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 notwithstanding constant variations in the work set them. The crude articles of diet offered them vary immensely in nature, bulk and utility, from which they must elaborate simple food-elements for absorption, incorporate them after absorption into complex organic substances properly designed to supply the constant needs of cellular activity, of growth and repair, and fitly harmonized to fulfil the many requirements of very divergent processes and functions. Any form of unphysiological diet, each failure to cater for the wants of any special tissue engaged in, or of any processes of, metabolism, carry with them pathological signs. Perhaps in greater degree than elsewhere are the individual sections of the digestive system dependent upon, and closely correlated with, one another. The lungs can only yield oxygen to the blood when the oxygen is uncombined; no compounds are of use. The digestive organs have to deal with an enormous variety of compound bodies, from which to obtain the elements necessary for protoplasmic upkeep and activity. Morbid lesions of the respiratory and circulatory systems are frequently capable of compensation through increased activity elsewhere, and the symptoms they give rise to follow chiefly along one line; diseases of the digestive organs are more liable to occasion disorders elsewhere than to excite compensatory actions. The digestive system includes every organ, function and process concerned with the utilization of food-stuffs, from the moment of their entrance into the mouth, their preparation in the canal, assimilation with the tissues, their employment therein, up to their excretion or expulsion in the form of waste. Each portion resembles a link of a continuous chain; each link depends upon the integrity of the others, the weakening or breaking of one straining or making impotent the chain as a whole.