Franciscus Verellen

Franciscus Verellen is a historian of medieval China specializing in the Tang-Song transition (ninth and tenth centuries) and the religious culture of Daoism in its formative period (second to tenth centuries). He is Professor Emeritus and a former Director of the École française d’Extrême-Orient.

Career
After doctoral studies at the University of Oxford and the École pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne), Franciscus Verellen taught Chinese religions and Oriental Humanities at the École pratique des Hautes Études (1986–87) and Columbia University (1987–91). In 1991 he joined the École française d’Extrême-Orient (French School of Asian Studies) where he occupied the chair in History of Daoism from 2002 to 2021. Verellen founded and headed the School's Taipei Center (1992–95) and later directed the Hong Kong Center (2000-4 and 2014–21). He was Director of the École française d’Extrême-Orient from 2004 to 2014 and served as a board member or advisor to various French and European institutions, including Campus France and the Expert Advisory Group “Horizon 2020” to the European Commission (2013–18).

Franciscus Verellen held visiting appointments at the University of Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was Distinguished Visiting professor at McMaster University, Ontario, Princeton University Stewart Lecturer in the Humanities, and Edwin C. and Elizabeth A. Whitehead Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Verellen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and a Life Member (Visiting Fellow in 2022) of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

Recognition
Franciscus Verellen was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 2008. He was decorated with the French Légion d’honneur (2009) and Palmes académiques (2020) and received the Association of American Publishers (2005) and American Academy of Religion Awards for Excellence (2007). Verellen was made an Officer of the Royal Order of Cambodia (2007) and awarded the Medal of Sahametrei (2018) for contributions to the conservation of Angkor made as Director of the École française d’Extrême-Orient.

Research overview
Verellen's research centers on the belief system, text traditions, and ritual practices of medieval Daoism. His recent work explores the breakup of the Tang empire (618-907) and China's transition to its early modern era under the late Tang and Five Dynasties (907-65), with particular attention to religious and intellectual responses to dynastic change. Beside the records of official historiography and canonical sources, Verellen's analysis draws extensively on lay religious writings, private memoirs, and informal literature.

Principal publications
Imperiled Destinies (2019) was described as “a capstone of Daoist studies of the past half-century” (Stephen F, Teiser, HUP review). The book traces the evolution of medieval Daoist thought and practices concerning spiritual debt and retribution through eight centuries, providing “a detailed, lucid portrait of Daoist and medieval Chinese views of fate.” Explaining Daoist ritual as an instrument for acting on human fate, it “remains focused on the people who developed and performed these rituals and on the ubiquitous, very human existential problems the rituals were crafted to address.”

The Taoist Canon (2004). The joint publication with Kristofer Schipper of this collective work marked a “watershed in the history of Daoist studies.” The three-volume compendium comprehensively analyses the 1,500 texts and collections transmitted through the Repository of Daoist Scriptures of the Great Ming (1445), opening for the first time the full range of the religion's foundational writings to scholars of Daoism, students of world religions, and historians of China.

Du Guangting (1989) pioneered the study of the eminent Daoist hierarch and court divine, providing “a completely new picture of the complex and crucial changes occurring in Daoism in the ninth and in the tenth century.” In a series of separate articles Verellen portrayed the intellectual universe of Du Guangting as gleaned from his religious memoirs and personal testimony on the Tang–Five Dynasties transition.

Selected bibliography

 * Conjurer la destinée: rétribution et délivrance dans le taoïsme médiéval. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2021.
 * Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliverance in Medieval China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019.
 * Daoist Lives, edited with Vincent Goossaert. 2 volumes: “Narrative and Practice,” vol. 8 of Daoism: Religion, History and Society, and “Community and Place,” vol. 25 of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, 2016.
 * Prince Gao’s Occupation of Annan and the Rise of Regional Autonomy under the Late Tang. Jao Tsung-I Lecture in Chinese Culture no. 4. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2015.
 * Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese Religion, edited with Stephen F. Teiser. Vol. 20 of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, 2011
 * Daoism: Religion, History and Society 道教研究學報, an annual periodical, co-founded and co-directed with Lai Chi Tim. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2009.
 * The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang, edited with Kristofer Schipper. 3 volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004
 * Culte des sites et culte des saints en Chine (ed.). Vol. 10 of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, 1998
 * Die Mythologie des Taoismus. In Wörterbuch der Mythologie, edited by E. Schmalzriedt and H.W. Haussig, ser. 6, 739–863. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1994.
 * Du Guangting (850-933): taoïste de cour à la fin de la Chine médiévale. Paris: Collège de France, 1989.