Vincenzo Notarbartolo

Born in Palermo, Sicilia in 1855, Vincenzo and Gaetano were the sons of Gandolfo Notarbartolo, a family with a famous name in Sicilian politics. After converting to Protestantism at the age of 17, Notarbartolo attended the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Florence and from 1878 was sent as an evangelist to Riesi, Sicily, where the Waldensian Evangelization Committee was having remarkable success. For a short period, more than half the population called itself "Waldensians", although they still attended Catholic masses on Sundays. In 1888, still a candidate for the pastoral ministry, he moved with his wife Jane MacKenzie to Genova as coadjutor pastor to Giovanni Davide Turino, remaining there after his ordination in 1889, with the task of visiting Sampierdarena and Chiavari; then he was then briefly in Messina and finally was sent as titular pastor to Rio Marina from 1894 to 1895.

In October 1895 Notarbartolo transferred to the Free Christian Church, becoming pastor of Pisa. In 1902, following the crisis of the Italian Evangelical Church, the president of the newly formed Free Christian Church, Saverio Fera, undertook a number of dismissals and expulsions, including that of Notarbartolo, who responded by taking his case to court.

After the dissolution of the Church in 1904-1905, Notarbartolo brought together a number of dissidents and other groups that did not intend to merge into the Methodist Churches, refounding an Italian Evangelical Church comprising a number of small communities especially in central Italy. In 1911, he visited England, where the Census gatherers noted that he was visiting a boarding house in London owned by Rosina Alice Francis at 39 Torrington Square. His new Church published a newspaper, La Vedetta Cristiana and in 1919 hired the colporteur Angelo Deodato, who organized a church in Piombino (prov. Livorno). In 1929 Notarbartolo was forced to dissolve his organization for financial reasons, but shortly afterwards he reconstituted it with the name of "National Protestant Presbyterian Church of Italy", again gathering nuclei of evangelicals from Palermo, Livorno, Bologna and Rome. The new Church survived only a few years, publishing the monthly La Riforma italiana in 1930-1931, directed by Francesco Silvestri Falconieri.

Notarbartolo died in the summer of 1935. With his wife, Jane, he had two daughters, including Elisa Isabella Cimino de Lettieri.

Sources:

Gabriella Ballesio & L. Pilone, 'Notarbartolo, Vincenzo', in the Dizionario Biografico dei Protestanti in Italia, https://www.studivaldesi.org/dizionario/evan_det.php?secolo=XIX&evan_id=343.

G. Spini, L’evangelo e il berretto frigio. Storia della Chiesa Cristina Libera in Italia, 1870-1904, Torino, Claudiana, 1971.

V. Vinay, Storia dei Valdesi, III. Dal movimento evangelico italiano al movimento ecumenico (1848-1978), Torino, Claudiana, 1989.