DUNGAL: The name of several ecclesiastics of the early Middle Ages. A Celtic bishop Dungal is mentioned by Alcuin, but is scarcely identical with the monk Dungal of St. Denis, who is never termed a bishop. This monk was the author of a number of letters and poems. Of the former the first is dated in 811, the next five during the reign of Charlemagne, the seventh after the death of that monarch, and the eighth either in his reign or in that of Louis the Pious. Dungal is named in only two of the poems, but he has been regarded as the chief author of the poems emanating from St. Denis. His writings show him to have been a man of unusual attainments and a scion of a wealthy Scotch-Irish family, although on the Continent he lived in needy circumstances. He apparently left his home about 784 or 787, since the twelfth St. Denis poem was written at the earliest in the former year, and the second in or shortly after the latter date. Charlemagne valued Dungal's learning highly, and requested him to explain the eclipse of the sun in 810 and to criticize the De substantia nihili et tenebris an sint of Fridugis. Dungal was thus naturally an enthusiastic panegyrist of the emperor.

 

It is uncertain whether this Dungal was the author of the Responsa contra perversas Claudii sententias, written at the request of Lothair in 827. It see more probable, however, that this work was composed by a third DungaI, whom Lothair mentions in 825 as a, teacher of the school of Pavia, though so little is known regarding this teacher that the question can not be decided. Despite their polemics against Claudius of Turin, the Responsa adhere in the main to the Carolingian theology. A fourth Dungal, of somewhat later date, was the author of another poem from St. Denis, while a fifth, who seems to belong to the eleventh century, presented numerous books to Bobbio.

(A. HAUCK.)

 

Bibliography: The Epistolæ, ed. E. Dümmler, are in MGH, Epist. Sæc. xiii., iv (1892), 568 sqq.; the Carmina, ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Poetæ, Latini ævi Carolini, i (1881), 1393 sqq., ii (1884), 664-665; cf. Wattenbach, DGQ, i (1893), 153, and Traube, AMA, philosophische Classe, xix. 332 sqq.