Bernard Heyberger (born 1954) is a French historian. He specializes in the history of Middle Eastern Christianity from the sixteenth century to the present; modern Catholicism and Catholic missions; and the Arab provinces of the late Ottoman Empire, especially Syria. He is a Director of Studies at the
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and simultaneously holds a chair as Director of Studies in the Religious Sciences section at the
École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), also in Paris.
Early life and family
Heyberger was born in
Saint-Hippolyte, a village in the Haut-Rhin department in
Alsace
Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...
(northeastern France), to a family of small farmers and winemakers. His parents were Antoine Heyberger and Jeanne Bogner.
Bernard Heyberger grew up speaking Alsatian
Alemannisch, a Germanic language, as his native tongue. He is married to Colette Thommeret and has two sons.
Education
After graduating from the lycée of
Ribeauvillé
Ribeauvillé (; Alsatian language, Alsatian: ''Rappschwihr''; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Haut-Rhin Departments of France, department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. It was a Subprefectures in France, sub-prefecture of the de ...
in 1972, Bernard Heyberger studied history at the
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers.
The French university traces its history to the ea ...
. He received the CAPES (Certificat d'Aptitude au Professorat de l'Enseignement du Second Degré) in History and Geography in 1979, and achieved the rank of ''agrégation'' in history in 1980. From 1979 to 1989, he taught in various secondary schools. He spent the 1989-90 year in Damascus, studying Arabic with a grant from the Institut français d’études arabes. From 1990 to 1993, he was a research associate in the
École Française de Rome
The École française de Rome (EFR) is a French research institute for history, archaeology, and the social sciences; overseen by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and a division of the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et d ...
. He completed his PhD dissertation, entitled, “Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique”, under the supervision of the lat
Louis Châtellierin
Nancy in 1993.
Career and publications
Heyberger published his PhD dissertation as a book in 1994; a second edition appeared in 2014. Entitled, ''Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme Catholique (Syrie, Liban, Palestine, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle)'' (“Christians of the Near East in the Era of Catholic Reform
yria, Lebanon, Palestine, 17th-18thCenturies), this book appeared from the press of the École Française de Rome. Focusing especially on the Syrian city of
Aleppo
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, and drawing heavily upon records from the
Propaganda Fide
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
(the Roman Catholic church’s missionary agency), the book considers the historical anthropology of Middle Eastern Christian communities in a period when
Jesuit
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and other Catholic missionaries were active among them. The book considers how Middle Eastern Christians’ material, social, and religious lives changed, and also how they interacted with
Ottoman state authorities and with Muslim communities around them. ''Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme Catholique'' makes an important contribution to the study of confessionalization and sectarianism in the Ottoman Empire. It pays particular attention to the impact of Catholic missionaries on gender dynamics within Arab Christian societies, while pointing to what Heyberger has called the “feminization” of Middle Eastern Christianity through the assertion of female devotion.
Heyberger published a second book, entitled, ''Hindiyya (1720-1798): mystique et criminelle'', in 2001. This book is a biographical study of the eighteenth-century
Maronite
The Maronites ( ar, الموارنة; syr, ܡܖ̈ܘܢܝܐ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant region of the Middle East, whose members traditionally belong to the Maronite Church, with the larges ...
Christian mystic and memoirist,
Hindiyya ‘Ujaymi, who claimed to experience visitations from Christ. Trained by the Jesuits in Aleppo, Syria, where she grew up, Hindiyya founded a convent in Mount Lebanon but became mired in controversy following the deaths of two nuns, from torture, which occurred in her convent. Heyberger’s book appeared in English translation as ''Hindiyya, Mystic and Criminal (1720-1798): A Political and Religious Crisis in Lebanon'', in 2013; an Arabic edition also appeared in 2010. To write this story of the woman who had an “iron will”
for her times, Heyberger drew deeply upon archives in the Propaganda Fide in Rome – including records of inquisitions sent to investigate her – along with Maronite sources from the patriarchate in Bkiriki, Lebanon.
Heyberger also wrote two books responding to the major challenges that have faced Middle Eastern Christian communities in the post-9/11 era, especially in light of social upheavals caused by the
U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and, from 2011, the
Syrian Civil War. These books are ''Les Chrétiens au Proche-Orient: De la compassion à la compréhension'' (2013); and ''Les Chrétiens d’Orient'' (2017). The latter considers the long and ambiguous impact of European – and especially French, British, and Russian – intervention in the region relative to Middle Eastern Christian communities. This book takes the story of Middle Eastern Christians into the early twenty-first century while commenting on the Islamist militant movement known as
ISIS
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingd ...
or
Da’esh.
Heyberger has also edited or co-edited more than a dozen edited volumes on Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman world. He has appeared frequently as a media commentator in France and has given many public lectures.
With Paul Fahmé-Thiéry and Jérôme Lentin, Bernard Heyberger published in 2015 a French translation of the Arabic travelogue of Hanna Diyab
Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab ( ar, اَنْطون يوسُف حَنّا دِياب, Anṭūn Yūsuf Ḥannā Diyāb; born ''circa'' 1688) was a Syrian Maronite writer and storyteller. He is the origin of the famous tales of '' Aladdin'' and ''Ali Baba ...
of Aleppo
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, who visited Paris in 1708-9. In Paris, Hanna Diyab met the French Orientalist, Antoine Galland
Antoine Galland (; 4 April 1646 – 17 February 1715) was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of '' One Thousand and One Nights'', which he called ''Les mille et une nuits''. His version of the t ...
, who was collecting the tales that he later published as the One Thousand and One Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
. Hanna Diyab told Galland some of stories in that collection which have since become most famous: he was the sole source of "Aladdin
Aladdin ( ; ar, علاء الدين, ', , ATU 561, ‘Aladdin') is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with ''The Book of One Thousand and One Nights'' (''The Arabian Nights''), despite not being part of ...
and the Lamp" and " Alibaba and the Forty Thieves". Heyberger wrote the introduction to this volume, in which he suggested that Hanna Diyab may have modeled the character of Aladdin on himself, or vice versa – an idea which, in the words of a reviewer, "will no doubt keep a generation of scholars very busy."
Heyberger has taught or supervised students at several institutions over the course of his career. These institutions include the Université de Haute-Alsace in Mulhouse
Mulhouse (; Alsatian language, Alsatian: or , ; ; meaning ''Mill (grinding), mill house'') is a city of the Haut-Rhin Departments of France, department, in the Grand Est Regions of France, region, eastern France, close to the France–Switzerl ...
, CNRS Strasbourg, Université François-Rabelais
The University of Tours (french: Université de Tours), formerly François Rabelais University of Tours (french: Université François Rabelais), is a public university in Tours, France. Founded in 1969, the university was formerly named after th ...
in Tours, and, in Paris, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (french: École des hautes études en sciences sociales; EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and ''grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The ...
(EHESS), and the École Pratique des Hautes Études
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
(EPHE). He held the distinction award of Senior Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France (2005-2010), and served as Director of th
Institut d’études de l’Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman (IISMM)
at EHESS from 2010 to 2014.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heyberger, Bernard
Living people
1954 births
People from Haut-Rhin
20th-century French historians
21st-century French historians