DOMINIS, MARCANTONIO DE

Italian ecclesiastic, scientist, and apostate; b. island of Arbe (now Rab, Croatia), 1566; d. Castel Sant' Angelo, Rome, 1624. He entered the Society of Jesus at an early age and on leaving the Society in 1596, was appointed bishop of Segni (Senj). In 1602 he was elevated to the archbishopric of Spalato (Split), and later to the primatial See of Dalmatia, which he held until 1616. He was also professor of mathematics at Padua, where he published De radii visus et lucis in vitris perspectivis et iride tractatus (1611), a scientific explanation of the rainbow, according to Sir Isaac Newton. He became involved in the quarrel between the papacy and Venice, and in 1616 went to England, where he was appointed dean of Windsor and master of the Savoy by james i. In 1617 he published the first part of his De republica ecclesiastica, a work in which he asserted that the pope had no jurisdiction over bishops, but was only primus inter pares. Two years later he published, without authority, Paolo Sarpi's Istoria del Concilio di Trento with a dedication to James I. At the accession of Gregory XV, a relative and fellow countryman, Dominis returned to Rome. There he attacked the Church of England in Sui reditus ex Anglia consilium (1623). After Gregory XV's death, Dominis was seized by the Inquisition and confined to the Castel Sant' Angelo as a relapsed heretic, where he died. His body and books were burned on Dec. 21, 1624.

Bibliography: h. newland, The Life and Contemporaneous Church History of Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato (Oxford 1859). d. cantimori, "Sua M. A. De Dominis," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 49 (1958) 245–258. The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London 1885–1900; repr. with corrections, 1908–09, 1921–22, 1938) 5:1106–08. v. gabrieli, "Bacon: La reforma e Roma," English Miscellany 8 (1957) 226–233.

[v. luciani]