253 



VAKHUSTA. 



VALDES, JUAN. 



264 



assumed the government in the name of his father, and went to the 

 court of Persia in order to obtain the confirmation of his dignity. 

 The Shah would not grant the confirmation, except on condition of 

 Vakhtang embracing Mohammedanism, which having refused to do, 

 he was imprisoned, and his brother Jesse, who complied with the 

 condition, was put in his place. Jesso governed Kartli two years, 

 during which it suffered from internal troubles and the inroads of the 

 Lesghis. Vakhtang, who had been imprisoned all this time at 

 Ispahan, resolved, in order to restore tranquillity to his country, out- 

 wardly to conform to Mohammedanism. He thus conciliated the 

 Shah, who nominated Vakhtang his sirdar, and appointed him 

 governor of the province of Azerbijan, and sent his son Bakar to 

 govern Kartli, whence Jesse, having abjured the Islam, had retired. 

 Vakhtaug remained seven years in Persia before he was permitted to 

 return to his own country. His first care was to improve the laws 

 and the state of religion. He therefore assembled such learned men 

 as he could find, translated from the Greek the statutes of the Emperor 

 Leo the Philosopher, accommodated them to the regulations of dif- 

 ferent Armenian and Georgian kings, added to them several of his 

 own, and thus formed the code which is known by his name. He also 

 undertook the printing of the Bible, which had been, as it is believed, 

 translated as early as the 4th century from the Greek into the 

 Georgian, and corrected in the llth by three Georgian princes, monks 

 of the Iberian convent on Mount Athos. This version, being cor- 

 rupted by successive copyists, required great emendations : the 

 version of the books of the Ecclesiasticus and of the Maccabees had 

 been entirely lost. Thqse were however supplied before the printing 

 was undertaken, by Vakhtang's uncle, Archil, king of Imiritia, who, 

 being expelled from his country, died in Russia. Vakhtang established 

 at Tiflis a printing-press, and printed the Gospels, the Acts, the Psalms, 

 jvnd several liturgies and prayer-books ; but the court of Persia, per- 

 ceiving that Vakhtang, instead of following the Koran, promoted 

 Christianity, sent an army against him. Vakhtang, after having 

 defended himself for some time at Tifiis, was finally expelled ; his 

 pi'intiug establishment and all the published books which could be 

 found were destroyed; and his brother Constantino, who had become 

 a Mohammedan, was established in his place. Vakhtang called the 

 Turks to his assistance, and submitted to the authority of the Sultan ; 

 but these protectors, having occupied the country, gave the throne to 

 his brother Jesse, who again became a Mohammedan. 



In the invasions and wars between the Turks, Persians, and Af- 

 ghans, three-fourths of the population of Georgia were destroyed; 

 and Vakhtang, after having wandered a long time with his most 

 faithful adherents in the mountains, sought protection from Peter the 

 Great, who invited him to Russia. Vakhtang went to Russia, in 1725, 

 with his family, five bishops, and many inferior clergy of Georgia. 

 Peter had just died, but his successor, Catherine the First, granted 

 Vakhtang a large pension and considerable estates. Vakhtang resided 

 in Russia till 1734, but in that year he resolved to make an attempt to 

 recover his dominions by the co-operation of the Shah of Persia. The 

 empress Anna consented to Vakhtang's project, but gave him in- 

 structions how to act in Persia, and in what manner he should induce 

 the Georgians as well as the Caucasian highlanders to enter the 

 Russian service, in order to bring about their entire submission to 

 the authority of Russia. Vakhtang started for his diplomatic journey, 

 in company with a Russian general, but fell ill on his way, and died at 

 Astrakhan. His descendants exist to the present day in Russia under 

 the name of the Georgian (Gruzinski) princes. 



Vakhtaug the Sixth was a man of considerable talents and attain- 

 ments, which ia shown by his engaging in literary pursuits amidst all 

 the troubles with which his life was agitated. Rewrote the history of 

 Kartli, which is considered to contain very important materials for the 

 history of Georgia, and is known under the name of the 'Chronicle of 

 Vakhtang the Sixth.' One manuscript copy of this chronicle exists at 

 Rome, and another at St. Petersburg, in the Rumianzoff Museum. 

 Des Guignes employed it for the names of the kings of Georgia in his 

 ' Histoire des Huns,' &c. It has been also mentioned by Guldenstadt 

 and Klaproth. 



(Klaproth, Tableau du> Caucase ; Encyclopedical Dictionary of St. 

 Petersburg.) 



VAKHUSTA, a natural son of Vakhtang the Sixth, king of Kartli 

 (Georgia). He completed, with his brother, Prince Bakar, the printing 

 of the Bible in Georgian, which had been only partly done by their 

 father, Vakhtang the Sixth. He established for that purpose, in his 

 house near Moscow, a printing-press, taught the art of printing to 

 several Georgian clergymen, and completed the first edition of the 

 Bible in the language of his country in 1743. The printing-press was 

 afterwards transferred to Moscow, where several religious works in 

 Georgian were printed. Vakhusta wrote a history of Georgia, which 

 still remains in manuscript. 



