VOLUME VIII SLICE VI Dodwell to Drama (continued 4)

(P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

DON, a river in the south of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, rising in peat-moss to the east of Glen Avon on the borders of Banffshire, at a height of nearly 2000 ft. above the sea. It follows a generally easterly course, roughly parallel with that of the Dee, and a few miles to the south of it, falling into the North Sea close to Old Aberdeen, after a run of 82 m. At the mouth the two rivers are only 21⁄3 m. apart. Like its greater neighbour, the Don is an excellent salmon stream. On the left its chief affluents are the Ernan, Nochty, Bucket and Urie; on the right, the Conrie, Carvie, Deskry and Strow. The principal places of interest on its banks are Strathdon, Towie, Kildrummy, Alford, Keig, Monymusk, Inverurie, Kintore and Dyce.

DONAGHADEE, a market town of Co. Down, Ireland, in the north parliamentary division, near the south of Belfast Lough, on the Irish Channel, 25 m. E. by N. of Belfast by a branch of the Belfast and Co. Down railway. Pop. (1901) 2073. It is the nearest port in Ireland to Great Britain, being 21½ m. S.W. of Portpatrick in Wigtownshire. Telegraph and telephone cables join these ports, but a regular passenger route does not exist owing to the unsuitability of Portpatrick. Donaghadee harbour admits vessels up to 200 tons. On the north-east side of the town there is a rath or encampment 70 ft. high, in which a powder magazine is erected. The parish church dates from 1626. There are two holy wells in the town. The town is frequented as a seaside watering-place in the summer months.

DONALDSON, SIR JAMES (1831- ), Scottish classical scholar, educational and theological writer, was born at Aberdeen on the 26th of April 1831. He was educated at Aberdeen University and New College, London. In 1854 he was appointed rector of the Stirling high school, in 1866 rector of that of Edinburgh, in 1881 professor of humanity in the university of Aberdeen, and in 1890 principal of the university of St Andrews, by the Universities (Scotland) Act. His chief works are: Modern Greek Grammar (1853); Lyra Graeca (1854), specimens of Greek lyric poetry from Callinus to Soutsos; A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council (i.-iii., 1864-1866; new ed. of i. as The Apostolical Fathers, 1874), a book unique of its kind in England at the time of its appearance and one which adds materially to the knowledge of Christian antiquities as deduced from the apostolic fathers; Lectures on the History of Education in Prussia and England (1874); The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1905); Woman, her position and influence in ancient Greece and Rome (1907). He was knighted in 1907.

DONALDSON, JOHN WILLIAM (1811-1861), English philologist and biblical critic, was born in London on the 7th of June 1811. He was educated at University College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, of which society he subsequently became fellow. In 1841 he was elected headmaster of King Edward’s school, Bury St Edmunds. In 1855 he resigned his post and returned to Cambridge, where his time was divided between literary work and private tuition. He died on the 10th of February 1861. He is remembered as a pioneer of philology in England, and as a great scholar in his day, though much of his work is now obsolete. The New Cratylus (1839), the book on which his fame mainly rests, was an attempt to apply to the Greek language the principles of comparative philology. It was founded mainly on the comparative grammar of Bopp, but a large part of it was original, Bopp’s grammar not being completed till ten years after the first edition of the Cratylus. In the Varronianus (1844) the same method was applied to Latin, Umbrian and Oscan. His Jashar (1854), written in Latin as an appeal to the learned world, and especially to German theologians, was an attempt to reconstitute the lost biblical book of Jashar from the remains of old songs and historical records, which, according to the author, are incorporated in the existing text of the Old Testament. His bold views on the nature of inspiration, and his free handling of the sacred text, aroused the anger of the theologians. Of his numerous other works the most important are The Theatre of the Greeks; The History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (a translation and completion of C. O. Müller’s unfinished work); editions of the Odes of Pindar and the Antigone of Sophocles; a Hebrew, a Greek and a Latin Grammar.

DONATELLO (diminutive of Donato) (c. 1386-1466), Italian sculptor, was the son of Niccolò di Betto Bardi, a member of the Florentine Woolcombers’ Gild, and was born in Florence probably in 1386. The date is conjectural, since the scanty contemporary records of Donatello’s life are contradictory, the earliest documentary reference to the master bearing the date 1406, when a payment is made to him as an independent sculptor. That Donatello was educated in the house of the Martelli family, as stated by Vasari, and that he owed to them his introduction to his future friend and patron, Cosimo de’ Medici, is very doubtful, in view of the fact that his father had espoused the cause of the Albizzi against the Medici, and was in consequence banished from Florence, where his property was confiscated. It is, however, certain that Donatello received his first training, according to the custom of the period, in a goldsmith’s workshop, and that he worked for a short time in Ghiberti’s studio. He was too young to enter the competition for the baptistery gates in 1402, from which Ghiberti issued victorious against Brunelleschi, Jacopo della Quercia, Niccolò d’Arezzo and other rivals. But when Brunelleschi in his disappointment left Florence and went to Rome to study the remains of classic art he was accompanied by young Donatello. Whilst pursuing their studies and excavations on classic soil, which made them talked about amongst the Romans of the day as “treasure seekers,” the two young men made a living by working at the goldsmiths’ shops. This Roman sojourn was decisive for the entire development of Italian art in the 15th century, for it was during this period that Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome and of other Roman buildings, which enabled him to construct the noble cupola of S. Maria del Fiore in Florence, while Donatello acquired his knowledge of classic forms and ornamentation. The two masters, each in his own sphere, were to become the leading spirits in the art movement of the 15th century. Brunelleschi’s buildings and Donatello’s monuments are the supreme expression of the spirit of the early Renaissance in architecture and sculpture and exercised a potent influence upon the painters of that age.

Donatello probably did not return to Florence before 1405, since the earliest works in that city that can be traced to his chisel are two small statues of “prophets” for the north door of the cathedral, for which he received payment in November 1406 and in the beginning of 1408. In the latter year he was entrusted with the important commissions for the marble “David,” now at the Bargello, and for the colossal seated figure of “St John the Evangelist,” which until 1588 occupied a niche of the old cathedral façade, and is now placed in a dark chapel of the Duomo. We find him next employed at Or San Michele, where between 1340 and 1406 only four of the fourteen niches had been filled. As the result of a reminder sent by the Signory to the gilds who had undertaken to furnish the statues, the services of Ciuffagni, Nanni di Banco, Ghiberti and Donatello were enlisted, and Donatello completed between 1412 and 1415 the “St Peter,” the “St George” (the original, now in the Bargello, has been replaced by a copy) and the “St Mark.” He probably also assisted Nanni di Banco in his group of four saints. To this early period—in spite of Dr Bode’s contention, who places it about twenty years later—belongs the wooden crucifix in S. Croce, the most striking instance of Donatello’s realism in rendering the human form and his first attempt at carving the nude. It is said that this crucifix was executed in rivalry with Brunelleschi’s noble work at S. Maria Novella, and that Donatello, at the sight of his friend’s work, exclaimed, “It has been left to you to shape a real Christ, whilst I have made a peasant.” In this early group of statues, from the prophets for the cathedral door to the “St George,” can be followed the gradual advance from Gothic stiffness of attitude and draping to a forceful rendering of the human form and of movement, which is a distinct approach to the classic ideal; from the massiveness of the heavily draped figure to easy poise and muscular litheness. All these figures were carved in marble and are admirably conceived in relation to their architectural setting. In fact, so strong is this tendency that the “St Mark,” when inspected at the master’s workshop, was disapproved of by the heads of the Gild of Linen-weavers, but aroused public enthusiasm when placed in situ, and at a later date received Michelangelo’s unstinted admiration.

Between the completion of the niches for Or San Michele and his second journey to Rome in 1433, Donatello was chiefly occupied with statuary work for the campanile and the cathedral, though from this period dates the bronze figure of the Baptist for the christening font of Orvieto Cathedral, which was never delivered and is now among the treasures of the Berlin museum. This, and the “St Louis of Toulouse,” which originally occupied a niche at Or San Michele and is now badly placed at S. Croce, were the first works in bronze which owed their origin to the partnership of Donatello with Michelozzo, who undertook the casting of the models supplied by his senior. The marble statues for the campanile, which are either proved to be Donatello’s by documentary evidence or can be recognized as his work from their style, are the “Abraham,” wrought by the master in conjunction with Giovanni di Bartolo (il Rosso); the “St John the Baptist”; the so-called “Zuccone” (Jonah?); “Jeremiah”; “Habakuk” (?); the unknown “prophet” who is supposed to bear the features of the humanist Poggio Bracciolini; and possibly he may have had a share in the completion of the “Joshua” commenced by Ciuffagni in 1415. All these statues, and the “St John” at the Bargello, mark a bold departure from the statuesque balance of the “St Mark” and “St George” to an almost instantaneous impression of life. The fall of the draperies is no longer arranged in harmonious lines, but is treated in an accidental, massive, bold manner. At the same time the heads are no longer, as it were, impersonal, but almost cruelly realistic character portraits of actual people, just as the arms and legs and necks are faithfully copied from life with all their angularities and deviations from the lines of beauty. During this period Donatello executed some work for the baptismal font at S. Giovanni in Siena, which Jacopo della Quercia and his assistants had begun in 1416. Though the Florentine’s share in it is confined to a relief which may have been designed, or even begun, by Jacopo, and a few statuettes, it is of considerable importance in Donatello’s life-work, as it includes his first attempt at relief sculpture—except the marble relief on the socle of the “St George”—his first female figures,—“Faith” and “Hope,” and his first putti. The relief, “Herod’s Feast,” shows already that power of dramatic narration and the skill of expressing the depth of space by varying the treatment from plastic roundness to the finest stiacciato, which was to find its mature expression in the panels of the altar of S. Antonio in Padua and of the pulpit of S. Lorenzo in Florence. The casting of the pieces for the Siena font was probably done by Michelozzo, who is also credited with an important share in the next two monumental works, in the designing of which Donatello had to face a new problem—the tomb of John XXIII. in the baptistery (begun about 1425), and that of Cardinal Brancacci at S. Angelo a Nilo in Naples (executed in Pisa, 1427). The noble recumbent figure of the defunct on the former, the relief on the sarcophagus, and the whole architectural design, are unquestionably due to Donatello; the figure of the pope is the most beautiful tomb figure of the 15th century, and served as the model on which Rossellino, Desiderio, and other sculptors of the following period based their treatment of similar problems. Donatello’s share in the Naples monument is probably confined to the characteristic low relief of the “Ascension.” The baptistery tomb shows how completely Donatello had mastered the forms of Renaissance architecture, even before his second visit to Rome. An earlier proof of his knowledge of classic art is his niche for the “St Louis” at Or S. Michele, now occupied by Verrocchio’s “Christ and St Thomas.” Similar in treatment to the “Ascension” relief is the “Charge to St Peter” at South Kensington, which is almost impressionistic in its suggestion of distance and intervening atmosphere expressed by the extreme slightness of the relief. Another important work of this period, and not, as Vasari maintains, of Donatello’s youth, is the “Annunciation” relief, with its wealth of delicately wrought Renaissance motifs in the architectural setting.

