HIS-306-T2-Resource

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History

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Apr 3, 2024

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HIS-306 Topic 2 Resource Ancient Historians through the Enlightenment Introduction In the study of historiography, it is important first to define historiography . In the simplest of definitions, historiography is studying the history of history. Historiography, in greater terms, is the tracing of methodologies used by historians and the development of history as a discipline. Additionally, historiography is the body of work by historians or their contributions to the written narrative, on a particular subject, for example the causes of the First World War. For this course, students will write a historiographical essay that examines the body of work in a particular subject and explore the history of history, through a series of resources that provides a basic introduction to the evolution of the methodologies used by historians in the development of history as a discipline. This first resource will cover the ancient historians, Middle Ages, the Reformation Era, and the Enlightenment and will provide a brief overview of the evolving approach to the recording of history and the development of history as a profession. The Greeks and Romans The first topic of ancient historiography is the contributions of the Greek historians. The Greeks studied history critically and scientifically; for them, history was an effort to discover the truth. Prior to the development of the Greeks' critical and scientific exploration of the past, religious myth and parables passed down from generation to generation as oral histories satisfied the curiosities of ancient peoples about their past. The Greeks transformed historical thinking when they introduced critical history as a technique of distinguishing truth from fiction. During the fifth century BC, two Greek Historians stood out as the forerunners of this early critical and scientific exploration of the past, Herodotus and Thucydides. These two men introduced the use of rational techniques and created the writing of history. Initially, the Greeks recorded their past with the heroic poems of Homer. The Greeks based their initial attempts to record the past on tales drawn from oral histories. These early histories based their explanations for the past on myths in which humans interacted with the gods and credited supernatural force for the development of world events. Divine will was the explanation of worldly events. Herodotus and Thucydides revolutionized the methods used to write history. Their writings implemented the use of prose, which is writing in a normal continuous manner, without the rhythmic structure found in poetry and yet permitted them to engage a live audience with their talents of storytelling.

Herodotus recorded the history of the wars fought between the Greeks and the Persians during the fifth century BC. To write his history of these wars, Herodotus used methods we still find in use today. He verified his information through the reports of eyewitness accounts and the participants in the event. Additionally, he accessed the available documents, for example, inscriptional records, archives, and official chronicles. Most significantly, his interpretation of events looked to human will and not divine will as the explanation for the outcome of human events. Though he never achieved a completely secular interpretation of the past, he was the first to look to the choices of humans as the primary explanation of events, which was a revolution in historiography. Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the Peloponnesian War, in the fifth century BC. Thucydides intended his accounts of events to be useful, believing that the awareness of history would serve to educate leaders about the mistakes of the past. He employed meticulous methods, relying on documentation and eyewitness accounts to construct his histories. Even more so than Herodotus, Thucydides turned to secular explanations for past events, assigning the cause of the Peloponnesian War to Sparta’s alarm over Athens’ growing influence. Ernst Breisach (2007), in his exhaustive work, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, credits the Greeks with creating the very idea of history, transforming it from a general examination of the world into an analysis of past events. Perhaps the greatest contributions of the Greeks was to transform the way history was written, moving away from the use of a poetic style to the use of prose and searching for explanations of past events that gave credit to human and not divine will. The Greeks, however, never identified any methods of exploring the distant past, preferring to focus on present history, written from the evidence of eyewitness accounts. The Greeks had a great influence on the Romans. Like the Greeks, the Romans focused their attention on war and societal leaders, but there were some differences in the way Greek and Roman historians approached history. Mark T. Gilderhus (2010), in his History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction argues that the Greeks' approach embraced detachment and objectivity when they wrote their histories; the Romans, however, preferred to place blame or point to examples or behavior that exemplified the standard to follow. One example is Sallust; writing from an outsider’s perspective, he wrote about the affairs of state and pointed to the corruption of leaders as the cause of society’s deterioration. The most notable Roman historian was Tacitus. He wrote several works, focusing on political and military subjects. Tacitus employed the traditional format of narration of events in chronological order. This was a typical topic for Roman historians. Like the Greeks, the Romans lacked any interest in the development of a universal history. For Romans the purpose of history was to record the history of Rome. Breisach, wrote that this narrow focus of history and

the belief held by Roman historians that Rome was eternal, their refusal to “subject Rome to a comparative analysis” and an absence interest about the past of other peoples obstructed the way to a universal history. (Briesach, 2007, p. 76) Middle Ages As the Roman Empire began to collapse and Christianity began to grow, there emerged a Christian view of history that developed slowly over several centuries. During the Middle Ages or medieval period, historians returned to the practice of crediting divine will or supernatural power for world events. One of the earliest Christian historians was St. Augustine. Augustine wrote The City of God, sometime between AD 413 and 426, in response to the fall of Rome to the Goths in AD 410. This disaster brought charges that Christianity was responsible for Rome’s fall. With this work, Augustine “established a dualism” that clearly defined the difference between secular and the holy (Gilderhus 2010, p. 21). Augustine saw the world as existing as two cities, the city of man and the city of God. The two coexisted on earth for all time. Augustine, unlike the Greek historians, thought that God influenced the events of man. He attempted to connect human events with biblical accounts. Gilderhus wrote that Augustine “thought of history as moving along a line with a clear beginning marked by creation, a middle, and an end. The birth of Christ denoted the central events, and the salvation of all believers at the termination of time signified the completion of process” (Gilderhus 2010, p. 22). During the Middle Ages, historians influenced by Augustine included in their writings an interpretation of history that credited events to God attempting to work out his will. The historians who wrote history during the Middle Ages were primarily priests and monks presented their works in the form of annals and chronicles. The writings of these historians make clear their belief in divine providence and that God influenced human events. Historians from the period focused on the events of their own time; they seldom sought out or used primary sources to write about the past, and instead, they trusted the writings of the predecessors. Renaissance and Reformation Following the medieval period, the world became smaller or global, and historians and other scholars developed new approaches to interpreting the past. During this period of change, commonly called the Renaissance, the state emerged as the central framework of society, in contrast to the medieval period, during which the church was the central framework. Humanist historians of the Renaissance period were at the forefront of the historiographical changes of that time, focusing their writing on the motives and deeds of humans and the importance of the relationship between the individual and the state. They considered these more relevant than the acts of God or the relationship between the individual and the church. These

