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 eager for sensations, he wandered through half of Europe. He wrote a great quantity of libels (very famous in his day), obscene, defamatory toward the Church, intent on revealing the supposed arcana of princes, setting a record in the repeated condemnations to the Index of his Opera omnia (decrees of 1667, 1676, 1682, 1683, 1685, 1686 [three times], 1687, 1694, 1696 [twice], 1697 [three times], 1699, 1702); he wrote among other things Istoria ovvero vita di Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra detta per soprannome la commediante politica (Amsterdam 1693) and, very celebrated, the Vita di Sisto V (Lausanne 1669), typical examples of what is customarily called fictionalized historiography.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: L. Fassò, Avventurieri della penna nel Seicento, Florence 1923, pp. 5-267 (with the preceding bibliography); C. Morandi, In margine ad una lettera di G. L., in Studi in onore di Niccolò Rodolico, ibid. 1944, pp. 273-89; G. Spini, Ricerca dei libertini, Rome 1930, p. 231-322.

@incollection{ec7_leti_gregorio, author = {Petrocchi, Massimo}, title = {Leti, gregorio}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {1208}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/leti-gregorio} }

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Leti, Gregorio

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