When Cosimo, the greatest art patron of his time, was exiled from Florence in 1433, Michelozzo accompanied him to Venice, whilst Donatello for the second time went to Rome to drink once more at the source of classic art. The two works which still testify to his presence in this city, the “Tomb of Giovanni Crivelli” at S. Maria in Aracoeli, and the “Ciborium” at St Peter’s, bear the stamp of classic influence. Donatello’s return to Florence in the following year almost coincides with Cosimo’s. Almost immediately, in May 1434, he signed a contract for the marble pulpit on the façade of Prato cathedral, the last work executed in collaboration with Michelozzo, a veritable bacchanalian dance of half-nude putti, pagan in spirit, passionate in its wonderful rhythmic movement—the forerunner of the “singing tribune” for Florence cathedral, at which he worked intermittently from 1433 to 1440, and which is now restored to its original complete form at the museum of the Opera del Duomo. But Donatello’s greatest achievement of his “classic period” is the bronze “David” at the Bargello, the first nude statue of the Renaissance, the first figure conceived in the round, independent of any architectural surroundings—graceful, well-proportioned, superbly balanced, suggestive of Greek art in the simplification of form, and yet realistic, without any striving after ideal proportions. The same tendencies are to be noted in the bronze putto at the Bargello.

In 1443 Donatello was invited to Padua to undertake the decoration of the high altar of S. Antonio, but in the period preceding his departure he not only assisted Brunelleschi in the decoration of the sacristy of S. Lorenzo, towards which the bronze doors are his chief contribution, but found time to chisel, or model in wax or terra-cotta, for Cosimo and other private patrons, most of the portrait busts and small reliefs, which are now distributed over the museums of the world. His first work in Padua was the bronze crucifix for the high altar, a work immeasurably superior to the early wooden crucifix at S. Croce, both as regards nobility of expression and subtlety of form. In the very year when Donatello arrived in Padua the famous Condottiere Erasmo de’ Narni, called Gattamelata, had died, and when it was decided to honour his memory with an equestrian statue, it was only natural that this master should be chosen to undertake a task from the difficulties of which all others may well have shrunk—had shrunk, indeed, since classic times. This commission, and the reliefs and figures for the high altar, kept Donatello in Padua for ten years, though during that time he visited Venice (where he carved the wooden “St John” at the Frari) and probably Mantua, Ferrara and Modena. At least, he was in communication with of Borso d’Este of Modena about a project for an equestrian statue, and had to give expert opinion about two equestrian statues at Ferrara. In his workshop in Padua he gathered around him quite a small army of assistants, stone-carvers, metal-workers, painters, gilders and bronze-casters. The Gattamelata was finished and set up in 1453—a work powerful and majestic in its very repose; there is no striving for dramatic effect, no exaggerated muscular action, but the whole thing is dominated by the strong, energetic head, which is modelled with the searching realism of the Zuccone and the Poggio heads. The high altar, for which Donatello executed twenty-two reliefs, seven statues and the crucifix, was completed in 1450, but had subsequently to undergo many changes, in the course of which the original disposition of the sculptures was entirely lost sight of, the present arrangement being due to Camillo Boito (1895). The chief features of the altar are the wonderfully animated and dramatic bronze reliefs, four in number, of the “Miracles of St Anthony.”

With the exception of another visit to Siena in 1457, of which the bronze “St John” in the cathedral is a reminder, Donatello spent the remaining years of his life in Florence. Closely akin to the rugged “St John” at Siena, and therefore probably contemporaneous, is the repulsively ugly, emaciated “Magdalen” at the baptistery in Florence. The dramatic intensity of the “Judith” group in the Loggia de’ Lanzi, which was originally placed in the court of the Medici Palace, marks it as belonging to the post-Paduan period of the master’s life. His last work of importance was the bronze reliefs for the pulpit of S. Lorenzo, commissioned about 1460, and finished after Donatello’s death by his pupil Bertoldo. The reliefs of the “Flagellation” and “Crucifixion” at the Victoria and Albert Museum are typical examples of the master’s style at this closing period of his life. He died on the 13th of December 1466.

As happened subsequently to Velazquez and Frans Hals, Donatello, whose supreme mastery had been acknowledged by Michelangelo, Raphael and the other giants of the late Renaissance, almost sank into oblivion during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and only in comparatively recent times has he been restored to the eminent position which is his due in the history of art. The full power of his genius was only revealed to the world when, at the quincentenary celebration of his birth, the greater part of his life-work was brought together in Florence. The large hall at the Bargello has ever since been devoted to the display of his works, the numerous original bronzes and marbles and terra-cottas being supplemented by casts of works at other places, such as the colossal Gattamelata monument.

Authorities.—Before the date of the Florence exhibition in 1886 the only books on the subject of Donatello—apart from references in general histories of art—were Pastor’s Donatello (Giessen, 1882) and Semper’s Donatello, seine Zeit und seine Schule (Vienna, 1875). Since then the great Florentine sculptor has received attention from many of the leading art writers, though England has only contributed a not very complete record of his life and work by Hope Rea, Donatello (London, 1900), and an excellent critical study by Lord Balcarres, Donatello (London, 1903), besides a translation of A. G. Meyer’s fully illustrated and exhaustive monograph in the Knackfuss series (London, 1904). Other notable books on the subject are:—Eugène Müntz, Donatello (Paris, 1885), and in the series of Les Artistes célèbres (Paris, 1890); Schmarzow, Donatello (Breslau, 1886); Cavalucci, Vita ed opere del Donatello (Milan, 1886); Tschudi, Donatello e la critica moderna (Turin, 1887); Reymond, Donatello (Florence, 1899); and Bode, Florentiner Bildhauer der Renaissance (Donatello als Architekt und Dekorator, Die Madonnenreliefs Donatellos) (Berlin, 1902).

(P. G. K.)

DONATI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1826-1873), Italian astronomer, was born at Pisa on the 16th of December 1826. He entered the observatory of Florence as a student in 1852, became assistant to G. B. Amici in 1854, and was appointed in 1864 to succeed him as director. A new observatory at Arcetri near Florence, built under his supervision, was completed in 1872. During the ten years 1854-1864 Donati discovered six comets, one of which, first seen on the 2nd of June 1858, bears his name (see Comet). He observed the total solar eclipse of the 18th of July 1860, at Torreblanca in Spain, and in the same year began experiments in stellar spectroscopy. In 1862 he published a memoir, Intorno alle strie degli spettri stellari, which indicated the feasibility of a physical classification of the stars; and on the 5th of August 1864 discovered the gaseous composition of comets by submitting to prismatic analysis the light of one then visible. An investigation of the great aurora of the 4th of February 1872 led him to refer such phenomena to a distinct branch of science, designated by him “cosmical meteorology”; but he was not destined to prosecute the subject. Attending the International Meteorological Congress of August 1873 at Vienna, he fell ill of cholera, and died a few hours after his arrival at Arcetri, on the 20th of September 1873.

See Vierteljahrsschrift der astr. Gesellschaft (Leipzig), ix. 4; Monthly Notices Roy. Astr. Society, xxxiv. 153; Memorie degli spettroscopisti italiani, ii. 125 (G. Cacciatore); Nature, viii. 556; &c.

(A. M. C.)

DONATIO MORTIS CAUSA (grant in case of death), in law, a gift of personal property made in contemplation of death and intended either expressly or impliedly to take complete effect only if the donor dies of the illness affecting him at the time of the gift. The conception as well as the name is borrowed from Roman law, and the definition given by Justinian (Inst. ii. 7. 1) applies equally to a donatio mortis causa in Roman and English law. A distinction, however, has arisen between the English and civil codes; by English law delivery either actual or (when from the nature of the thing actual delivery is impossible) constructive is essential, and this delivery must pass not only the possession but the dominion of the thing given; by the civil law, in some cases at least, delivery of possession was not essential (see the judgment of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke in Ward v. Turner, 1751, 2 Ves. sen. 431, where the whole question is exhaustively discussed). A donatio mortis causa stands halfway between a gift inter vivos and a legacy, and has some of the characteristics of each form of disposition. It resembles a legacy in that (1) it is revocable during the donor’s life, (2) it is subject to legacy and estate duty, and (3) it is liable to satisfy debts of the testator in default of other assets. On the other hand, it resembles a gift inter vivos in that it takes effect from delivery; therefore the consent of the executor is not necessary. Anything may be the subject of a donatio mortis causa, the absolute property in which can be made to pass by delivery after the donor’s death either in law or equity; this will cover bankers’ deposit notes, bills of exchange, and notes and cheques of a third person, but not promissory notes and cheques of the donor in favour of the donee, for the donor’s signature is merely an authority for his banker to pay, which is revoked by his death.

