LETI, GREGORIO. - Writer, b. in Milano 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 Ginevra.
A restless spirit eager for sensations, he wandered through half of Europe. He wrote a great number of pamphlets (extremely famous in his day), obscene and defamatory towards the Church, intended to reveal the alleged 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); among other works, he wrote Istoria ovvero vita di Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra detta per soprannome la commediante politica (Amsterdam 1693) and, very famous, the Vita di Sisto V (Losanna 1669), typical examples of what is customarily called novelistic historiography.