Marcantonio De Dominis

1566-1624. Scholar and controversialist. Born in what is now Rab, Yugoslavia, he became a Jesuit but left in 1596 on appointment as bishop of Segni. He was subsequently archbishop of Spalato (1602) and primate of Dalmatia until 1616. He had also been a professor of mathematics at Padua (propounding a scientific explanation of the rainbow which anticipated Newton) and of rhetoric and logic at Brescia. Involved in the quarrel between the papacy and Venice, he went to England (1616) and was appointed dean of Windsor and master of the Savoy by James I (1617). There, having written De Republica Ecclesiastica, attacking Rome and defending national churches, he attacked the English Church just as violently (Sui reditus ex Anglia consilium). He died in the Castel Sant' Angelo as a relapsed heretic, having been seized by the Inquisition.