DONATION OF CONSTANTINE (Donatio Constantini), the supposed grant by the emperor Constantine, in gratitude for his conversion by Pope Silvester, to that pope and his successors for ever, not only of spiritual supremacy over the other great patriarchates and over all matters of faith and worship, but also of temporal dominion over Rome, Italy and “the provinces, places and civitates of the western regions.” The famous document, known as the Constitutum Constantini and compounded of various elements (notably the apocryphal Vita S. Silvestri), was forged at Rome some time between the middle and end of the 8th century, was included in the 9th century in the collection known as the False Decretals, two centuries later was incorporated in the Decretum by a pupil of Gratian, and in Gibbon’s day was still “enrolled among the decrees of the canon law,” though already rejected “by the tacit or modest censure of the advocates of the Roman church.” It is now universally admitted to be a gross forgery.1 In spite, however, of Gibbon’s characteristic scepticism on this point, it is certain that the Constitutum was regarded as genuine both by the friends and the enemies of the papal pretensions throughout the middle ages.2 Though no use of it was made by the popes during the 9th and 10th centuries, it was quoted as authoritative by eminent ecclesiastics of the Frankish empire (e.g. by Ado of Vienne and Hincmar of Reims), and it was employed by two Frankish popes, Gregory V. and Silvester II., in urging certain territorial claims. But not till 1050 was it made the basis of the larger papal claims, when another Frankish pope, Leo IX., used it in his controversy with the Byzantines. From this time forward it was increasingly used by popes and canonists in support of the papal pretensions, and from the 12th century onwards became a powerful weapon of the spiritual against the temporal powers. It is, however, as Cardinal Hergenröther points out, possible to exaggerate its importance in this respect; a charter purporting to be a grant by an emperor to a pope of spiritual as well as temporal jurisdiction was at best a double-edged weapon; and the popes generally preferred to base their claim to universal sovereignty on their direct commission as vicars of God. By the partisans of the Empire, on the other hand, the Donation was looked upon as the fons et origo malorum, and Constantine was regarded as having, in his new-born zeal, betrayed his imperial trust. The expression of this opinion is not uncommon in medieval literature (e.g. Walther von der Vogelweide, Pfeiffer’s edition, 1880, Nos. 85 and 164), the most famous instance being in the Inferno of Dante (xix. 115):

“Ahi, Costantin, di questo mal fu matre Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!”

The genuineness of the Constitutum was first critically assailed by Laurentius Valla in 1440, whose De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio opened a controversy that lasted until, at the close of the 18th century, the defence was silenced. In modern times the controversy as to the genuineness of the document has been succeeded by a debate scarcely less lively as to its date, its authorship and place of origin. The efforts of Roman Catholic scholars have been directed (since Baronius ascribed the forgery to the Greeks) to proving that the fraud was not committed at Rome. Thus Cardinal Hergenröther holds that it was written by a Frank in the 9th century, in order to prove that the Greeks had been rightfully expelled from Italy and that Charlemagne was legitimate emperor. This view, with variations, was maintained by the writer of an article in the Civiltà cattolica in 1864 (Serie v. vol. x. pp. 303, &c.) and supported by Grauert, who maintains that the document was concocted at the abbey of St Denis, after 840. The evidence now available, however, confirms those who ascribe an earlier date to the forgery and place it at Rome. The view held by Gibbon and Döllinger among others,3 that the Constitutum is referred to in the letter of Pope Adrian I. to Charlemagne (778), is now indeed largely rejected; there is nothing in the letter to make such an assumption safe, and the same must be said of Friedrich’s attempt to find such reference in the letter addressed in 785 by the same pope to Constantine VI., emperor of the East, and his mother Irene. Still less safe is it to ascribe the authorship of the forgery to any particular pope on the ground of its style; for papal letters were drawn up in the papal chancery and the style employed there was apt to persist through several pontificates. Friedrich’s theory that the Constitutum is a composite document, part written in the 7th century, part added by Paul I. when a deacon under Stephen II., though supported by a wealth of learning, has been torn to tatters by more than one critic (G. Krüger, L. Loening).

On one point, however, a fair amount of agreement seems now to have been reached, a result due to the labour in collating documents of Scheffer-Boichorst, namely, that the style of the Constitutum is generally that of the papal chancery in the latter half of the 8th century. This being granted, there is room for plentiful speculation as to where and why it was concocted. We may still hold the opinion of Döllinger that it was intended to impress the barbarian Pippin and justify in his eyes the Frank intervention in favour of the pope in Italy; or we may share the view of Loening (rejected by Brunner, Rechtsgeschichte) that the forgery was a pious fraud on the part of a cleric of the Curia, committed under Adrian I.,4 with the idea of giving a legal basis to territorial dominion which that pope had succeeded in establishing in Italy. The donations of Pippin and Charlemagne established him as sovereign de facto; the donation of Constantine was to proclaim him as sovereign de jure. It is significant in this connexion that it was under Adrian (c. 774) that the papal chancery ceased to date by the regnal years of the Eastern emperor and substituted that of the pontificate. Döllinger’s view is supported and carried a step further by H. Böhmer, who by an ingenious argument endeavours to prove that the Constitutum was forged in 753, probably by the notary Christophorus, and was carried with him by Pope Stephen II. to the court of Pippin, in 754, with an eye to the acquisition of the Exarchate. In support of this argument it is to be noted that the forged document first appears at the abbey of St Denis, where Stephen spent the winter months of 754. E. Mayer, on the other hand, denies that the Constitutum can have been forged before the news of the iconoclastic decrees of the council of Constantinople of 754 had reached Rome. He lays stress on the relation of the supposed confession of faith of Constantine, embodied in the forgery, to that issued by the emperor Constantine V., pointing out the efforts made by the Byzantines between 756 and the synod of Gentilly in 767 to detach Pippin from the cause of Rome and the holy images. The forgery thus had a double object: as a weapon against Byzantine heresy and as a defence of the papal patrimony. As the result of an exhaustive analysis of the text and of the political and religious events of the time, Mayer comes to the conclusion that the document was forged about 775, i.e. at the time when Charlemagne was beginning to reverse the policy by which in 774 he had confirmed the possession of the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento to the pope.

Bibliography.—See Döllinger, Papstfabeln des Mittelalters (Munich, 1863; Eng. trans. A. Plummer, 1871); “Janus,” Der Pabst und das Konzil (Munich, 1869; Eng. trans. 1869); Hergenröther, Catholic Church and Christian State (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1872; Eng. trans. 2 vols. 1876); W. Martens, Die römische Frage unter Pippin u. Karl d. Grossen (Stuttgart, 1881), with text; H. Grauert, “Die Konstantinische Schenkung” in Hist. Jahrb. der Gorres-Gesellsch. iii. (1882), iv. (1883); Langen, “Entstehung u. Tendenz der Konst. Schenkungsurkunde” in Sybel’s Hist. Zeitschr. l. (1883); L. Weiland, “Die Konst. Schenkung” in Zeitschr. f. Kirchenrecht, xxii. (1887-1888), maintains that the Constitutum was forged at Rome between 813 and 875, in connexion with the papal claim to crown the emperors; H. Brunner and K. Zeumer, Die Konstantinische Schenkungsurkunde (Berlin, 1888; Festgaben für R. v. Gneist), with text; Friedrich, Die Konst. Schenkung (Nördlingen, 1889), with text; W. Martens, Die falsche Generalkonzession Konstantins des Grossen (Munich, 1889); P. Scheffer-Boichorst, “Neue Forschungen über die Konst. Schenkung,” i. ii. Mitteilungen des Instituts für österr. Geschichtsforschung, x. (1889), xi. (1890); G. Krüger, “Die Frage der Entstehungszeit der Konst. Schenkung,” in Theologische Literaturzeitung, xiv. (1889); J. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vol. vii. p. 135 (Oxford, 1899); article “Konstantinische Schenkung,” G. H. Böhmer, in Herzog-Hauck, Realencykl. (1902); E. Mayer, “Die Schenkungen Konstantins und Pipins” in Deutsche Zeitschr. für Kirchenrecht (Tübingen, 1904). Laurentius Valla’s treatise was issued in a new edition, with French translation and historical introduction, by A. Bonneau, La Donation de Constantin (Lisieux, 1879).

(W. A. P.)

1 Dr Hodgkin’s suggestion (Italy and her Invaders, vii. p. 153) that the Constitutum may have been originally a mere pious romance, recognized as such by its author and his contemporaries, and laid up in the papal archives until its origin was forgotten, is wholly inconsistent with the unquestioned results of the critical analysis of the text.

2 Leo of Vercelli, the emperor Otto III.’s chancellor, protested that the Constitutum was a forgery, but without effect. The attacks upon it by the heretical followers of Arnold of Brescia (1152) convinced neither the partisans of the pope nor those of the emperor.

3 So Langen (1883) and E. Mayer (1904).

4 This is also W. Mayer’s view in his later work. In his Die römische Frage (1881) he had placed the forgery in 805 or 806.

DONATISTS, a powerful sect which arose in the Christian church of northern Africa at the beginning of the 4th century.1 In its doctrine it sprang from the same roots, and in its history it had in many things the same character, as the earlier Novatians. The predisposing causes of the Donatist schism were the belief, early introduced into the African church, that the validity of all sacerdotal acts depended upon the personal character of the agent, and the question, arising out of that belief, as to the eligibility for sacerdotal office of the traditores, or those who had delivered up their copies of the Scriptures under the compulsion of the Diocletian persecution; the exciting cause was the election of a successor to Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, who died in 311. Mensurius had held moderate views as to the treatment of the traditores, and accordingly a strong fanatical party had formed itself in Carthage in opposition to him, headed by a wealthy and influential widow named Lucilla, and countenanced by Secundus of Tigisis, episcopus primae sedis in Numidia. There were thus two parties, each anxious to secure the succession to the vacant see. The friends of the late bishop fixed their choice on Caecilian, the archdeacon, and secured his election and his consecration by Felix, the bishop of Aptunga, before the other party were ready for action. It had been customary for the Numidian bishops to be present at the election and consecration of the bishop of Carthage, who as metropolitan of proconsular Africa occupied a position of primacy towards all the African provinces. Caecilian’s party, however, had not waited for them, knowing them to be in sympathy with their opponents. Soon after Caecilian’s consecration, Secundus sent a commission to Carthage, which appointed an interventor temporarily to administer the bishopric which they regarded as vacant. Then Secundus himself with seventy of the Numidian bishops arrived at Carthage. A synod of Africa was formed, before which Caecilian was summoned; his consecration was declared invalid, on the ground that Felix had been a traditor; and finally, having refused to obey the summons to appear, he was excommunicated, and the lector Majorinus, a dependant of Lucilla’s, consecrated in his stead. This synod forbade the African churches to hold communion with Caecilian, the schism became overt, and in a very short time there were rival bishops and rival churches throughout the whole province.

It was soon clear, by the exclusion of the “Pars Majorini” from certain privileges conferred on the African church, that the sympathies of Constantine were with the other party (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. x. 6, 7). To investigate the dispute an imperial commission was issued to five Gallic bishops, under the presidency of Melchiades, bishop of Rome. The number of referees was afterwards increased to twenty, and the case was tried at Rome in 313.2 Ten bishops appeared on each side, the leading representative of the Donatists being Donatus of Casae Nigrae. The decision was entirely in favour of Caecilian, and Donatus was found guilty of various ecclesiastical offences. An appeal was taken and allowed; but the decision of the synod of Arles in 314 not only confirmed the position of Caecilian, but greatly strengthened it by passing a canon that ordination was not invalid because performed by a traditor, if otherwise regular. Felix had previously been declared innocent after an examination of records and witnesses at Carthage. A further appeal to the emperor in person was heard at Milan in 316, when all points were finally decided in favour of Caecilian, probably on the advice of Hosius, bishop of Cordova. Henceforward the power of the state was directed to the suppression of the defeated party. Persistent Donatists were no longer merely heretics; they were rebels and incurred the confiscation of their church property and the forfeiture of their civil rights.

