DEGOLA, EUSTACHIO. - Priest, the last and most original figure of Italian Jansenism, b. in Genoa on 20 Sept. 1761, d. there on 17 Jan. 1826. Educated in the school of Molinelli, there converged in him the anti-Roman aversion of Fra Paolo Sarpi (to whom he dedicated an apologetic writing: Justification de fra' Paolo Sarpi ou Lettres d'un prêtre italien à un magistrat françois sur le caractère et les sentiments de cet homme célèbre, Paris 1811; placed on the Index, decr. 22 Dec. 1817) and the spirituality of Port-Royal (on whose ruins he held in 1809 the centenary commemoration of its destruction).
Along with anti-Roman principles and Jansenist convictions, the democratic ideals of the French Revolution soon took hold of him, together with an ecclesiastical policy that led him to establish friendly contacts with B.-H. Grégoire and O. Mouton. He indeed held an authoritative position in the ecclesiastical policy of the Ligurian Republic (1797-98), publishing the Annali politico-ecclesiastici (1797-99), and he took part in the second National Council of the French constitutional clergy, in defense of which he drafted a compendium of Solari's work: L'ancien clergé constitutionnel jugé par un évêque d'Italie (Lausanne 1804; placed on the Index, decr. 26 Aug. 1822). Only from 1791 was he in contact with the bishop of Pistoia Scipione de' Ricci, and he therefore had no part in the famous Synod presided over by the latter; he had friendly relations with the Tuscan Jansenists and with the theologians of the University Circle of Pavia. And when by the bull Anctorem Fidei of 1794 the tendencies of which all these were supporters were condemned, he kept their mutual relations alive by traveling in Italy and abroad.
He lived in communion with the schismatic Church of Utrecht (1794-96), which he professed to be «holy» and said he loved with
«a most tender love». He always regarded France as a second homeland, and his religious thought was akin to that of the appellants and of the French Gallicans, repeating the ambiguities of P. Quesnel, the Gallicanism of Grégoire, and, as already said, the anti-curialism of Paolo Sarpi. He began his Jansenist activity in 1792 by translating, under the pseudonym of Ireneo Filarete, Guibaud's work: Gemiti di un'anima penitente ricavati dalla S. Scrittura e dai SS. Padri; he collaborated on Grégoire's Annales de la Religion, and, with the latter, in Paris (1819-22) on the Chronique religieuse, finally publishing in Leipzig (1820) the Catechismo dei Gesuiti. He compiled various other pamphlets, among which some are still in manuscript (Vatican Library, codd. Vat. lat. 13136) on millenarianism, on pontifical infallibility, etc., which confirm his opposition to the doctrine of the Church.
Among his various friendships he had the distinguished one of Alessandro Manzoni. An apostle for the conversion of the Calvinists, after that of the Geymüller family (1805-1808), he contributed to the conversion of Enrichetta Manzoni Blondel (1810) and of Adele Sellon, marquise of Cavour. A soul of singular spiritual gifts, distinguished for culture and purity of life, in 1820 he founded with Assarotti in Genoa the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb. There remains of him a copious correspondence, a true mine of information on the ecclesiastical controversies of his time, and a decisive document of his doctrinal aberrations.