SCHMITT, Jean-Claude

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of Chicago Press, 5801 South Ellis Ave., 4th Floor, Chicago, IL 60637.

CAREER: École des Hautes Études, Paris, France, director of studies.

WRITINGS:

Mort d'un hérésie: l'église et les clercs face aux béguines et aux béghards du Rhin supérier du XIVe au XVe siècle, Mouton (New York, NY), 1978.

Le saint lévrier: Guinefort, guérisseur d'enfants depuis le XIIIe siècle, Flammarion (Paris, France), 1979, translated by Marin Thom as The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1983.

(With Jacques Le Goff) Le Charivari: Actes de la table ronde organisée à Paris, 25-27 avril par l'école des hautes études en sciences sociales et le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Mouton (New York, NY), 1981.

(With Claude Bremond and Jacques le Goff) L'Exemplum, Brepols (Turnhout, Belgium), 1982.

Les saints et les stars: le texte hagiographique dans la culture populaire: études, Beauchamp (Paris, France), 1983.

Prêcher d'examples: récite de prédicateurs du moyen âge, Stock (Paris, France), 1985.

(With others) Sergio Balari, editor, El món imaginari i el món meravellós a l'edat mitjana, Fundació Caixa de Pensions (Barcelona, Spain), 1986.

La raison des gestes dans l'occident médiéval, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1990.

(With Michel Pastoureau) Europe, mémoires & emblèmes, Éditions de l'Epargne (Paris, France), 1990.

Les revenants: les vivants et les morts dans la société médiéval, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1994.

L'image: fonctions et usages des images dans l'occident médiéval: actes de 6e International Workshop on Medieval Societies, Centro Ettore Majorana, Leopard d'Or (Paris, France), 1996.

(Editor, with Giovanni Levi) A History of Young People in the West, Volume 1: Ancient and Medieval Rites of Passage, translated by Camille Naish, Volume 2: Stormy Evolution to Modern Times, translated by Carol Volk, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 1997.

(With Otto Gerhard Öxle) Die Blick auf die Bilder: Kunstgeschichte un Geschichte im Gespräch, Wall-stein (Göttingen, Germany), 1997.

Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1998.

(Compiler, with Jacques Revel and Marc Augé) L'ogre historien: autour de Jacques le Goff, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1998.

(With Jacque le Goff) Dictionnaire raisonné de l'Occident médiéval, Fayard (Paris, France), 1999.

Le corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps: essais d'anthropologie médiéval, Gallimard (Paris, France), 2001.

Le corps des images: essais sur la culture visuelle au moyen âge, Gallimard (Paris, France), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Jean-Claude Schmitt and coauthor Giovanni Levi, in their two-volume A History of Young People in the West, present a compilation of scholarly analyses of adolescence throughout Western history from ancient times, to the Middle Ages, to modern times. The books do not attempt to reveal the continuous development of concepts of childhood, instead showing examples of young people at various times throughout history. As Rosamond McKitterick noted in her review of the book in the New York Times Book Review, the concept of "teenager" is a twentieth-century invention, and in previous ages people were married at the ages of twelve or thirteen and often died in their late twenties, clearly showing that previous ideas about childhood were very different from our own. McKitterick commented that the books focus mainly on males; few girls or young women are discussed. And, she wrote, "collectively, the lasting impression these volumes leave is of the exploitation of innocence, and the control exerted by those in authority—church, state or parents—over the lives of children growing up."

In The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century Schmitt tells the strange story of Saint Guinefort, a greyhound dog who was killed by his nobleman owner in the thirteenth century when the owner thought, mistakenly, that the dog had killed his infant son. When the nobleman realized that instead of killing the child, the dog had defended the child against a poisonous snake, the nobleman buried the dog with great honors. Subsequently, the local people began revering the grave site, bringing sick or deformed children there and praying for a cure from the dog "saint." Schmitt discusses this tradition from the point of view of archeology, ethnology, literary criticism, and linguistics, and attempts to follow the development and growth of the veneration of St. Guinefort the dog, which persists today. In American Historical Review Michael Goodich praised the book: "This is the kind of work that restores one's faith in the possibilities of academic history."

Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society discusses the belief in ghosts during the Middle Ages. This belief was widespread and commonly accepted, despite Church insistence that Christians should be concerned with souls, not ghosts. The book recounts many ghost stories, some from as early as 1091, and analyzes what they reveal about the societies that created them. As Stuart Clark wrote in History Today, ghost stories tell social historian about "the kinship group, the monastery, the noble lineage, the parish, and the religious obligations required of their members in order to secure their salvation." Clark praised the book, and wrote that in it "the dead become an unexpectedly rich resource" for understanding the lives of people in the past.

In La raison des gestes dans l'occident médiéval Schmitt traces the development and meaning of body gestures in the Middle Ages. Schmitt examines history, art, and language to construct the meaning of gestures shown in art and described in literature of the time. In Modern Language Notes Stephen G. Nichols wrote, "This is a book one will return to repeatedly . . . sooner or later, it touches almost every aspect of medieval culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Historical Review, October, 1984, Michael Goodich, review of The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, p. 1063; October, 1991, Caroline Walker Bynum, review of La raison des gestes dans l'Occident médiéval, p. 1158; June, 1998, p. 845.

European Historical Review, January, 1986, p. 216.

Historian, May, 1985, p. 416.

History Today, February, 1998, Nicholas Tucker, review of A History of Young People in the West, p. 56; July, 1999, Stuart Clark, review of Ghosts in the Middle Ages, p. 57.

Library Journal, August, 1997, Bennett D. Hill, review of A History of Young People in the West, p. 105.

London Review of Books, June 18, 1998, Marina Warner, "Suffering Souls," pp. 27-28.

Medieval Review, February, 1999, p. 12.

Modern Language Notes, September, 1992, Stephen G. Nichols, review of La raison des gestes dans l'occident médiéval, p. 806.

New York Review of Books, April 30, 1981, Lester K. Little, "The Greyhound Saint," p. 26; September 14, 1997, p. 40.

New York Times, September 14, 1997, Rosamond McKitterick, review of A History of Young People in the West, p. 40.

Times Literary Supplement, April 11, 1980, Brian Stock, review of Le saint lévrier: Guinefort, guérisseur d'enfants depuis le XIIIe siècle, p. 410; April 26, 1991, Alexander Murray, "Making a Gesture," p. 3; December 4, 1998, Marina Warner, review of Ghosts in the Middle Ages, p. 12.*