or **VIDASOA**, a small river which rises in the Western Pyrenees, in the valley of Baztan, and flows to the Atlantic near Cape Higues. On its left bank is the town of Fuenterraba, where the army of Charlemagne was defeated by the Gascons. On Oct. 7, 1813, Wellington, in his victorious career, crossed the Bidassoa at Irun, and the whole British army was encamped in France by the 10th of November.

**BIDDING PRAYER.** It was one part of the office of the deacons in the primitive Christian church to act as monitors and directors of the people in the exercise of their public devotions in the church; to which end they made use of certain known forms of words, to give notice when each part of the service began. This was called by the Greeks *exōρασμός*, and by the Latins *predicare*, which therefore does not ordinarily signify to "preach," as some mistake it, but to perform the office of crier (*κηρύξ* or *præceo*) in the assembly; and hence Synesius and others call the deacons *κηρυκεῖς*, the "holy criers" of the church, appointed to bid or exhort the congregation to pray and join in the several parts of the service of the church. Analogous to this practice is the form "Let us pray," repeated before several of the prayers in the English liturgy, and used as a sort of premon in the simpler invocations of the Presbyterian church.