NATALE, MICHELE. — Bishop of Vico Equense, born at Casapulla (Caserta) on 23 August 1751, died at Naples on 20 August 1799.
After exercising the priestly ministry at Capua and Naples, through the protection of King Ferdinando IV he was elected in 1797 to the cathedral of Vico Equense; but two years later he joined 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 diocesan subjects then rose up against him and forced him to take refuge in Capua, where, following the Bourbon restoration, he was arrested and taken to Naples. Brought to trial and condemned to death, after desecration, he was executed, and his likeness was erased from the iconographic series of the bishops in the cathedral of Vico Equense.