Education and teaching

Born in 1960, he is alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud (1982), agrégé in History (1984), alumnus of the Ecole française de Rome, the French Historical Institute of Rome (1992-1995), doctor in Early modern History of the Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University (1996) and graduated in Catholic theology from the Marc Bloch University

Marc Bloch University

The Université Marc Bloch, also known as Strasbourg II or UMB was a university in Strasbourg, Alsace, France. As of 2006, it had around 13,000 students. Its name used to be Université des Sciences Humaines , but it was renamed in 1998 in honour of the French historian Marc Bloch...

 of Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

.

Since 1998, he has been associate professor of Early modern History at the University of Orléans

University of Orléans

-History:In 1230, when for a time the doctors of the University of Paris were scattered, a number of the teachers and disciples took refuge in Orléans; when pope Boniface VIII, in 1298, promulgated the sixth book of the Decretals, he appointed the doctors of Bologna and the doctors of Orléans to...

 (France), where is also teaching the History of Religions and the History of Nonviolence.

Research

His research work is about the history of canonization

Canonization

Canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares a deceased person to be a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the canon, or list, of recognized saints. Originally, individuals were recognized as saints without any formal process...

 and of sainthood in the Early Modern Times and about the history of Female Mystics in the 17th century. He is also interested in the history of demoniacal possession in the same period.

He published an history of the Peace Prayer attributed to saint Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order of Saint Francis. St...

 ("Lord, make me an instrument of your peace"), in which he demonstrated that this text, wellknown as the Prayer of Saint Francis

Prayer of Saint Francis

The Prayer of Saint Francis is a Christian prayer. It is attributed to the 13th-century saint Francis of Assisi, although the prayer in its present form cannot be traced back further than 1912, when it was printed in France in French, in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette as an...

 and become in half a century one the most famous worldwide prayers, appeared, anonymously, in 1912, in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, and has been wrongly attributed to saint Francis around 1925.

Commitments for Peace and Nonviolence

A conscientious objector

Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....

, he served during his obligatory civilian service (1985–87) at the Cahiers de la Réconciliation, magazine of the MIR, French branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation

International Fellowship of Reconciliation

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation is an international faith-based nonviolent movement created shortly after the First World War, in 1919, to draw together national Fellowships of Reconciliation that had been founded during the war....

 (IFOR

IFOR

The Implementation Force was a NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina under a one-year mandate from 20 December 1995 to 20 December 1996 under the codename Operation Joint Endeavour. Its task was to implement the military Annexes of The General Framework Agreement for...

). He was editor of this magazine from 1987 to 2006. He has been member of MIR France national committee since 1987 and was MIR France co-president from 1994 to 2004. He was member of IFOR

IFOR

The Implementation Force was a NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina under a one-year mandate from 20 December 1995 to 20 December 1996 under the codename Operation Joint Endeavour. Its task was to implement the military Annexes of The General Framework Agreement for...

 Steering Committee from 1996 to 2000.

Since November 2000, he has been the MIR France representative to the National Committee and president of the French Coalition for the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence (2001–10), which became in April 2011 the Coalition for the Education for Nonviolence and Peace.

Since June 2003, he has been the representative of the French Coalition to the International Committee and president of the International Coalition for the Decade

International Coalition for the Decade

On 10 November 1998, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the first decade of the 21st century and the third millennium, the years 2001 to 2010, as the International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World.Since 2001, some national...

 for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence (2001–10), which became in April 2011 the International Network for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence.

Book

• Christian RENOUX, La prière pour la paix attribuée à saint François : une énigme à résoudre, Paris, Éditions franciscaines, 2001, 210 p.
• Christian RENOUX, La preghiera per la pace attribuita a san Francesco. Un enigma da risolvere, Padoue, Edizioni Messagero Padova (EMP), 2003, Collana: Memoria e profezia, 180 p.
• Book's abstracts in English : « The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis »
• Book's review in Portuguese

Articles on line

• « Une source de l'histoire de la mystique moderne revisitée : les procès de canonisation », in Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, 1993, vol. 105, n° 105-1, p. 177–217.
• « Discerner la sainteté des mystiques. Quelques exemples italiens de l'âge baroque », in Rives nord-méditerranéennes, n° 3, 1999, p. 19–28.
• « Madame Acarie lit Thérèse d'Avila », October 2001.
• « Freud et l'affaire Haizmann », in Psychoanalytische Perspectieven, 2002, t. 20, 2, p. 309–325.
• « Cultivons la paix », interview for the Secours Catholique / Caritas France, June 2004.
• « Décennie de la non-violence et de la paix, quels objectifs pour 2010 ? », in Non-Violence Actualité, n° 285, March–April 2006.
• « La paix, invitée de La Villette », interview for L'Humanité, June 1 2006.

Interview on line

• « Peut-on éduquer à la paix ? », documentary – 2006 – 26 mn. The television program Question d'Église from Jour du Seigneur on French national Channel France 2, presents the second International Salon for Peace Initiatives, which took place in Paris in June 2006 (13,000 participants)
• Interview on Radio Ethic to present the 3rd Salon in May–June 2008