DONATELLO (1386-1466), the diminutive of Donato, was the son of Niccolo Bardi, and was born in Florence in 1386. In the struggle between the rival parties of the Albizzi and the Medici, the father took part with the former, and was involved in their ruin. He must have been a man of considerable property, judging from the decree by which his houses are confiscated. His son Donatello found protection and shelter and the means of early training from the Martelli family, and to this connection must be ascribed Donatello’s introduction to the great Cosmo de’ Medici, pater patrice, who during the life-long relation between himself and the artist, did everything to efface, by kindness towards the son, the recollection of the sufferings which the house of Medici had inflicted on the father. He learned the goldsmith’s trade under the father of the renowned Lorenzo Ghiberti, and the goldsmith’s trade then included all kinds of bronze creations. At the age of seventeen he set out for Rome with his friend Brunellesco. At Rome the two young men maintained themselves by working as goldsmiths during the first half of the week, devoting the second half to the study of the ancient monuments, and to making excavations in search of lost works of art. The Romans, we are told, believed them to be treasure-seekers. The Romans of Donatello’s time still reflected the feelings with which their forefathers, nearly three centuries before, had wondered when the agents of Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, dug up and carried away from their city similar artistic treasures. On their return to Florence, rich in artistic knowledge and treasures, the careers commenced in which Brunellesco was destined to hang above the Florence cathedral the dome of the Pantheon, and Donatello to impart to ...

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 June 2, 1858, he discovered the comet which bears his name (see vol. ii. p. 815). Other comets were 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, aud 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. 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 introduced 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 quaestio υexata 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 Caecilian, the archdeacon, 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 Caecilian’s consecration, however, Secundus and seventy of the Numidian bishops arrived at Carthage, and steps were at once taken to ...

DONATUS, Aelius, a grammarian and rhetorician, who taught at Rome in the middle of the 4th century a,d., had the honour of numbering St Jerome among his pupils, and was the author of a number of professional works. We still possess his Ars grammatica, consisting of three parts, De Uteris, syllabis, pedibus et tonis, De octo partibus orationis, and De barbarismo, solecismo, schematibus, et tropis; tho larger portion of his commentary on Terence, in a greatly interpolated condition; and a few fragments of his notes on Virgil preserved and severely criticised by Servius. The first of these works, and especially the section De octo partibus, though possessing little claim to originality, and in fact evidently based on the same authorities which were used by Charisius and Diomedes, attained such popularity as a school-book that in the Middle Ages the writer’s name became a common metonymy for a rudimentary treatise of any sort, and bade fair to furnish as permanent an addition to the English vocabulary as has been obtained in French from the name of Calepinus. Avaricia, for example, in the Vision of Piers Plowman, tells how he “drowe among draperes his donet to learn;” and bishop Pecock published about 1440 a Donat into Christian Religion. On the introduction of printing the little book was one of the first rendered accessible by the new process, and editions were soon multiplied to such an extent that the bibliography of Donatus is nearly as intricate a subject as that of the Bible. Copies still exist, though in a mutilated condition, of impressions produced by the early wooden-block system, details about which may be found in Sotzmann’s “Aelteste Geschichte der Xylographie” in the Historische Taschenbuch for 1837. The Ars Grammatica is reprinted by Putsch in ...