V A L V A L break of the Burgundian War the bishop of Sion and the tithings made a treaty with Bern. In November of the same year (1475) they seized all Lower Valais up to Martigny, and in 1476 (March), after the victory of Granson, won St Maurice, Evian, Thonon, and Mon they. The last three districts were given up in 1477, but won again in 1536, though finally by the treaty of 1569 Monthey, Val d llliez, and Bouveret alone were permanently annexed to Valais. These conquered districts (or Lower Valais) were always ruled as subject lands by the bishop and tithings of Upper Valais. In 1533 a close alliance was made with the Catholic cantons ; but by 1551 the Protestants had won so much ground that toleration was pro claimed by the local assembly. In 1586 Upper Valais became a member of the Golden League, and finally in 1603-4 the four tithings of Conches, Brieg, Visp, and Raron carried the day in favour of the old faith against those of Leuk, Sierre, and Sion. In 1790-91 Lower Valais rose in revolt ; but it was not finally freed till 1798, when the whole of Valais became part of the Rhodanic, and then one of the cantons of the Helvetic, Republic. Such prolonged and fierce re sistance was, however, offered to French rule by the inhabitants that in 1802 Bonaparte declared Valais an independent republic, yet in 1810, for strategic reasons, he incorporated it with France as the "department of the Simplou," and it was not freed till the Austrians came in 1813. In 1815 a local assembly was created, in which each of the seven tithings of Upper and each of the six of Lower Valais (though the latter had nearly double the population of the former) elected four members, the bishop being given four votes. In 1832 Valais joined the League of Sarnen to maintain the Federal Pact of 1815. In 1838-40 it was convulsed by a struggle between the Con servative and Radical parties, the split into two half cantons being only prevented by the arrival of Federal troops. The constitution was revised in 1839 and 1844 ; the local assembly was to be elected according to population, and the bishop was given a seat instead of his four votes. In 1843 Valais was one of the Sonderbund, and in 1 844 civil war raged, many Liberals being slain at the bridge of Trient (May 1844). The introduction of the Jesuits embittered matters, and Valais was the last canton to submit in the Sonderbund War (1847) ; it contented itself, however, with voting steadily against the acceptance of the Federal constitutions of 1848 and 1874. By the constitution of 1847 all ecclesiastical immunities were swept away, and the bishop lost his seat in the assembly. That constitu tion was revised in 1852, and the present one is dated 1875. There is now a legislative assembly of 101 members, elected for four years by all male citizens of twenty years, in the proportion of one mem ber to 1000 inhabitants, and an executive council of five members, holding office for four years, and chosen by the legislative assembly, though in a certain proportion to the different districts of the canton (two for the upper part, one for Sion, two for the lower part). The " financial referendum " exists, by which when a capital expendi ture of 2400, or an annual one of 800 for three years, is to be incurred, or it is proposed to raise the property tax higher than 1J per cent., the proposal must be submitted to and approved by a popular vote. See Furrer, Gesch. von Wallis (3 vols., 1852-54); Gingins La Sarra, Developpe- ment de I liuUpendance du Ilaut Valais et Conquite du lias Valais (1844) ; anil J. Gremaud, Documents^Iielatifs a I Histoire du Valais (1875 sq.). (W. A. 13. C.) VALDEPENAS, a town of Spain, in the province of Ciudad Real, on the railway line from Madrid to Cordova, is situated in the midst of a district thickly clothed with vineyards at the foot of the northern slope of the Sierra Morena. It is a straggling place and its only industry is that of wine-making (see WINE). The population within the municipal boundaries in 1877 was 13,876. VALDES, JUAN DE (c. 1500-1541), Spanish religious writer, born about 1500 at Cuenca in Castile, was the younger of twin sons of Fernando de Valdes, hereditary regidor of Cuenca. Juan has often been confounded with his twin-brother Alphonso, who was in the suite of Charles V. in 1520, acted as his Latin secretary from 1524, and died in 1532 at Vienna. It has been conjectured that Juan studied at the university of Alcala. We first meet him as the anonymous author of a politico -religious Didlogo de Mercurio y Caron, apparently written in 1528 and published then or soon after. As this Didlogo reflected strongly on the corruptions of the Roman Church, Valdes got into difficulties with the Spanish Inquisition, and left Spain for Naples in 1530. He removed in 1531 to Rome. On 12th January 1533 he writes from Bologna, where he was in attendance upon the pope, Clement VII.; his criticisms of papal policy had been condoned, inasmuch as in