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historians turned away from a religious interpretation of events and focused on the actions of individuals, generally people of power, and political institutions for answers to past events. Perhaps the most significant contribution to historiography by Renaissance historians was their move toward the use of documents to interpret the past. This moved historians away from the practice of relying on the literature from the authorities of the past and toward the use of nonliterary or primary source documents to find new information. Although, the practice of relying heavily on the literature of earlier historians would not completely fade away until the 19th century, Renaissance historians played a significant role in establishing the practice of using primary sources. Another significant aspect of Renaissance historiography is the reemergence of Greek and Roman influence. The writings of Thucydides, and Polybius, with its focus on political and military subjects, particularly influenced Renaissance historians. This influence is seen in the writings of one of the better-known historians of the Renaissance period, Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli made the human element in history the focus of his writings. He provides a thorough examination of the scheming and maneuvering characteristics prevalent in the politics of his time, in his History of Florence. The political and religious conflicts, created by the Protestant Reformation, seen in 16th and 17th century Europe, generated an increased interest in history and brought about a dispute in historiography between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Each side, Protestant and Catholic, used history as a tool in the passionate debates over the questions raised by the Reformation's challenge to the Catholic Church. Rivals on both sides of the debate used the past to give credence to their beliefs in the present. Martin Luther and other Protestant historians, like Philip Melanchthon and Robert Barnes used history to challenge the authority of the Pope and assert that hierarchy of the Catholic Church had distorted the teachings of Christ. Roman Catholics responded to these challenges by producing their own histories of the church such as Caesar Boronius’s Ecclesiastical Annals . According to Gilderhus, these controversies had one positive outcome: they led to the creation of the “first professorships in history at European universities” (Gilderhus, 2010, p. 33). This was a major contribution to the establishment of a professional history. The Protestant Reformation also brought about the end to St. Augustine’s universal history and created a gap between secular and Christian interpretations of the past. The Enlightenment Any examination of the Enlightenment must begin by defining the principle concepts of the era. Three main concepts motivated Enlightenment thought. First, Enlightenment historians

embraced the idea that reason explained all things. Additionally, they thought that traditional explanations for the past, found in religion, should be subjected to a critical analysis grounded in reason. In this age of cynicism, historians embraced the only those Christian beliefs that stood up to their investigations. Second, Enlightenment historians embrace the idea that simple unchanging laws, functioning in line with reason, governed nature. No human prayer would alter its behavior. Finally, the ideals of change and progress governed the Age of Enlightenment and Enlightenment philosophes held that humans were in the process of perfecting themselves without divine intervention. The eighteenth century or the Age of Enlightenment saw a revolution in historiography as historians began to embrace these Enlightenment concepts. Historians who adopted Enlightenment concepts began to assert that reason and not religion determined the outcome of human events. For Example, the French philosophes explained changes in the past with their reason theses, arguing that reason “managed to assert itself against all…odds” and brought about positive changes by overcoming the “forces of darkness, error, and vice” (Briesach, 2007, p. 207). One of the greatest weaknesses of the philosophes' approach was that it “devalued the earlier stages of the Western world” (Briesach, 2007, p. 207). Voltaire, perhaps one of the most influential philosophes, exemplified this revolutionary approach to history. He thought himself a forerunner of an innovative history. He rejected supernatural explanations of the past, and an uncritical acceptance of ancient history. He advocated for replacing these earlier histories with a secular, naturalistic history, which depicted the life, spirit, art, science, and politics of a people. Some additional positive developments in historiography took place during the 18th century. For example, in Germany, historians began to assert that “historical study must concentrate on the actual event and unique event or person” and the study of history was “more than a search for simple cause-and-effect relationships” (Briesach 2007, p. 204). The Germans also began to move historiography toward interpretation rather than a simple presentation of the facts (Briesach 2007, p. 205). Enlightenment historians also moved history beyond the traditional subject matter found in previous written histories that focused on political and military concerns. These earlier histories focused on Western Europe. Historians of the Enlightenment expanded history to include social, economic, and cultural aspects and began to include the exploration of the history of cultures beyond Western Europe. Conclusion Historiography evolved from its very beginning with the Greeks and Romans, who did not use primary sources to write their histories and often looked to the gods for explanations of events, to a more systematic, secular approach found with the historians of the Enlightenment era.

These historians relied upon primary sources and began to move historiography toward a historical narrative that asserted man and not the gods determined their own fate. Additionally, Enlightenment historians began to move history toward an exploration of events and individuals that was more than an attempt to discover the cause and effect of an event. Enlightenment historians from Germany began to see the value of interpreting events and not just reporting the facts. Although, historians of the Enlightenment Age made some significant improvements to historiography, there were some weaknesses in their approach to history. First, they lacked the ability to understand the actions of participants in historical events on their own terms. This is a result of their belief that their values were accepted universally and as absolute, and any aberrations were discarded as foolishness. Additionally, they did not possess a historical understanding of change and context of past events. References Briesach, E. (2007). Historiography: Ancient, medieval, and modern . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gilderhus, M. T. ( 2010). History and historians: A historical introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.

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