The attempt to destroy the sect by force had the result of intensifying its fanaticism. Majorinus, the Donatist bishop of Carthage, died in 315, and was succeeded by Donatus, surnamed Magnus, a man of great force of character, under whose influence the schism gained fresh strength from the opposition it encountered. Force was met with force; the Circumcelliones, bands of fugitive slaves and vagrant (circum cellas) peasants, attached themselves to the Donatists, and their violence reached such a height as to threaten civil war. In 321 Constantine, seeing probably that he had been wrong in abandoning his usual policy of toleration, sought to retrace his steps by granting the Donatists liberty to act according to their consciences, and declaring that the points in dispute between them and the orthodox should be left to the judgment of God. This wise policy, to which he consistently adhered to the close of his reign, was not followed by his son and successor Constans, who, after repeated attempts to win over the sect by bribes, resorted to persecution. The renewed excesses of the Circumcelliones, among whom were ranged fugitive slaves, debtors and political malcontents of all kinds, had given to the Donatist schism a revolutionary aspect; and its forcible suppression may therefore have seemed to Constans even more necessary for the preservation of the empire than for the vindication of orthodoxy. The power which they had been the first to invoke having thus declared so emphatically and persistently against them, the Donatists revived the old world-alien Christianity of the days of persecution, and repeated Tertullian’s question, “What has the emperor to do with the church?” (Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?) Such an attitude aggravated the lawlessness of the Circumcellion adherents of the sect, and their outrages were in turn made the justification for the most rigorous measures against the whole Donatist party indiscriminately. Many of their bishops fell victims to the persecution, and Donatus (Magnus) and several others were banished from their sees.

With the accession of Julian (361) an entire change took place in the treatment of the Donatists. Their churches were restored and their bishops reinstated (Parmenianus succeeding the deceased Donatus at Carthage), with the natural result of greatly increasing both the numbers and the enthusiasm of the party. A return to the earlier policy of repression was made under Valentinian I. and Gratian, by whom the Donatist churches were again closed, and all their assemblies forbidden. It was not, however, until the commencement of the 5th century that the sect began to decline, owing largely to the rise among them of a group of moderate and scholarly men like the grammarian Tychonius, who vainly strove to overcome the more fanatical section. Against the house thus divided against itself both state and church directed not unsuccessful assaults. In 405 an edict was issued by the emperor Honorius commanding the Donatists, under the severest penalties, to return to the Catholic church. On the other hand, Augustine, bishop of Hippo, after several years’ negotiation, arranged a great conference between the Donatists and the orthodox, which was held under the authority of the emperor at Carthage in 411. There were present 286 Catholics and 279 Donatist bishops. Before entering on the proceedings the Catholics pledged themselves, if defeated, to give up their sees, while in the other event they promised to recognize the Donatists as bishops on their simply declaring their adherence to the Catholic church. The latter proposal, though it was received with scorn at the time, had perhaps ultimately as much influence as the logic of Augustine in breaking the strength of the schism. The discussion, which lasted for three days, Augustine and Aurelius of Carthage being the chief speakers on the one side, and Primian and Petilian on the other, turned exclusively upon the two questions that had given rise to the schism—first, the question of fact, whether Felix of Aptunga who consecrated Caecilian had been a traditor; and secondly, the question of doctrine, whether a church by tolerance of unworthy members within its pale lost the essential attributes of purity and catholicity. The Donatist position, like that of the Novatians, was that the mark of the true church is to guard the essential predicate of holiness by excluding all who have committed mortal sin; the Catholic standpoint was that such holiness is not destroyed by the presence of unworthy members in the church but rests upon the divine foundation of the church and upon the gift of the Holy Spirit and the communication of grace through the priesthood. In the words of Optatus of Milevi, sanctitas de sacramentis colligitur, non de superbia personarum pondera. And the much wider diffusion of the orthodox church was also taken as practical confirmation that it alone possessed what was regarded as the equally essential predicate of catholicity.

The decision of Marcellinus, the imperial commissioner, was in favour of the Catholic party on both questions, and it was at once confirmed on an appeal to the emperor. The severest penal measures were enforced against the schismatics; in 414 they were denied all civil rights, in 415 the holding of assemblies was forbidden on pain of death. But they lived on, suffering with their orthodox brethren in the Vandal invasions of the 5th century, and like them finally disappearing before the Saracen onslaught two centuries later.

Authorities.—1. Contemporary sources: Optatus Milevitanus De Schismate Donatistarum adversus Parmenianum, written c. 368 (Dupin’s ed., Paris, 1700), and several of the works of Augustine. 2. Modern: C. W. F. Walch, Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der Ketzereien (Leipzig, 1768); Hauck-Herzog, Realencyk. für prot. Theol., art. “Donatismus” by N. Bonwetsch, who cites the literature very fully; W. Möller, History of the Christian Church (vol. i. pp. 331 ff., 445 ff.); D. Völter, Der Ursprung des Donatismus (Freiburg, 1883).

1 There were three prominent men named Donatus connected with the movement—Donatus of Casae Nigrae; Donatus surnamed Magnus, who succeeded Majorinus as the Donatist bishop of Carthage; and Donatus of Bagoi, a leader of the circumcelliones, who was captured and executed c. 350. The name of the sect was derived from the second of these. The Donatists themselves repudiated the designation, which was applied to them by their opponents as a reproach. They called themselves “Pars Majorini” or “Pars Donati.”

2 The Donatist movement affords a valuable illustration of the new importance which the changed position of the church under Constantine gave to the synodal system of ecclesiastical legislation.

DONATUS, AELIUS, Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric, flourished in the middle of the 4th century a.d. The only fact known regarding his life is that he was the tutor of St Jerome. He was the author of a number of professional works, of which there are still extant:—Ars grammatica; the larger portion of his commentary on Terence (a compilation from other commentaries), but probably not in its original form; and a few fragments of his notes on Virgil, preserved and severely criticized by Servius, together with the preface and introduction, and life of Virgil. The first of these works, and especially the section on the eight parts of speech, though possessing little claim to originality, and in fact evidently based on the same authorities which were used by the grammarians Charisius and Diomedes, attained such popularity as a school-book that in the middle ages the writer’s name, like the French Calepin, became a common metonymy (in the form donet) for a rudimentary treatise of any sort. On the introduction of printing editions of the little book were multiplied to an enormous extent. It is extant in the form of an Ars Minor, which only treats of the parts of speech, and an Ars Major, which deals with grammar in general at greater length.

Aelius Donatus is to be distinguished from Tiberius Claudius Donatus, the author of a commentary (Interpretationes) on the Aeneid (of far less value than that of Servius), who lived about fifty years later.

The best text of the Ars and the commentaries upon it by Servius and others is in H. Keil, Grammatici Latini, iv.; of the commentary on Terence there is an edition by P. Wessner (1902, Teubner series), with bibliography and full account of MSS. See generally E. A. Gräfenhan, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie im Altertum, iv. (1850); P. Rosenstock, De Donato, Terenti ... explicatore (1886); H. T. Karsten, De comm. Don. ad Terenti fabulas origine et compositione (Leiden, 1907). For the commentary of Tiberius Donatus see O. Ribbeck, Prolegomena to Virgil, Gräfenhan (as above), and V. Burkas, De Tiberii Claudii Donati in Aeneidem commentario (1889). The text will be found in G. Fabricius’s edition of Virgil (1561), ed. by H. George, i. (1905 foll.).

DONAUWÖRTH, a town of Germany in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the left bank of the Danube, at the confluence of the Wörnitz, 25 m. N. of Augsburg by rail and at the junction of lines to Ulm and Ingolstadt. Pop. 5000. It is an ancient town and has several medieval buildings of interest. Notable among its seven churches (six Roman Catholic) are the Kloster-Kirche (monasterial), a beautiful Gothic edifice with the sarcophagus of Maria of Brabant, and that of the former Benedictine abbey, Heilig-Kreuz, with a lofty tower. Remarkable among secular buildings are the Gothic town hall, and the so-called Tanz-haus, which now includes both a theatre and a school. The industries embrace machinery, brewing and saw-milling; the place is of some importance as a river port, and the centre of a considerable agricultural trade.

Donauwörth grew up in the course of the 11th and 12th centuries under the protection of the castle of Mangoldstein, became in the 13th a seat of the duke of Upper Bavaria, who, however, soon withdrew to Munich to escape from the manes of his wife Maria of Brabant, whom he had there beheaded on an unfounded suspicion of infidelity. The town received the freedom of the Empire in 1308, and maintained its position in spite of the encroachments of Bavaria till 1607, when the interference of the Protestant inhabitants with the abbot of the Heilig-Kreuz called forth an imperial law authorizing the duke of Bavaria to inflict chastisement for the offence. In the Thirty Years’ War it was stormed by Gustavus Adolphus (1632), and captured by King Ferdinand (1634). In the vicinity, on the Schellenberg, the Bavarians and French were defeated by Marlborough and Prince Louis of Baden on the 2nd of July 1704. The imperial freedom restored to the town by Joseph I. in 1705 was again lost by reincorporation with Bavaria in 1714. In the neighbourhood the Austrians under Mack were, on the 6th of October 1805, decisively defeated by the French under Soult.

See Königsdörfer, Geschichte des Klosters zum Heiligen Kreuz in Donauwörth (1819-20).

DON BENÍTO, a town of western Spain, in the province of Badajoz; near the left bank of the river Guadiana, on the Madrid-Badajoz-Lisbon railway. Pop. (1900) 16,565. Don Beníto is a thriving and comparatively modern town; for it dates only from the 15th century, when it was founded by refugees from Don Llorente, who deserted their own town owing to the danger of floods from the Guadiana. Besides manufactures of brandy, flour, oil, soap, linen and cloth, it has an active trade in wheat, wine and fruit, especially melons.

DONCASTER, a market-town and municipal borough in the Doncaster parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 156 m. N. by W. from London. Pop. (1901) 28,932. It lies in a flat plain on the river Don, with slight hills rising westward. It is an important station on the Great Northern railway, whose principal locomotive and carriage works are here, and it is also served by the North Eastern, Great Eastern, Great Central, Lancashire & Yorkshire, and Midland railways. The Don affords intercommunication with Goole and the Humber. The parish church of St George, occupying the site of an older structure of the same name, destroyed by fire in 1853, was finished in 1858 under the direction of Sir G. G. Scott. It is a fine cruciform structure of Decorated character, with a central tower 170 ft. high, and contains a particularly fine organ. St James’s church was erected, under the same architect and Lord Grimthorpe, by the Great Northern railway company. Other important buildings are the town hall, mansion house, free library and art school, corn exchange and markets. The grammar school was founded in 1553 and reorganized in 1862. Doncaster race-meetings are widely famous. The racecourse lies 1 m. S.E. of the town. The old course is 1 m. 7 fur. 70 yds. in length, and the Sandall course of 1 m. was added in 1892. The grand stand was erected in 1777, but there are several additional stands. Races have long been held at Doncaster, and there was a stand on the course before the year 1615. The St Leger takes its name from Lieut.-General St Leger, who originated the race in 1776; but it was not so named till 1778. The meetings are held in the second week of September. A system of electric tramways connects the town with its principal suburbs. The agricultural trade is extensive, and there are iron, brass and agricultural machine works. Doncaster lies on the outskirts of a populous district extending up the valley of the Don. Two miles S.W. is the urban district of Balby-with-Hexthorpe (pop. 6781); and 7 m. S. is that of Tickhill, where there are remains of a Norman castle. Wheatley (3579) lies 2 m. N.E. The borough of Doncaster is under a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen councillors. Area, 1695 acres.

History.—There was a Roman station here, and numerous remains of the Roman period have been found. In the reign of Edward the Confessor, Doncaster, as a berewic of the manor of Hexthorp, belonged to Earl Tostig; but before 1086 it had been granted to Robert, earl of Mortain, whose successor William was attainted for treason in the time of Henry I. The overlordship then fell to the crown, and the families of Frossard, Mauley and Salvin successively held the manor as underlords. Doncaster was evidently a borough held of the crown for a fee farm rent before 1194, when Richard I. granted and confirmed to the burgesses their soke and town to hold by the ancient rent and by twenty-five marks yearly. The town was incorporated in 1467 by Edward IV., who granted a gild merchant and appointed that the town should be governed by a mayor and two serjeants-at-mace elected every year by the burgesses. Henry VII., while confirming this charter in 1505, granted further that the burgesses should hold their town and soke with all the manors in the soke on payment of a fee farm. He also by another charter in 1508 confirmed letters patent granted by Peter de Mauley in 1341, by which the latter renounced to the inhabitants of Doncaster all the manorial claims which he had upon them, with the “pernicious customs” which his ancestors claimed from bakers, brewers, butchers, fishers and wind-fallen trees. In 1623 Ralph Salvin tried to regain the manor of Doncaster from the mayor and burgesses, who, fearing that the case would go against them, agreed to pay about £3000, in return for which he gave up his claim to all the manors in the soke. Charles II. in 1664 gave the town a new charter, granting that it should be governed by a mayor, twelve aldermen and twenty-four capital burgesses, but since this was not enrolled and was therefore of no effect the burgesses obtained another charter from James II. in 1684 by which the town was governed until the Municipal Corporation Act. In 1200 a fair at Doncaster on the vigil and day of St James the Apostle was confirmed to Robert de Turnham, who held the manor in right of his wife, with the addition of an extra day, for which he had to give the king two palfreys worth 100 s. each. By the charter of 1194 the burgesses received licence to hold a fair on the vigil, feast and morrow of the Annunciation, and this with the fair on St James’s day was confirmed to them by Henry VII. in 1505. The fairs and markets are still held under these charters.

See Victoria County History, Yorkshire; Edward Miller, The History and Antiquities of Doncaster (1828-1831); Calendar to the Records of the Borough of Doncaster, published by the Corporation.

DON COSSACKS, TERRITORY OF THE (Russ. Donskaya Oblast), a government of S.E. Russia, bounded W. by the governments of Voronezh, Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav, S.W. by the Sea of Azov, S. by the governments of Kuban and Stavropol, and E. by those of Astrakhan and Saratov. Area, 63,532 sq. m. Pop. 1,010,135 in 1867, 2,585,920 in 1897 and 3,125,400 (estimate) in 1906. It belongs almost entirely to the region of the South Russian steppes, but in the N., W. and S.W. presents more the aspects of elevated plains gapped with ravine-like river-courses, while in the S.E., towards the Manych depression, it passes over into the arid Aral-Caspian steppes (e.g. Zadonsk Steppe), dotted over with salt lakes. Geologically the region is made up of Carboniferous limestones, clay slates and sandstones, containing anthracite and coal; of Cretaceous marls, chalk, sandstone and greensands—chalk cliffs, in fact, accompany the Don for 200 m.; and of Miocene limestones and clays. The surface, especially W. of the Don, is the fertile black earth, intermingled here and there, especially in the Zadonsk Steppe, with clay impregnated with salt. The government is drained by the Don and its tributaries, of which the Donets, Chir and Mius enter from the right and the Khoper and Medvyeditsa from the left. The Don is navigable throughout the government, and at Kalach is connected by a railway, 45 m. long, with Tsaritsyn on the Volga, routes by which an enormous amount of heavy merchandise is transported. The climate is continental and dry, the average temperatures being—year 43° Fahr., January 13°, July 72° at Uryupina (in 50° 48´ N.; alt. 92 ft.); and year 48°, January 21°, July 73° at Taganrog. The annual rainfall at the same two places is 13.4 and 17.4 in. respectively. Forests cover only 2% of the area.

Nearly one-half of the population are Cossacks, the other ethnological groups being (1897) 27,234 Armenians, 2255 Greeks, 1267 Albanians, 16,000 Jews and some 30,000 Kalmuck Tatars, who are Lamaists in religion. Nearly all the rest of the people, except the Jews and about 3000 Mahommedans, belong to the Orthodox Eastern Church. The Cossacks own nearly 30,000,000 acres of land. The government is well provided with schools, especially on the Cossack territory. Agriculture is the principal occupation, but the crops vary very greatly from year to year, owing to deficiency of rain. Vines are cultivated on a large scale, and tobacco is grown in the south. Cattle-breeding is important, and there are fine breeds of horses and large flocks of sheep. Productive fisheries are carried on at the mouth of the Don. Nearly 13,000 persons are engaged in coal-mining; the coalfields form part of the vast Donets coal basin (10,420 sq. m., with a total output of nearly 13,000,000 tons annually). Some iron ore, gypsum, salt and limestone are also produced. The principal branches of manufacturing industry are flour-milling, potteries, ironworks and tobacco factories. The exports consist chiefly of cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, wine, fish and hides. The government is under the administration of the ministry of war, and is divided into nine districts—Donets (chief town, Kamenskaya with 23,576 inhabitants in 1897), First Don district (Konstantinovskaya, 8800), Second Don district (Nizhne-Chirskaya, 15,196), Rostov (Rostov-on-Don, 119,889), Salsky (Velikoknyazheskaya), Taganrog (Taganrog, 58,928 in 1900), Ust-medvyeditsa (Ust-medvyeditsa, 16,000), Khoper (Uryupina, 9600), Cherkasky (Novo-cherkassk, 52,005). The capital of the government is Novo-cherkassk. Many of the Cossack stanitsas (villages) are very populous.

(P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

DONEGAL, a county in the extreme north-west of Ireland, in the province of Ulster, bounded N. and W. by the Atlantic Ocean, E. by Lough Foyle and the counties Londonderry and Tyrone, and S. by Donegal Bay and the counties Fermanagh and Leitrim. The area is 1,197,153 acres, or about 1871 sq. m., the county being the largest in Ireland after Cork and Mayo. This portion of the country possesses little natural wealth; its physical characteristics are against easy communications, and although its northern coast affords one or two good natural harbours, there is no commercial inducement to take advantage of them. The fine scenery and other natural attractions of Donegal thus remained practically unknown until late in the 19th century, but an effort was then made by Lord George Hill to introduce wealth from without into the county, and to develop its resources in this, almost the only possible direction. The county possesses a large extent of sea-coast indented by numerous inlets. Ballyshannon harbour, the most southern of these, is small, and has a bar at its mouth, as has Donegal harbour farther north. Killybegs harbour is well sheltered, and capable of receiving large vessels. These, with Bruckles or M’Swiney’s Bay, and Teelin harbour, suitable for small vessels, are arms of the fine inlet of Donegal Bay. The western shore is beautified by the indentations of Loughros Beg, Gweebarra, Trawenagh and Inishfree Bays. On the north is Sheephaven, within which is Dunfanaghy Bay, where the largest ships may lie in safety, as they may also in Mulroy Bay and Lough Swilly farther east. Lough Foyle, which divides Donegal from Londonderry, is a noble sheet of water, but is shallow and in part dry at ebb tide, contracted at its entrance, and encumbered with shoals. A few miles west of Malin Head, the most northerly point of the mainland of Ireland, the varied and extensive Lough Swilly runs far into the interior. From these two loughs much land has been reclaimed. Numerous islands and rocks stud the coast. The largest island is North Aran, about 15 m. in circumference, with a lofty hill in its centre, and a gradual declivity down to the sea. On the northern coast are Tory Island, and, farther east, Inishtrahull, the ultima Thule of Ireland. The inhabitants of these islands obtain a precarious livelihood by fishing, kelp-burning and rude husbandry, but are often reduced to extreme destitution.

Mountains and irregular groups of highlands occupy the whole interior of the county, and a considerable portion is bog and moorland. Errigal mountain in the north-west attains an elevation of 2466 ft. and commands from its summit a fine view over a considerable portion of the country. In its vicinity, the Derryveagh mountains reach 2240 ft. in Slieve Snaght; Muckish is 2197 ft.; in the south Bluestack reaches 2219 ft.; and in the Innishowen peninsula between Loughs Swilly and Foyle, another Slieve Snaght is 2019 ft. in elevation. At the western extremity of the north coast of Donegal Bay stands Slieve League, whose western flank consists of a mighty cliff, descending almost sheer to the Atlantic, exhibiting beautiful variegated colouring, and reaching an extreme height of 1972 ft. From these details it will appear that the scenery of the highlands and the sea-coast often attain a character of savage and romantic grandeur; whereas the eastern and southern portions are generally less elevated and more fertile, but still possess considerable beauty. A considerable portion of the surface, however, is occupied by bogs, and entirely destitute of timber.

