Michel Pastoureau

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Michel Pastoureau is a French specialist in medieval history, who was born in Paris on 17 June 1947. He studied at the École nationale des chartes, a college for prospective archivists associated with the Sorbonne, where he was awarded a palaeographic archivist's diploma. After writing his 1972 thesis about heraldic bestiaries in the Middle Ages, he worked in the coins, medals and antiquities department of the French National Library until 1982.

Since 1983 he has held the Chair of History of Western Symbolism (Chaire d'histoire de la symbolique occidentale) and is a director of studies at the Sorbonne's École pratique des hautes études. He is an academician of the Académie internationale d'héraldique (International Academy of Heraldry) and vice-president of the Société française d'héraldique (French Heraldry Society). When he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne in 1996, he was described as an eminent scholar who has made a radical contribution to several disciplines.

Professor Pastoureau has published widely, including work on the history of colours, animals, symbols, and the knights of the Round Table. He has also written on emblems and heraldry, as well as sigillography and numismatics.

[edit] Works in English translation

Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton 2001), ISBN 0-691-09050-5
The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes (Columbia 2001), ISBN 0-231-12366-3
Heraldry: its origins and meaning (Thames & Hudson 1997), ISBN 0-500-30074-7
The Bible and the Saints, with Gaston Duchet-Suchaux (Flammarion 1994), ISBN 2-08-013564-3

[edit] Selected works in French

Les chevaliers de la Table ronde, éditions du Gui, 2006, ISBN 2-9517417-5-8
Une histoire symbolique du Moyen Âge occidental, Seuil, La librairie du XXIe siècle, Paris, 2004, ISBN 2-02-013611-2
Traité d'héraldique, Grands manuels Picard, first published 1979, latest edition 2003
Bleu: Histoire d'une couleur, éditions du Seuil, 2002
Les animaux célèbres, Bonneton, 2001
Les emblèmes de la France, éditions Bonneton, Paris, 1998
Jésus chez le teinturier: couleurs et teintures dans l'Occident médiéval, Le Léopard d'or, Paris, 1997, ISBN 2-86377-150-7
Figures de l'héraldique, Découvertes Gallimard, 1996
Dictionnaire des couleurs de notre temps, Bonneton, Paris, 1992
L'étoffe du diable: une histoire des rayures et des tissus rayés, éditions du Seuil, 1991
La vie quotidienne en France et en Angleterre au temps des chevaliers de la Table ronde, Hachette 1991, ISBN 2-01-017737-1
L'hermine et le sinople, études d'héraldique médiévale, Le Léopard d'or, Paris, 1982, ISBN 2-86377-017-9