The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 168

DOMAT, JEAN, a learned French jurist and friend of Pascal, regarded laws and customs as the reflex of political history (1625-1696).

DOMBASLE, an eminent French agriculturist, born at Nancy (1771-1818).

DOM-BOKE (i. e. Doom-book), a code of laws compiled by King Alfred from two prior Saxon codes, to which he prefixed the Ten Commandments of Moses, and rules of life from the Christian code of ethics.

DOMBROWSKI, JOHN HENRY, a Polish general, served in the Polish campaigns against Russia and Prussia in 1792-1794; organised a Polish legion which did good service in the wars of Napoleon; covered the retreat of the French at the Beresina in 1812 (1755-1818).

DOMDANIEL, a hall under the ocean where the evil spirits and magicians hold council under their chief and pay him homage.

DOMENICHI'NO, a celebrated Italian painter, born at Bologna; studied under Calvaert and Caracci; was of the Bolognese school, and reckoned one of the first of them; his princ.i.p.al works are his "Communion of St.

Jerome," now in the Vatican, and the "Martyrdom of St. Agnes," at Bologna, the former being regarded as his masterpiece; he was the victim of persecution at the hands of rivals; died at Naples, not without suspicion of having been poisoned (1581-1641).

DOMESDAY BOOK, the record, in 2 vols., of the survey of all the lands of England made in 1081-1086 at the instance of William the Conqueror for purposes of taxation; the survey included the whole of England, except the four northern counties and part of Lancas.h.i.+re, and was made by commissioners appointed by the king, and sent to the different districts of the country, where they held courts, and registered everything on evidence; it is a valuable doc.u.ment.

DOMINIC DE GUZMAN, ST., saint of the Catholic Church, born in Old Castile; distinguished for his zeal in the conversion of the heretic; essayed the task by simple preaching of the Word; sanctioned persecution when persuasion was of no avail; countenanced the crusade of Simon de Montfort against the Albigenses for their obstinate unbelief, and thus established a precedent which was all too relentlessly followed by the agents of the Spanish Inquisition, the chiefs of which were of the Dominican order, so that he is ignominiously remembered as the "burner and slayer of heretics" (1170-1221). Festival, Aug. 4.

DOMINICA, or DOMINIQUE (26), the largest and most southerly of the Leeward Islands, and belongs to Britain; one-half of the island is forest, and parts of it have never been explored; was discovered by Columbus on Sunday, November 3, 1493, whence its name.

DOMINICAL LETTER, one of seven letters, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, used to mark the Sundays throughout the year, so that if A denote the first Sunday, it will denote all the rest, and so on with B, C, &c., till at the end of seven years A becomes the dominical letter again.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, or ST. DOMINGO (610), a republic forming the E. part of the island of Haiti, and consisting of two-thirds of it; it belonged alternately to France and Spain till 1865, when, on revolt, the Spaniards were expelled, and a republic established; the capital is St. Domingo (15), and the chief port Puerto Plata.

DOMINICANS, a religious order of preaching friars, founded at Toulouse in 1215 by St. Dominic, to aid in the conversion of the heretic Albigenses to the faith, and finally established as the order whose special charge it was to guard the orthodoxy of the Church. The order was known by the name Black Friars in England, from their dress; and Jacobins in France, from the street of Paris in which they had their head-quarters.

DOMINIE, SAMPSON, a schoolmaster in "Guy Mannering," "a poor, modest, humble scholar, who had won his way through the cla.s.sics, but fallen to the leeward in the voyage of life."

DOMINIS, MARCO ANTONIO DE, a vacillating ecclesiastic, born in Dalmatia; was educated by the Jesuits; taught mathematics in Padua; wrote a treatise in which an explanation was for the first time given of the phenomenon of the rainbow; became archbishop of Spalatro; falling under suspicion he pa.s.sed over to England, professed Protestantism, and was made dean of Windsor; reconciled to the Papacy, returned to the Church of Rome, and left the country; his sincerity being distrusted, was cast into prison, where he died, his body being afterwards disinterred and burned (1566-1624).

DOMITIAN, Roman emperor, son of Vespasian, brother of t.i.tus, whom he succeeded in 81, the last of the twelve Caesars; exceeded the expectations of every one in the beginning of his reign, as he had given proof of a licentious and sanguinary character beforehand, but soon his conduct changed, and fulfilled the worst fears of his subjects; his vanity was wounded by the non-success of his arms, and his vengeful spirit showed itself in a wholesale murder of the citizens; many conspiracies were formed against his life, and he was at length murdered by an a.s.sa.s.sin, who had been hired by his courtiers and abetted by his wife Domitia, in 96.

DOMReMY, a small village on the Meuse, in the dep. of Vosges; the birthplace of Joan of Arc.

DON, a Russian river, the ancient Tanas; flows southward from its source in the province of Tula, and after a course of 1153 m. falls into the Sea of Azov; also the name of a river in Aberdeens.h.i.+re, and another in Yorks.h.i.+re.

