Henri-Charles Puech


Henri-Charles Puech, was a French historian who long held the chair of History of religions at the Collège de France from 1952 to 1972.

Biography

A philosopher by training, he was interested in Greek philosophy, especially in hermeticism and neoplatonism, before turning to the study of Christian doctrines of the early centuries, a discipline he long taught in the École pratique des hautes études.
His teaching had a great influence on the development of patristics studies in the second half of the twentieth in France. But it is primarily as a result of the discovery of new documents in the study of Manichaeism and the various systems of Gnostic thought that he gained international recognition.
A long collaborator of the before he directed it, he presided the Association internationale pour l'étude de l'histoire des religions from 1950 to 1965.

Honours