VALCKENAER, LUDWIG KASPAR, a celebrated Dutch scholar, 

 was born in 1715 at Leeuwarden inFriesland. He studied at Franeker, 

 and although he had chosen philology as his department, he devoted 

 considerable time to philosophy and theology. After the completion 

 of his studies he was for a time master in a school, until, in 1741, he 

 was appointed professor of Greek at Franeker, in the place of Hem- 

 sterhuis. In 1755 he obtained the professorship of Greek and ol 

 archaeology in the university of Leyden, which office he held until his 



death in the year 1785. The life of Valckcnaer, like that of most 

 scholars, pregents few incidents worthy of note, and all that wo can 

 say of him is that ho was a very modest man, and contributed greatly 

 to maintain the high reputation of the university of Leydeo. He 

 possessed a very extensive knowledge of all the matters connected with 

 antiquity, but the department in which he excelled was his critical 

 and grammatical knowledge of the Greek language ; and what he has 

 done in this respect, partly in his editions of Greek writers and partly 

 in separate dissertations, has secured him a distinguished place among 

 the illustrious scholars of his country. Among his editions of Greek 

 authors, the following deservo especial notice: 1. The work of the 

 grammarian Ammonius, 'De Differentia adfinium Vocabulorum,' to 

 which are added some other ancient grammatical works, Leyden, 

 4to, 1739 (reprinted with some additions at Leipzig, 8vo, 1822); 2, the 

 'Phoenissse' of Euripides, with a very excellent commentary, the 

 Greek scholia, and a Latin translation by H. Grotius, Franeker, 4to, 

 1755 (reprinted at Leyden in 4to, 1802, and at Leipzig, 2 vols., 8vo, 

 1824) ; 3, the ' Hippolytus ' of Euripides, with a Latin translation by 

 Rat.-illerus, and notes by the editor, L^yden, 4to, 1768 (reprinted at 

 Leipzig, 8vo, 1823) ; 4, the ' Idyls ' of Theocritus, with a Latin version 

 by Wetstein, Leyden, 8vo, 1773. The commentary, especially that on 

 the idyl called the ' Adoniazusse,' ia full of the most exquisite gramma- 

 tical remarks. Valckenaer also wrote notes on other writers, such as 

 Herodotus and Callimachus, which were inserted in the editions of 

 others. Those on Herodotus are contained in the editions of Weasel- 

 ing and Schweighausor. Among his separate treatises, his ' Diatribe 

 in Euripidis Perditorum Dramatum Reliquias,' which is contained in 

 his edition of the ' Hippolytus,' was printed separately at Leipzig, 8vo, 

 1824. This is one of the most masterly treatises ever written on 

 matters of antiquity, and should be studied by every scholar. His 

 smaller essays were collected and published at Leipzig, in 2 vols. 

 8vo, 1808. 



VALCKENAER, JAN, the only son of Ludwig Kaspar Valcknaer, 

 was born at Leydeu, 1759. He studied jurisprudence in the univer- 

 sity of Leyden, and was afterwards appointed professor of the same 

 department in the university of Franeker. His reputation as a dis- 

 tinguished jurist, and still more his political sentiments, for he was 

 one of the leaders of the anti-Orange party, procured him in 1787 the 

 professorship of jurisprudence in the university of Utrecht. But in 

 the same year the rights and claims of the hereditary Stadtholder of 

 the Netherlands, William V., were victoriously established by the 

 armed assistance of Prussia, and Valckenaer was obliged to quit 

 Holland. The Dutch patriots, to whom Valckenaer belonged, were 

 only intimidated, but not annihilated. They looked to France for 

 support, and on the 6th of February 1793, Vaclkenaer, together with 

 other representatives of the patriots, presented himself at the bar of 

 the National Assembly of France, and requested them to send an army 

 into Holland to support the party of the patriots. In 1795 a French 

 army under Pichegru made its appearance in the Netherlands, and 

 Valckenaer returned to Holland and was appointed professor of public 

 law in the university of Leyden. He now started a patriotic journal 

 called 'The Advocate of Batavian Liberty,' which however did not last 

 long, for in the beginning of the year 1796 he was sent as ambassador 

 of the Batavian republic to Spain. He returned to Holland in 1799, 

 but was sent again in the same year as minister plenipotentiary to the 

 coxirt of Madrid. He remained there till 1801, and after his return 

 he withdrew for a time altogether from public life. But soon after 

 he was sent on a special mission to Berlin, to settle some financial 

 matters, which however had not the result which was anticipated. 

 On the 16th of March 1810, Louis Napoleon, king of Holland, sent 

 Valckenaer on a mission to Napoleon, to avert a rupture with the 

 French emperor, and to prevent, if possible, the contemplated incor- 

 poration of the Netherlands with France. A few months later Louis 

 Napoleon abdicated, and the events which followed induced Valcke- 

 naer to withdraw from public life. He spent the remainder of his days 

 in study and in the enjoyment of the company of a select circle of 

 friends, partly at Amsterdam, and partly at his country-seat near 

 Haarlem, where he died on the 25th of January 1821, at the age of 

 sixty-two. Valckenaer was an able politician and statesman, but he 

 had the misfortune to see nearly all the plans for which he had 

 struggled thwarted by the circumstances of the time. He wrote 

 several political pamphlets, which have been praised for the sound- 

 ness of their arguments and the eloquence with which they are 

 treated. 



VALDES, JUAN, or VALDESSO, GIOVANNI, a native of Spain, 

 studied law, was employed in several missions by the emperor 

 Charles V., and appears to have lived to an advanced age in retire- 

 ment at Naples. He died in 1640. He carried from Germany to 

 Italy several works of Melanchthon and other reformers, and adopted 

 several opinions condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, to which 

 he converted some of his familiar friends. Neither Valdes nor any 

 of his disciples during his life separated themselves from the Roman 

 communion; and he remained unmolested on account of his opinions, 

 although they appear to have been generally known. A similar spirit 

 of negative or latent heresy prevailed at the same time in different 

 parts of Italy, in Piedmont, at Bologna, Padua, and Vicenza. In 

 1542 the Italian governments, especially that of Naples, took the 

 alarm, and the friends of Valdes were obliged to fly or recant. Valdes 



