Born on 7 January, 1829 in Mondragone (Caserta), Pietro Taglialatela was the son of a couple of wealthy landowners, strongly linked to Catholicism. After being educated by a private tutor and by his local parish priest, he was sent by his parents to the seminary in Sessa Aurunca, where he took orders.

At the age of nineteen, he began teaching, first in the seminary for four years, then in Cava de 'Tirreni (1852 to 1856). His studies enabled him to deepen his understanding of the thought of Vincenzo Gioberti and Giordano Bruno, developing a strongly liberal and patriotic conscience: in 1860, enrolling in the Revolutionary Committee of Salerno, his attempt to enlist with the troops of Giuseppe Garibaldi was rejected on health grounds, but that did not stop him from becoming a popularizer of Unification ideals among insurgents of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. For this he was repeatedly sought by the Bourbon police.

Having demitted his orders in 1860, he devoted himself to teaching theology. In 1861 he was appointed professor of philosophy of religion at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Naples, which however was closed after a few months. Taglialatela then opened a private school in via Nilo (later recognized by the Ministry of Education), while editing for publication the writings of authors such as Giordano Bruno and Nicola Cusano [Nicholas of Cusa].

In 1864 he married Teresa Tammaro (1840-1895), with whom he had four sons (Gustavo, Filoteo, Alfredo, Eduardo), and a daughter, Amalia. The school he had founded became a gathering point for Neapolitan cultural debate: Taglialatela was several times appointed as Royal Commissioner for examinations in public high schools, and received various offers of university professorships (which he refused in order not to leave his school). This was located not far from the University and from the Free Christian Church in via Mezzocannone, leading Taglialatela to come into contact with evangelicals. He participated in popular and animated debates between Catholics and Protestants, initially with the intent of attacking the latter, and then increasingly in their defense. His fame as a speaker grew, and when he joined the ranks of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, he attracted a sizeable and influential audience among professors, students, and journalists.

His meeting with the Reverend Thomas Jones, the superintendent of the southern Italian district for the Wesleyan Mission in Italy, was decisive in his conversion. Jones saw in him the makings of a preacher, and from 1874 entrusted him with the church of S. Anna di Palazzo, where he began to preach with great success. In 1877 he took pastoral exams and began his probationary period in Naples, carrying out a fruitful evangelization activity first as assistant to Salvatore Ragghianti, then in Catanzaro and Cosenza from 1879 to 1881.

In 1881, breaking away from the Wesleyan Methodist Church, he briefly served the Free Christian Church as an itinerant preacher in Tuscany. In the last months of 1882 he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was later sent as a pastor to Puglia. In Foggia, where he remained until 1889, he founded an evangelical community, as he also did in San Severo. There he faced disputes against the Catholic clergy that sometimes resulted in real armed attacks, once requiring the intervention of the military to protect the pastor, his wife and one of their children from a violent mob. These episodes, however, only strengthened his conviction and his work of evangelization: in fact, Taglialatela inserted his own preaching into the social and political life of the city, without relying on charitable works and assistance, believing that this was not the task of the evangelical churches.

An example of the extent of Taglialatela's preaching is given by the case of Pescasseroli, in Abruzzo, where he was called in 1886 by some shepherds who had heard him preach in Foggia. A small evangelical community was born, which then died out due to the emigration of all its members to the United States, and to aggressive counter-evangelism by the Passionist order. The Protestant elements of the Pescasseroli community, however, re-constituted themselves in the Baptist church in Buffalo (pastored by Ariel Bellondi [q.v.], and Taglialatela's son, Filoteo [q.v.]). Benedetto Croce, whose family owned land around Pescasseroli, spoke of this mission with admiration in a booklet dedicated to his native country, defining Taglialatela as "a worthy man and cultured philosopher, one of the strongest minds of the Protestant movement in Italy, and one of the most eloquent preachers". Other secular thinkers such as Baldassarre Labanca and Giovanni Gentile also admired or were influenced by his work.

