John Scheid (born 1946 in Luxembourg under the first name Jean) is a French historian. A specialist of ancient Rome, he has been a professor at the Collège de France since 2001.
Biography
After his secondary studies in Luxembourg, John Scheid came to France in 1966 in order to study history and classical letters first at the University of Strasbourg and then in Paris, where he was a pupil of Hans-Georg Pflaum. He obtained a 3rd cycle thesis scholarship that he led under the direction of Robert Schilling and which he supported in 1972 in Strasbourg. (Les Frères arvales : recrutement et origine sociale sous les Julio-Claudiens)
Wishing to go to Rome as part of the École française de Rome, he had to pass the agrégation. He obtained the necessary French naturalization in January 1973, in time to enroll in the competition of that year. He was received at the agrégation de grammaire. He left for Rome in 1974 and in 1975 began excavations in the district of La Magliana, carried out regularly until 1988 (and afterwards in 1997–98).
From 1977 to 1983, he was an assistant at the University of Lille-3, then became director of studies at the École pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), section of religious sciences.
In 1987, he defended his doctoral thesis, Romulus et ses frères : Le culte des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans la Rome des empereurs (‘Romulus and his brothers: The worship of the Arval Brethren, a model of public worship in imperial Rome’).
Since 2001, he has been a professor at the College de France, in charge of a chair Religion, institutions et société de la Rome antique (‘Religion, institutions, and society of ancient Rome’). He is also co-director of the excavation of Djebel Oust in Tunisia, coordinator of the experimental excavation of a necropolis at Classe near Ravenna, and coordinator of the Fana Templa Delubra : Corpus des lieux de culte dans l'Italie antique project.
He is codirector of the Revue d'histoire des religions and member of the board of editors of numerous journals: Archives des sciences sociales des religions, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte (Teubner, Stuttgart-Leipzig), Potsdamer Althistorische Beiträge, , Millenium and Mythos.
According to historian Jean-Louis Voisin, John Scheid "revolutionized [...] the study and approach of the Roman religion by insisting on the precise fulfillment of its rites and its civic character".
Honours and awards
Honours
2013 : Knight of the Legion of Honour (France) 2016 : Officier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France) 2020 : Grand Officier of the Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg 2021 : Commander of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France)