JOSE

MARCHENA

See also:

• RUIZ, JUAN (c. 1283-c. 1350)

RUIZ DE

See also:

• CASTRO, INEZ DE (d. 1355)
• CASTRO, JOAO DE (1500-1548)

CASTRO (1768-1821?)  , Spanish author, was born at 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 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 . 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 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, 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, Rousseau, Voltaire and Volney . The Liberal triumph 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 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, 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 .