CAPECELATRO, GIUSEPPE. — Archbishop of Taranto, b. in Naples on 23 Sept. 1744, d. 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 St. Januarius, then consistorial advocate for the Kingdom of Naples and later Archbishop of Taranto. He was one of the most notable figures of that Neapolitan Jansenism which, as elsewhere in Italy, merged into regalism and Enlightenment thought.
Indeed, two of his works were placed on the Index: *Discorso storico-politico dell'origine, del progresso e della decadenza del potere dei chierici sulle Signorie temporali*, Philadelphia (Naples) n.d. (banned 29 Jan. 1789), and *Riflessioni sul discorso... dialogo del sig. Censorini, italiano col sig. Ramour, francese*, Philadelphia (Naples) n.d. (1789, banned 20 Feb. 1794) because they contained false, seditious, heretical assertions, injurious to ecclesiastical liberty and immunity, destructive of the primacy of the Pope, and manifestly tending to schism and rebellion (H. Reusch, *Der Index der verbotenen 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 distinctive mark. Before his death he retracted his errors.