D
Damiano Maraffi [Damianus Maraffus], a Florentine, compiled two books, in which he set forth the chief histories of the Old and New Testament with most elegant pictures, drawn by the hand of Albrecht Dürer, a German, a most excellent painter; with Tuscan octastichs [eight-line stanzas] added to each, explaining the meaning of every picture. He flourished in the year of the saving incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ 1554.
Defensor, a learned, pious, and ancient Theologian, for the gratification of his fosterer Ursinus, culled out of all sacred scripture certain common passages [commonplaces] of various moral arguments, adding also the sentences of the most ancient fathers, which he found to be conformable to the aforesaid passages of the scriptures. And he entitled his work The Sparks of Holy Scripture [Scintillae Scripturae Sanctae], whose beginning is, Reader, whoever you are. At what time he flourished is uncertain.
Didymus of Alexandria [Didymus the Blind], an admirable man, flourishing in erudition of every kind. When he was quite young, and had learned the first elements of grammar, he fell into a disease of the eyes, by which he was so badly affected that he lost the keenness of sight. But God furnished him, in place of bodily eyes, with spiritual ones: for even blind he grasped Rhetoric, and, advancing to Philosophical studies, learned Dialectic in a certain astonishing manner, and stored up in his mind Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and the rest of the disciplines of the philosophers. Nay more, he held most exactly the divine oracles of the Old and New Testament, and expounded Origen’s Periarchon [On First Principles], and published commentaries upon it, in which he contended that the things which are in it are well written. To him Antony the Great, the monk, having met with him at Alexandria, said: Let nothing, O Didymus, trouble you at the loss of your bodily eyes: for you are deprived of such eyes as even flies and gnats can see with; but rejoice that you have eyes with which the angels see, and God is contemplated, and His light is apprehended.
Alluding to which saying, St. Jerome — Didymus’s disciple in the sacred letters — in the epistle to Paulinus [says]: My Didymus, having the eyes of the bride from the Song of Songs, and those lights which Jesus commanded to be lifted up upon the whitening cornfields [John 4:35], looks far higher, and restores to us the ancient custom, so that, being a seer, he is also called a Prophet. Surely, he who reads him will recognize the thefts of the Latins, and will despise the rivulets when he has begun to draw from the fountains. He is unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge, expressing an Apostolic man by his very style, as much by the light of the sense as by the simplicity of the words.
This man, therefore, dictated many and noble commentaries through notaries [shorthand-writers]: whose whole ἐξήγησις [exegesis], to use Jerome’s word, was allegorical, and scarcely touching a few points of the history [the literal narrative]. Of which number the most notable are:
- Of commentaries on Job, three books.
- On the Psalter, one book.
- On Isaiah, from the beginning of the 40th chapter to the end, eighteen volumes.
- To Jerome the Presbyter, on Hosea, three books.
- To the same, on Zechariah, five books.
- On Matthew, one book.
- On John, one book.
- On the epistles of Paul, fourteen books.
- On the Catholic epistles, seven books.
He flourished under Theodosius the Great, in the year of the Lord 390.
Diego
Diego de Deza [Diegus Deza], Archbishop of Seville, born at Toro, a noble town of Castile in Spain, of the Order of Preachers, in all Spain the supreme censor in matters of faith [Inquisitor General], who built at Seville the notable college of the Dominicans; among the other monuments of his genius, he left a Gospel Monotessaron [gospel-harmony], illustrated with most beautiful commentaries, which is now kept in the Library of the same college, in a great volume, written in elegant characters. He flourished in the year of the Lord 1500.
Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, the teacher of John Chrysostom in the sacred letters, formerly a presbyter of the church of Antioch, illustrious no less for sanctity than for knowledge of the sacred letters; having attained the meaning of Eusebius of Emesa and the understanding of the scriptures, which he had taken to himself as a model — yet he could not imitate his eloquence, on account of his ignorance of secular literature. He therefore, as Suidas relates on the authority of Theodore the historian, wrote upon the divine scriptures the below-written volumes:
- On the Pentateuch, five books.
- On the books of Kings, on Paralipomenon [Chronicles], on the Psalter, on Proverbs, on Ecclesiastes, on the Song of Songs, on the Prophets — commentaries greatly to be approved.
- Likewise on the four Gospels, on Paul, on the Acts of the Apostles, and on the Epistle of John the Evangelist, noble commentaries.
- Likewise, on the distinction between Theory [Theoria] and Allegory in the holy Scriptures, one book.
Theodoret, in book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 3, making mention of him, writes thus: Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, wrote many books; and because he was intent upon the bare letter of the divine scriptures, he overturned their higher meanings. And this same thing Sozomen attributes to him, in book 8 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 2, saying: I have heard that Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, left behind him many books of his commentaries, and that he expounded the sacred scriptures according to the letter, the theoria being neglected. Nicephorus also, in the 13th volume of his History, adds these things:1 Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, left many books of his writings on both Testaments: in which he was occupied only with the exposition of the letter itself, declining the more abstruse and sublime sense of Scripture and the speculations of contemplations; in which matter also his disciple John Chrysostom especially followed him. He flourished in the year of the Lord 360.
