This one thousand year history of the civilization of western Europe has already been recognized in France as a scholarly contribution of the highest order and as a popular classic. Jacques Le Goff has written a book which will not only be read by generations of students and historians, but which will delight and inform all those interested in the history of medieval Europe. Part one, Historical Evolution , is a narrative account of the entire period, from the barbarian settlement of Roman Europe in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries to the war-torn crises of Christian Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Part two, Medieval Civilization , is analytical, concerned with the origins of early medieval ideas of culture and religion, the constraints of time and space in a pre-industrial world and the reconstruction of the lives and sensibilities of the people during this long period. Medieval Civilization combines the narrative and descriptive power characteristic of Anglo-Saxon scholarship with the sensitivity and insight of the French historical tradition.

法国著名历史学家，是年鉴学派第三代的代表人物之一，主要从事西方中世纪史研究。在对中世纪的文化、心态和感觉表象的研究中有所创新。1972年至1977年任法国社会科学高等研究院院长。