A prolific medievalist of international renown, Le Goff was sometimes considered the principal heir and continuator of the movement known as
Annales School (
École des Annales), founded by his intellectual mentor
Marc Bloch. Le Goff succeeded
Fernand Braudel in 1972 at the head of the
École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and was succeeded by
François Furet in 1977. Along with
Pierre Nora, he was one of the leading figures of
New History (
Nouvelle histoire) in the 1970s. Subsequently, he dedicated himself to studies on the
historical anthropology of
Western Europe during medieval times. He was well known for contesting the very name of "Middle Ages" and its chronology, highlighting achievements of this period and variations inside it, in particular by attracting attention to the
Renaissance of the 12th century. In his 1984 book,
The Birth of Purgatory, he argued that the conception of
purgatory as a physical place, rather than merely as a state, dates to the 12th century, the heyday of medieval otherworld-journey narratives such as the Irish
Visio Tnugdali, and of pilgrims' tales about
St Patrick's Purgatory, a cavelike entrance to purgatory on a remote island in Ireland. Alexander Lee argued in
History Today, "This innovative use of popular culture to uncover the roots of a central idea in the religious thought of the Middle Ages was firmly within the Annales tradition, but extended the boundaries of the Annalistes’ approach in such a way that its broader potential as an historiographical methodology was almost beyond question." An
agnostic, Le Goff presented an equidistant position between the detractors and the apologists of the Middle Ages. Among his numerous works were two widely accepted biographies, a
genre that his school did not usually favour: the
life of Louis IX, the only
King of France to be
canonized, and the life of
Saint Francis of Assisi, the
Italian mendicant friar. In October 2000 he received an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from the
University of Pavia. He was also nominated Academician of Studium, Accademia di Casale e del Monferrato, Italy. In 2004, he received the
Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History from the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. ==Honours and awards==