CIRCONCESII. - Heretics of the 13th century, so called because of their practice of the Jewish rite of circumcision. They are listed under this name in the catalogue of heretical sects proscribed by the constitution of Frederick II, Rome, 22 Nov. 1220 and Ravenna, 22 Feb. 1232, in which the Passagini are not mentioned; in the imperial edicts against heretics, promulgated in various places in the years 1238-39 and subsequently inserted into the bulls of various popes, they are listed before the Passagini; in the lists of other papal documents, only the latter appear, whose doctrines are refuted in various manuals for anti-heretical controversy of the 12th and 13th centuries.
A Summa breviata (ed. Douais, pp. 63-64) refutes both the Passagini and the Circumcisi as supporters of the obligatory nature of the laws of the Old Testament, the observance of the Sabbath, and circumcision. These coincidences of condemnations and errors lead historians to identify the C. with the Passagini, considering the two terms as synonymous. On their doctrines V. PATARINI; among other things, they reject as useless ecclesiastical institutions Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. But a recently discovered anti-heretical Summa from the first half of the 13th century, in a concrete theoretical chapter, refers to the C. as those who demand the literal observance of circumcision and the Sacraments of the Old Law alongside the Sacraments of the New Law. The acceptance, therefore, of the latter would distinguish the C. from the Passagini; bearing in mind the doctrinal fluidity of medieval sects, it is probable that the C. were a fraction of the Passagini; they would not be opposed, like these, to the economy of the New Testament; but, like the ancient Judaising Christians, they demand the observance of Mosaic law, especially circumcision, together with the Sacraments and precepts of Christianity. The author of this Summa, who may well be the renowned Dominican inquisitor St. Peter Martyr (v.), recalls having refuted, with the text Col. 2:11-12, the circumcised Alberto Bustignano, at Bergamo. He considers this sect to be one of the most infected with the Catholic faith.