Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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The
theory
of
history
757
conception
of
history
was
'catholic'
as
well
as
'pragmatic'
-
'like
a
body
whose
members may
not
be divided', Baudouin quoted. Such was the basis
of
Baudouin's historical ideal
(historia integra, universa, perpetua
or
perfecta,
as
he variously called
it).
The
most celebrated
of all
early modern methodisers (next
to
Ramus and
Descartes)
was
Jean
Bodin, whose
Methodus adfacilem historiarum cognitionem
appeared
in
1566. Bodin began
by
asking
the
standard
questions
of
the ars
histórica,
'What
is
history
and how
many
are its
categories?'
48
Most
generally,
he
answered,
it was a
'true
narrative',
and it
could
be
pursued
either
on a
universal
or on a
particular
level,
that
is,
as a
history
of
nations
(maximae
respublicae)
or cities
(minimae respublicae)
or else as biography (res
gestae virorum).
Secondly,
it
could
be
viewed
as the
choice
(delectus)
and
classification
(ordo
et
collectio) of
historical writings,
and
then
as
the
criticism
(judicium) of
these works
in
the light
of
what modern scholarship had
to
say
about
the
myths
of
national origins
and the old, to
Bodin offensively
Romanist, theory
of
the 'four world monarchies', propagated
by
Sleidan
and others
and
rejected
by
Bodin. Thirdly,
the
objective aspect was history
as 'action', which is
to
say
the
drive
of
human
will
successively
to
sustinence
(nécessitas),
comfort
(commoditas)
and
finally
the
amenities
of
civilisation
(splendor
and
voluptas).
The
culmination
of
these economic, social
and
cultural phases
of
history came,
of
course,
in
the creation
of
republics.
In
this
systematic
way
Bodin
set out on the 'new
route' mapped
out by
Machiavelli
in his
Discorsi.
Like
Baudouin Bodin wanted
to
strengthen the alliance between law
and
history,
but
he had a more grandiose and philosophical aim
than
the
authors
of
the
'arts
of
history'. Like Baudouin, too, he drew upon the legal tradition
as
well
as
the art
of
history
and
humanist scholarship,
but
his interests were
more eclectic
and
bound
up
with French national traditions, with
comparative European law
and
with
a
system
of
universal law. According
to Bodin, the basic categories
of
history were identical with those
of
the law
(natural, human
or
civil,
and divine), and its human substance corresponded
in general to the 'law
of
nations'
(jus
gentium)
in a modern sense. Bodin's aim
was
to
study this 'world
of
nations'
(as
Vico
would derivatively call
it)
through 'universal history'
in its
broadest sense. 'The best
part
of
universal
law
resides in history' was his motto (in
historia juris universi pars optima
est).
49
The purpose
of
his 'method' was
to
reorganise topically
the
'flowers'
of
history
in
order
to
assemble
the
most relevant materials
for
political
48.
Bodin 1951,
p.
114;
see
also Klempt i960; Jean Bodin 1973, with full bibliography.
49.
Bodin 1951,
p. 108.
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75«
Philosophy
and
humanistic disciplines
thought
(civilis
disciplina).
It
was
in
this sense
that
Bodin proclaimed history
to
be
'above all sciences'
(super scientias omnes)
and
with this
in
mind
that
he
defined
the
role
of the
philosophical historian
or
philosopher
of
history
(philosophistoricus),
which
was to
'combine
the
narration
of
facts with
precepts
of
wisdom'.
Like
law
itself,
the
implication
was,
history
was a
form
of
wisdom
(sapientia),
and indeed this was made explicit by
another
'method
of
reading
history' published
in
1579
by one of
Bodin's first disciples. 'Among
the
aphorisms
of
the ancients
. . .',
wrote Pierre Droit
de
Gaillard,
'the
most
remarkable was
that
of
Chilon,
one
of
the seven
sages:
Know thyself. Now
this knowledge depends upon history, sacred as
well
as profane, universal as
well
as
particular.'
