DAVILA, ENRICO CATERINO Italian historian, was descended from a Spanish noble family. His im mediate ancestors had been constables of the kingdom of Cyprus for the Venetian republic since 1464. But in 1570 the island was taken by the Turks ; and Antonio Davila, the father of the his torian, had to leave it, despoiled of all he possessed. He travelled into Spain and France, and finally returned to Padua, and at Sacco on Oct. 3o, 1576, his youngest son, Enrico Caterino, was born. About 1583 Antonio took this son to France, where he be came a page in the service of Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II. In due time he entered the military service, and fought through the civil wars until the peace in 1598. He then returned to Padua, where, and subsequently at Parma, he led a studious life until, when war broke out, he entered the service of the repub lic of Venice. During the whole of this active life he never lost sight of his early design of writing the history of those civil wars in France in which he had borne a part. The success of the Istoria delle guerre civili di Francis was immediate and enormous. Over 200 editions followed, of which perhaps the best is the one published in Paris in 1644. Davila was murdered, while on his way to take over Cremona for Venice in July 1631.
The Istoria was translated into French by G. Baudouin (1642) ; into Spanish by Varen de Soto (Madrid, 1651, and Antwerp, 1686) ; into English by W. Aylesbury (1647) , and by Charles Cotterel (1666) , and into Latin by Pietro Francesco Cornazzano . The best account of the life of Davila is that by Apostolo Zeno, prefixed to an edition of the history printed at Venice in 2 vols. in