A historian of religions, Jean Léon Marie Delumeau is a specialist in religious mentalities in the West, and more specifically in Christianity during the Renaissance and the Early Modern period. A committed Christian, his work is dominated by one theme in particular: the feeling of fear. He coined the concept of “pastoral care of fear,” according to which the Catholic Church dominates souls by emphasizing the unsettling aspects of Christianity for the purpose of conversion, and in 1983 published *Sin and Fear*, a bestseller.
Born on June 18, 1923, in Nantes, he attended the Lycée Masséna in Nice and then the Lycée Thiers in Marseille, where his philosophy teacher was Roger Mehl. Delumeau pursued a career as a high school teacher, a preparatory school instructor, and a university professor before becoming a professor at the Collège de France in 1975.
After preparing for the entrance exam for the École normale supérieure (ENS), Jean Delumeau was admitted to the ENS in 1943 and became an agrégé in history in 1947. He was a member of the École française de Rome from 1948 to 1950. After earning his doctorate in literature in 1955, he taught history at the École Polytechnique, the University of Rennes-II, and the University of Paris-I.
Delumeau was subsequently appointed director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études from 1963 to 1975 and then at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales from 1975 to 1978.
Appointed professor at the Collège de France, he held the chair in the History of Religious Mentalities in the Modern West for twenty years, until 1994, before becoming an honorary professor at the Collège.
On February 26, 1988, Jean Delumeau was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, succeeding Georges Dumézil.
A visiting professor at several universities, Jean Delumeau was, in May 1992, one of the first professors at the French University College in Moscow.
A member of the editorial boards of several academic journals, Jean Delumeau wrote numerous works (some translated into a dozen languages), including two major books: *Fear in the West (14th–18th Centuries) * (1978) and *Is Christianity Doomed? * (1977). A distinguished cultural historian, he is considered one of the leading Christian essayists of his time.
Jean Delumeau passed away on January 13, 2020, in Brest.