DE DOMINIS, MARCANTONIO. — Archbishop of Spalato, then apostate, and finally Catholic again, probably in 1560 (or in 1566) in the city of Arbe (Rab) on the homonymous island of the Dalmatian archipelago, and died in Rome on 8 September 1624. A pupil of the Jesuits, he then entered the Order. Initially, he cultivated the physical and mathematical sciences, of which he was also a teacher in Padua. Of an irascible and intolerant temperament, he left the Order in 1596. Appointed bishop of Zengg (Segna) in August 1600, he added the title of count against the Uscocchi; he was then archbishop of Spalato (15 November 1602) and also received the pallium. The fruit of his scientific studies is the work *De radiis visus et lucis in vitris perspectivis et iride* (Venice 1611) concerning the decomposition of light. In the matter of the Interdict, he sided with Venice against Rome. He then came into conflict with the Chapter and the nobles of his diocese.
In 1615, he went to Venice where he had contacts with Sarpi and befriended the English ambassador to the Republic, Sir Henry Wotton, and his embassy chaplain, William Bedell. However, the reasons and circumstances for his departure from Venice to Switzerland in 1616, whence, via Heidelberg and Rotterdam, he reached England on 16 December 1616, are not entirely clear. He then entered the Anglican Church and, on the first Sunday of Advent 1617 in London, in the chapel of the Mercedarians, launched a public and violent attack against the Church of Rome. Shortly after, he published *Scogli del naufragio cristiano* (*The Rocks of Christian Shipwreck*), in which the Holy Church of Christ reveals them to its children so that they may avoid them (London [?] 1618), later translated into English, French, and German. In it, Rome was accused of aspiring to purely temporal dominion, of sowing religious terror, and of corrupting evangelical ideals. De Dominis received honors and prebends, becoming dean of Windsor. Meanwhile, in 1617, the first part of his major work, *De republica ecclesiastica* (Heidelberg and London; then Heidelberg 1618, II. I-IV), was published. The work continued to be published in the years 1620 (II. V-VI) and 1622 (II. VI and IX; II. VII and X were never published). Welcomed by Protestants for polemical reasons, it was widely translated and used; but its truest meaning is, in essence, anti-curialist and Gallican, albeit with Protestant influences. To a «monarchical» concept of the Church, De Dominis intended to substitute that of a «spiritual aristocracy» represented by the episcopate: the primacy of St. Peter was of a personal nature; the Church of Rome has no prerogatives, and its authority is of «external» origin, according to De Dominis, or purely «historical», as was later said.
In the second part of the work, the Protestant influence is more pronounced, particularly in the doctrine of the sacraments. Purgatory is denied. In discussing the relationship between temporal powers and the Church, De Dominis arrives at a clear jurisdictionalist conception; for him, ecclesiastics and even the pope are bound by the laws of princes in temporal matters, even in the external ecclesiastical regime. De Dominis utilized and accentuated the guiding ideas of Sarpi’s *Historia del Concilio Tridentino*, of which he had supervised the publication (London 1619) without Sarpi’s consent, dedicating it to King James I.
However, De Dominis began to tire of his English sojourn. His ideas were suspected of lacking Protestant orthodoxy. With the election of Gregory XV, who had known De Dominis, the latter, through Spanish ambassadors, expressed to Rome his intention of returning to the Church, and on 16 January 1622, he wrote to the king, claiming he wished to leave because of the climate. The king took offense and, after some attempts to detain him, gave him twenty days to depart. From Rome, he had received promises of a good reception. After various vicissitudes, he arrived in Brussels and there wrote *Sui reditus ex Anglia consilium* (published in Rome in 1623), in which he completely retracted his past and declared whatever he had said or written against the Catholic Church to be mere calumny. In Rome, where he had gone, he was nonetheless required to make amends in consistory. But as De Dominis again gave cause for suspicion, the Inquisition arrested him and examined his case. At this time, however, De Dominis died in 1624 (cf. G. Fabro’s letter to G. Galilei, in *Opere di G. Galilei*, XIII, Florence 1903, p. 207). The cardinal commission, concluding its examination, declared—especially on the basis of certain writings on the Holy Trinity found among De Dominis’s papers—that he had died a heretic. His body was therefore exhumed and burned along with his books. All his works are on the Index (decrees of 1616, 1617, 1618, 1620, 1621).
BIBL. No modern and exhaustive work exists on De Dominis, who is, in many respects, an interesting figure. Cf., however: H. Newland, *Life and contemporaneous Church history of M. d. D.*, Oxford 1850; K. Benrath, *D.*, in *Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche*, IV, pp. 781-87, and there is abundant bibliography; Pastor, XII, pp. 156-57, 222-23; see also: A. C. Jemolo, *Stato e Chiesa negli scrittori italiani del Seicento e del Settecento*, Turin 1914, passim; A. Bacciotti, *M. De D. Appunti biografici*, in *Archivio storico per la Dalmazia*, annata 2, 4 (1927), pp. 65-77. Franco Bolgiani