THAT the Renaissance owed many of its ideas of historiography to the Revival of Learning, which had restored to the modern world an acquaintance with ancient histories and with ancient theories of historical writing, is at once apparent to anyone who reads his way among the multitudinous histories, prefaces to histories, defenses of history, treatises on politics and law and rhetoric, and all the varied writing which discussed history during the sixteenth century. I have chosen to suggest the multiple Renaissance approaches to the whole subject, however, by discussing the work of four men as representing perhaps the most important schools of thought in regard to history which developed during this period.
The first is Niccolo Machiavelli, who demonstrated to the sixteenth century the political significance of history. It is not certain whence the idea came to Machiavelli of using history as a basis for the exposition of political theory, but certainly his reading of classical histories was to a great extent responsible for his conviction that “he who would foresee what is to happen should look to what has happened: for all that is has its counterpart in time past.” Because man remains the same, history repeats itself. His experiment was based upon the work of an ancient Roman historian. It appeared as Discorsi … sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, first printed in Rome in 1531. A Latin edition was published in London in 1584, but there was no translation into English until 1636. Machiavelli's preface explains why he decided to use the first decade of Livy as the basis for political discourses. He had, he says, noted that while his countrymen were eager to rescue a piece of ancient statuary to adorn a house and to stimulate others to copy it, yet they neglected the records of the ancient virtues of kingdoms, of commonwealths, of rulers, and of citizens as set forth in histories. This he wondered at the more because all legal cases were determined by ancient decisions, “for the civill laws are nothing else, but the opinions given by ancient Lawyers, which since having bin reduc'd to a Method, direct our Doctors of the Law now a dayes, in giving of their judgments.” And he continues:
yet for all this in the ordering of Commonwealths, in the maintenance of States, in the government of Kingdomes, in ordeining of military discipline, in waging of warre, in giving judgment upon the subjects, in amplifying of the Empire, there are neither Princes, nor Republiques, Commanders, nor Citizens who ever seeke after any of these ancient patternes.
To correct this omission he wrote his discourses on Livy concerning matters “conformable to moderne and ancient affairs” that his readers might “reape that profit, for which end the knowledge of historie ought to be sought after.”1
Machiavelli was the pioneer, but the most important contributor to the development of the study of history for its political usefulness was Jean Bodin, who in his Methodus ad factlem historiarum cognitionem, first published in 1566, formulated the problems of the relationship between history and politics as they were to be recognized during the next century. He discussed many questions: the nature and the kinds of history, the proper order for reading histories, the formulation of topics under which aspects of history may be considered, the qualifications of the historian, the relation of geography to history, the organization of the history of states to show their rise and fall in relation to historical events, and Daniel's prophecy of four kingdoms for the world. The concluding section is given over to a plan of historical study, of collecting and ordering history and histories. For the purpose of this review, however, the most important aspect of his contribution to the idea of the usefulness of history is that summarized by Professor Allen:
The chief use of history is to subserve politics; to help us to understand the meaning and the function of the state; its needs and its structure, the causes of its prosperity or decline. The business of the historian is, above all, to explain the revolutions, the profound and radical changes, through which human societies pass. From a sufficiently wide study of history it should be possible to draw accurate conclusions as to the laws governing human society and to determine the best form of government and the best form of law under given conditions.2
It is interesting to note that the introductory epistle to Thomas Heywood's translations of Sallust's Catiline and Jugurtha, published in 1608-9, has been identified by Professor Lathrop as a translation of the fourth chapter of this work, the identification having been suggested by Heywood's marginal reference, “Bodin.”
Bodin's greatest influence on the thinking of his day came through his Six livres de la république, first published in 1576 and translated into English in 1606, but the Methodus was the herald of his coming ideas, and it was the Methodus that popularized many of his ideas concerning the importance of historical studies. It was perhaps the most popular of the sixteenth-century artes historiae and perhaps also the most important in affirming the relation of history and political theory.3 It will be remembered that Bodin accompanied the Due d'Alençon to England in 1581 on his visit to promote the marriage with Queen Elizabeth.
One of those who had been laying foundations upon which Bodin and others were to build was François Baudouin (or Baldwin), who may for this brief review of continental forces represent the special contribution of those who developed the idea of the mutual interdependence of law and history and the necessity for combining the study of the history of law with other historical studies. Baudouin was French, for a part of his life he was a Calvinist, and he was deeply concerned with the reception of Roman law. He illustrates in his own work a variety of influences, for while he showed the effect of his Reformation leanings by his insistence upon history as manifesting the government of God and by stressing the necessity for the study of universal as well as national history, he also showed his acquaintance with Greek and Latin authors by recapitulating classical teaching in regard to history, particularly that of Cicero, and in his comparison of history and poetry. He saw history as interpreting the past for the benefit of the present and as prophetical of the future. But his chief contribution was in relating history and jurisprudence both in theory and practice, and it will be remembered that in the history of law the century saw the conflict between Roman and common law, with the common law gradually emerging as legal precedent rather than as merely a set of examples.4
Of the great so-called rhetorical school of historical writing, Robertello may be chosen to represent those who viewed the writing of history as a part of rhetoric. Annals Robertello excluded from consideration, since they have no method or system, but he argued that the historical faculty found in such writers as Thucydides arises from the rhetorical faculty, for they describe the mores and the speech of men. Men are themselves the material for history, he said, not as human beings who move or live or reason, for all that belongs to philosophy, but in so far as they act and speak in public affairs. The historian does not concern himself with private affairs, with humble affairs, or with the matters of daily intercourse. History is thus differentiated from philosophy [ethics]. It is also differentiated from poetry in that it is concerned with truth as opposed to verisimilitude, and with particulars as opposed to universals. In method too it is distinguished from poetry in that it follows the course of events in time as they happened, while poetry may plunge in medias res. Requiring vast knowledge of many subjects, the writing of history truthfully, clearly, elegantly, and correctly, Robertello thought, should be judged one of the most difficult parts of rhetoric.5
Inadequate as any such arbitrary and highly selective account of the Renaissance approaches to history must be of necessity, it illustrates three important truths: the Renaissance theories of history were to a great extent the outgrowth of the study of ancient classical historians and rhetoricians; the approaches to the study of history were diverse, and the uses to which it was put were manifold; the political usefulness of history was common to the thinking of all the commentators.6
I have already mentioned the influence of Reformation theories of history on Baudouin, and indeed the Reformation has to be considered a joint influence with the Revival of Learning on the whole period. But the men I have discussed here are primarily representative of the humanistic approach to historical studies. The contribution of the Reformation I have reserved for a separate chapter.