Michel Spanneut

Michel Spanneut was a French priest and patristics scholar. From a Flemish speaking agricultural family in the Nord Département, after primary school he entered the Petit séminaire at Hazebrook. Following studies at the Université Catholique de Lille, where he obtained a doctorate in theology, and ordination to the priesthood in 1944, he completed a doctorat d' état under the direction of Henri-Irénée Marrou devoted to the influence of Stoic philosophy on Church Fathers from Clement of Rome to Clement of Alexandria. The permanence of Stoicism in Western thought remained one of his major preoccupations. Some of his early publications dealt with Eustathius of Antioch. A teacher at the Université Catholique de Lille from 1955 to 1989 he became Dean of the Faculty of Letters. He was an honorary canon of Lille.