LETI, GREGORIO. - Writer, b. in Milan on 29 May 1630, d. in Amsterdam on 9 June 1701. He is a curious figure of an adventurer, a "libertine," an "émigré." After various vicissitudes he converted to Calvinism in Geneva.
A restless spirit and eager for sensations, he wandered through half of Europe. He wrote a great quantity of pamphlets (very famous in his time), obscene and defamatory toward the Church, aimed at revealing the alleged arcana of princes, achieving a record in the repeated condemnations of his Opera omnia to the Index (decrees 1667, 1676, 1682, 1683, 1685, 1686 [three times], 1687, 1694, 1696 [twice], 1697 [three times], 1699, 1702); among other works he wrote Istoria ovvero vita di Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra detta per soprannome la commendante politica (Amsterdam 1693) and, very celebrated, the Vita di Sisto V (Lausanne 1669), typical examples of what is known as novelistic historiography.