Annalists and Historians: Western Historiography from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century

228 Pages·2016·5.807 MB·English

by  Denys Hay

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
HISTORIOGRAPHY
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ANNALISTS AND HISTORIANS
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1 Western Historiography from the Eighth to
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y the Eighteenth Centuries
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Firstpublishedin1977byMethuen&CoLtd
Thiseditionfirstpublishedin2016
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
7 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
1 ©1977DenysHay
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2
y Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedorutilised
r inanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,nowknownor
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u hereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinanyinformation
n storageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublishers.
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3 Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
1 trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintentto
4 infringe.
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7 BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
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t AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
a
o] ISBN:978-1-138-99958-9(Set)
g ISBN:978-1-315-63745-7(Set)(ebk)
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i ISBN:978-1-138-19301-7(Volume17)(hbk)
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n ISBN:978-1-138-19350-5(Volume17)(pbk)
a ISBN:978-1-315-63961-1(Volume17)(ebk)
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a, Publisher’sNote
ni Thepublisherhasgonetogreatlengthstoensurethequalityofthisreprintbut
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o pointsoutthatsomeimperfectionsintheoriginalcopiesmaybeapparent.
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f correspondencefromthosetheyhavebeenunabletotrace.
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DENYS HAY
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y Annalists and
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a Historians
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4 WESTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY
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7 FROM THE EIGHTH TO
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at THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

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LONDON
METHUEN & CO LTD
11 NEW FETTER LANE EC4
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2 First published in 1977
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a © 1977 by Denys Hay
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3 Photoset by Red Lion Setters, Holborn, London
4 1 and printed by Richard Clay & Co, Bungay, Suffolk
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7 ISBN 0 416 81180 9 (hardback)
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Distributed in the USA by
HARPER & ROW PUBLISHERS, INC.
BARNES & NOBLE IMPORT DIVISION
Contents
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ua Preface lV
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J 1 Ancient historians: Greeks and Romans 1
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4 2 The Bible: jewish and Christian Time 12
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7 3 The Birth of the Medieval Chronicle 38
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a
] 4 Medieval Historiography at its Prime:
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g from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries 63
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5 The Humanist Historian in Fifteenth-century Italy 87
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S 6 The Sixteenth Century Ill
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ni 7 History and Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century 133
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o
if 8 Historians and Antiquaries in the Eighteenth
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C Century: the Emergence of the Modern Method 169
f
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y Notes 186
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rs Index 209
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Preface
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ar I have contemplated wntmg a book on historiography for
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n many years, perhaps almost since I first began working on the
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3 J English history of Polydore Vergil in 1938. I have clear
1 memories of reading translations of the main Greek and Latin
4
1 historians during the often lengthy boredoms of the war. I
:
7
0 find, too, that I have kept a letter dated October 1943 from
at my former tutor, V.H. Galbraith, professor of history at
]
o Edinburgh, in which he indicated in reply to a question I had
g
e put to him that there was indeed room for a history of
i
D
n historiography - though he wisely did not designate me as its
a author. In those days I envisaged some vast multi-volume
S
a, treatment of the vast subject, which would have run from
i
n Babylon to Marc Bloch. What I attempt here is infinitely more
r
o
f modest.
i
l
a Some such book is, I believe, desirable if not necessary. Even
C
f if what follows is not what I would have wished for, or what
o
y others may expect, the fact is that there is no comparable book
t
si in which a general survey of at any rate a long portion of the
r
ve story is attempted, a portion, moreover, which seems to me to
i
n be critical. There are, of course, many admirable partial
U
[ studies, although some are now out of date and they usually
y
b treat the writings of an historian, or of the historians of a
d
e period, mainly as source material, on a par with other
d
a materials available to later scholars. Such are the masterly
o
nl volumes of W. Wattenbach and 0. Lorenz for Germany, and
w
o of A. Molinier for France. There is nothing, even old-
D
fashioned, to compare with these books for England. [I] Let us
nevertheless honour the erudition of Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy
(1804-78), and salute Mrs Antonia Gransden, who has begun
to produce what will be undoubtedly a very complete
discussion of English narrative sources in the Middle Ages.[2]
What I am concerned with is the evolution of a genre, not the
Preface v
validation of authorities. Here we have only limited help from
earlier books.
The intelligent, short but stimulating Introduction to the
History ofH istory by James T. Shotwell (1922) only goes to the
brink of the Middle Ages. Other more ambitious books are
7 scarcely worth reading, at any rate those that have come my
1
0 way. The lengthy two-volume compilation by James Westfall
2
y Thompson, A History of Historical Wr£ting (1942), is mainly
r
a scissors-and-paste; wherever one can check them, the facts are
u
n often wrong and the interpretation banal. The briefer work of
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3 Harry Elmer Barnes has the same title (1937) and is shorter,
1
4 and that is about all one can say for it. Similar works of .even
1 less merit and sometimes of much greater tendentiousness exist
:
7
0 in other languages; I was astonished at the fairly recent
t
a reprinting (1946) of G. Lefebure's inferior cours de Sorbonne.
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o Recently there has fortunately been a new interest in historians
g
e
i as craftsmen, as men operating in a particular literary
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n tradition. In particular, reference will be made in the
a
S following pages to several admirable works on one or two
a, medieval chroniclers and Renaissance historians. But the only
i
n
r wide-ranging work which commands respect remains E.
o
if Fueter's Gesch£chte der neueren Historiograph£e (1911, and,
l
a
C despite claims of publishers, virtually not revised after the
f French translation ofl914: see below p.88 and p.l96). Brilliant
o
y though the work of this Swiss journalist is, it is often
t
i
s over-schematic and some of his general ideas have to be
r
e
v treated with caution.
i
n
U There are reasons enough why no one has produced the
y [ modern treatment which the subject needs. There is no history
b worth the name of Latin literature in the medieval and
d
e Renaissance periods. Histories of vernacular literatures
d
a
o normally ignore contemporary Latin works unless by authors
l
n who wrote in both a vulgar and a learned tongue; in English
w
o only C.S. Lewis's critical works earn added praise for the way
D
they integrate discussion of English and Latin works in this
way. Yet in most scholarly fields Latin writers were much more
sophisticated and influential than vernacular writers, at any
rate down to the seventeenth century. Most serious Latin prose
in the Middle Ages was either exegetical, didactic or historical
and there were legions of medieval historians. For half a