Name Gregorio Leti | ||
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Died 1701, Amsterdam, Netherlands | ||
Gregorio Leti (1630–1701) was an Italian historian and satirist from Milan, who sometimes published under the pseudonym Abbe Gualdi, L'abbé Gualdi, or Gualdus known for his works about the Catholic Church, especially the papacy. All of his publications were listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
Contents
Life
The nephew of the Bishop of Acquapendente in Umbria, Leti was educated in a Jesuit school, but later became a Protestant. He resided in the court of Louis XIV of France and in 1680 that of Charles II of England, who commissioned him to write a history of England. Leti had access to the library of the Earl of Anglesey, which numbered over 5,000 volumes, as well as that of Bishop Gilbert Burnet. He wrote the first ever proper life of Elizabeth I of England, which includes many romantic embellishments about her youth and her mother, Anne Boleyn. Nevertheless, he may have used documents he found in the English libraries. Leti was also elected a member of the Royal Society.
After the publication of a collection of anecdotes which offended Charles II, Il Teatro Britannico, Leti fled England in 1683 for Amsterdam, where he became the city historiographer in 1685. He died in Amsterdam in 1701.
Leti's biography of Pope Sixtus V has been translated into many languages, and contains an anecdote similar to the infamous "pound of flesh" from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Leti "mendacious and inexact" and is also critical of works described as derivative of Leti's "anti-papal histories." Mosheim, a Lutheran church historian, called Leti "inaccurate and unfaithful." According to Thomas Trollope, "his inexactitude as an historian is notorious." Even secular writers have characterised his biography of Sixtus V as "resting on very slight authority." Among his critics, Leti is sometimes referred to as the "Varillas of Italy."
Leti was the father-in-law of the scholar and theologian Jean Leclerc.