He had a deep knowledge of Semitic and oriental languages and was a religious historian. He was born in Brittany, at Tréguier, on 28th of February 1823. Orphan since his youngest age, he entered the seminary when he was fifteen. He left it seven years later in order pursue his studied, which led him to Italy for his degree about Averroism (school of philosophy based on the works of the philosopher Averroes).
Several religions histories publications followed. In 1863, when his most famous and controversial work was published, the Life of Jesus (Vie de Jesus), he was teaching Hebrew at Collège de France. He lost his teaching post, because of the hostility created by his volume. He started again teaching in 1870. In 1875, he arrived in Ischia for the first time with his wife and he stopped at Casamicciola for his thermal baths, which be benefitted from. He returned there two years later for a new course of treatment. This time, he went with his children, Noemi and Ary. The ladder showed an artistic talent and, in delicate health, he benefitted from the thermal baths too. It was during that long spring stay in Ischia that Renan wrote one of his philosophic drama plays, Caliban. When he became an academic of France, the following year, in 1879, in august and September he was again a host in Casamicciola, in the Villa Zavota hotel, with his family.
There, his son Ary, a more and more promising painter, dedicated several drawings to the island, which are precious testimonies, because some paitings were representing the village of Casamicciola before the earthquake of 1883. Even if he really appreciated the island, often mentioned with enthusiasm in his letters, as well as the benefits of the thermal cures, the Renan never returned to Ischia. In 1879, when they left the island, they spent few days in Sorrento. An intense activity as a writer and as an historian followed. His writing was famous, borrowed from a conference from 1882 at Sorbonne about the same subject, What is a nation? Renan died in Pris on 2nd of October 1892.
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