Henri-Irénée Marrou

Henri- Irenee Marrou ( born November 12, 1904 in Marseille, † April 11, 1977 in Bourg- la -Reine ) was a French historian with particular emphasis on the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Life

Born as the son of Catholic parents Marrou due to its excellent studies at the Ecole Superieure normal de la rue d' Ulm was taken and received in 1929 the right to teach in history. From there Marrou moved to the École française de Rome, where he did extensive research on St. Augustine. With Emmanuel Mounier, who also conducted research on Augustine and along with Marrou as the founder of the magazine " Études Augustiniennes " applies also to collaborate on the journal Esprit joined him.

Marrou undertook study trips to Naples to Cairo before he taught in Nancy and later in Montpellier. He wrote his dissertation on St. Augustine and the end of the ancient culture. He received for the year 1937 The doctorate.

During the 2nd World War, Marrou engaged in resistance ( Resistance ). From 1945 to 1976 he was Professor of the History of Christianity at the Sorbonne in Paris. During this time Marrou wrote his major works.

Marrou was one of the first employees of the collection " Sources Chrétiennes ", are published in the texts of the Church Fathers in the original language and with French translation. He also published the series Patristica Sorbonensia ( 1957ff. ), who brought it, but only nine volumes.

Politically engaged Henri Irenee Marrou: He referred during the Algerian war public position and denounced the practice of torture, which he einhandelte a house search. The Second Vatican Council took its full consent, because he fought alongside the fundamentalists and the Marxists. The events of May 1968 filled him with suspicion.

His first book, " Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique " (1938 ) was translated into German and Italian. Marrou examined in this work Augustine's relation to the ancient science and education. In the center of his study he advanced Augustine 's De doctrina christiana, which he described as a " charte fondamentale de la culture chrétienne ". He put forward the theory that De doctrina christiana in the end of ancient culture announcing. His book "Histoire de l' education dans l' antiquité " (1948 ) was translated into English, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, German and Italian. It is " the classic standard work on the intellectual formation in the period of the late Republic."

The historian André Mandouze (1916-2006) wrote in his obituary of Marrou in the newspaper Le Monde: "The name of Marrou will always be connected with the discovery ( or rediscovery ) of a wide field. Said the Christian Late Antiquity "

His daughter Françoise Marrou - Flamant ( born February 21, 1931) was a professor at the University of Aix -Marseille and started as a translator from Russian into French a name.

A student Marrous is the stoicism researcher Michel Spanneut.

Works (selection)

• History of education in classical antiquity. Freiburg 1957.
• Augustine in autobiographies and image documents. Translated from the French by Christine Muthesius. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1958.
• Augustine and the end of the ancient education. Paderborn, inter alia, 1981, 2nd edition 1995.