Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne

Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne (6 March 1826 – 7 October 1910) was a poet-priest and scholar of the Valdôtain dialect of Franco-Provençal. He is celebrated as a pioneer of Franco-Provençal grammar and lexicography, identifying a vocabulary for a set of dialects that had hitherto very largely been transmitted only orally. He is also considered the principal poet of the Aosta Valley, where he lived for most of his life, being a Savoyard in his youth before becoming an Italian. Cerlogne was born in the hamlet with which he shared his surname, in the comune of Saint-Nicolas, a mountain village several kilometers west of Aosta. His father, Jean-Michel Cerlogne, was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars who worked as the village school master. While still a child, Cerlogne had to leave the family home to support himself as a shepherd. This was normal for boys of his age, as was his moving away from home to find work, becoming a chimney sweep in Marseilles. He returned briefly to the Aosta Valley in 1841, and this time when he went back to Marseilles he obtained a job at the "Hôtel des Princes" where he worked as a scullion in the kitchens. A few years later, he had risen to the rank of kitchen assistant, which meant that when he next returned to his home valley, in 1845, he had a "trade". Still only 19, he now resumed his attendance at the local school for a couple of years. On 4 January 1847 he left the valley again, this time to enlist as a soldier for King Charles Albert. He participated in the First Italian War of Independence, taking part in the Battles of Goito and Santa Lucia. He was captured by the Austrians and briefly held as a prisoner of war, before being released on 7 September 1848. In his autobiography he later took care to stress the humanity with which, as a prisoner, he was treated by the Austrian army. After the Battle of Novara (23 March 1849) the war spluttered to an end, and he was sent on indefinite leave: he returned to Saint-Nicolas where, despite his age, he resumed his habit of attending the village school as a pupil, alongside the children.