He wrote for various magazines, including Civiltà Evangelica (founded in 1874), L'Evangelista and Lumen de Lumine, an interdenominational Methodist periodical founded in 1905 by his son Alfredo, of which he was one of the promoters. He founded La Nuova Puglia, an anti-clerical polemic newspaper published between 1885 and 1886. As Annese notes, he brought a powerful philosophical intent to the non-doctrinal orientation of Methodism, and so contributed significantly to the emergence of theology proper (as opposed to mere biblical interpretation) among Methodists and Episcopalians in Italy.

He lived the last years of his life between Rome, Geneva and Turin, together with his son Eduardo, who in the meantime (like his other three sons) became an evangelical pastor. Between 1908 and 1910 he moved with the latter to the United States, where two other sons, Gustavo and Filoteo, had already worked for some years.

Taglialatela then carried out his ministry in Naples and finally in Genoa, retiring in 1896. However, he continued to participate in the life of the church, making trips to Geneva, Turin, Livorno, Milan, and to the United States (New York, Philadelphia and New Haven) .

He died in Rome on 23 September 1913

Writings:

1864: Istituzioni di filosofia, Tip. all'Insegna del Diogene, Napoli 1864;

1867: Apologia delle dottrine filosofiche di V. Gioberti, Tip. all'Insegna del Diogene, Napoli 1867;

1872: La scienza, la vita e Francesco de Sanctis. Discorso, Tip. all'insegna del Diogene, Napoli 1872;

[n.d.]: Giuseppe Garibaldi. Conferenza, La Speranza, Roma s.d.;

1902: Il Papa-re nelle profezie e nella storia, La Speranza, Roma 1902;

1927: In Dio. Saggi, discorsi, frammenti di filosofia cristiana, ed. postuma, La Speranza, Roma 1927;

1927: Fede, speranza e carità. Meditazioni, ed. postuma, La Speranza, Roma 1927;

1929: Teoria evangelica della vita, ed. postuma, La Speranza, Roma 1929;

See also his writings in Civilta Evangelica, e.g. 'L’evangelizzazione di [sic] Italia giudicata da uno scrittore politico', Civiltà Evangelica 19 June 1878, p. 156.

Sources:

The base for this entry is from the Italian original in: Società di Studi Valdesi, 'Pietro Taglialatela', Dizionario Biografico dei Protestanti in Italia, https://www.studivaldesi.org/dizionario/evan_det.php?secolo=XIX-XX&evan_id=438.

Annese, Andrea, Il metodismo in Italia dall’Unità al “caso Buonaiuti” Profilo storico-religioso, PhD thesis, Universita degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", 2017.

Chiarini, F., Storia delle chiese metodiste in Italia (1859-1915), Torino, Claudiana, 1999

Ciampoli, D., L'opera letteraria di Pietro Taglialatela, Roma, Tip. Unione editrice, 1913

Croce, B., Pescasseroli, in Storia del Regno di Napoli, Bari, Laterza, 1925

Di Silvestri-Falconeri, F., ‘In memoriam, Pietro Taglialatela’, in L’Evangelista, n. 41, 10 ottobre 1913

Fiore, R., 'Pietro Taglialatela', in Civiltà Aurunca n. 47, 2002, pp. 7-16

Iurato, G., Pietro Tagliatatela. Dalla filosofia del Gioberti all’evangelismo antipapale, Torino, Claudiana, 1972

Nitti, V. C., 'Pietro Taglialatela', in L’Evangelista n. 40, 3 Ottobre 1913

Nitti, S., 'Pietro Taglialatela. Un filosofo pastore metodista', in D. Bognandi and M. Cignoni, Scelte di fede e di libertà. Profili di evangelici nell’Italia unita, Torino, Claudiana, 2011, pp. 87-90.

Spini, G., Italia liberale e protestanti, Torino, Claudiana, 2002