The Donations of Constantine were in fact a fraud - a fact that could only have been revealed through the subjecting of the "original" document to unbiased evaluation. Yet Leonardo Bruni, much more than Valla, deserves the credit for shaping the modern idea of history. Advancing on the style and technique of such Classical authors as Herodotus and Thucydides, Bruni developed a more modern, and scientific approach to the subject. Though not all of his writings can be taken as shining exemplars of the new commitment to accuracy and truth, Bruni at his best, charted new territory for historical scholarship.
Bruni's monumental Historiarum Florentini Populi Libri XII (hereafter Historiae) is often singled out as an exemplary work, one that set the whole enterprise of history writing on a new plane.... Bruni destroys the legends surrounding the founding and early history of Florence, and then recasts the story on the basis of hard evidence.... Bruni's recourse to... classical rhetorical devices did not in itself preclude the application of critical categories.... Bruni's Historiae are best seen as a projection of the values championed by the city's emerging political elites. Bruni's critique of earlier versions of the Florentine past is thus not the product of a pure scholar seeking to reconstruct the past. It corresponds instead to a new ethos, one of whose chief characteristics was a detached, skeptical attitude towards consolidated traditions, both cultural and political.
Once the questioning begins it is difficult to stop. Renaissance scholars soon took the fledgling historical method in new directions.
Niccolo Machiavelli extended the discussion of the past to a discussion of the present. Machiavelli's the Prince was meant to serve as a model for the rulers of his own day. Broadening the scope of scientific investigation, Machiavelli saw history as akin to medicine.
Medicine and history resembled one another in that both stored up past experience for present practical purposes. In the preface to the Discourses, he noted that the basis of medicine was "nothing other than the experiments made by the ancient physicians, on which present physicians base their judgements," and deplored the failure of princes and republics to use ancient experience of government in the same way.
To most individuals of the New Millennium, there can be few disciplines that are more scientific than medicine. To conceive of a connection in method between history and medicine, was to realize that history could be as minutely and factually dissected as the human body. It also meant that the lessons of the past could be seen as part of a genuinely verifiable formula for development. One could examine past "experiments," rate their effectiveness, and use the data gained therefrom to postulate new experiments, and new outcomes. In the Prince, Machiavelli was endeavoring to show the rulers and politicians of his own day that politics was a science, like anything else. It was his acceptance of the validity of investigation leading to proof - his validation of the scientific method - that gave added weight to his own theories. The new ideas postulated by Machiavelli could be shown to possess a firm factual underpinning. The rulers of Fifteenth Century Italy could understand the utility of things that had been proved to work. They could also glean the new lesson that logic, reason, and scientific methods of deduction were of value to themselves and their successors. The Prince encouraged rulers to govern in a rational manner. This great work of political science ushered in a new era in state administration, foreign relations, and the response of governments to a whole range of potential problems.
Machiavelli's ideas would be the inspiration for still others. Erasmus would, in the following century, put forth a clear statement of the historical method. He employed rigid theoretical guidelines in his work on St. Jerome.
Erasmus wrote a critical and well-documented life of Jerome which also had a definite rhetorical character and which shared in his basic aim to reform theology. In the opening section of the life he also set down the critical standards that would guide him in his narrative, and he produced a remarkable statement on historical method.
Erasmus' work once more expanded the range of the historical method, and scientific, rational thinking. By applying the historical method to a work of theology, the philosopher was recognizing that even the mystical cosmos conformed to certain recordable and reproducible laws. He also showed the way forward to a learned discussion of ideal situations based on real-life past instances, and a spirit of experimentation. Erasmus attempt to describe a possible Utopia represented a more comprehensive, and still more humane, use of the historical method than that which had been attempted by Machiavelli. Machiavelli had employed the rationality of the historical method, and historical perspective, in what was essentially a primer for dictatorship - a guide to the personal aggregation of absolute power.
The Utopia of St. Thomas More was the logical Renaissance outcome of applying the historical method,...
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