CAPECELATRO, GIUSEPPE. - Archbishop of Taranto, born in Naples on 23 Sept. 1744, died there on 2 Nov. 1836. Of a noble ducal family, at the age of twenty-two, after a long educational journey through Italy, he was ordained priest and became chaplain of the Treasury of S. Gennaro, then consistorial advocate for the Kingdom of Naples, and subsequently archbishop of Taranto. He was one of the most notable figures of that Neapolitan Jansenism which, as elsewhere in Italy, merged into regalist and Enlightenment currents.
Two of his works were placed on the Index: Discorso istorico-politico dell'origine, del progresso e della decadenza del potere dei chierici sulle Signorie temporali, Filadelfia (Naples) n.d. (decree 29 Jan. 1789), and Riflessioni sul discorso... dialogo del sig. Censorini, italiano col sig. Ramour, francese, Filadelfia (Naples) n.d. (1789, decree 20 Feb. 1794), because they contained false, seditious, heretical assertions, injurious to ecclesiastical liberty and immunity, destructive of the primacy of the Pope, with a manifest tendency toward schism and rebellion (H. Reusch, Der Index der verbot. Büchern, II, Bonn 1885, p. 931). In the political sphere he adapted himself to the various forms of government—monarchical and republican, Italian and French—that succeeded one another, without leaving any particular mark. Before his death he recanted his errors.