Michel Tardieu (born 10 April 1938) is a French scholar working on religious currents in Late Antiquity and in the Near and Far East. He was born in Mareuil, Dordogne and educated in a petit séminaire and with the Dominicans in Toulouse before becoming a researcher in state higher education. Work in Iraq and neighbouring countries led to the acquisition of a number of Late Antique Near Eastern languages, extending to extensive familiarity also with Persian and Chinese.