Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/988

Rh into the Royal Society in 1724, and left Paris for St Petersburg on a summons from the empress Catherine, towards the end of 1725. Having founded an observatory there, he returned to Paris in 1747, was appointed geographical astronomer to the naval department with a salary of 3000 livres, and installed an observatory in the Hôtel Cluny. Charles Messier and J. J. Lalande were among his pupils. He died of apoplexy at Paris on the 12th of September 1768. Delisle is chiefly remembered as the author of a method for observing the transits of Venus and Mercury by instants of contacts. First proposed by him in a letter to J. Cassini in 1743, it was afterwards perfected, and has been extensively employed. As a preliminary to the transit of Mercury in 1743, which he personally observed, he issued a map of the world showing the varied circumstances of its occurrence. Besides many papers communicated to the academy of sciences, of which he became a member in 1714, he published Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire et au progrès de l’astronomie (St Petersburg, 1738), in which he gave the first method for determining the heliocentric co-ordinates of sun-spots; Mémoire sur les nouvelles découvertes au nord de la mer du sud (Paris, 1752), &c.

See ''Mémoires de l’acad. des sciences (Paris, 1768), Histoire'', p. 167 (G. de Fouchy); J. B. J. Delambre, ''Hist. de l’astronomie au XVIIIe'' siècle, pp. 319, 533; Max. Marie, ''Hist. des sciences'', vii. 254; Lalande, Bibl. astr. p. 385; and Le Nécrologe des hommes célèbres de France (1770). The records of Delisle’s observations at St Petersburg are preserved in manuscript at the Pulkowa observatory. A report upon them was presented to the St Petersburg academy of sciences by O. Struve in 1848, and those relating to occultations of the Pleiades were discussed by Carl Linsser in 1864. See also S. Newcomb, Washington Observations for 1875, app. ii. pp. 176-189.

DELISLE, LÉOPOLD VICTOR (1826–&emsp;&emsp;), French bibliophile and historian, was born at Valognes (Manche) on the 24th of October 1826. At the École des Chartes, where his career was remarkably brilliant, his valedictory thesis was an Essai sur les revenus publics en Normandie au XIIe siècle (1849), and it was to the history of his native province that he devoted his early works. Of these the Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en Normandie au moyen âge (1851), condensing an enormous mass of facts drawn from the local archives, was reprinted in 1905 without change, and remains authoritative. In November 1852 he entered the manuscript department of the Bibliothèque Impériale (Nationale), of which in 1874 he became the official head in succession to Jules Taschereau. He was already known as the compiler of several invaluable inventories of its manuscripts. When the French government decided on printing a general catalogue of the printed books in the Bibliothèque, Delisle became responsible for this great undertaking and took an active part in the work; in the preface to the first volume (1897) he gave a detailed history of the library and its management. Under his administration the library was enriched with numerous gifts, legacies and acquisitions, notably by the purchase of a part of the Ashburnham MSS. Delisle proved that the bulk of the MSS. of French origin which Lord Ashburnham had bought in France, particularly those bought from the bookseller Barrois, had been purloined by Count Libri, inspector-general of libraries under King Louis Philippe, and he procured the repurchase of the MSS. for the library, afterwards preparing a catalogue of them entitled ''Catalogue des MSS. des fonds Libri'' et Barrois (1888), the preface of which gives the history of the whole transaction. He was elected member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1859, and became a member of the staff of the Recueil des historiens de la France, collaborating in vols. xxii. (1865) and xxiii. (1876) and editing vol. xxiv. (1904), which is valuable for the social history of France in the 13th century. The jubilee of his fifty years’ association with the Bibliothèque Nationale was celebrated on the 8th of March 1903. After his retirement (February 21, 1905) he brought out in two volumes a catalogue and description of the printed books and MSS. in the Musée Condé at Chantilly, left by the duc d’Aumale to the French Institute. He produced many valuable official reports and catalogues and a great number of memoirs and monographs on points connected with palaeography and the study of history and archaeology (see his Mélanges de paléographie et de bibliographie (1880) with atlas; and his articles in the Album paléographique (1887). Of his purely historical works special mention must be made of his Mémoire sur les actes d’Innocent III (1857), and his Mémoire sur les opérations financières des Templiers (1889), a collection of documents of the highest value for economic history. The thirty-second volume of the Histoire littéraire de la France, which was partly his work, is of great importance for the study of 13th and 14th century Latin chronicles. Delisle was undoubtedly the most learned man in Europe with regard to the middle ages; and his knowledge of diplomatics, palaeography and printing was profound. His output of work, in catalogues, &c., was enormous, and his services to the Bibliothèque Nationale in this respect cannot be overestimated. His wife, a daughter of Eugène Burnouf, was for many years his collaborator.

