Christian Renoux

Christian Renoux is a French historian and an activist for nonviolence.

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 of Strasbourg.

Since 1998, he has been associate professor of Early modern History at the University of Orléans (France), where is also teaching the History of Religions and the History of Nonviolence.

His research work is about the history of canonization 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 ("Lord, make me an instrument of your peace"), in which he demonstrated that this text, well known as the Prayer of Saint Francis and become in half a century one of the most famous worldwide prayers, appeared, anonymously, in 1912, in France, and has been wrongly attributed to saint Francis around 1925.

A conscientious objector, 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 (IFOR). 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 Steering Committee from 1996 to 2000.

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