MARCHENA RUIZ DE CASTRO, JOSE (1768-1821?)

This article appears in Volume V17, Page 690 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MAL-MAR

MARCHENA RUIZ DE CASTRO, JOSE (1768-1821?) , Spanish author, was born at

Utrera

UTRERA

on the l8th of November 1768 and studied with distinction at the university of Seville. He took

minor

orders and was for some time professor at the

seminary

SEMINARY (Lat. seminarium, from semen, seed)

of Vergara, but he became a convert to the doctrines of the French philosophes, scandalizing his acquaintances by his professions of materialism and his denunciations of

celibacy

CELIBACY (Lat. caelibatus, from caelebs, unmarried)

. His writings being brought before the

Inquisition

INQUISITION, THE (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry)

in 1792, Marchena escaped to Paris, where he is said to have collaborated with Marat in L'Ami du peuple; at a later date he organized a revolutionary

movement

MOVEMENT

at Bayonne, returned to Paris, avowed his sympathies with the Girondists, and refused the advances of Robespierre. He acted as editor of L'Ami des leis and other French journals till 1799, when he was expelled from France; he succeeded, however, in obtaining employment under Moreau, upon whose fall in 1804 he declared himself a Bonapartist. In 18o8 he accompanied Murat to Spain as private secretary; in this same year he was imprisoned by the

Inquisition

INQUISITION, THE (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry)

, but was released by Joseph Bonaparte, who appointed him editor of the official Gaceta. In 1813 Marchena retired to Valencia, and thence to France, where he supported himself by translating into Spanish the works of

Montesquieu

MONTESQUIEU, CHARLES LOUIS DE SECONDAT, BARON DE LA BREDE ET DE (1689-1755)

, Rousseau, Voltaire and Volney. The Liberal

triumph

TRIUMPH (triumphus)

of 182o opened Spain to him once more, but he was coldly received by the revolutionary party. He died at
MARCHES
Madrid shortly before the 26th of February 1821. The

interest

INTEREST

of his voluminous writings is almost wholly ephemeral, but they are excellent specimens of trenchant journalism. His Fragmentum Petronii (Basel, 1802), which purports to reconstruct missing passages in the current text of

Petronius

PETRONIUS (G. (?)1

, is a testimony to Marchena's fine scholarship; but, by the irony of fate, Marchena is best known by his ode to Christ Crucified, which breathes a spirit of profound and tender piety.

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