FRANCESCO PETRARCH

1. FRANCESCO PETRARCH • Native of Florence/14th century • Wrote Lives of Illustrious Men • Introduced new secular interpretation of history • Viewed history as the story of acts of human beings acting on their own and motivated by personal goals

2. NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI • Born in 1469 • Served the Republic of Florence Wrote The Prince • Guidelines showing that the actual methods of governing had little to do with medieval political theory • Argued that a wise prince had to know when to use duplicitous or cynical means • Religious considerations or morality had no place in the decisions and actions of rulers • Also wrote the History of Florence • Depicted human behavior as motivated solely by opportunism and aggrandizement • Not the invisible hand of God

3. FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI • Wrote History of Italy • Better historian than Machiavelli • Carried out more research and understood more subtly the diversity of human nature • Examined history of a larger geographic area, strove to provide a broad interpretative framework, and showed some of the connecting features of the Italian experience

4. LORENZO VALLA • Wrote Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine • Using philology, he demonstrated that the Donation of Constantine abounded with errors, inconsistencies, and anachronism • Proved that it could not have been written during the time it was supposed to have been written (400 AD) • Probably forged around 800 AD or so

5. REFORMATION HISTORIANS • Matthias Flacius Illyricus • Published 13 volume Magdeburg Centuries • Documented Lutheran assertions that Roman Cathoic hierarchy had distorted and perverted the teachings of Christ and the apostles • Robert Barnes • Wrote Lives of the Roman Pontiffs • Ascribed an assortment of misdeeds and wrongdoings to high Church officials in the past • Caesar Boronius • Wrote Ecclesiastical Annals to rebut the Magdeburg Centuries • Argued that the institutions and doctrines of the Catholic Church were legitimate as clarifications and interpretations of the teachings of Christ and were proof that the Holy Spirit still continued to work among men

6. JEAN BODIN • Wrote Methods for the Easy Comprehension of History • In 1566 • Called for an expansion of legal studies as a means to escape provincialism • Wanted to create new universal history which would compare and contrast the laws and customs of all nations • Insisted on preeminence of primary sources

7. JEAN MABILLON • Wrote On Diplomatics • 2 volumes • 1681 • Demonstrated exacting scholarship while presenting the methods and techniques of deciphering ancient charters and manuscripts to determine their authenticity

8. JACQUES BOUSSUET • Wrote Discourse on Universal History • 1681 • Affirmed tradition and authority by employing a divine-oriented view of the past as the unfolding of God’s master plan • Depicted Roman Catholic Church as the chosen agent of God’s will on earth • A kind of throwback

9. ROBIN COLLINGWOOD • In his The Idea of History, he characterized the Enlightenment as an attempt to “secularize every department of human life and thought” • Saw it as a revolt “not only against the power of institutional religion but against religion itself”

10. FUNDAMENTAL FLAWS • Written history during the Enlightenment suffered from an incapacity to comprehend the behavior of historical actors in their own terms • Enlightenment historians lacked a truly historical sense of development and context • They regarded their own values and aspirations as universal and absolute and therefore tended to regard deviations in other times and places either as aberrations or folly • Had difficulty understanding the past as the participants experienced it, and when gauged against the standards of the present, it always failed to measure up • Were also reluctant to carry out archival research • Preferred to draw on existing secondary sources

11. VOLTAIRE • Insisted that history have a practical purpose • Should free readers from fallacy and misconception • Only by facing up to the shortcomings of the past could human beings achieve freedom and emancipation from error and superstition • Principal works were Philosophy of History (later the introduction to Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations) and The Age of Louis XIV

12. DAVID HUME • Wrote History of England • 6 volumes • Best and most popular book of the entire 18th century • Refused to put history in service of politics and wrecked one romantic legend and patriotic myth after another • History did not provide any revelation of God’s plan because there was no plan

13. EDWARD GIBBON • Wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire • Covered 1300 years and ran to 1,250,000 words • Drew heavily on work of 17th century scholars • Held Christians responsible for the fall of Rome • Their obsession with life after death resulted in neglect of imperial interests and the need to maintain proper military defenses • Other-worldly concerns corroded the Roman will, undermined the Roman army, and caused collapse of the empire

14. GIAMBATTISTA VICO • Wrote The New Science in 1725 • Argued that in order to overcome the confines of one’s own time and to treat the past with respect, scholars had an obligation to reconstruct the mental universe of people in previous times in order to account for their actions

15. RENÉ DESCARTES • Claimed that history was not a branch of knowledge because of the unreliability of traditional historical accounts • Vico insisted that, in order to understand anything completely, the observer must have made the thing under observation • Humans, no matter how rigorous their methods, could never completely understand natural phenomena • Argued that because human beings had made history, they possessed the capacity to arrive at a correct understanding of it, provided that they employed the right methods

16. VICO’S SCHEMA • Saw history as a dynamic process of change characterized by a movement through three stages • Scheme rested on recognition that different people in different places and different times actually saw and experienced the world differently • Three stages were: • Age of sensation • Ferocity and cruelty characterized human nature and government was theocratic • Age of imagination • Nobility and pride dominated human nature and government was led by warrior aristocracy • Age of reason • Rationality guided human behavior and government was an egalitarian democracy

17. VICO’S METHOD • Proposed to employ the study of linguistics, mythology, and law as the primary keys to unlock meaning of the past • Historian could never understand their predecessors unless they learned to see the people of the past as they viewed themselves • Studied the roots of words, folklore, myths, legends and legal systems in order to find the conception people in the past had of themselves and their position in the universe