns, and since the caste distinction of later periods of Hinduism was not yet established, these traditions resulted from the circumstance that Sudas, a king named in the Kig- veda, who employed Vasishtha for his house-priest, al- lowed, for some unknown reason, Viswamitra also to of- ficiate for him at sacrifices; and that the latter, incur- ring on tliis ground the jealousy of Vasishtha, had to maintain by force the prerogative conferred on him by his royal master. Jlany legends are relateil concern- ing him. See Muir, Original Sanscrit Texts (Lond. 1858).
Vital, St., an early French monk, was born about 1050 at Tierceville, near iNIortain, Normandy. He left his native land to gain instruction from the most learned men of his time, was ordained, and became (about 1080) chaplain of Kobert, count of Mortain, who furnished him a prebendship in the collegial church of St. Evroul, founded by him in 1082. Vital, nevertheless, renounced his honors and emoluments (about 1091), and retired among the rocks of Mortain. The number of his fol- lowers increasing, he went (in 1093) to the forest of Craon, and afterwards to that of Fougeres. He finally (about 1105) founded an abbey in the forest of Savigny, near Mortain, dedicated to the Trinity, which was con- firmed in 1112. Tiience Vital made extended preaching tours, the fame of which reached even the papal ears. In 1120 he passed over to England, where he made many conversions. About the same time he trans- ferred to Neuf-Bourg a nunnery which he had founded near Savigny, in honor of his sister St. Adeline. He died while performing matins at the priory of Dam- pierre, Sept. 16, 1122. The monastery established bv him gave rise to many others, both in France and Eng- land, the most remarkable of \vhich were those of La Trappe, Fournmont, and Aulnoy. It finally (in 1148) passed over to the Order of Citeaux. One of the last suc- cessors of abbe Vital was Massillon. See Hoef^r, Nouv. Biog. Generale, s. v.
Vital CiiAji.M, a famous Cabalist and pupil of Isaac Loria (q. v.), was a descendant of a Calabrian family. He was born in 1543, and died in 1020. After the death of his teacher. Vital diligently collected all the manuscript notes of the lectures which Loria's dis- ciples had written down, from which, together with his own jottings, he produced the gigantic and famous system of the Cabala entitled the Tree of Life, C^'^nn VS'. This work, upon which Vitallabored over thirty years, was at first circulated in manuscript copies, and every one of the Cabalistic disciples had to pledge himself, under pain of excommunication, not to allow a copy to be made for a foreign land, so that for a time all the codices remained in Palestine. "Chajim's ex- ample," says Steinschneider, "gave a great impulse to his fertile followers, and not long afterwards, Aaron Berechja of Modena declared (in a manuscript work, 1029) that he had somewhere read that it is the duty of every stiulent to write down the princi|)les of the Cabala. With respect to the authenticity and ar- rangement of these writings, nearly all of which bear the name of Chajim, and are extant in hundreds of manuscripts (the very few that are printed having ap- peared together with other older Cabalistic works at Korez, 1784-85), we find an apparatus critiais of no less than four recensions; and Chajim himself began his comprehensive work with such care that he distin- guished what he found taught in Loria's name from what he considered as authentic tradition. But his own account of the different ways in which he arranged