COLLETTA, Pietro. — Historian, born in Naples on 23 January 1775, died at Verramista, in the Villa Capponi, on 11 November 1831. He took part as a soldier in political life, first in the Bourbon army, then in defence of the Parthenopean Republic, and both Joachim Murat and King Ferdinand made use of his work. With the return of the Austrians to Naples, he was confined for two years to Brünn in Moravia. In 1823 he moved to Florence, where he composed the *Storia del reame di Napoli dal 1734 sino al 1835*, published posthumously by Capponi.
In the ten volumes of the *Storia* (placed on the Index by decree of 7 July 1835), Colletta, a vivid writer in the pages where he himself is an actor and witness to the events he narrates, nonetheless lacks deep insight and a sure historical method, being bound as he is to a certain taste for chronicle. In his overall vision, he remains fixed to the eighteenth-century myth of progress and to hatred of the papacy; politically, he favours a middle way, anti-revolutionary and anti-reactionary.