NATALI, MARTINO. - Piarist and Jansenist, b. at Bussana (Imperia) on 21 Dec. 1730, d. at Pavia on 28 June 1791. A disciple of G. B. Curlo, in Rome he formed friendships with the most stubborn adversaries of the Jesuits and the most ardent supporters of Jansenism, and had occasion to express his ideas. Admonished, he did not yield, but his polemical character grew with singular violence, so as to draw upon his name the suspicion of the Holy Office itself.
The occasion for this was a course of 509 theses De summo Pontifice deque S. Romanae Ecclesiae cardinalibus and the printing of these and other theses (at the Roman publisher Zempel), in which, under the appearance of defending Catholic truths, he insinuated Jansenist theories. Reproved by Fr. Mamachi and subjected to an examination by the Holy Office, he did not come out of it condemned, but he was forbidden to continue teaching theology at the Collegio Calasanzio (1763). Transferred to Urbino, in the following year, with the favor of friends, he returned to Rome, where in an aggressive tone he wrote: Lettera d'un chierico delle Scuole Pie scolare del p. M. N., al p. maestro Mamachi di Scio, teologo casanatense a giustificazione di sé. From 1766 to 1769 he was prefect of the schools of the Collegio Calasanzio, in which year he received the order to move to Milan for a chair of dogmatic theology at the University of Pavia. From the Pavia course came the works: S. Augustini doctrina de Gratia Dei (Pavia 1786); Scripturae et Patrum doctrina de Deo eiusque attributus seu praelectionum theologicarum ad usum auditorum (ibid. 1787-1788). Furthermore: Lettera contro il Tournely (ibid. 1770); Lettera sopra la morte di Gesù e la sua discesa all'Inferno (ibid. 1776), where the common doctrine on Limbo is rejected and free discussion is defended against the common teaching in theological matters; to this work two years later he added a Sermone di s. Agostino in cui tratta della pena de' fanciulli morti senza Battesimo. Particularly popular were the Sentimenti di un cattolico sulla predestinazione dei santi (ibid. 1782), the Preghiere della Chiesa per ottenere da Dio la sua santa Grazia (ibid. 1783) and an Epitome all'opera di Francesco Veronio (ibid. 1785). He was also an assiduous collaborator of the Pistoia collection of Opuscoli interessanti la religione edited by De' Ricci, a translator of various literature of the French appellants, an apologist of the schismatic Church of Utrecht, against the history of that Church written by Mozzi (v.), in a short work which he left unfinished, finally concluding with a truly reckless work: Dubbio sul centro dell'unità cattolica della Chiesa (ibid. 1790); an obscure vision of the Church on the part of a poisoned and thoroughly revolutionary believer. Codignola rightly considers it his literary, theological and polemical testament. Many of his friends rejected it. He carried out his office of royal censor in a Jansenist manner, especially in the case of Bellarmine's catechism, seeking, as he said, against the « Loyolistic doctrines » the « sound truth and doctrine », always devoted and humble toward the imperial government, as hostile and acid toward the Roman Curia. He had constant relations with the principal Italian and foreign Jansenists, but, failing to rise above polemic, also because of the not ingenious complexity of his work and his intellect, he remained only a bold and reckless exponent of Ligurian Jansenism and of the theological portico of Pavia.