DŁUGOSZ, JAN (Johannes Longinus). — Historian, born at Brzeźnica in 1415, died at Cracow on 19 May 1480. Secretary to the bishop of Cracow Zbigniew Oleśnicki and ordained a priest in 1440, he undertook diplomatic missions for his bishop and for King Casimir IV, who appointed him archbishop of Leopoli; but he died before taking canonical possession of the see. D. is the most celebrated Polish historiographer of the Middle Ages.
In Italy he maintained relations with the humanists and brought manuscripts of Latin classics to Poland. A diligent collector of sources, he was not always critical in using them, and his patriotism at times prevailed at the expense of impartiality. Among D.’s works, the principal ones are: Annales seu cronicae inclyti Regni Poloniae, libri XII, written in 1455–80 (Leipzig 1711–12); Liber beneficiorum dioecesis Cracoviensis (3 vols., written between 1470 and 1480).
Jan D., jego życie i stanowisko w piśmiennictwie, there 1893; E. Perlecki, L'histoire polonaise de J. D. et les Annales russes, Prague 1932. Giuseppe Olir
D. M. S. — This abbreviation is read d(is) M(anibus) s(acrum) and is rarely written out in full; for the most part, the third element, s(acrum), is omitted. The meaning is always the same: the burial and the stele or monument are consecrated to the Manes gods and placed under their protection against possible violations. The corresponding Greek formula to the Latin is θ(εσίς) κ(αταχθονίοις) or χ(θονίοις).
As a rule, it is placed before the inscription, at the top, as a title. It came into use as early as the first century A.D., but became truly frequent and practically customary in the second and third centuries, naturally in pagan burials.
Nevertheless, this formula also appears above a considerable number of certainly Christian epitaphs (and in some Jewish ones), particularly in Rome,
and elsewhere in Italy at Chiusi, and in Africa in the fuller form D. M. S. Great efforts were made by scholars of the past to explain those abbreviations in a Christian sense (e.g., D(eo) M(agno), d(igno et) m(erito), θ(εσί) κ(τιστῆ), but in vain. It must be said that, through usage, such abbreviations had become devoid of their specific pagan meaning, serving by then only to indicate that the inscription was funerary; for many, their true reading must even have been unknown, for example, to that African who translates them as donis memoriae spiritantium (CIL, VIII, n. 20780).
On many tombstones, specifically Christian signs or words were engraved beside and among the D. M. It has been said that Christians, purchasing the tombstone already prepared with that heading, wished in a certain way to cancel the pagan meaning of D. M. by means of these additions.
This cannot be true in general, because those tombstones are either the work of Christians or clearly display the same script by the same hand.
We must therefore conclude that here too the juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements shows that the proper significance of D. M. was no longer understood. The same is demonstrated by certain strange forms such as D.I.B.M., D.O.M., and by its juxtaposition with the monogram of Christ—all things that suggest that those who wrote the abbreviations read them in a manner very different from the true one.
It may be thought that the similar headings of later Christian epitaphs, B. M. (very common) and B. M. S. (in Calabria), derive through certain lines of transmission from D. M.