Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve

Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve (3 January 1756 in Chartres, France – 18 [?] June 1794 in Saint-Magne-de-Castillon (near Saint-Émilion)) was a French writer and politician who served as the second mayor of Paris, from 1791 to 1792.

Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve was the son of a procureur at Chartres. Though it is known that he was trained as a lawyer, very few specifics are known about Petion's early life, as he was virtually unknown prior to the French Revolution. He became an advocate in 1778, and at once began to try to make a name in literature. His first printed work was an essay, Sur les moyens de prévenir l'infanticide, which failed to gain the prize for which it was composed, but pleased Brissot so much that he printed it in vol. vii. of his Bibliothèque philosophique des législateurs.

Pétion's next works, Les Lois civiles, and Essais sur le mariage, in which he advocated the marriage of priests, confirmed his position as a bold reformer. He also attacked long-held Ancien Régime traditions such as primogeniture, accusing it of dividing the countryside into "proletarians and colossal properties." Later works penned by Pétion include his account of Haiti entitled "Reflexions sur la noir et denonciation d'un crime affreux commis a Saint-Domingue" (1790) and "Avis aux francois" in which he chides France for its corruption.