Gustave Schlumberger

Who was Gustave Schlumberger?

Léon Gustave Schlumberger was a French historian and numismatist who specialised in the era of the crusades and the Byzantine Empire. His Numismatique de l'Orient Latin is still considered the principal work on the coinage of the crusades.

He was born in Guebwiller, Alsace, then part of France but later annexed to Germany. From 1863 he studied medicine in Paris. During the Franco-Prussian War, he served on the French side as a medic. In 1871 he returned to Paris, and was awarded a doctorate in 1872 for a thesis on the respiratory tract. After this he travelled extensively in North Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Italy and then turned to research into the history of the Crusader states and the Byzantine Empire. He was elected president of the Societé des Antiquaires de France. In 1884 he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. In 1903 he was awarded the Medal of the Royal Numismatic Society.

He was a friend of Edith Wharton, who described him as looking like 'a descendent of one of the Gauls on the arch of Titus'. He also corresponded extensively with the Greek writer Penelope Delta, which correspondence influenced several of her historical novels set in Byzantine times.