Dionysius, the 13th Bishop of the city of Alexandria, once a hearer of Origen, imbued with all the disciplines, sacred as well as profane; while he was still a presbyter, he held the public school under Heraclas, and acquired great glory for his learning — although he consented to the doctrine of Cyprian and of the African synod concerning the rebaptizing of heretics. This man, then, wrote learned commentaries on Ecclesiastes; of which Procopius of Gaza makes mention in his explanation of the third chapter of Genesis. He wrote likewise a narration upon the first [epistle] to the Corinthians, which Jerome mentions in the epistle to Pammachius. Likewise, against Nepos, a Chiliast Bishop, who from the Apocalypse of John falsely maintained a reign of a thousand years, two books, in which he disputed most diligently and most piously concerning all these things which are contained in the revelation of John. He wrote likewise against Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who expounded the Apocalypse of John carnally, one book:2 which Jerome mentions in the preface to the 18th book of his commentaries on Isaiah. He dies in the twelfth year of Gallienus, that is, about the year of the Lord 270.
Dionysius Leuwis [Denis the Carthusian, of Rijkel], a German, from the town of Rijkel, of the Carthusian institute, professor in the noble monastery of Roermond, a man of the highest erudition and sanctity, so fervently and so assiduously devoted in spirit to contemplation and prayer that it is a marvel that a man, abstracted by continual meditation on divine things, could write so great and various a number of volumes as we now have in print. This man illustrated all the books of both Testaments with most pious and most clear commentaries, and, according to the threefold sense of divine scripture — and especially the literal — explained them briefly and most openly, following the custom of the scholastic expositors, yet in a somewhat more polished style, and midway between the ancient fathers and the more recent followers of the schools. He cites by name not only the ancient authors, but also the scholastics themselves — Hugh [of St. Cher], Bonaventure, Thomas [Aquinas], Lyra [Nicholas of Lyra], and others of the same profession — out of whose rhapsodies he gathered his own explanations, omitting their tiresome divisions and subdivisions. But the number of his commentaries, together with their openings (beginning, in the scholastic manner, from various sentences of the scriptures), you have in Trithemius. He flourished in the year of the Lord 1472.
Dominic Buchi [Buchius] of Kotor [Catharensis], of the Order of Preachers, a scholastic Theologian, published an exposition on the seven penitential Psalms, with pious little prayers added to each, which he entitled A most elegant Etymum upon the seven Psalms. The work begins, Heavenly Manna. He flourished in the year of the Lord 1530.
Dominic Grenier [Greniae] of Toulouse, a Dominican, Bishop of Pamiers [Appaniensis], wrote on the Pentateuch, 5 books, and on the historical books of the Bibles, 6 books.
Dominic Leoni [Leonus], a Venetian, a scholastic by profession, whose many volumes are kept in manuscript in the Dominican Library of Bologna, wrote a Postil on Luke, which begins, Of the super-ineffable Prince. He flourished in the year of the Lord 1368.
Dominic Mancini [Mancinus], a not ignoble poet, put forth in Hexameter verses one book, On the Passion of the Lord, gathered from the four Gospels, which begins, Not the praises of men, nor, etc. In the year of the Lord 1494.
Dominic Nani Mirabelli [Nanus Mirabellius], a citizen of Alba, doctor of arts, whose work is extant, entitled POLYANTHEA, in the year 1470, compiled a Monotessaron of the gospels, or a Harmony from the four Gospels; in which work, together with the gospel sentences, he wove in all the authorities and sentences of the gentile philosophers, poets, and orators which seemed to agree with the several passages of the Gospels, the names of the authors whose sentences they were being appended. This work is kept
…kept at Genoa, in the Library of the Preachers’ monastery of the Castle. And the names of the authors from which he wove the Harmony are these — the Seven Sages of Greece, [and]:
Seneca, Ovid, the oracles of the Sibyls, Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Aesop, Apuleius, Muhammad, Isocrates, Cicero [Tullius]; Homer, Terence, Virgil, Horace, Plautus, Juvenal, Persius, Claudian, Lucan, Lucretius, Pliny, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, Valerius Maximus; [and] the author of the work himself.
Dominic Soto [Dominicus Soto], a Spaniard, of Segovia by fatherland, of the Order of Preachers, confessor to the Imperial Majesty, a supreme Theologian, Philosopher, and orator, wrote, in the year of the Lord 1548, commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans, greatly to be approved for erudition, style, and especially method: in which he first most clearly elucidates the literal senses; then, having briefly proposed and resolved all the controversies of both the ancients and the more recent [writers] upon this epistle, he applies himself, with all the efficacy of speech he can, to affecting and stirring up souls. The opening of the work is, I can by no means further deny [dissemble].
Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre, who under Julian Augustus, the deserter of the Christian religion, suffered martyrdom, compiled a Synopsis of all holy scripture — that is, a Conspectus [Contuitus] — in which he embraced most briefly the arguments of all the books of both Testaments. He flourished in the year of the Lord 360.
Dracontius, a presbyter, a Spaniard, wrote an exposition on the Hexaemeron of the creation of the world in heroic verses: of which Honorius of Autun [Augustodunensis] makes mention in his catalogue.