BATAVORUM insula, the island of the Batavians, in Ancient Geography. Of this island Tacitus gives the following description. "The Rhine flowing in one channel, or only broken by small islands, is divided at its entering Batavia, as it were into two rivers. One continues its course through Germany, retaining the same name, and violent current, till it falls into the ocean. The other wathing the coast of Gaul, with a broader and more gentle stream, is called by the inhabitants Valahis; which name it soon changes for that of Moa, by the immense mouth of which river it discharges itself into the same ocean." According to Tacitus, therefore, the island of the Batavians was bounded by the ocean, the Rhine, and the Valahis, now the Waal. Caesar extends it to the Moa, or Meuse; but Pliny agrees with Tacitus. However, this island was of greater extent in Tacitus's time than in Caesar's; Druus, the father of Germanicus, having by a new canal conveyed the waters of the Rhine into the ocean a considerable way north of the former mouth of that river. The Batavi were a branch of the Catti, who in a domestic sedition, being expelled their country, occupied the extremity of the coast of Gaul, at that time uninhabited, together with this island situated among flocks. Their name Batavi they carried with them from Germany; there being some towns in the territory of the Catti called Battenberg, and Battenhausen. The bravery of the Batavi, especially the BATE, GEORGE, an eminent physician, born at Maid's Morton, near Buckingham, in the year 1608. In 1629 he obtained a licence, and for some years practised in and about Oxford; his practice was chiefly amongst the Puritans, who at that time considered him as one of their party. In 1637, he took his degree of doctor in physic, and became very eminent in his profession, so that when King Charles kept his court at Oxford, he was his principal physician. When the king's affairs declined, Dr Bate removed to London, where he accommodated himself so well to the times, that he became physician to the Charter-house, fellow of the college of physicians, and afterwards principal physician to Oliver Cromwell. Upon the Restoration, he got into favour with the royal party, was made principal physician to the king, and fellow of the Royal Society; and this, we are told, was owing to a report raised on purpose by his friends, according to Mr Wood, that he gave the protector a dose which hastened his death. Dr Bate wrote in Latin an account of the late commotions in England, and some other pieces. He died at his house in Hatton-garden, and was buried at Kingston upon Thames in Surry.—There was another George Bate, who wrote a work entitled, "The Lives, Actions, and Execution, of the prime Actors and principal Contrivers of that horrid Murther of our late pious and sacred King Charles I."

Batenites, a sect of apostates from Mahometanism dispersed through the East, who professed the same abominable practices with the Imaelians and Karmatians. The word properly signifies esoteric, or people of inward or hidden light.