Cerutti, Giuseppe Antonio Giachimo
CERUTTI, GIUSEPPE ANTONIO GIACHIMO (1738-1792), French author and politician, was born at Turin on the 13th of June 1738. He joined the Society of Jesus and became professor at the Jesuit college at Lyons. In 1762, in reply to the attacks on his order, he published an Apologie générale de l'institut et de la doctrine des Jésuites, which won him much fame and some exalted patronage; notably that of the ex-king Stanislaus of Poland and of his grandson the dauphin. During the agitations that preceded the Revolution Cerutti took the popular side, and in 1788 published a pamphlet, Mémoire pour le peuple français, in which in a clear and trenchant style he advocated the claims of the tiers état. In May 1789 he presided over the electors of Paris, by whom in January 1791 he was chosen member of the administration of the department and afterwards deputy to the Legislative Assembly. He was a friend of Mirabeau, whose policy he supported and whose funeral oration he pronounced. He himself died on the 3rd of February 1792. Of Cerutti's literary enterprises the most interesting, and probably the most influential, was the popular newspaper founded by him, on the 30th of September 1790, in collaboration with Rabaut Saint-Etienne and Philippe Antoine Grouvelle. Its character and objects are explained by its title: La Feuille villageoise, adressée chaque semaine à tous les villages de France pour les instruire des lois, des événements, des découvertes qui interessent tout ban citoyen, etc. It was continued by Grouvelle after Cerutti's death, the last number appearing on the 2nd of August 1795.
Cerutti's works were published in 1793 in 3 volumes. On the Mémoire pour le peuple français, see F.A. Aulard in La Révolution française, tom. xv. (1888).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
