Gregorio Leti (1630–1701) was an Italian historian and satirist from Milan, who sometimes published under the pseudonym Abbe Gualdi, L'abbé Gualdi,[1] or Gualdus[2] known for his works about the Roman Catholic Church, especially the papacy. All of his publications were listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.[3]
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The nephew of the Bishop of Acquapendente in Umbria, Leti was educated in a Jesuit school, but later became a Protestant.[4] He resided in the court of Louis XIV of France and in 1680[5] that of Charles II of England, who commissioned him to write a history of England. Leti had access to the library of the Earl of Anglesey, which numbered over 5,000 volumes, as well as that of Bishop Gilbert Burnet.[6] He wrote the first ever proper life of Elizabeth I of England, which includes many romantic embellishments about her youth and her mother, Anne Boleyn. Nevertheless, he may have used documents he found in the English libraries.[7] Leti was also elected a member of the Royal Society.
After the publication of a collection of anecdotes which offended Charles II, Il Teatro Britannico,[8] Leti fled England in 1683 for Amsterdam, where he became the city historiographer in 1685.[9][10] He died in Amsterdam in 1701.[8]
Leti's biography of Pope Sixtus V has been translated into many languages, and contains an anecdote similar to the infamous "pound of flesh" from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.[11] The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Leti "mendacious and inexact" and is also critical of works describes as derivative of Leti's "anti-papal histories."[12] Mosheim, a Lutheran church historian, called Leti "inaccurate and unfaithful."[13] According to Thomas Trollope, "his inexactitude as an [sic] historian is notorious."[14] Even secular writers have characterized his biography of Sixtus V as "resting on very slight authority."[15] Among his critics, Leti is sometimes referred to as the "Varillas of Italy."[5]
Leti was the father-in-law of the theologian Jean Leclerc.[10]
"Pope
Innocent X" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. "Conclave" in
the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.|
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