NATALE, MICHELE. — Bishop of Vico Equense, b. at Casapulla (Caserta) on 23 Aug. 1751, d. at Naples on 20 Aug. 1799.
After exercising his priestly ministry at Capua and Naples, he was elected in 1797 to the see of Vico Equense through the protection of King Ferdinand IV, but two years later he adhered to the Parthenopean Republic, assuming the presidency of the municipality of Vico and publishing a Republican Catechism “for the instruction of the people and the ruin of tyrants.”
His diocesans then rose up against him and forced him to flee to Capua, where, following the Bourbon restoration, he was arrested and taken to Naples. Subjected to trial and condemned to death, after a public recantation, he was executed and his effigy was erased from the iconographic series of bishops in the cathedral of Vico Equense.