Bernard Heyberger (born 1954) is a French historian. He specializes in the history of Middle Eastern Christianity from the sixteenth century to the present; modern Catholicism and Catholic missions; and the Arab provinces of the late Ottoman Empire, especially Syria. He is a Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and simultaneously holds a chair as Director of Studies in the Religious Sciences section at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), also in Paris. Early life and family Heyberger was born in Saint-Hippolyte, a village in the Haut-Rhin department in Alsace (northeastern France), to a family of small farmers and winemakers. His parents were Antoine Heyberger and Jeanne Bogner. Bernard Heyberger grew up speaking Alsatian Alemannisch, a Germanic language, as his native tongue. He is married to Colette Thommeret and has two sons. Education After graduating from the lycée of Ribeauvillé in 1972, Bernard Heyberger studied history at the University of Strasbourg. He received the CAPES (Certificat d'Aptitude au Professorat de l'Enseignement du Second Degré) in History and Geography in 1979, and achieved the rank of agrégation in history in 1980. From 1979 to 1989, he taught in various secondary schools. He spent the 1989-90 year in Damascus, studying Arabic with a grant from the Institut français d’études arabes. From 1990 to 1993, he was a research associate in the École Française de Rome. He completed his PhD dissertation, entitled, “Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique”, under the supervision of the late Louis Châtellier in Nancy in 1993. Career and publications Heyberger published his PhD dissertation as a book in 1994; a second edition appeared in 2014. Entitled, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme Catholique (Syrie, Liban, Palestine, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle) (“Christians of the Near East in the Era of Catholic Reform [Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, 17th-18thCenturies]”), this book appeared from the press of the École Française de Rome. Focusing especially on the Syrian city of Aleppo, and drawing heavily upon records from the Propaganda Fide (the Roman Catholic church’s missionary agency), the book considers the historical anthropology of Middle Eastern Christian communities in a period when Jesuit and other Catholic missionaries were active among them. The book considers how Middle Eastern Christians’ material, social, and religious lives changed, and also how they interacted with Ottoman state authorities and with Muslim communities around them. Les Chrétiens