50
Gaillard celebrated
the
alliance
(conference)
of
history
with
other disciplines, indeed with
the
whole humanist
encyclopaedia,
and
concluded
'in a
word, all disciplines take their source and principles wholly
from
history, as from an
overflowing
fountain'. For the rest Gaillard's work
was
a laudatory survey
of
the contours and glories
of
French history and
the
moral
and
political lessons
to be
derived from
its
study.
Building
even more comprehensively on Bodin's 'method' was the work
of
the Huguenot historiographer Henri Lancelot
Voisin
de la
Popelinière,
who
in 1599 published a pair of
works,
Histoire
des
histoires, avec
LTdée
de
l'histoire accomplie,
to
which was appended 'Le Dessein de l'histoire nouvelle
des François'. La Popelinière prided
himself
on standing 'above passion
and
party' and,
especially
in his earlier history
of
France during the
civil
wars,
on
his
treatment
of
the past in
terms
of
cause and effect
(la cause,
le
progrès,
bonne
ou
mauvaise issue).
51
For La
Popelinière history represented
not
merely
a
genre
but a
mode
of
thought which affected
to
interpret
the
actions
of
men
'according
to
the times, the
places,
their
causes,
progress and results', and for
this reason
it
was a more useful discipline
than
either philosophy
or
political
thought. Echoing Bodin,
then,
La
Popelinière concluded
that
history
was
above
all
arts
and
sciences.
THE
PATTERNS
OF
HISTORY
In
his
proposal
for a 'new
history'
of
France
La
Popelinière
was in
fact
continuing
an old
enterprise, which
was to
find
the
basic
patterns
of the
national past.
The
most popular scheme
of
periodisation, derived from
Florus,
had
been suggested
by
Claude
de
Seyssel
in his
Histoire singulier
du
50.
Gaillard 1579,
p. 1; cf.
Gaillard 1578.
See
also Dubois 1977.
51.
La
Popelinière 1599;
see
also
Kelley
1971.
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The
theory of history
759
roy
Louis
XII and taken up by the royal historiographer Bernard Du Haillan
and the regius professor of Greek Louis Le
Roy.
52
The conceit of the four
ages
(applied also to England by Polydore
Vergil)
included infancy from
the beginning to
Clovis,
youth down to the Merovingians, maturity
under
the Carolingians and old age
under
the Capetians. La Popelinière himself
proposed a five-stage periodisation - ancient, Roman,
Gallic,
Frankish and
modern French. What was most novel was La Popelinière's aspiration to
incorporate into historical narrative an account
of
the growth
of
all
the
arts
and sciences. This had also been the intention of Le Roy, whose De la
vicissitude
ou
varieté
des
choses
en
Vunivers
(1575)
has been called 'the first
treatise devoted to the history
of
civilization'.
53
Le Roy also wrote historical
sketches
of
the history
of
political
thought and
of
philosophy itself, while La
Popelinière (expanding on a conventional theme of the ars
historica)
proposed a most interesting
interpretation
of the rise and progress of
historical consciousness
—
first a period of
'natural
history' (oral tradition
and superstition), next 'poetic history' (Homer or Moses, for example),
then
with the establishment of a rational chronology 'continuous history'
expressed in chronicles and annals, fourthly a
'civilised'
sort of historical
writing coinciding with the emergence
of
other
arts
and sciences and finally
(so La Popelienière hoped) an age of'perfect history', which is to say the
'philosophical' kind of history later to be made famous by Voltaire.
54
By
the end of the sixteenth century history had, in the eyes of many
observers, attained a position
of
eminence, sometimes elevated above other
disciplines,
since it was regarded as the source and even the ordering
principle
of
knowledge.
Careful distinctions were maintained between the
history
of
nature
and
of
culture
(res
naturales
and
res
humanae,
according to
Baudouin and Bodin) and between sacred and profane history.
55
Yet in a
sense all
three
of Bodin's varieties of history
—
natural,
civil
and divine
—
found a place in historical thought; for if the Italianate 'art of history' was
secular and human,
Protestant
historiography adopted Eusebian perspec-
tives
on divine history, while Bodinian method invoked naturalistic means
of
explanation, including what Bodin himself called 'geohistory'. In the
Renaissance as in the present century a distinction may be made between the
analytical and the speculative philosophy of history, the first being
represented by discussions of the problems of criticism, explanation and
52.