With the exception of the tidal river Foyle, which forms the boundary between this county and Tyrone and Londonderry, the rivers, though numerous, are of small size. The branches of the Foyle which rise in Donegal are the Derg, issuing from Lough Derg, and the Finn, rising in the beautiful little lake of the same name in the highlands, and passing through some of the best cultivated land in the county. The Foyle, augmented by their contributions, and by those of several other branches from the counties Tyrone and Londonderry, proceeds northward, discharging its waters into the southern extremity of Lough Foyle, at the city of Londonderry. It is navigable for vessels of large burden to this place, and thence by lighters of fifty tons as far as Lifford. Boats of fourteen tons can proceed up the Finn river as far as Castlefinn. The fine river Erne flows from Lough Erne through the southern extremity of the county into the southern extremity of Donegal Bay. Its navigation is prevented by a fall of 12 ft., generally called the Salmon Leap, in the neighbourhood of Ballyshannon, and by rapids between Ballyshannon and Belleek, on the confines of Co. Fermanagh. The Gweebarra, the Owenea, and the Eask are the only other streams of any note. Lakes are very numerous in Donegal. The most remarkable, and also the largest, is Lough Derg, comprising within its waters several islets, on one of which, Station Island, is the cave named St Patrick’s Purgatory, a celebrated place of resort for pilgrims and devotees. The circumference of the lake is about 9 m., and the extent of the island to which the pilgrims are ferried over is less than 1 acre. The landscape round Lough Derg is desolate and sombre in the extreme, barren moors and heathy hills surrounding it on all sides. Salmon, sea-trout and brown trout afford sport in most of the rivers and loughs, and Glenties for the Owenea river, and Gweedore for the Clady, in the west; Killybegs for the Eanymore and Eask, in the south; and Rathmelton and Rosapenna for the Owencarrow and Leannan, in the north, may be mentioned as centres. Ballyshannon and Bundoran, in the extreme south, are centres for the Erne and other waters outside the county.

Geology.—The dominant feature in the geology of this county is the north-east and south-west strike forced upon the older rocks during earth-movements that set in at the close of Silurian times. The granite that forms characteristically the core of the folds is probably of the same age as that of Leinster, or may possibly represent older igneous masses, brought into a general parallelism during the main epoch of stress. The oldest recognizable series of rocks is the Dalradian, and its quartzites form the white summits of Muckish, Errigal and Aghla. The intruding granite, which predominates in the north-west, has frequently united with the metamorphic series to form composite gneiss. In the southern mass near Pettigo, once regarded as Archaean and fundamental, residual “eyes” of the hornblendic rocks that are associated with the Dalradian series remain floating, as it were, in the gneiss. North of this, the country is wilder, consisting largely of mica-schist, through which a grand mass of unfoliated granite rises at Barnesmore. The course of the Gweebarra, or Glen Beagh, of the Glendowan mountains, and the Aghla ridge, have all been determined by the general strike imparted to the country. At Donegal Bay the Lower Carboniferous sandstone and limestone come in as a synclinal, and the limestone extends to Bundoran. Small Carboniferous outliers on the summits of the great cliff of Slieve League show the former extension of these strata. Bog iron-ore is raised as a gas-purifier; and talc-schist has been worked for steatite at Crohy Head. In most parts of the west the patches of glacial drift form the only agricultural land. The fine-grained sandstone of Mount Charles near Donegal is a well-known building stone, and the granites of the north-west have attracted much attention.

Industries.—The modes of agriculture present little that is peculiar to the county, and the spade still supplies the place of the plough where the rocky nature of the surface prevents the application of the latter implement. The soil of the greater portion of the county, i.e. the granite, quartz and mica slate districts, is thin and cold, while that on the carboniferous limestone is warm and friable. Owing to the boggy nature of the soil, agriculture has not made much progress, although in certain districts (Gweedore, for instance) much land has been brought under cultivation through the enterprise of the proprietors. Roughly speaking, however, about 45% of the land is waste, 35% pasture and 15% tillage. Wheat and barley are quite an inconsiderable crop, and in this as well as in other respects Donegal is much behind the rest of Ulster in the extent of its crops. It bears, however, a more favourable comparison as regards its live stock, as cattle, sheep and poultry are extensively kept.

In Donegal, as in other counties of Ulster, the linen manufacture affords employment to a number of inhabitants, especially at Raphoe, while the manufacture of excellent homespun, woollen stockings and worked muslin is carried on pretty extensively. The trade in these manufactures and in the domestic produce of the county finds its principal outlets through the port of Londonderry and the inland town of Strabane, Co. Tyrone. The deep-sea fisheries are important, and are centred at Killybegs, Gweedore and Rathmullen. The salmon fishery is also prosecuted to a considerable extent, the principal seats of the trade being at Ballyshannon and Letterkenny.

The railway system includes the County Donegal railway from Londonderry south-west to Donegal town and Killybegs, with branches to Glenties, a village near the west coast, and to Ballyshannon; and the Londonderry and Lough Swilly, serving Letterkenny, and continuing to Burtonport with a branch north to Buncrana, a watering-place on Lough Swilly, and Cardonagh in the Innishowen peninsula. From Letterkenny the line continues to Dunfanaghy on the north coast, thence to Gweedore and Burtonport.

Population and Administration.—The population (185,635 in 1891; 173,722 in 1901) decreases less seriously than in most Irish counties, though the proportion of emigrants is large. About 78% of the population is Roman Catholic, and almost the whole is rural. The native Erse naturally dies out slowly in this remote county, and the Donegal dialect is said to be the purest in the Irish language. The towns are small in extent and importance. Lifford (pop. 446), the county town, is practically a suburb of Strabane, in the neighbouring Co. Tyrone. Ballyshannon (2359) on the river Erne, Letterkenny (2370) at the head of Lough Swilly, and Donegal (1214) at the head of the bay of that name, are the other principal towns. The principal watering-places are Moville on Lough Foyle, Buncrana and Rathmelton on Lough Swilly; while, following the coast from north to south, Rosapenna, Dunfanaghy, Gweedore, Dungloe and Ardara, with Bundoran in the extreme south, are seaside villages frequently visited. Resorts deserving mention for the attractive scenery for which they are centres, are—Ardara, on the Owenea river, where the cliffs of the neighbouring coast are particularly fine; Carrick, Malin Head, the beautiful land-locked bay of Mulroy, Narin on Boylagh Bay, Portsalon on Lough Swilly, and Stranorlar, a small market town near the fine mountain pass of Barnesmore.

Donegal contains seven baronies and fifty parishes. Assizes are held at Lifford, and quarter sessions at Ballyshannon, Buncrana, Donegal, Cardonagh, Glenties, Letterkenny and Lifford. The county is in the Protestant dioceses of Clogher and Derry, and the Roman Catholic dioceses of Raphoe, Clogher and Derry. The county returned twelve members to the Irish parliament; after the Union it returned two; but it is now divided into north, east, south and west divisions, each returning one member.

History and Antiquities.—The greater part of Donegal was anciently called Tyrconnell (q.v.) or the country of Conall; and it was sometimes called O’Donnell’s country, after the head chieftains of the district. This district was formed into the county of Donegal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in 1585, by the lord-deputy Sir John Perrott. The most noteworthy architectural remains of antiquity in the county are to be found at the head of Lough Swilly, where, situated on the summit of a hill 802 ft. high, some remarkable remains exist of a fortress or palace of the northern Irish kings. These are known as the Grianan of Aileach, and evidently date from a period prior to the 12th century. On Tory Island there are one of the best specimens of a round tower and some other interesting remains. Numerous ruins of ancient castles along the coast prove that much attention was formerly paid to the defence of the country from invasion. The principal are—Kilbarron Castle, an ancient stronghold of the O’Clerys, near Ballyshannon; Donegal Castle, built by the O’Donnells, anciently their chief residence, and now a fine ruin standing close to the water’s edge; Burt Castle, built in the reign of Henry VIII. on the shores of Lough Swilly by Sir Cahir O’Dogherty, to whom is also attributed the erection of Green Castle, one of the strongholds of the clan on Lough Foyle. Near the Castle of Doe, or M’Swiney’s Castle, at Horn Head, is a natural perforation in the roof of a cave, called M’Swiney’s Gun, formed by the workings of the ocean into the overhanging cliff. When the wind blows due north, and the tide is at half flood, the gun is seen to spout up jets of water to a height of 100 ft., attended with explosions heard occasionally in favourable weather at an immense distance. Gulmore Fort, on the coast of Lough Swilly, supposed to have been erected by the O’Doghertys, having come into the possession of the crown, was granted in 1609 to the corporation of London. It was afterwards enlarged or rebuilt, and acted a prominent part in the celebrated siege of Derry. Traces of religious houses, some existing only in traditionary or documental records, are also numerous. The ruins of that of Donegal, founded in 1474, afford proofs of its ancient grandeur. At Raphoe, 5 m. N.W. of Lifford, is the cathedral of a former diocese united to that of Derry in 1835.

DONEGAL, a small seaport and market town of Co. Donegal, Ireland (not, as its name would suggest, the county town, which is Lifford), in the south parliamentary division, at the head of Donegal Bay, and the mouth of the river Eask, on the Donegal railway. Pop. (1901) 1214. Its trade in agricultural produce is hampered by the unsatisfactory condition of its harbour, the approach to which is beset with shoals. Here are the ruins of a fine Jacobean castle, occupying the site of a fortress of the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell, but built by Sir Basil Brooke in 1610. There are also considerable remains of a Franciscan monastery, founded in 1474 by one of the O’Donnells, and here were compiled the famous “Annals of the Four Masters,” a record of Irish history completed in 1636 by one Michael O’Clery and his coadjutors. There is a chalybeate well near the town, and 7½ m. S., at Ballintra, a small stream forms a series of limestone caverns known as the Pullins. Donegal received a charter from James I., and returned two members to the Irish parliament. The name is said to signify the “fortress of the foreigners,” and to allude to a settlement by the Northmen.

