DEGOLA, EUSTACHIO. — Priest, the last and most original figure of Italian Jansenism, born in Genoa on 20 September 1761, died there on 17 January 1826. Educated at the school of Molinelli, he combined the anti-Roman aversion of fra' Paolo Sarpi (to whom he dedicated an apologetic work: 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, decree of 22 December 1817) with the spirituality of Port-Royal (on whose ruins he delivered the centenary commemoration of its destruction in 1809).
Alongside anti-Roman principles and Jansenist convictions, the democratic ideals of the French Revolution and an ecclesiastical policy that led him to establish friendly contacts with B.-H. Grégoire and O. Mouton soon gained influence over him. He in fact held an authoritative position in the ecclesiastical policy of the Ligurian republic (1797–98), publishing the Annali politico-ecclesiastici (1797–99), and took part in the Second National Council of the French constitutional clergy, in defence of which he prepared a summary of Solari’s work: L'ancien clergé constitutionnel jugé par un évêque d'Italie (Lausanne 1804; placed on the Index, decree of 26 August 1822). Only from 1791 was he in contact with the bishop of Pistoia, Scipione de' Ricci, and consequently he played no part in the celebrated Synod presided over by him; he maintained friendly relations with the Tuscan Jansenists and with the theologians of the University Circle of Pavia. And when, with the bull Auctorem Fidei of 1794, the tendencies upheld by all these figures were condemned, he kept their mutual relations alive by travelling 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 French Appellants and Gallicans, repeating the ambiguities of P. Quesnel, the Gallicanism of Grégoire, and, as already noted, the anti-Curialism of Paolo Sarpi. He began his Jansenist activity in 1792 by translating, under the pseudonym 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, some of them still in manuscript (Vatican Library, cod. Vat. lat. 13136), on millenarianism, papal infallibility, etc., which confirm his opposition to the Church’s doctrine.
Among his various friendships was the distinguished one with Alessandro Manzoni. He worked zealously for the conversion of Calvinists, following that of the Geymüller family (1805–1808); he contributed to the conversion of Enrichetta Manzoni Blondel (1810) and of Adele Sellon, marchioness of Cavour. A man endowed with singular spiritual gifts, distinguished for his learning and purity of life, in 1820 he founded the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Genoa with Assarotti. His abundant correspondence remains, a veritable mine of information on the ecclesiastical controversies of his time and decisive evidence of his doctrinal aberrations.