MALVESTITI, MAURIZIO. - Francesca, born in Verolanuova (Brescia) on 17 Feb. 1778, died in Brescia on 25 March 1865. He entered the Franciscan Order in 1794, and at the Napoleonic suppression of 1797 he moved to Ferrara, where he was ordained priest in 1800. From 1801 he was a lecturer in the Aracoceli convent; between 1806 and 1807 he met Prince Lucien Bonaparte, who obtained from Pius VII that M. should be tutor to his children.
He took part in the turbulent events of Lucien’s life, following him to England in 1810 and then until the latter’s death in 1840. On the excavations at Lucien’s villa in Canino (Viterbo), begun in 1826, M. wrote four volumes, Museum etrusque de Lucien Bonaparte, Viterbo 1826–29. In 1837, having become general chronicler of the Order, he worked on a new volume of the Chronologia historico-legalis, which he did not complete. In 1847 he was elected provincial minister of the Lombard–Venetian province and in 1849 negotiated the surrender of Brescia at the close of the Ten Days. In 1850 Pius IX appointed him definitor general. In 1853 he was made Commissioner of the Holy Land for the Lombard–Venetian province, and in 1856 was entrusted with bringing to Napoleon III the embassy of the Custody of the Holy Land to obtain France’s protection; on this occasion he founded the Commissariat in Paris. A man of wide culture, he also devoted himself to the natural sciences and music, carrying out studies especially on Hebrew music.