Levillain attended the
Lycée Montaigne in
Bordeaux for secondary school. He then studied at the
École normale supérieure and earned an
agrégation in history in 1965. He then served as an assistant professor at
Paris Nanterre University from 1975 to 1981. He defended his doctoral thesis,
Le deuxième concile du Vatican et sa procédure, in 1972 under the direction of
René Rémond at Paris Nanterre University. He was then sent to the , where he directed studies in modern and contemporary history from 1977 to 1981. He completed his in 1979 and became a professor of contemporary history at the
Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III, where he stayed from 1982 to 1986. He then spent the remainder of his career at Paris Nanterre University, where he became a professor emeritus. Levillain was a senior member of the
Institut Universitaire de France from 1998 to 2003 and was also a member of the
Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. He was elected to be a member of the
Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques on 19 December 2011, succeeding the historian
Pierre Chaunu. He served as President of the
Société de l'histoire de France in 2012. He hosted the radio show '''' on
France Culture from 1982 to 2014. Levillain died on 4 October 2021 at the age of 80. ==Distinctions==