MARC ANTONIO DE, celebrated as a theologian and natural philosopher, was born in the island of Arbe, in 1566. He was educated in the order of the Jesuits, and was raised from the bishopric of Segni to the archbishopric of Spalatro. His endeavours to reform the church soon after made him obnoxious to the papal authorities, and he was compelled to leave his native country. Having become acquainted with Bishop Bedell, whilst chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton, ambassador from James I. at Venice, he communicated to that prelate his books De Republica Ecclesiastica, which were afterwards published at London, with Bedell's corrections. He came to England with Bedell, where he was received with great respect, and preached and wrote against the Roman Catholic religion. In 1619 he published at London Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent, with a dedication to King James. But on the promotion of Pope Gregory XIV., who had been his school-fellow and old acquaintance, he was deluded by Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador into the hopes of procuring a cardinal's hat, and thus of proving an instrument of great reformation within the church. Accordingly he returned to Rome in 1622, recanted his errors, and was at first well received; but he afterwards wrote letters to England recanting his recantation, and these being intercepted, he was imprisoned by Pope Urban VIII. and died in 1625. He is believed to have been the first to promulgate a true theory of the rainbow.