FRANCESCO MARIA da LECCE. - A Franciscan from Apulia. Of the province of S. Nicola di Bari, he studied at the missionary college of S. Pietro in Monroio in Rome. From 1688 to 1692 he was a missionary in the Lucerne Valleys, whence he was transferred to Albania; in 1701 he was elected prefect of the missions of Macedonia, comprising the dioceses of Alessio and Durazzo. In 1705 he attended in Rome the printing of the Albanian Synod in Latin and Albanian; from 1705 to 1711 he taught the Albanian language at the Franciscan missionary college of S. Bartolomeo all'Isola. Having returned to his native land, he apparently died in 1719.
He published the first Albanian grammar known to date, under the title: Osservazioni grammaticali nella lingua albanese (Rome 1716); he also compiled a dictionary of the same language, which he delivered to the prefect of the Archive of Propaganda, but it was not published. The grammar was later used by Fr. Francesco da Montalto for his Regole grammaticali della lingua albanese (Rome 1866).