on the St Mark, exclaimed, " So noble a figure could indeed
write a gospel."DONATI, Giovanni Battista, professor of astronomy at the Royal Institution of Florence, was born at Pisa, December 16, 1826, and died at Florence, September 20, 1873. In 1852 he became an assistant at the Florentine observatory, of which in 1864 he was appointed director. On Jane 2, 1858, he discovered the comet which bears his name (see vol. ii. p. 815). Other comets wore discovered by him on June 3, 1855, November 10, 1857, and July 23 and September 9, 1864. He made numerous spectroscopic observations of comets and the solar disc, and in 1862 published diagrams of three or four lines in the spectra of fifteen stars. The new observatory on the hill of Arcetri, near Florence, was erected under his superintendence, and was directed by him. At the time of his death Donati had just returned from Vienna, where he was the representative of Italy in the international meteorological congress.
DONATISTS, a powerful sect which formed itself in the Christian church of northern Africa in the beginning of the 4th century.[1] In its doctrine it sprang from the same roots, and in its history it had in many things the same character, as the earlier Novatians. The predisposing causes of the Donatist schism were the belief, early intro duced into the African church, that the validity of all sacerdotal acts depended upon the personal character of the agent, and the question, arising out of that belief, as to the eligibility for sacerdotal office of the traditores, or those who had delivered up their copies of the Scriptures under the compulsion of the Diocletian persecution; the exciting cause was the election of a successor to Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, who died in 311. Mensurius had held moderate views as to the qucestio vexata of the treatment of the traditores, and accordingly a strong fanatical party had formed itself in Carthage in opposition to him, headed by a wealthy and therefore influential widow named Lucilla, and countenanced by Secundus of Tigisis, primate of Numidia. There were thus two parties each anxious to secure the succession to the vacant see. The friends of the late bishop fixed their choice on Csecilian, the arch deacon, and secured his election and his consecration by Felix, the bishop of Aptungis, before the other party were ready for action. It had been customary, though probably it was not essential, that the Numidian bishops should be present at the election and consecration of the bishop of Carthage ; Caecilian s party had not waited for them, knowing them to be in sympathy with their opponents. Soon after Csecilian s consecration, however, Secundus and seventy of the Numidian bishops arrived at Carthage, and steps were at once taken to displace the new bishop. A synod was formed before which Caecilian was summoned ; his consecration was declared invalid, on the ground that Felix had been a traditor ; and finally, having refused to obey the summons to appear, he was excommunicated, and Majorinus, a dependent of Lucilla s, consecrated in his stead. Thus the schism became overt, and in a very short time there were rival bishops and rival churches in most of the cities of North Africa, as well as in Carthage. The inevitable appeal to the civil power to settle the dispute was first made by the Donatists, who were incited to do so by receiving proof, in their exclusion from certain privileges conferred on the African church, that the sympathies of Constantine were with the other party. They accordingly petitioned the emperor to appoint a commission to try the case, indicating a preference for Gallic bishops, among whom there were no traditors, the Diocletian persecution not having extended to Gaul. The result was that a commission was issued to five Gallic bishops, under the presidency of Miltiades, bishop of Home. The number of referees was afterwards increased to twenty, and the case was tried at Rome in 313. Ten bishops appeared on each side, the leading representative of the Donatists being Donatus of Caste Nigrae. The decision was entirely in favour of Caecilian, and Donatus was found guilty of various ecclesiastical offences. An appeal was taken and allowed ; but the decision of the synod of Aries (314) not only confirmed the position of Caacilian, but greatly strengthened it by passing a canon that ordination was not invalid because performed by a traditor, if otherwise regular. Felix had previously been declared innocent after an examination of records and witnesses at Carthage. A further appeal to the emperor in person was heard at Milan in 316, when all points were finally decided in favour of Ceecilian. As a necessary consequence of this the power of the state was directed to the suppression of the defeated party. Persistent Donatists were no longer merely heretics ; they were rebels, and incurred the confiscation of their church property and the forfeiture of their civil rights.
The attempt to destroy by force a fanatical sect had its usual result in only intensifying its fanaticism and con solidating its sectarianism. Majorinus, the Donatist bishop of Carthage, dying in 315, was succeeded by Donatus, surnamed Magnus, a man of great force of character, under whose influence the schism gained fresh strength from the opposition it encountered. Force was met with force ; the Circumcelliones, bands of fugitive slaves and vagrant (drcum cellas) peasants, were enlisted as the champions of Donatism, and their violence reached such a height as to threaten civil war. In 321 Constantine, seeing probably that he had been wrong in abandoning his usual policy of toleration in this case, sought to retrace his steps by grant ing the Donatists liberty to act according to their con sciences, and declaring that the points in dispute between them and the orthodox should be left to the judgment of God. This wise policy, to which he consistently adhered to the close of his reign, was not followed by his son and successor in the Western Empire, Constans, who, after repeated attempts to win over the sect by bribes, resorted to persecution. The renewed excesses of the Circumcellioues, among whom were ranged fugitive slaves, debtors, and political malcontents of all kinds, had given to the Donatist schism a socialist aspect ; and its forcible suppression may therefore have seemed to Constans even more necessary for the preservation of the empire than for the vindication of orthodoxy. The power which they had been the first to invoke having thus declared so emphatically and persistently against them, the Donatists were led to adopt the theory known in more recent times as that of spiritual independence, which Donatus Magnus formulated in the question, " What has the emperor to do with the church?" (Quid est imper atari cum ecdcsia?) Such a theory naturally aggravated the lawlessness of the Circum- cellion adherents of the sect, and their outrages were in turn made the justification for the most rigorous measures against the whole Donatist party indiscriminately. Many of their bishops fell victims to the persecution, and Donatua and several others were banished from their sees.
took place in the treatment of the Donatists. Their churches were restored and their bishops reinstated, with the natural result of greatly increasing both the numbers and the fanaticism of the sect. A return to the earlier
policy of repression was made under Valentinian I. ani
- ↑ There were two Donatuses connected with the Donatist sect, Donatus of Casse Nigroe, and Donatus surnamed Magnus, who succeeded Majorinus as the Donatist bishop of Carthage. The name of the sect was probably derived from the latter, who was the more influential of the two. It is to be observed that the Donatists themselves repudiated that designation, whioh was applied to them by their opponents as a reproach. They called themselves " Pars Majorini or "Pars Donati."
