DENILIQUIN, a municipal town of Townsend county, New South Wales, Australia, 534 m. direct S.W. of Sydney, and 195 m. by rail N. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 2644. The business of the town is chiefly connected with the interests of the sheep and cattle farmers of the Riverina district, a plain country, in the main pastoral, but suited in some parts for cultivation. Deniliquin has a well-known public school.
DENIM (an abbreviation of serge de Nîmes), the name originally given to a kind of serge. It is now applied to a stout twilled cloth made in various colours, usually of cotton, and used for overalls, &c.
DENINA, CARLO GIOVANNI MARIA (1731-1813), Italian historian, was born at Revello, Piedmont, in 1731, and was educated at Saluzzo and Turin. In 1753 he was appointed to the chair of humanity at Pignerol, but he was soon compelled by the influence of the Jesuits to retire from it. In 1756 he graduated as doctor in theology, and began authorship with a theological treatise. Promoted to the professorship of humanity and rhetoric in the college of Turin, he published (1769-1772) his Delle revoluzioni d’Italia, the work on which his reputation is mainly founded. Collegiate honours accompanied the issue of its successive volumes, which, however, at the same time multiplied his foes and stimulated their hatred. In 1782, at Frederick the Great’s invitation, he went to Berlin, where he remained for many years, in the course of which he published his Vie et règne de Frédéric II (Berlin, 1788) and La Prusse littéraire sous Frédéric II (3 vols., Berlin, 1790-1791). His Delle revoluzioni della Germania was published at Florence in 1804, in which year he went to Paris as the imperial librarian, on the invitation of Napoleon. At Paris he published in 1805 his Tableau de la Haute Italie, et des Alpes qui l’entourent. He died there on the 5th of December 1813.
DENIS (Dionysius), SAINT, first bishop of Paris, patron saint of France. According to Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. i. 30), he was sent into Gaul at the time of the emperor Decius. He suffered martyrdom at the village of Catulliacus, the modern St Denis. His tomb was situated by the side of the Roman road, where rose the priory of St-Denis-de-l’Estrée, which existed until the 18th century. In the 5th century the clergy of the diocese of Paris built a basilica over the tomb. About 625 Dagobert, son of Lothair II., founded in honour of St Denis, at some distance from the basilica, the monastery where the greater number of the kings of France have been buried. The festival of St Denis is celebrated on the 9th of October. With his name are already associated in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum the priest Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius. Other traditions—of no value—are connected with the name of St Denis. A false interpretation of Gregory of Tours, apparently dating from 724, represented St Denis as having received his mission from Pope Clement, and as having suffered martyrdom under Domitian (81-96). Hilduin, abbot of St-Denis in the first half of the 9th century, identified Denis of Paris with Denis (Dionysius) the Areopagite (mentioned in Acts xviii. 34), bishop of Athens (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 4. 10, iv. 23. 3), and naturally attributed to him the celebrated writings of the pseudo-Areopagite. St Denis is generally represented carrying his head in his hands.
See Acta Sanctorum, Octobris, iv. 696-987; Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca, p. 37 (Brussels, 1895); Bibliotheca hagiographica latina, No. 2171-2203 (Brussels, 1899); J. Havet, Les Origines de Saint-Denis, in his collected works, i. 191-246 (Paris, 1896); Cahier, Caractéristiques des saints, p. 761 (Paris, 1867). (H. De.)
DENIS, JOHANN NEPOMUK COSMAS MICHAEL (1729-1800), Austrian poet, was born at Schärding on the Inn, on the 27th of September 1729. He was brought up by the Jesuits, entered their order, and in 1759 was appointed professor in the Theresianum in Vienna, a Jesuit college. In 1784, after the suppression of the college, he was made second custodian of the court library, and seven years later became chief librarian. He died on the 29th of September 1800. A warm admirer of Klopstock, he was one of the leading members of the group of so-called “bards”; and his original poetry, published under the title Die Lieder Sineds des Barden (1772), shows all the extravagances of the “bardic” movement. He is best remembered as the translator of Ossian (1768-1769; also published together with his own poems in 5 vols. as Ossians und Sineds Lieder, 1784). More important than either his original poetry or his translations were his efforts to familiarize the Austrians with the literature of North Germany; his Sammlung kürzerer Gedichte aus den neuern Dichtern Deutschlands, 3 vols. (1762-1766), was in this respect invaluable. He has also left a number of bibliographical compilations, Grundriss der Bibliographie und Bücherkunde (1774), Grundriss der Literaturgeschichte (1776), Einleitung in die Bücherkunde (1777) and Wiens Buchdruckergeschichte bis 1560 (1782).