Léopold Genicot

Léopold Genicot (Forville, Namur, 18 March 1914 - Ottignies, Louvain-la-Neuve, 11 May 1995) was a Belgian historian and medievalist and an activist for the Walloon Movement. He established a centre for the study of rural history and an influential series of guides to medieval historical sources. Léopold Genicot was born in Forville, Belgium, in 1914. After earning his BA in political economy, he worked as an archivist in the Namur branch of the Royal Archives from 1935 to 1944. During that time, he obtained a doctorate in History in 1937. His work at the archives also allowed him to hide escaped prisoners during the Second World War. In 1935, he was offered a position as professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, receiving tenure there in 1947. He taught diplomatic, methodology, Belgian history and medieval history. In his research, he was particularly interested in the history of Wallonia. His contribution to Medieval History is well known, and his books and articles are used today in many medieval history classes. In 1963, persuaded of the academic value of interdisciplinarity, he established a Centre for Rural History (Centre d'Histoire Rurale) and later still a Centre for Historical Ecology (Centre d'écologie historique), inviting historians to work together with geographers, agronomers, and other specialists in Earth Sciences in the newly established Institut Interfacultaire d'Études Médiévales (better known as the Institut d'Études Médiévales). In 1972 he decided to start publishing a series of small monographs under the title Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental ("typology of sources for the Western Middle Ages"), devising the editorial plan and writing an introductory volume the same year. The whole of this collection has acquired enormous academic prestige and has continued to be published by Brepols. This collection was to serve a scholarly base of medievalists ranging from graduate students to professors and has become one of the most successful collections of introductory and bibliographical aids ever presented to the academic community of medieval history scholars.