Historian Philippe Contamine died on January 26 at the age of 89. Philippe Contamine was born in Metz in 1932 to a father who was a specialist in military history, Philippe Contamine did not follow the path of contemporary history, but kept his father’s favorite object. In 1972, he published his thesis defended three years earlier: War, State and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Studies on the armies of the kings of France (1337-1494).
Contamine was a president of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, the Société de l’histoire de France, and the Societé des Antiquaires de France. He taught at the Université de Nancy, the Université de Paris X at Nanterre and Université de Paris IV (Paris-Sorbonne). He was an officer of the Légion d’Honneur and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
He will then publish many reference works, on the battle of Agincourt in 1964 or the Hundred Years War in 1968 and 1976, being interested, as explained The world, as much to the economy as to the nobility, to power or to the role of horses during the period of which he is a specialist. In 1990, Philippe Contamine was elected to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres and became President of the Society for the History of France in 2005.
2017 History Book Grand Prize
Joan of Arc plays a preponderant role in the work of Philippe Contamine: several works are dedicated to her, including the ambitious Jeanne D’Arc.
History and dictionary published by Robert Laffont in 2012, co-edited with Olivier Bouzy and Xavier Hélary. “As a historian, it is up to me to enter into the mentality of the period studied”, he explained, evoking Joan of Arc, a character mixing prophecies and powerful speeches, spirituality and politics. “If you adopt a purely realistic analysis, you miss something essential,” he said.
Having become a acclaimed biographer, the man of history devoted the last work of his life to the rehabilitation of King Charles VII. In this major biography entitled Charles VII: a life, a policy (Perrin, 2017), Philippe Contamine gives new importance to this unloved king whom History has placed in the shadow of Joan of Arc.
For his work, the author was rewarded that year with the Grand Prix du livre d’histoire awarded by Le Figaro History and the History Channel.
