Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne

Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne
Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne ca. 1900
Born	6 March 1826 Saint-Nicolas, Aosta Valley
Died	7 October 1910 Saint-Nicolas, Aosta Valley, Italy
Occupation	Priest Poet Valdôtain scholar
Parent(s)	Jean-Michel Cerlogne

Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne (6 March 1826 - 7 October 1910) was a poet-priest and a scholar of the Valdôtain patois (dialects). He is celebrated for his work on Valdôtain grammar and on identifying a vocabulary for a set of dialects that had hitherto very largely been transmitted only orally. His poetic output marks him out as the principal poet in the Valdôtain patois.

He lived and worked in the Aosta Valley which was owned by the Kingdom of Sardinia while he was a young man and became part of Italy in 1861.

Jean-Baptiste was born in the hamlet with which he shared his surname, just outside the mountain village of Saint-Nicolas, a few kilometers up the valley to the 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 Jean-Baptiste had to leave the family home in order to support himself as a shepherd. This was normal for boys of his age, as was the way he moved away from home in order to work in September 1837, when he emigrated to Marseilles. Here he worked, in the first instance, as a chimney sweep. 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. As he later recalled, duties included lighting , washing the tables, keeping the kitchen clean and plucking the birds for the table. Allumer le fourneau, laver les tables, tenir propre la cuisine, plumer la volaille, voilà son occupation. 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 in order 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 1948. 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.