Giuseppe Cerutti

He was born at Turin. Having joined the Society of Jesus, he 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 French 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 (third estate). 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 Honoré Mirabeau, whose policy he supported and whose funeral oration he gave.

Of Cerutti's literary enterprises the most interesting, and probably the most influential, was the popular newspaper founded by him, on September 30, 1790, in collaboration with Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Etienne and Philippe Antoine Grouvelle.

Reference