Pierre Courcelle


Pierre Paul Courcelle was a French historian who was a specialist of ancient philosophy and of Latin Patristics, especially of St Augustine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1968.

Family

Pierre Courcelle, the youngest of three siblings, was born in 1912 in Orléans. His father, the merchant Paul Courcelles, and his mother, Madeleine née Giroux, were divorced before his birth, by a legal judgment on December 20, 1911. Pierre Courcelle's origins were from Orléans on both the maternal and paternal side. While he was still a high school student, he had, according to his own testimony, done extensive genealogical research concerning his ancestors back to the 16th century, but found aucun homme illustre, rien que des laboureurs.
In 1937, he married Jeanne Ladmirant, doctor in history and archeology from the University of Liège. They had known each other while he was at the École française de Rome and she at the Académie de Belgique à Rome. She was his constant collaborator, especially in the preparation and writing of several works in which iconographic research plays a large role. They had eight children.

Career

Pierre Courcelle did his primary and secondary studies at the Lycée d'Orléans. In 1927, he was a laureate of the nationwide competition Concours general in compositions written in Latin. He prepared at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand for the École normale supérieure de la rue d'Ulm, where he matriculated in 1930 at the age of 18. The same year, he passed the competition for the École nationale des chartes, where he came first. Exceptionally, he completed two academic majors in parallel, obtaining a double major in, on one hand, philology and history of literature, and, on the other hand, archival expertise and history. In 1934, he was appointed professor agrégé of classical Greek and Latin literature, as well as archivist-paleographer, at the École française de Rome, where he remained until 1936.
After his year of military service, he was from 1937 to 1939 deputy director of the Institut français de Naples. Mobilized in 1939 as an infantry lieutenant, he received two citations and the Croix de Guerre. In 1940–1941, he was a teacher at the Lycée d'Orléans. But in 1941, he was appointed lecturer at the Faculty of Arts in Bordeaux. In 1943, he defended his doctoral thesis on Les Lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore. The following year, at the age of 32, he became both a professor at Sorbonne Université and director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes . From 1946 to 1962, he was also a lecturer at the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in Sèvres.
In 1952, succeeding Alfred Ernout as professor at the Collège de France, he held the chair of Latin literature, while remaining director of studies at the École des Hautes Etudes. He exercised these two functions until his death in 1980. From 1978 to his death, he was also director of the Fondation Thiers.

Selected publications

  • Les Lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore, Paris, de Boccard, 1943; 2e éd., 1948.
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  • Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques, Paris, Hachette, 1948, 264 p. ; 3e éd., Paris, Études augustiniennes, 1964, 436 p., ill.
  • Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin, Paris, E. de Boccard, 1950; , Paris, E. de Boccard, 1968, 615 p., ill.
  • L'Entretien de Pascal et Sacy : ses sources et ses énigmes, Paris, J. Vrin, 1960, 83 p..
  • Les Confessions de saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire : antécédents et postérité, Paris, Études augustiniennes, 1963, 746 p., ill.
  • Vita Sancti Augustini imaginibus adornata. Manuscrit de Boston, Public Library, n° 1483, S. XV, inédit, Paris, Études augustiniennes, 1963, 257 p., ill.
  • Iconographie de saint Augustin, 5 vol., ill., Paris, Études augustiniennes.
  • La Consolation de philosophie dans la tradition littéraire : antécédents et postérité de Boèce, Paris, 1967.
  • Recherches sur saint Ambroise : « Vies » anciennes, culture, iconographie, Paris, Études augustiniennes, 1973, 369 p., ill. en noir et en coul.
  • Huit rôles des tailles inédits de Sully-sur-Loire : 1440-1484, Paris, Imprimerie nationale - C. Klincksieck, 1973, 61 p.
  • « Connais-toi toi-même » de Socrate à saint Bernard, 3 vol., Paris, Études augustiniennes, 1974–1975.
  • Nouveaux documents inédits de Sully-sur-Loire : 1364-1500, Paris, Imprimerie nationale - C. Klincksieck, 1978, 85 p.
  • Opuscula selecta. Bibliographie et recueil d’articles publiés entre 1938 et 1980, 1984.
  • Saint Ortaire : sa vie, son culte, son iconographie, Société parisienne d'histoire et d'archéologie normandes, 1989, 52 p.
  • Lecteurs païens et lecteurs chrétiens de l’Énéide, Paris, Gauthier-Villars - diffusion De Boccard, 1984, 2 vol.. Ouvrage posthume.