World-renowned historian is still a Conahy man at heart - Kilkenny Live

ABOVE AND BELOW: Then and now! Brothers Joe and Larry Bergin.

Joe enjoyed his years teaching. Manchester University, he said, was a multi-national school and attracted international academics because of the many language departments, as well as some exceptional historians.

Joe has written seven books. he explained that PhD dissertations are often rewritten and published as books, but Joe didn’t present his thesis as his first book. His first book was the ground-breaking ‘Cardinal Richelieu - Power and the pursuit of wealth’.

The book was about the French political powerhouse, and first ‘prime minister’ to Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu. It was very different to past histories and biographies thanks to an accidental discovery of original records by Joe.

While doing research he had come across references to documents relating to Richelieu that nobody had seen, or if they had, had never used.
In an archive in Paris were five volumes of handwritten notes in French, from the 1600s. The notes contained business records of people who dealt with Richelieu and knew a lot about the management of his estates.

As a child, the father of the man who would become Cardinal Richelieu had gone bankrupt. By the time of his death, Cardinal Richelieu had become one of the richest men in the history of France.

Joe’s book was controversial when it first came out, because it was about the wealthy politician and not the leader people knew. It was a different field altogether and, Joe said, the reaction to the book was as if writing about someone’s fortune wasn’t the thing to be done.

But that was only the initial reaction. As time went on, and Joe researched and published further titles dedicated to French history in the 16th and 17th Century, he became feted in France. In 2011 Joe was awarded the first ever silver Richelieu Medal by the Sorbonne University, in recognition of his contribution to ‘promoting the values of scholarly excellence.’

It was just one of many awards presented to Joe in recognition of his work. In 1995 he was awarded the separate Prix Richelieu for one of his books. In February 2010 Joe received the ‘Antiquities of France’ medal from the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres for his book ‘Church, Society and Religious Change in France 1580-1730’. He was also made an ‘officier’ of the French Order of the Palmes Académiques by the French government in 2010.

Joe has written six major books, and edited a number of others. He has also been an active translator of books and articles in history from French to English. One such translation, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, won the American Historical Association’s Russell Major prize in 2014.

He was elected as a member of the British Academy in 1996, one of only a handful invited every year, and is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
A love of learning and languages led Joe to meet his French wife Sylvia, when they both signed up to a German course. They have two children, Edward and Olivia, and four grandchildren.

Joe has frequently been a visiting professor to French universities, from Paris and Nancy to Lyon and Montpellier.
His academic achievements have been recognised worldwide, but a humble person, it is as a Conahy man that Joe will always be known.