Vincent. January 22. Patron of Lisbon, Valencia, Saragossa, Milan, and Châlons.
Vincent de Paul. July 19. Founder of Order of the Sisters of Charity.
Vitus. June 15. Patron of Bohemia, Saxony, Sicily, and of dancers and actors (third century).
Walburga. February 25 (died ca. 778).
William. January 10. Patron of Bruges (died 1209).
Winifred. November 3. British maiden of seventh century.
VII
On the Religious Use of Various Stones
The precious stone mentioned in the earliest biblical reference, Gen. ii, 12, and there translated onyx, is rendered chrysoprase in the Septuagint version, and is by others referred to the emerald on the ground that the land of Havilah, where it is there said to occur, is thought to have been a part of what was later called Scythia, and as such would include the emerald region of the Urals. But the ancient emeralds are now known to have come largely from Upper Egypt, and such vague conjectures are of little use in determining what stone was really meant in this most ancient allusion. Professor Haupt has even suggested that we might translate the Hebrew word shoham used in this passage by “pearl,” since he conjectures that one of the four “rivers” surrounding the land of Havilah was the Persian Gulf.
For all attempted identifications of the stones mentioned in the Old Testament, we are principally dependent upon the Greek version of the Seventy. As this was made in the Alexandrian period, not far from the time of Theophrastus, whose work on gems we shall presently mention, the names at that time adopted by the Greek translators may be regarded as fairly correct equivalents of the Hebrew. The difficulty lies more in the translation of the classical names into the English, and arises largely from the unscientific nomenclature of the ancients; the same name being employed for stones that resemble each other to the eye, but which are now well distinguished by chemical and physical differences formerly unknown.