Jacques Fontaine

A former student at the École normale supérieure, agrégé de grammaire (1943) and member of the Casa de Velázquez (1943-1946), he taught classics at Caen’s Lycée Malherbe (1949-1954). Lecturer in Latin philology (1954-1957), then professor of Latin language and literature at the University of Caen-Normandie (1958-1959), he was awarded a doctorate in literature in 1957, then professor of Latin language and literature at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne from 1959 to 1988.

Head of the Latin team at the Centre de Recherches “Lenain de Tillemont pour le christianisme ancien et l’Antiquité tardive”, he is a member of the Comité national du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, the Comité de l’Association Guillaume-Budé, the Steering Committee of the Commission internationale d’Histoire ecclésiastique comparée, the Scientific Council of the Centre d’Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale de Poitiers, the Boards of Directors of the Institut d’Études augustiniennes (Paris, Chairman) and the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud3.

He is also a member of the Royal Academy of History (Madrid), the Real Academia de BellasArtes y CienciasHistóricas de Toledo, the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Ireland and the MedievalAcademy of America.

Professor emeritus, he was President of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and of the Institut de France in 1993. In 1968, he also became president of the Société des études latines.