DON JUAN, the member of a distinguished family of Seville, who seduces the daughter of a n.o.ble, and when confronted by her father stabs him to death in a duel; he afterwards prepares a feast and invites the stone statue of his victim to partake of it; the stone statue turns up at the least, compels Don Juan to follow him, and delivers him over to the abyss of h.e.l.l, the depths of which he had qualified himself for by his utter and absolute depravity.

DON QUIXOTE, the t.i.tle of a world-famous book written by Miguel Cervantes, in satire of the romances of chivalry with which his countrymen were so fascinated; the chief character of which gives t.i.tle to it, a worthy gentleman of La Mancha, whose head is so turned by reading tales of knight-errantry, that he fancies he is a knight-errant himself, sallies forth in quest of adventures, and encounters them in the most commonplace incidents, one of his most ridiculous extravagancies being his tilting with the windmills, and the overweening regard he has for his Dulcinea del Tobosa.

DONALDSON, JOHN WILLIAM, a philologist, born in London; Fellow of Cambridge and tutor of Trinity College; author of "New Cratylus; or Contributions towards a more Accurate Knowledge of the Greek Language," a work of great erudition and of value to scholars; contributed also to the philological study of Latin, and wrote a grammar of both languages; he failed when he intruded into the field of biblical criticism (1811-1861).

DONATELLO, a great Italian sculptor, born at Florence, where he was apprenticed to a goldsmith; tried his hand at carving in leisure hours; went to Rome and studied the monuments of ancient art; returned to Florence and executed an "Annunciation," still preserved in a chapel in Santa Croce, which was followed by marble statues of St. Peter, St. Mark, and St. George, before one of which, that of St. Mark, Michael Angelo exclaimed, "Why do you not speak to me?"; he executed tombs and figures, or groups in bronze as well as marble; his schoolmasters were the sculptors of Greece, and the real was his ultimate model (1383-1460).

DONATI, an Italian astronomer, born at Pisa; discoverer of the comet of 1858, called Donati's comet (1826-1873).

DONATISTS, a sect in N. Africa, founded by Donatus, bishop of Carthage, in the 4th century, that separated from the rest of the Church and formed itself into an exclusive community, with bishops and congregations of its own, on the ground that no one was ent.i.tled to be a member of Christ's body, or an overseer of Christ's flock, who was not of divine election, and that in the face of an attempt, backed by the Emperor Constantine, to thrust a bishop on the Church at Carthage, consecrated by an authority that had betrayed and sold the Church to the world; the members of it were subject to cruel persecutions in which they gloried, and were annihilated by the Saracens in the 7th century.

DONATUS, a Latin grammarian and rhetorician of the 4th century, the teacher of St. Jerome; the author of treatises in grammar known as Donats, and, along with the sacred Scriptures, the earliest examples of printing by means of letters cut on wooden blocks, and so appreciated as elementary treatises that they gave name to treatises of the kind on any subject; he wrote also _scholia_ to the plays of Terence.

DONAU, the German name for the Danube.

DONCASTER (26), a market and manufacturing town in the West Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re, well built, in a pleasant country, on the right bank of the Don, 33 m. S. of York; famous for its races, the St. Leger in particular, called after Colonel St. Leger, who inst.i.tuted them in 1776.

DONDRA HEAD, the southern extremity of Ceylon, once the site of the capital.

DONEGAL (185), a county in the NW. of Ireland, in the province of Ulster, the most mountainous in the country; is mossy and boggy, and is indented along the coast with bays, and fringed with islands.

DONETZ, a tributary of the Russian Don, the basin of which forms one large coal-field, reckoned to be as large as all Yorks.h.i.+re, and is reckoned one of the largest of any in the world.

DONGOLA, NEW, a town in Nubia, on the left bank of the Nile, above the third cataract, 20 N. and over 700 m. from Cairo; was founded by the Mamelukes.

DONIZETTI, a celebrated Italian composer, born at Bergamo, Lombardy, and studied at Bologna; devoted himself to dramatic music; produced over 60 operas, among the number "Lucia di Lammermoor," the "Daughter of the Regiment," "Lucrezia Borgia," and "La Favorita," all well known, and all possessing a melodious quality of the first order (1797-1848).

DONNE, JOHN, English poet and divine, born in London; a man of good degree; brought up in the Catholic faith; after weighing the claims of the Romish and Anglican communions, joined the latter; married a young lady of sixteen without consent of her father, which involved him in trouble for a time; was induced to take holy orders by King James; was made his chaplain, and finally became Dean of St. Paul's; wrote sermons, some 200 letters and essays, as well as poems, the latter, amid many defects, revealing a soul instinct with true poetic fire (1573-1631). See "Professor Saintsbury on Donne."

DONNYBROOK, a village now included in Dublin, long celebrated for its fairs and the fights it was the scene of on such occasions.