Spain, and was engaged by Cromwell, much to the scandal of both Royalists and Roundheads, in negotiations abroad, of which the aim was probably to prevent a union between those two foreign powers. He visited Germany, in 1660 was in Paris, and at the Restoration returned to England. He was well received in spite of his former relations with Cromwell, and was confirmed in his post as Queen Henrietta Maria’s chancellor. In January 1661 he delivered a lecture, which was published the same month, at Gresham College, on the vegetation of plants, and became an original member of the Royal Society in 1663. In January 1664 he was forbidden to appear at court, the cause assigned being that he had interposed too far in favour of the 2nd earl of Bristol, disgraced by the king on account of the charge of high treason brought by him against Clarendon into the House of Lords. The rest of his life was spent in the enjoyment of literary and scientific society at his house in Covent Garden. He died on the 11th of June 1665. He had five children, of whom two, a son and one daughter, survived him.
Digby, though he possessed for the time a considerable knowledge of natural science, and is said to have been the first to explain the necessity of oxygen to the existence of plants, bears no high place in the history of science. He was a firm believer in astrology and alchemy, and the extraordinary fables which he circulated on the subject of his discoveries are evidence of anything rather than of the scientific spirit. In 1656 he made public a marvellous account of a city in Tripoli, petrified in a few hours, which he printed in the Mercurius Politicus. Malicious reports had been current that his wife had been poisoned by one of his prescriptions, viper wine, taken to preserve her beauty. Evelyn, who visited him in Paris in 1651, describes him as an “errant mountebank.” Henry Stubbes characterizes him as “the very Pliny of our age for lying,” and Lady Fanshawe refers to the same “infirmity.”[1] His famous “powder of sympathy,” which seems to have been only powder of “vitriol,” healed without any contact, by being merely applied to a rag or bandage taken from the wound, and Digby records a miraculous cure by this means in a lecture given by him at Montpellier on this subject in 1658, published in French and English the same year, in German in 1660 and in Dutch in 1663; but Digby’s claim to its original discovery is doubtful, Nathaniel Highmore in his History of Generation (1651, p. 113) calling the powder “Talbot’s powder,” and ascribing its invention to Sir Gilbert Talbot. Some of Digby’s pills and preparations, however, described in The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digby Knt. Opened (publ. 1677), are said to make less demand upon the faith of patients, and his injunction on the subject of the making of tea, to let the water “remain upon it no longer than you can say the Miserere Psalm very leisurely,” is one by no means to be ridiculed. As a philosopher and an Aristotelian Digby shows little originality and followed the methods of the schoolmen. His Roman Catholic orthodoxy mixed with rationalism, and his political opinions, according to which any existing authority should receive support, were evidently derived from Thomas White (1582–1676), the Roman Catholic philosopher, who lived with him in France. White published in 1651 Institutionum Peripateticorum libri quinque, purporting to expound Digby’s “peripatetic philosophy,” but going far beyond Digby’s published treatises. Digby’s Memoirs are composed in the high-flown fantastic manner then usual when recounting incidents of love and adventure, but the style of his more sober works is excellent. In 1632 he presented to the Bodleian library a collection of 236 MSS., bequeathed to him by his former tutor Thomas Allen, and described in Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Bodleianae, by W. D. Macray, part ix. Besides the works already mentioned Digby translated A Treatise of adhering to God written by Albert the Great, Bishop of Ratisbon (1653); and he was the author of Private Memoirs, published by Sir N. H. Nicholas from Harleian MS. 6758 with introduction (1827); Journal of the Scanderoon Voyage in 1628, printed by J. Bruce with preface (Camden Society, 1868); Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers... with preface and notes (Roxburghe Club, 1877); in the Add. MSS. 34,362 f. 66 is a poem Of the Miserys of Man, probably by Digby; Choice of Experimental Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery ... collected by Sir K. Digby (1668), and Chymical Secrets and Rare Experiments (1683), were published by G. Hartman, who describes himself as Digby’s steward and laboratory assistant.
