DOMINIS, MARCO ANTONIO DE (1566-1624), Italian theologian, was born on the island of Arbe, off the Dalmatian coast. He was educated by the Jesuits, and became professor of mathematics at Padua, and professor of rhetoric and philosophy at Brescia. In 1596 he was appointed to the bishopric of Segnia (Zengg) in Dalmatia, and in 1600 was raised to the archbishopric of Spalato and primacy of Dalmatia and Croatia. His attempts at reform brought him into conflict with his suffragans; and he also became involved in the quarrel between the papacy and Venice. He resigned his see in Sept. 1616, and wrote at Venice his Consilium pro f ectionis, criticizing the papacy. In the same year, he crossed to England, and being regarded as a convert to Anglicanism, was appointed master of the Savoy (1618) and dean of Windsor (1619) ; he subsequently presented himself to the living of West Ilsley, Berkshire. His published attacks on the papacy include the Papatus Romanus, issued anonymously (London, 1617; Frankfurt, 1618), the Scogli del nau f ragio Christiano (London [ ?] 1618) , and a Sermon preached in Italian, etc. before the king. But his principal work was the De republics ecclesiastica, of which the first part—after revision by Anglican theologians—was published under royal patronage in London (1617) , in which he ably set forth his theory of the church. In 1619 Dominis published without the author's consent Paolo Sarpi's Historia del Concilio Tridentino, the ms. of which he had brought with him from Venice.
Three years later the ex-archbishop was back again in Rome, doing penance for his heresies. He may have been enticed back by the elevation of his kinsman, Alessandro Ludovisi, to the papal throne as Gregory XV. (1621), but if so, he had barely time to publish at Rome (1623) his Sui reditus ex Angliae con silium, a repudiation of his anti-papal works, when Gregory died (July 1623). The proceedings of the Inquisition against the archbishop were revived, but before they were concluded, Dominis died in prison, on Sept. 8, 1624. Judgment was pro nounced over his corpse, which was pubjicly burnt in the Campo di Fiore. By a strange irony of fate the publication of his Reditus consilium was subsequently forbidden in Venice because of its uncompromising advocacy of the supremacy of the pope over the temporal powers.
See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklo padie, where a full bibliography is given ; G. Goodman, The Court of James I. ed. Brewer (London, 1839) ; H. Newland, Life and Contemporaneous Church History of Antonio de Dominis (Oxford, 1859).