LEVI, Anthony H(erbert) T(igar) 1929-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 30, 1929, in Ruislip, Middlesex, England; died December 31, 2004, in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England. Educator, priest, and author. Levi was a former Jesuit priest and scholar of French history. After studying at Prior Park College in the early 1940s, he left school in 1946 to work in the family carpet and textile importation business. He then joined the Jesuit Order in 1949. He subsequently studied at Oxford University, the Berchmanskolleg in Munich, Germany, and the Jesuit Heythrop College in London. Ordained in 1962, he embarked on an academic career at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a lecturer in French from 1966 until 1971. At the same time, he was a reader in French at the University of Warwick, where he also became personal chair in 1970. In 1971, Levi left the Jesuits, having formed differing opinions on the subject of theology. He joined the faculty at the University of St. Andrews, where he was Buchanan Professor of French Language and Literature until 1988. Levi's background in theology naturally influenced his perspective on history, and many of his books involve a combination of the two disciplines. Among these works are French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions, 1585-1649 (1964), Pagan Virtue and the Humanism of the Northern Renaissance (1974), and The Intellectual History of the Northern Renaissance (1988). His more recent books include Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France (2000) and Renaissance and Reformation: The Intellectual Genesis (2002). At the time of his death, he had nearly completed a biography on Erasmus and was working on a text tentatively titled "The Visual Transmission of Christianity."

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), January 12, 2005, p. 34.

Scotsman, January 13, 2005.