MONTENSES. - Name by which the small Donatist community of Rome was designated, because, according to what St. Optatus states (De schismate Donatistarum, II, 4: PL. 11, 950-51), since it originally had no building of its own, it used to hold its assemblies in a cave outside the walls. Petilian and other writers of the sect made much of the existence of this group in order to maintain the universality of their Church. Optatus 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, Victor of Garba, who, according to the same Optatus, had as successors Boniface, Encolpius, Macrobius (living at the time of the first edition of Optatus's work, and author of the Passio Maximiani et Isaac, written, according to P. Monceaux, around 366), then Lucianus and Claudianus. These too would have been ordained by Donatist bishops in Africa. St. Augustine (C. litter. Petil., II, 108, 247; C. Cresc., II, 37, 46; III, 34, 33; 63, 70; 65, 73) does not know much more about the Montenses; indeed he derives most of his information from Optatus himself, since he adds only two details: the other appellation, of Cutrapitani (or Curupitani in Epist. ad cathol., 3, 6) and the fact (but it may be merely his own supposition, moreover a fairly natural one) that some ordination, 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 case, the small community must already have disappeared, or been in the process of disappearing, by the early 5th century.
Bibliography
Alberto Pincherle