Durastante Tommaso Francesco Emiliano Natalucci (17 September 1687 – 22 May 1772) was an Italian historian who specialized in history of

Trevi The area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ) of the European Union (EU) is a policy domain concerning home affairs and migration, justice as well as fundamental rights, developed to address the challenges posed to internal security by col ...

, in

Umbria Umbria ( ; ) is a Regions of Italy, region of central Italy. It includes Lake Trasimeno and Cascata delle Marmore, Marmore Falls, and is crossed by the Tiber. It is the only landlocked region on the Italian Peninsula, Apennine Peninsula. The re ...

. Born at Picicche di Trevi into one of the prominent families of the area, he was tonsured at age 7, upon the death of an uncle of his who had been priest of SS. Crocifisso: he received the benefice of that church from Pope

Innocent XII Pope Innocent XII (; ; 13 March 1615 – 27 September 1700), born Antonio Pignatelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 July 1691 to his death in September 1700. He took a hard stance against nepotism ...

. He studied with the

Jesuits The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

in nearby

Spoleto Spoleto (, also , , ; ) is an ancient city in the Italian province of Perugia in east-central Umbria on a foothill of the Apennines. It is south of Trevi, north of Terni, southeast of Perugia; southeast of Florence; and north of Rome. H ...

from 1704 to 1709, when he moved to

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

to study law. His father had died in 1705, so when his mother fell ill around 1710, he returned to Trevi to take care of his family's affairs, in which task he succeeded well enough that he was entrusted similar work on behalf of other local families. Over the next ten or twelve years he accompanied the

bishop of Spoleto The Archdiocese of Spoleto-Norcia () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Italy. Historically, it was the Diocese of Spoleto. Elevated to the status of an archdiocese since 1821, it is a metropolis ( ...

on his pastoral rounds, possibly serving as a reliable secretary versed in the affairs of Trevi whenever the bishop needed to visit the northern area of his large diocese. This experience deepened his interest in the history of his hometown and its dependencies. He started to consign the historical information he collected to a series of notebooks, and gradually formed them into what would become his ''Historia Universale dello stato temporale ed eclesiastico'' (sic) ''di Trevi''. In 1726 he was elected attorney for the

comune A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...

of Trevi, and later became magistrate with the town council. He was, however, suddenly afflicted with total blindness in 1747, which put an end to his efforts; in that same year, having been a lifelong bachelor, he decided to marry a noblewoman from Spoleto, who bore him three children, Giuseppe, Maria, and another who lived only a few days. His work, though well advanced, remained unpublished, in the state it had reached in 1745, until 1985, when thanks to Giuseppe Natalucci, a descendant, the sole manuscript was made available to another Trevi historian, Carlo Zenobi, who produced a careful edition. Natalucci's history of Trevi, though still essentially a draft, exhaustively documents the history of the Trevi area based on many hundreds of meticulously noted sources. It focuses primarily on land parcels and the families and church entities that controlled them, and provides a minute picture of rural Umbria in the Middle Ages through the first half of the 18th century. It is of particular value in that many of his sources — cartularies, cadastral documents, etc. — no longer exist, and Natalucci showed himself a true scholar in scrupulously sourcing his facts.

References

*The original version of this article was adapted from Bill Thayer's Gazetteer of Umbria, by permission.

External links

Pro Trevi pageIl Fondo Archivistico Giuseppe Sasso Natalucci page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Natalucci 1687 births 1772 deaths People from the Province of Perugia 18th-century Italian historians