José Marchena Ruiz de Cueto

His writings being brought before the Inquisition 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 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 lois and other French journals until 1799, when he was expelled from France; he succeeded, however, in obtaining employment under General Moreau, upon whose fall in 1804 he declared himself a Bonapartist. In 1808 he accompanied Murat, brother in law of Napoléon Bonaparte, to Spain as private secretary; in this same year he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, but was released by Emperor Napoléon I brother 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, Rousseau, Voltaire and Volney. The Liberal triumph of 1820 opened Spain to him once more, but he was coldly received by the revolutionary party. He died in Madrid shortly before February 26, 1821. The interest of his voluminous writings is almost wholly ephemeral, but they are excellent specimens of trenchant journalism. His Fragmentum Petronii (Basel, 1800), which purports to reconstruct missing passages in the current text of Petronius's Satyricon, 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.

José Marchena Ruiz de Cueto was recorded at birth as José Marchena y Ruiz de Cueto. He also worked under the name Abate Marchena. The authorities additionally record the heading Jose Marchena Ruiz de Cueto. His recorded languages were Spanish and French.