his Didlogo he had defended the validity of the marriage of Catherine of Aragon to Henry VIII. But in the autumn of 1533 he returned to Naples, and seems never to have left it again. His name has been Italianized into Valdesso and Val d Esso. It has frequently been asserted that he was appointed by Charles V. as secretary to the viceroy at Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo ; but of this there is no evi dence, and it seems a "harmonizing" conjecture, based on the confusion between Alphonso and Juan. Curione (writ ing in 1544) calls him "cavalliere di Cesare," but there is no proof of his having ever held an official appointment. At his house on the Chiaja he was the centre of a very distinguished circle, literary and religious, and the influ ence of his conversations and his writings, chiefly circulated in manuscript, stimulated the desire for a spiritual refor mation of the church. The first-fruit of his cultured leisure at Naples was a philological treatise, Didlogo de la Lengua (written 1533) ; but, though his friends urged him to seek distinction by his humanistic studies, his bent was towards the spiritual problems of Biblical interpretation and the deep things of the devout life. Vermigli (Peter Martyr) and Marcantonio Flaminio were leading spirits in the coterie of Valdes, which included Vittoria Colonna and her sister-in-law Giulia Gonzaga. On Ochino, whom he furnished with themes for sermons, his influence was very great. Carnesecchi, who had known Valdes at Rome as "a modest and wellbred courtier," found him at Naples in 1540 " wholly intent upon the study of Holy Scripture," portions of which he translated from the Hebrew and Greek into Spanish, with comments and suggestive pre faces. To his teaching Carnesecchi ascribes his own com plete adoption of the Evangelical doctrine of justification by faith, and at the same time his estrangement from the policy of the Lutheran schism. Valdes died at Naples in May 1541. The death of Valdes scattered his band of associates. Ochino and Vermigli abandoned the hope of a regenerated Catholicism, and left Italy. By degrees some of Valdes s writings were translated into Italian and published. They exhibit great originality and penetration, combined with a delicate vein of semi-mystical spiritu ality, and retain a large measure of that personal charm which is attributed to their author in all contemporary notices. Llorente finds traces in Valdes of the influence of Tauler s writings ; any such influence must have been at second hand. Valdes was in re lations with Fra Benedetto of Mantua, the anonymous author of Del Beticfizio di Gesu Cristo Crocefisso, which was revised by Flaminio (reprinted by Dr Babington, Cambridge, 1855). The suggestion that Valdes was unsound on the doctrine of the Trinity was first made in 1567 by the Transylvanian bishop, Francis David (see SOCINUS, vol. xxii. p. 230) ; it has been adopted by Sand (1684), Wallace (1850), and other anti-Trinitarian writers, and is counte nanced by Bayle. Some colour has been given to this view by iso lated expressions in his writings, and by the subsequent course of Ochino, whose orthodoxy seems, however, to have been unjustly suspected, from the speculative insight with which he presented objections. But Valdes, though he never treats of the Trinity, even when commenting upon Matt, xxviii. 19, reserving it in his Lattc Spirituale as a topic for advanced Christians, explicitly affirms the eonsubstantiality of the Son, whom he unites in doxologies with the Father and the Holy Spirit (Opusc., p. 145). His interest centred in matters of practical rather than of speculative theology : his great aim was the promotion of a healthy and personal piety. The following is a list of his writings. (1) Didlogo de Mercurio y Caron, 8vo (no date or place of print ing; 1528 ?). An Italian translation, by Nicolo Franco, was printed at Venice without date, and reprinted at the same place in 1545. Both with the original and the translation is generally found a Did logo on the sack of Rome in 1527, by Alphonso de Valdes, printed at the same time. Both are ascribed to Juan in the reprint Dos Didlogos of 1850. (2) Didlogo de la Lengua, written in 1533, first printed at Madrid, 1737, reprinted 1860 and 1873. (3) Qual Maniera si devrcbbe tenere a informare . . . gli Figliuoli de Christiani dclla Cose della Rfligione (no date or place of printing ; before 1545, as it was made use of by the Italian translator of Calvin s catechism, 1545). No Spanish original is known. It was reproduced as Latte Spirituale, Basel, 1549, and Paris, 1550. A Latin version, by Pier- paolo Vergerio, was published in 1554 and again in 1557 ; it has been translated into German twice, into Polish, into English by J. T. Betts, 1882, and into Spanish by Ed. Boehmer, in Revista Cristiana, Madrid, February 1882 (also separately published). (4) Trataditos, first
published at Bonn, 1881, from a manuscript in the Palatine Library