CIRCUMCISED. - Heretics of the 13th century, so named from the practice of the Jewish rite of circumcision. They are designated by this term in the list of heretical sects proscribed by the constitution of Frederick II, Rome 22 Nov. 1220 and Ravenna 22 Feb. 1232, in which the Passagians are not named; in the imperial edicts against heretics, promulgated in various places in the years 1238-39 and subsequently inserted into the bulls of various pontiffs, they are listed before the Passagians; in the lists of other pontifical documents only the latter appear, whose doctrines are refuted in various manuals for the anti-heretical controversy of the 12th and 13th centuries.
A Summa breviata (ed. Douais, p. 63-64) refutes together Passaginos et Circumcisos as upholders of the obligatory character of the laws of the Old Testament, of the observance of the Sabbath and of circumcision. These concurrences of condemnations and of errors lead historians to identify the Circumcised with the Passagians, considering the two terms as synonyms. On their doctrines v. PASSAGIANS; among other things, they reject as a useless ecclesiastical institution Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist. But an anti-heretical Summa, recently discovered, of the first half of the 13th century, in a particular short chapter against the Circumcised reports that they demand the literal observance of circumcision and of the Sacraments of the old Law on a par with the Sacraments of the new Law. The acceptance, therefore, of the latter would distinguish the Circumcised from the Passagians; bearing in mind the doctrinal mobility of medieval sects, it is probable that the Circumcised are a fraction of the Passagians; it would not be opposed, as the latter are, to the economy of the New Testament; but, like the ancient Judaizing Christians, it demands the observance of the Mosaic law, especially of circumcision, together with the Christian Sacraments and precepts. The author of this Summa, who may well be the well-known 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 as one of the most hostile to the Catholic faith.
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