The Bibliographie des travaux de L. Delisle (1902), by Paul Lacombe, may be consulted for a full list of his numerous works.

 DELITZSCH, FRANZ (1813–1890), German Lutheran theologian and orientalist, of Jewish descent, was born at Leipzig on the 23rd of February 1813. He studied theology and oriental languages in the university of his native town, and in 1850 was appointed professor ordinarius of theology at Erlangen, where the school of theologians became almost as famous as that of Tübingen. In 1867 he accepted a call to Leipzig, where he died on the 4th of March 1890. Delitzsch was a strict Lutheran. “By the banner of our Lutheran confession let us stand,” he said in 1888; “folding ourselves in it, let us die” (T. K. Cheyne, Founders, p. 160). Greatly interested in the Jews, he longed ardently for their conversion to Christianity; and with a view to this he edited the periodical Saat auf Hoffnung from 1863, revived the “Institutum Judaicum” in 1880, founded a Jewish missionary college for the training of theologians, and translated the New Testament into Hebrew. He acquired such a mastery of post-biblical, rabbinic and talmudic literature that he has been called the “Christian Talmudist.” Though never an advanced critic, his article on Daniel in the second edition of Herzog’s Realencyklopädie, his New Commentary on Genesis and the fourth edition of his Isaiah show that as years went on his sympathy with higher criticism increased—so much so indeed that Prof. Cheyne has included him among its founders.

He wrote a number of very valuable commentaries on Habakkuk (1843), Genesis (1852, 4th ed. 1872), Neuer Kommentar über die Genesis (1887, Eng. trans. 1888, &c.), Psalms (4th ed. 1883, Eng. trans. 1886, &c.), Job (2nd ed., 1876), Isaiah (4th ed. 1889, Eng. trans. 1890, &c.), Proverbs (1873), Epistle to the Hebrews (1857, Eng. trans. 1865, &c.), Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (4th ed., 1875). Other works are ''Geschichte der jüd. Poesie (1836); Jesus und Hillel (1867, 3rd ed. 1879); Handwerkerleben zur Zeit Jesu (1868, 3rd ed. 1878, Eng. trans. in the “Unit Library,” 1902); Ein Tag in Kapernaum'' (1871, 3rd ed. 1886); Poesieen aus vormuhammedanischer Zeit (1874); Iris, Farbenstudien und Blumenstücke (1888, Eng. trans. 1889); Messianische Weissagungen in geschichtlicher Folge (1890, 2nd ed. 1898). His Hebrew New Testament reached its eleventh edition in 1891, and his popular devotional work Das Sakrament des wahren Leibes und Blutes Jesu Christi its seventh edition in 1886.

His son, (b. 1850), became well known as professor of Assyriology in Berlin, and the author of many books of great research and learning, especially on oriental philology. Among other works of importance he wrote Wo lag das Paradies? (1881), and Babel und Bibel (1902, 1903, Eng. trans. 1903).

DELITZSCH, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on the Lober, an affluent of the Mulde, 12 m. north of Leipzig at the junction of the railways, Bitterfeld-Leipzig and Halle-Cottbus. Pop. (1905) 10,479. Its public buildings comprise an old castle of the 14th century now used as a female penitentiary, a Roman Catholic and three Protestant churches, a normal college (Schullehrerseminar) established in 1873 and several other educational institutions. Besides Kuhschwanz, a peculiar kind of beer, it manufactures tobacco, cigars, shoes and hosiery; and coal-mining is carried on in the neighbourhood,