Seyssel
1961; 1981
(Kelley's
introduction); see also Le Roy 1570 (Les Monarchiques); Du Haitian
1570.
53.
Le Roy 1575; see also Gundersheimer 1966.
54.
Le Roy 1567, 1553 ('L'origine, progres et perfection de la philosophic'); La Popelinière 1599. See
also
Baron 1959; Kinser 1971. 55. Baudouin 1561;
Bodin
1951.
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76o
Philosophy and humanistic disciplines
interpretation
in treatises on method, and the second by discussions of
universal chronology, periodisation and cultural progress. In
that
period,
too,
there
were debates between those who regarded history as an
autonomous field and those, especially artificial and conservative
'methodisers' like
Aconcio
and
Vossius,
who hoped to reduce history to - or
perhaps
better,
to dissolve it in
—
a logical system.
56
Of course
there
were
also those who denied 'history' in any form and identified the
term
with the
raw material
of
empirical investigation, according to the style made famous
by
Francis Bacon.
In the classification of sciences history certainly improved its ranking
dramatically, being taught widely in (especially
Protestant)
universities and
gaining parity (for instance in the pedagogical scheme of the Lutheran
David
Chytraeus)
57
even with medicine, jurisprudence and philosophy.
But
it was in the company of political philosophy
that
the study
of
history
rose perhaps highest in the estimation of Renaissance scholars, beginning
with
Machiavelli's
'new route' and including such later followers as Bodin,
whose
Six
livres
de la
République
of 1576 was in effect an expansion of
chapter 6 of his
Methodus.
The vogue of Tacitus and the analytical,
'pragmatic' history of
Polybius,
translated
and celebrated by Casaubon in
1609,
reinforced the interest in political narrative as practised by Machia-
velli,
Guicciardini and even Sleidan. 'Political science belongs wholly to
history . . .', wrote Casaubon's friend Daniel Heinsius in the early
seventeenth century, for 'political science, without history, is
tortured
and
wasted away by tasteless, disgusting and pedantic distinctions and minute
divisions
of philosophers'
—
meaning the most superficial of the
'arts
of
history'.
58
Here sounds again, in the rhetoric of this Dutch scholar, the
theme of political humanism: 'If history have no professorship, if all
universities be closed', he wrote, 'she
will
always have an honourable
reception in palaces and in the innermost chambers of kings and princes.'
Yet
history continued to have a broader philosophical connection.
Having
reshaped the humanist 'encyclopaedia' by placing it in a long
perspective, historical studies in effect subsumed philosophy and created
what was already emerging as an academic speciality in the sixteenth
century — the history of philosophy. Having become involved in
fundamental debates over proper and effective scientific 'method', history
raised
itself
in the
eyes
of
some scholars to the
level
of
an autonomous science
and opened the way to the analytical philosophy
of
history. Having, finally,
56.
Vossius 1623. Cf. Cabrera de Cordoba 1611.
57.
Klatt 1908, p. 35; see also Scherer 1927. 58. Heinsius 1943, p. 12.
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The
theory of history
761
been conscripted into religious controversy by
Protestant
and Catholic
ideologists,
history
turned
to transcendent questions and passed on to an
early phase of modern speculative philosophy of history. For Heinsius
indeed
'that
fretful animal whom we
call
man' saw a kind of salvation in
historical study. 'He would be free from the limits
of
time and space
.
. . and
would
gather into one focus the immeasurably great vastness of genera-
tions', Heinsius wrote. 'He would
view
in a moment an infinite multitude
of
matters
and affairs.'
59
He had become
homo historicus
in a sense which
would
apply, paradoxically, to Descartes as
well
as to Descartes's nemesis
Vico.
And history had become a
permanent
factor, whether negative or
positive,
in western philosophy.
59.
Ibid., p. 10.
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PART 3
SUPPLEMENTARY
MATERIAL
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XIII
APPENDICES
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