Jacques Le Goff

About the author

Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014) was one of France's most influential medieval historians, whose prolific scholarship reshaped how the Middle Ages are understood. A champion of the Annales School, he pushed historical inquiry away from politics and diplomacy toward long-term social and cultural trends. A leading figure of the New History movement, he argued that medieval civilization constituted a world entirely its own — distinct from both Classical Antiquity and modernity.

From 1972 to 1977 he directed the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris.