FRANCESCO MARIA da Lecce. – A Franciscan from Apulia. Of the Province of St Nicholas of Bari, he studied at the Missionary College of St Peter in Montorio in Rome. From 1688 to 1692 he was a missionary in the Lucerne Valleys, whence he was transferred to Albania and in 1701 was elected prefect of the missions in Macedonia, which included 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 Albanian at the Franciscan Missionary College of St Bartholomew on the Island. Returning to his homeland, he died, it seems, in 1719.
He published the first Albanian grammar known to date, under the title: Osservazioni grammaticali nella lingua albanese (Rome 1716); he also composed a dictionary of the same language, which he entrusted to the Prefect of the Archive of the 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).
ARDUINO Kleinhans