See the Life of Sir Kenelm Digby by one of his Descendants (T. Longueville), 1896. (P. C. Y.)
DIGBY, KENELM HENRY (1800–1880), English writer, youngest son of William Digby, dean of Clonfert, was born at Clonfert, Ireland, in 1800. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and soon after taking his B.A. degree there in 1819 became a Roman Catholic. He spent most of his life, which was mainly devoted to literary pursuits, in London, where he died on the 22nd of March 1880. Digby’s reputation rests chiefly on his earliest publication, The Broadstone of Honour, or Rules for the Gentlemen of England (1822), which contains an exhaustive survey of medieval customs, full of quotations from varied sources. The work was subsequently enlarged and issued (1826–1827) in four volumes entitled: Godefridus, Tancredus, Morus and Orlandus (numerous re-impressions, the best of which is the edition brought out by B. Quaritch in five volumes, 1876–1877).
Among Digby’s other works are: Mores Catholici, or Ages of Faith (11 vols., London, 1831–1840); Compitum; or the Meeting of the Ways at the Catholic Church (7 vols., London, 1848–1854); The Lovers’ Seat, Kathemérina; or Common Things in relation to Beauty, Virtue and Faith (2 vols., London, 1856). A complete list is given in J. Gillow’s Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics, ii. 81-83.
DIGENES ACRITAS, BASILIUS, Byzantine national hero, probably lived in the 10th century. He is named Digenes (of double birth) as the son of a Moslem father and a Christian mother; Acritas (ἄκρα, frontier, boundary), as one of the frontier guards of the empire, corresponding to the Roman milites limitanei. The chief duty of these acritae consisted in repelling Moslem inroads and the raids of the apelatae (cattle-lifters), brigands who may be compared with the more modern Klephts. The original Digenes epic is lost, but four poems are extant, in which the different incidents of the legend have been worked up by different hands. The first of these consists of about 4000 lines, written in the so-called “political” metre, and was discovered in the latter part of the 19th century, in a 16th-century MS., at Trebizond; the other three MSS. were found at Grotta Ferrata, Andros and Oxford. The poem, which has been compared with the Chanson de Roland and the Romance of the Cid, undoubtedly contains a kernel of fact, although it cannot be regarded as in any sense an historical record. The scene of action is laid in Cappadocia and the district of the Euphrates.
Editions of the Trebizond MS. by C. Sathas and E. Legrand in the Collection des monuments pour servir à l’étude de la langue néohellénique, new series, vi. (1875), and by S. Joannides (Constantinople, 1887). See monographs by A. Luber (Salzburg, 1885) and G. Wartenberg (Berlin, 1897). Full information will be found in C. Krumbacher’s Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, p. 827 (2nd ed., 1897); see also G. Schlumberger, L’Épopée Byzantine à la fin du dixième siècle (1897).
DIGEST, a term used generally of any digested or carefully arranged collection or compendium of written matter, but more particularly in law of a compilation in condensed form of a body of law digested in a systematical method; e.g. the Digest (Digesta) or Pandects (Πάνδεκται) of Justinian, a collection of extracts from the earlier jurists compiled by order of the emperor Justinian. The word is also given to the compilations of the main points (marginal or hand-notes) of decided cases, usually arranged in alphabetical and subject order, and published under such titles as “Common Law Digest,” “Annual Digest,” &c.
DIGESTIVE ORGANS (Pathology). Several facts of importance have to be borne in mind for a proper appreciation of the pathology of the organs concerned in digestive processes (for the anatomy see Alimentary Canal and allied articles). In the first place, more than all other systems, the digestive comprises greater range of structure and exhibits wider diversity of function within its domain. Each separate structure and each different function presents special pathological signs and symptoms. Again, the duties imposed upon the system have to be performed
- ↑ Dict. of Nat. Biog. sub “Digby.” See also Robert Boyle’s Works (1744), v. 302.
