Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/825

 DERRY

743

DESAINS

gene, at what time cannot be accurately determined, and it was fully defined about the middle of the thir- teenth century. The ancient nion;ustcry of Derry was one of the most important in Ireland, and eventually the chief house of the Coluniban monks. Gilla Mac- Leag (Gelasius) who succeeded St. Malachy as Arch- bishop of Armagh (1136) had been abbot of the mon- astery.

After the formation of the diocese in the thirteenth century the succession of bishops was uninterrupted till the Reformation period. Redmond O'Gallagher, ap- pointed bishop in 1569, was one of the leading ecclesi- astics in the province of Armagh at that period. He was appointed Administrator of Armagh during the absence of the primate in 1575, and according to a State paper (1592) he seems to have been the most act- ive upholder of the Catholic Church in Ulster. He was killed by a body of soldiers in 1601. From 1601 till

The Cathedral, Derry

168.3 the Diocese of Derry was administered by \icars. From the appointment of Bernard O'Cahan in 1683, the line of bishops in Derry has been continued with- out interruption.

Tlie population of Deny according to the census of 1901 was 222,505, 127,387 of whom were Catholics. It is divided into thirty-nine parishes, two of these being mensal parishes ; the remainder are held by parish priests. The number of priests in the diocese is about 108. There is no chapter ( 1908), nor is there any house of the regular clergj- in the diocese. The seat of the bishop is in the city of Derry where are also situated the new cathedral and St. Columb's C'ollege which serves at the same time the purpose of a seminary and a general intermediate school, and is one of the most successful educational establishments in Ireland. , There is also a flourishing intermediate school at Omagh conducted by the Iri.sh Christian Brothers. The .Sisters of Mercy have convents in Derry, Moville, . Strahane, and Camdonagh; the Loretto Community have a house at Omagh, while the Sisters of Nazareth conduct a home for the aged of both sexes and one for children in Derrj'. The primary schools are con- ducted according to the rules of the Board of Na- tional Education, while the Model Schools in Derry

have been completely boycotted by the Catholic population.

Gams. Srri, r,.^ i l: :ii;-^l...ii. 1S73): EuBKL. lliernrchia Calholica elv M " u, i^ms.; Wske, Irish Bishops: Abcb- l)ALl,. A/oM.v^i . /; '„ ( liul.hn. 1786); Adamnan, Z-i/e

of Columba, v<\. I; i i m ^ 1 1 ii,i,hii, ls,^)7).

J.\MES MacCaffrey.

Derry, School of. — This was the first foundation of St. Columba, the great Apostle of Scotland, and one of the three patron saints of Ireland. When a terrible plague, known as the Buidhe Connnill or the Yellow Plague, dispersed the monks of the monastery of Glasnevin in the year 544, Columba instinctively turned his footsteps towards his native territory, and, full of the spirit of monasticism, bethought himself of fovmding his first monastery there, amongst his own kith and kin. An excellent site of 200 acres was offered to him by his princely cousin, Aedh, son of .\inmire, and the necessary permLssion of his master, St. Mobhi (^larainech, given with his dying breath, was immediately forthcoming. And so, a few miles from Aileeh, "the stone-hill fortress of the Hy-Neill", and close beside a beautiful oak grove which gave the place its name — Doire Colgaigh, or the oak wood of Colgagh — Columba built his church and several cells for his first monks and disciples. This, according to the "Annals of Ulster", was in the year 545 (correctly, 546). Students both clerical and lay flocked hither from all sides attracted by the imme- diate fame of the new school, and the character of its foimder. For several years Columba himself guided its destinies, and then, in pursuance of his apostolic vocation, he left to establi-sh and govern the second of his great schools amid the oak woods of Durrow in the King's County. But whether in Derry or away from it, in Durrow or Kells, or in distant lona, the saint's heart was ever with his first foundation, and often in the tenderest poetry he poured out his love for "My Derry, mine own little grove", with its "crowds of white angels from one end to the other".

For centvn-ies after Columba's death the School of Derry continued to flourish, and in the twelfth cen- tury, it was said to be the most important of the Columban foundations in Ireland. To this period, the most glorious of its history, belong the names of several members of the illustrious family of Brolchain — saints, scholars, and builders — as well as that of the illustrious Gelasius, successor of St. Malachy in the primacy of Ireland. Like all similar institutions it suffered severely from the ravages of the Danes. It survived these, to disappear completely, however, in the general devastation of monasteries that took place in Ireland in the sixteenth century. (See Columba, Saint.)

Adamnan, Vila Columba; ed. Fowler (London, 1895); Whitley Stokes, Livrs of Saints Irom the Book of Lismore, in Anecdutn Oxonien. (Oxford. 1890). V ; HE\l.y, Ireland's Ancumt Schools and Sdiolars (Dublin. 1890).

John Hf.aly. Dervish. See Mohammedanism.

Desains, Paul-Quentin. physicist, b. at St- Quentin, France, 12 July, 1817; d. at Paris, 3 May, 1885. He made his literarj- studies at the College des Bons-Enfants in his native town and then entered the Lycfie Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Here he distin- gi'iished himself, taking the first prize in physics. In 1835 he entered the science section of the Ecole Nor- male where his brother Edouard had preceded him. He made the acquaintance there of La Provostaye who was at the time a surveilhnt and who became his lifelong friend and his associate in his researches. After completing his course, he accepted a professor- ship in 1839 at Caen, and in 1841 returned to Paris where he received similar appointments, first at the LycC'C St-Louis and later at the Lyc^'C Condorcet, where he succeeded La Provostaye who was forced to retire on account of ill-health. His growing reputa-