NARBONE, ALESSIO. – Jesuit, historiographer, and erudite scholar, born at Caltagirone (Catania) on 9 Aug. 1789, died at Palermo on 13 Dec. 1860. He entered the Society of Jesus on 3 Oct. 1806 and for more than 40 years taught literature, theology, and ecclesiastical history in the schools of the Order and, from 1848, in the Palermo Seminary. In 1860, following the expulsion of the Jesuits, he found refuge in the Hospital of the Priests, where he died shortly afterward.
Together with other distinguished scholars, he represented nineteenth-century Sicilian culture. He undertook to compile an inventory of everything that had been written and accomplished in Sicily in the various fields of knowledge, from the invention of printing onward: the result was the Bibliografia sicula sistematica (4 vols., Palermo 1850–55), a remarkable monument of learning and ingenuity. Also noteworthy is the Storia letteraria della Sicilia dall'antichità al sec. XV (12 vols., there 1852–64). Following in the footsteps of his confrere G. Andres, in 1838 he began publishing in Palermo the 10 volumes of the Storia d'ogni poesia, d'ogni eloquenza, filologia, matematica fisica, filosofia, teologia, a work of immense erudition that earned him appointment as a member of the Accademia del Buon Gusto and as secretary of the academy of sciences, letters, and arts in the same city.
Among his numerous writings of ethical-religious interest are: La Compagnia di Gesù in Sicilia (there 1850) and, above all, the 6 volumes of the Annali siculi della Compagnia di Gesù (1804–59), published there by his confrere G. Filiti in 1906–1908.