MONTENSES. - Name by which the small Donatist community of Rome was designated, because, according to what St. Ottato states (De schimate Donititarum, II, 4: PL. 11, 950-51), having originally no building at its disposal, it used to hold its meetings in a cave outside the walls. Petiliano and other writers of the sect invoked the existence of this group in support of the universality of their Church. Ottato therefore insists on the small number of its adherents and on the recent origins of this group, composed predominantly, if not entirely, of immigrants.
They had received from Africa a bishop, Vittore di Garba, who, according to Ottato himself, was succeeded by Bonifazio, Encolpio, Macrobio (living at the time of the first edition of Ottato’s work, and author of the Passio Maximiani et Isaac, composed, according to P. Monceaux, ca. 366), then Luciano and Claudiano. They too would have been ordained by Donatist bishops in Africa. St. Agostino (C. litter. Petil., II, 108, 247; C. Cresc., II, 37, 46; III, 34, 33; 63, 70; 65, 73) knows little more about the M.; indeed, he derives most of his information from Ottato himself, since he adds only two details: the other designation, Cutrapitani (or Curupitani in Epist. ad cathol., 3, 6), and the fact (though this may have been only his own supposition, quite natural in any case) that some ordinations, rather than in Africa, would have been performed in Rome itself by Donatist bishops who had gone there for that purpose (De haeres., 62, 3, 1). In any event, the small community must already have disappeared, or have been in the process of disappearing, by the beginning of the fifth century.