DONELSON, FORT, an entrenched camp at Dover, Tennessee, U.S.A., erected by the Confederates in the Civil War to guard the lower Cumberland river, and taken by the Federals on the 16th of February 1862. It consisted of two continuous lines of entrenchments on the land side, and water batteries commanding the river. After the capture (Feb. 6) of Fort Henry on the lower Tennessee the Union army (three divisions) under Brigadier-General U. S. Grant marched overland to invest Donelson, and the gunboat flotilla (Commodore A. H. Foote) descended the Tennessee and ascended the Cumberland to meet him. Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederate commander in Kentucky, had thrown a large garrison under General Floyd into Donelson, and Grant was at first outnumbered; though continually reinforced, the latter had at no time more than three men to the Confederates’ two. The troops of both sides were untrained but eager.

On the 12th and 13th of February 1862 the Union divisions, skirmishing heavily, took up their positions investing the fort, and on the 14th Foote’s gunboats attacked the water batteries. The latter received a severe repulse, Foote himself being amongst the wounded, and soon afterwards the Confederates determined to cut their way through Grant’s lines. On the 15th General Pillow attacked the Federal division of McClernand and drove it off the Nashville road; having done this, however, he halted, and even retired. Grant ordered General C. F. Smith’s division to assault a part of the lines which had been denuded of its defenders in order to reinforce Pillow. Smith personally led his young volunteers in the charge and carried all before him. The Confederates returning from the sortie were quite unable to shake his hold on the captured works, and, Grant having reinforced McClernand with Lew Wallace’s division, these two generals reoccupied the lost position on the Nashville road. On the 16th, the two senior Confederate generals Floyd and Pillow having escaped by steamer, the infantry left in the fort under General S. B. Buckner surrendered unconditionally. The Confederate cavalry under Colonel Forrest made its escape by road. The prisoners numbered about 15,000 out of an original total of 18,000.

DONGA, a Bantu word for a ravine, narrow watercourse or gully formed by the action of water. Adopted by the European residents of South Africa from the Kaffirs, the use of the word has been extended by English writers to ravines or watercourses of the nature indicated in various other parts of the world. It is almost equivalent to the Arabic khor, which, however, also means the dry bed of a stream, or a stream flowing through a ravine. The Indian word nullah (properly a watercourse) has also the same significance. The three words are often used interchangeably by English writers.

DONGOLA, a mudiria (province) of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It lies wholly within the region known as Nubia and extends along both banks of the Nile from about 18° N. to 20° N. The rainfall is very slight, and the area of fertility is mainly confined to the lands watered by the Nile. Beyond stretches eastward the Nubian desert, westward the Libyan desert. The Wadi el Kab (Gab), west of and parallel to the Nile, contains, however, a good deal of arable land. This wadi, which is some 63 m. long, obtains water by percolation from the Nile. Farther west is the extensive plateau of Jebel Abiad, and beyond, some 250 m. due west of Debba, is Bir Natron, or Bir Sultan, a valley whence natron is obtained. In this desert region is found the addax, the rarest of Sudan antelopes. The chief grain crops are durra and barley, and date palms are extensively cultivated. The province is also noted for a breed of strong, hardy horses. The largest town is Dongola, but the administrative headquarters of the mudiria are at New Merawi (Merowe, Meroe), on the left bank of the Nile, below the 4th cataract. Other towns, also on the Nile, are Debba and Korti, whence start caravan routes to Kordofan and Omdurman. At Jebel Barkal, in the neighbourhood of Merawi, and elsewhere in the mudiria, are ancient ruins (see Sudan: Anglo-Egyptian). Old Merawi, on the right bank of the Nile, and Sanam Abu Dom, on the left bank, indicate the site of the Ethiopian city of Napata. From Kareima, on the right or northern bank of the Nile, 6 m. above New Merawi, a railway (opened in March 1906) runs to Abu Hamed, whence there is railway connexion with the Red Sea, Khartum and Egypt. From Kareima downstream the Nile is navigable to Kerma, just above the 3rd cataract. Between 1896 and 1904 a railway ran between Kerma and Wadi Halfa. In the last-named year this railway was closed. It had been built for purely military purposes and was unremunerative as a commerical undertaking.

The Dongolese (Dongolawi, Danaglas, Danagalehs) are Nubas in type and language, but have a large admixture of Arab, Turk and other blood. They are great agriculturists and keen traders, and were notorious slave-dealers. South of Old Dongola the inhabitants are not Nubians but Shagia (q.v.), and the Nubian tongue is replaced by Arabic. Of the nomad desert tribes the chief are the Hawawir and Kabbabish.

The country now forming the mudiria was once part of the ancient empire of Ethiopia (q.v.), Napata being one of its capital cities. From about the beginning of the Christian era the chief tribes in the region immediately south of Egypt were the Blemmyes and the Nobatae. The last named became converted to Christianity about the middle of the 6th century, through the instrumentality, it is stated, of the empress Theodora. A chieftain of the Nobatae, named Silko, between the middle and the close of that century, conquered the Blemmyes, founded a new state, apparently on the ruins of that of the southern Meroe (Bakarawiya), made Christianity the official religion of the country, and fixed his capital at (Old) Dongola. This state, now generally referred to as the Christian kingdom of Dongola, lasted for eight or nine hundred years. Though late in reaching Nubia, Christianity, after the wars of Silko, spread rapidly, and when the Arab conquerors of Egypt sought to subdue Nubia also they met with stout resistance. Dongola, however, was captured by the Moslems in 652, and the country laid under tribute (bakt)—400 men having to be sent yearly to Egypt. This tribute was paid when it could be enforced; at periods the Nubians gained the upper hand, as in 737 when Cyriacus, their then king, marched into Egypt with a large army to redress the grievances of the Copts. There is a record of an embassy sent by a king Zacharias in the 9th century to Bagdad concerning the tribute, while by the close of the 10th century the Nubians seem to have regained almost complete independence. They did not, however, possess any part of the Red Sea coast, which was held by the Egyptians, who, during the 9th and 10th centuries, worked the emerald and gold mines between the Nile and the Red Sea. The kingdom, according to the Armenian historian Abu Salih, was in a very flourishing condition in the 12th century. It then extended from Assuan southward to the 4th cataract, and contained several large cities. Gold and copper mines were worked. The liturgy used was in Greek. In 1173 Shams addaula, a brother of Saladin, attacked the Nubians, captured the city of Ibrim (Primis), and among other deeds destroyed 700 pigs found therein. The Egyptians then retired, and for about 100 years the country was at peace. In 1275 the Mameluke sultan Bibars aided a rebel prince to oust his uncle from the throne of Nubia; the sultans Kalaun and Nasir also sent expeditions to Dongola, which was several times captured. Though willing to pay tribute to the Moslems, the Nubians clung tenaciously to Christianity, and, despite the raids to which the country was subjected, it appears during the 12th and 13th centuries to have been fairly prosperous. No serious attempt was made by the Egyptians to penetrate south of Napata, nor is it certain how far south of that place the authority of the Dongola kingdom (sometimes known as Mukarra) extended. It was neighboured on the south by another Christian state, Aloa (Alwa), with its capital Soba on the Blue Nile.

Cut off more and more from free intercourse with the Copts in Egypt, the Nubian Christians at length began to embrace Jewish and Mahommedan doctrines; the decay of the state was hastened by dissensions between Mukarra and Aloa. Nevertheless, the Nubians were strong enough to invade upper Egypt during the reign of Nawaya Krestos (1342-1372), because the governor of Cairo had thrown the patriarch of Alexandria into prison. The date usually assigned for the overthrow of the Christian kingdom is 1351. Only the northern part of the country (as far as the 3rd cataract) came under the rule of Egypt. Nevertheless, according to Leo Africanus, at the close of the 15th century Christianity and native states still survived in Nubia, and in the 16th century the Nubians sent messengers to Abyssinia to Father Alvarez, begging him to appoint priests to administer the sacraments to them—a request with which he was not able to comply. Thereafter the Nubian Church is without records. The Moslems may have extinguished it in blood, for the region between Dongola and Shendi appears to have been depopulated. Between Assuan and Hannek the Turks introduced in the 16th century numbers of Bosnians, whose descendants ruled the district, paying but a nominal allegiance to the Porte. At Ibrim, Mahass, and elsewhere along the banks and in the islands of the Nile, they built castles, now in ruins. South of Hannek the kings of Sennar became overlords of the country. As the power of the Sennari declined, the nomad Shagia (or Shaikiyeh) attained pre-eminence in the Dongola district.

About 1812 Mamelukes fleeing from Mehemet Ali, the pasha of Egypt, made themselves masters of part of the country, destroying the old capital and building a new one lower down the Nile. In 1820 both Mamelukes and Shagia were conquered by the Egyptians, and the Dongola province annexed to Egypt. In consequence of the rising of the Dervishes Egypt evacuated Dongola in 1886. The attempt to set up an independent government failed, and the Dervishes held the town until September 1896, when it was reoccupied by an Egyptian force.

See J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia (London, 1819); Naum Bey Shucair, The History and Geography of the Sudan (in Arabic, 3 vols., Cairo, 1903); E. A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Sudan (2 vols., London, 1907).

DONGOLA, a town of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which gives its name to a mudiria. It is situated on the W. bank of the Nile, about 45 m. above the 3rd cataract, in 19° 10′ N., 30° 29′ E. Pop. about 10,000. It is 1082 m. S. of Cairo by river and 638 m. N. of Khartum by the same route. Its commerical outlet, however, is Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, 600 m. E.S.E. by steamer and railway. It is a thriving, well-built town; an important agricultural and trading centre. Lignite is found on the east bank of the Nile opposite the town. Founded c. 1812 by Mamelukes who fled to Nubia from the persecutions of Mehemet Ali, the town is called Dongola Makara (New Dongola) to distinguish it from Dongola Agusa (Old Dongola), which it supplanted. It is also called El Ordi (the barracks), a reminiscence of the buildings erected by the Egyptians after their occupation of the town in 1820. The Mahdi Mahommed Ahmed was a native of Dongola. In 1884-1885 the town was the base of the British troops in their advance on Khartum.

Dongola Agusa, 75 m. upstream from New Dongola, now a heap of ruins, was the capital of the Nubian state usually called the Christian kingdom of Dongola. An Arab historian of the 11th century describes it as a large city with many churches, fine houses and wide streets. It is said to have been finally destroyed by the Mamelukes. On a hill near the ruins is a mosque in which is an Arabic inscription stating that the building was opened “on the 20th Rabi el Aneh in the year 717 (June 1, 1317 a.d.) after the victory of Sefeddin Abdallah en Nasir over the Infidels.”

DONIZETTI, GAETANO (1798-1848), Italian musical composer, was born at Bergamo in 1798, the son of a government official of limited means. Originally destined for the bar, he showed at an early age a strong taste for art. At first, strangely enough, he mistook architecture for his vocation, and only after an unsuccessful trial in that direction did he discover his real talent. He entered the conservatoire of his native city, where he studied under Simon Mayr, the fertile operatic composer. His second master was Mattei, the head master of the celebrated music school of Bologna, where Donizetti resided for three years. After his return to Bergamo the young composer determined to devote himself to dramatic music, but his father insisted upon his giving lessons with a view to immediate gain. The disputes arising from this cause ultimately led to Donizetti’s enlisting in the army. But this desperate step proved beneficial against all expectation. The regiment was quartered at Venice, and here the young composer’s first dramatic attempt, an opera called Enrico comte di Borgogna, saw the light in 1818.

The success of this work, and of a second opera brought out in the following year, established Donizetti’s reputation. He obtained his discharge from the army, and henceforth his operas followed each other in rapid and uninterrupted succession at the rate of three or four a year. Although he had to contend successively with two such dangerous rivals as Rossini and Bellini, he succeeded in taking firm hold of the public, and the brilliant reception accorded to his Anna Bolena at Milan carried his name beyond the limits of his own country. In 1835 Donizetti went for the first time to Paris, where, however, his Marino Faliero failed to hold its own against Bellini’s Puritani, then recently produced at the Théâtre Italien. The disappointed composer went to Naples, where the enormous success of his Lucia di Lammermoor consoled him for his failure in Paris. For Naples he wrote a number of works, none of which is worth notice. In 1840 the censorship refused to pass his Poliuto, an Italian version of Corneille’s Polyeucte, in consequence of which the disgusted composer once more left his country for Paris. Here he produced at the Opéra Comique his most popular opera, La Fille du régiment, but again with little success. It was not till after the work had made the round of the theatres of Germany and Italy that the Parisians reconsidered their unfavourable verdict. A serious opera, Les Martyrs, produced about the same time with the Daughter of the Regiment, was equally unsuccessful, and it was reserved to La Favorita, generally considered as Donizetti’s masterpiece, to break the evil spell. His next important work, Linda di Chamounix, was written for Vienna, where it was received most favourably in 1842, and the same success accompanied the production of Don Pasquale after Donizetti’s return to Paris in 1843. Soon after this event the first signs of a fatal disease, caused to a great extent by overwork, began to show themselves. The utter failure of Don Sebastian, a large opera produced soon after Don Pasquale, is said to have hastened the catastrophe. A paralytic stroke in 1844 deprived Donizetti of his reason; for four years he lingered on in a state of mental and physical prostration. A visit to his country was proposed as a last resource, but he reached his native place only to die there on the 1st of April 1848.

The sum total of his operas amounts to sixty-four. The large number of his works accounts for many of their chief defects. His rapidity of working made all revision impossible. It is said that he once wrote the instrumentation of a whole opera within thirty hours, a time hardly sufficient, one would think, to put the notes on paper. And yet it may be doubted whether more elaboration would have essentially improved his work; for the last act of the Favorita, infinitely superior to the preceding ones, is also said to have been the product of a single night.

There is a strange parallelism observable in the lives of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. They had no sooner established their reputations on the Italian stage than they left their own country for Paris, at that time the centre of the musical world. All three settled in France, and all three were anxious to adapt the style of their music to the taste and artistic traditions of their adopted country. The difference which exists between Rossini’s Tell and his Semiramide may, although in a less striking degree, be noticed between Donizetti’s Fille du régiment and one of his earlier Italian operas. But here the parallel ends. As regards artistic genius Donizetti can by no means be compared with his illustrious countrymen. He has little of Bellini’s melancholy sweetness, less of Rossini’s sparkle, and is all but devoid of spontaneous dramatic impulse. For these shortcomings he atones by a considerable though by no means extraordinary store of fluent melody, and by his rare skill in writing for the voice. The duet in the last act of the Favorita and the ensemble in Lucia following upon the signing of the contract, are masterpieces of concerted music in the Italian style. These advantages, together with considerable power of humorous delineation, as evinced in Don Pasquale and L’Elisir d’amore, must account for the unimpaired vitality of many of his works on the stage.

DONJON (from a Late Lat. accusative form domnionem, connected with domnus or dominus, a lord), the French term for the keep of a medieval castle, used now in distinction to “dungeon” (q.v.), the prison, which is only an anglicized spelling (see also Keep).

DON JUAN, a legendary character, whose story has found currency in various European countries. He was introduced into formal literature in the Spanish El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, a play which was first printed at Barcelona in 1630, and is usually attributed to Tirso de Molina; but the story of a profligate inviting a dead man to supper, and finding his invitation accepted, was current before 1630, and is not peculiar to Spain. A Don Juan Tenorio is said to have frequented the court of Peter the Cruel, and at a later period another Don Juan Tenorio, a dissolute gallant, is reported as living at Seville; but there is no satisfactory evidence of their existence, and it is unlikely that the Don Juan legend is based on historical facts. It exists in Picardy as Le Souper de fantôme, and variants of it have been found at points so far apart as Iceland and the Azores; the available evidence goes to show that Don Juan is a universal type, that he is the subject of local myths in many countries, that he received his name in Spain, and that the Spanish version of his legend has absorbed certain elements from the French story of Robert the Devil. Some points of resemblance are observable between El Burlador de Sevilla and Dineros son calidad, a play of earlier date by Lope de Vega; but these resemblances are superficial, and the character of Don Juan, the incarnation of perverse sensuality and arrogant blasphemy, may be considered as the creation of Tirso de Molina, though the ascription to him of El Burlador de Sevilla has been disputed. The Spanish drama was apparently more popular in Italy than in Spain, and was frequently given in pantomime by the Italian actors, who accounted for its permanent vogue by saying that Tirso de Molina had sold his soul to the devil for fame. A company of these Italian mimes took the story into France in 1657, and it was dramatized by Dorimond in 1659 and by De Villiers in 1661; their attempts suggested Le Festin de pierre (1665) to Molière, who, apparently with the Spanish original before his eyes, substituted prose for verse, reduced the supernatural element, and interpolated comic effects completely out of keeping with the earlier conception. Later adaptations by Rosimond and Thomas Corneille were even less successful. The story was introduced into England by Sir Aston Cokain in his unreadable Tragedy of Ovid (1669), and was the theme of The Libertine (1676), a dull and obscene play by Shadwell. Goldoni’s D. Giovanni Tenorio osia Il Dissoluto, based upon the adaptations of Molière and Thomas Corneille, is one of his least interesting productions. Tirso de Molina’s play was recast, but not improved, by Antonio de Zamora early in the 18th century. A hundred years later the character of Don Juan was endowed with a new name in Espronceda’s Estudiante de Salamanca; Don Félix de Montemar is plainly modelled on Don Juan Tenorio, and rivals the original in licentiousness, impiety and grim humour. But the most curious resuscitation of the type in Spain is the protagonist in Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio, which is usually played in all large cities during the first week in November, and has come to be regarded as an essentially national work. It is in fact little more than an adaptation of the elder Dumas’ Don Juan de Marana, which, in its turn, derives chiefly from Mérimée’s novel, Les Âmes du purgatoire. Less exotic are Zorrilla’s two poems on the same subject—El Desafío del diablo and El Testigo de bronce. Byron’s Don Juan presents a Regency lady-killer who resembles Ulloa’s murderer in nothing but his name.

The sustained popularity of the Don Juan legend is undoubtedly due in great measure to Mozart’s incomparable setting of Da Ponte’s mediocre libretto. In this pale version of El Burlador de Sevilla the French romantic school made acquaintance with Don Juan, and hence, no doubt, the works of Mérimée and Dumas already mentioned, Balzac’s Élexir d’une longue vie, and Alfred de Musset’s Une Matinée de Don Juan and Namouna. The legend has been treated subsequently by Flaubert and Barbey d’Aurevilly in France, by Landau and Heyse in Germany, and by Sacher-Masoch in Austria. It has always fascinated composers. Mozart’s Don Giovanni has annihilated the earlier operas of Le Tellier, Righini, Tritto, Gardi and Gazzaniga; but Gluck’s ballet-music still survives, and Henry Purcell’s setting—the oldest of all—has saved some of Shadwell’s insipid lyrics from oblivion.

Bibliography.—F. de Simone Brouwer, Don Giovanni nella poesia e nell’ arte musicale (Napoli, 1894); A. Farinelli, Don Giovanni: Note critiche (Torino, 1896); A. Farinelli, Cuatro palabras sobre Don Juan y la literatura donjuanesca del porvenir in the Homenaje á Menéndez y Pelayo (Madrid, 1899), vol. i. pp. 205-222.

(J. F.-K.)

DONKIN, SIR RUFANE SHAW (1773-1841), British soldier, came of a military family. His father, who died, a full general, in 1821, served with almost all British commanders from Wolfe to Gage. Rufane Donkin was the eldest child, and received his first commission at the age of five in his father’s regiment; he joined, at fourteen, with eight years’ seniority as a lieutenant. Becoming a captain in 1793, he was on active service in the West Indies in 1794, and (as major) in 1796. At the age of twenty-five he became lieutenant-colonel, and in 1798 led a light battalion with distinction in the Ostend expedition. He served with Cathcart in Denmark in 1807, and two years later was given a brigade in the army in Portugal, which he led at Oporto and Talavera. He was soon transferred, as quartermaster-general, to the Mediterranean command, in which he served from 1810 to 1813, taking part in the Catalonian expeditions. Sir John Murray’s failure at Tarragona did not involve Donkin, whose advice was proved to be uniformly ignored by the British commander. In July 1815 Major-General Donkin went out to India, and distinguished himself as a divisional commander in Hastings’ operations against the Mahrattas (1817-1818), receiving the K.C.B. as his reward. The death of his young wife seriously affected him, and he went to the Cape of Good Hope on sick leave. From 1820 to 1821 he administered the colony with success, and named the rising seaport of Algoa Bay Port Elizabeth in memory of his wife. In 1821 he became lieutenant-general and G.C.H. The rest of his life was spent in literary and political work. He was one of the original fellows of the Royal Geographical Society, and was a member of the Royal Society and of many other learned bodies. His theories as to the course of the river Niger, published under the title Dissertation on the Course and Probable Termination of the Niger (London, 1829), involved him in a good deal of controversy. From 1832 onwards he sat in the House of Commons, and in 1835 was made surveyor-general of the ordnance. He committed suicide at Southampton in 1841. He was then a general, and colonel of the 11th Foot.