History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century
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UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I JBY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library D 13.G64 History and historians in tlie nineteentli 3 1924 027 792 930 DATE DUE ^^mSA -m 4 1989 M- -^^tr WK tey^-^r-elMA^=i^ PRINTED IN U.S.A. Wt^^Si Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027792930 W" HISTORY AND HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY HISTORY AND HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY G. P. GOOCH LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 1913 S K.n'B^Y^ PREFACE The object of this work is to summarise and assess the manifold achievements of historical research and production during the last hundred years, to portray the masters of the craft, to trace the development of scientific method, to measure the political, religious and racial influences that have contributed to the making of celebrated books, and to analyse their effect on the life and thought of their time. No such survey has been attempted in any language. The development of modern historiography is only treated incidentally in the excellent handbooks of Bernheim and Gustav Wolf. Langlois offers little more than a skeleton. Flint and Molinier deal with France alone. Wegele confines himself to Germany and halts on the threshold of the nineteenth century. Fueter's admirable ' Geschichte der neueren Historiographie,' pubHshed in 1911, pro- vides a comprehensive review from Petrarch to our own day ; but the main portion of the book is devoted to the earlier centuries, and its methods and aims differ fundamentally from those of the ^present work, in which the curtain rises on Niebuhr. The evolution of German, French and Anglo-Saxon scholarship is related in detail, and is followed by a brief survey of the achieve- ments of other States. The six international chapters which conclude the volume describe departments of study in which scholars of every nation have co-operated, namely, the recovery of the ancient world, the exploration of ecclesiastical history, and the reconstruction of the wider aspects of the life of humanity. For a bird's-eye view of the ground which is here examined in detail I may perhaps be permitted to refer to the closing chapter of the closing volume of the 'Cambridge Modern History.' G. P. G. January 1913. CONTENTS PAGE CHAP. Introduction I I. NiEBUHR ...... 14 II. Wolf, Bockh and Otfried Muller 24 III. ElCHHORN AND SaVIGNY . 42 IV. Jacob Grimm 54 V. The 'Monumenta Germanise Historica 64 VI. Ranke 76 VII. Ranke's Critics and Pupils . 103' VIII. The Prussian School 130 IX. The Renaissance of Historical Studies in France 156 ^^X. The Romantic School—Thierry and Michelet 169 XI. The Political School—Guizot, Mignet and Thiers 186 XII. The Middle Ages and the Ancien Regime 206 XIII. The French Revolution. 226 XIV. Napoleon 255 j/XV. From Hallam to Macaulay 282 XVI. Thirlwall, Grote and Arnold 308 XVII. Carlyle and Froude 323 XVIII., The Oxford School 340 XIX. Gardiner and Lecky, Seeley and Creighton 359 XX. .Acton and Maitland 379 XXI. The United States . 402 XXII. Minor Countries 425 XXIII. MoMMSEN and Roman Studies 454 XXIV. Greece and Byzantium . 475 XXV. The Ancient East . 496 XXVI. The Jews and the Christian Church 521 XXVII. Catholicism 549 XXVIII. The History of Civilisation 573 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY INTRODUCTION The Middle Ages produced historical writers of high literary merit—Matthew Paris and Lambert of Herzfeld, Joinville and Froissart—whose testimony to events of their own time was fairly trustworthy ; but the essential conditions of study did not exist. Printing was unknown and books were rare. The critical treatment of documents had not begun, nor was it realised that there was need to treat them critically. Happy in the treasures of his monastic library, the pious chronicler did not stop to investigate their value, and with equal innocence copied earlier compilations into his own pages. Though the forging of charters was a regular trade, the means of discovering such forgeries had not been invented. Recorded events were accepted without challenge, and the sanction of tradition guaran- teed the reality of the occurrence. Finally, the atmosphere of the Middle Ages was saturated with theology. The influence of Augustine weighed with an almost physical pressure on the mind of Europe for a thousand years, diverting attention from secular history and problems. In view of the constant inter- position of Providence, the search for natural causation became needless and even impertinent. History was a sermon, not a science, an exercise in Christian evidences, not a disinterested attempt to understand and explain the course of civilisation.i ' The best account of the development of historiography since the Renaissance is in Fueter, Geschichte der neueren HistoHographie, igii. Wegele, Geschichte der Deutschen HistoHographie, 1885, is indispensable I'Histoire for Germany. Molinier, Les Sources de de France, vol. v., 1904 ; ' Flint, Historical Philosophy in France, 1893 ; and Monod, Du Progres des fitudes historiques en France,' Revue Historique, vol. i., are useful for France. B ; 2 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS The great revolution in the outlook of mankind, which began in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, led to the crea- tion of some of the conditions in which objective methods and a genetic conception of history could arise. The revelation that the classical world was not a shadowy tradition but a brilliant reality stimulated curiosity and suggested the study of develop- ment. Comparative inquiry was further encouraged by the discovery of the New World and the establishment of closer relations with the East. Within the limits of a couple of genera- tions the realm of space and the horizon of learning were doubled. While the frontiers of knowledge were being pushed back, a change scarcely less momentous was beginning to appear in the intellectual atmosphere. The increasing corruption of the Church, the development of town life, the expansion of commerce had already begun to act as solvents of the theological spirit and the rapturous seduction of pagan culture, at once beautiful, lofty and frankly human, completed the process of emancipation. The Italian Renaissance stands not so much for a revolt against authority as for the secularisation of thought. A joyous pride in man, in the power of his mind and the beauty of his body, succeeded to the brooding asceticism of mediasval ideals. For speculations on the spiritual nature and prospects of mankind were substituted inquiries into his earthly achievements. The Middle Ages begin with Augustine and end with Machiavelli. The new spirit was reflected in the field of historical study. The earliest masters of the new learning, Petrarch and Boccaccio, were the fathers of modern historiography. They were, how- ever, only amateurs ; and the finished model was provided by the Florentine Bruni, the first historian who on principle employed criticism. Aiming at the closest possible reproduction of the classics, Bruni and his brother humanists condemned to themselves sterile imitation ; but they took the step without which progress was impossible by substituting natural for super natural causation. A further stage was reached when Machiavelli and Guicciardini lifted historiography out of literature and related it to the hfe of states. Tradition began to appear rather as a challenge than as a command. Lorenzo Valla exploded the Donation of Constantine, and .^neas Sylvius, the humanist Pope, confronted marvels and legends in a spirit of healthy scepticism. Humanistic historiography quickly spread over Europe .1 The pleiad of scholars whose rays illuminated the court of Maximilian, himself an historian, aroused interest in the ' See Joachimsen, Geschichtsauffassung in Deutschland unier dem Einfluss des Humanismus, 1910, INTRODUCTION 3 heroes and achievements of the Teutonic races. Celtis lectured on the Germania, Cuspinian edited Jordanes and Otto of Freising, Peutinger and Beatus Rhenanus plunged into the study of German antiquities, and Aventin compiled the Annals of Bavaria. They introduced into Central Europe the ideal and the methods of secular study and disinterested scholarship. It was of this that Goethe was thinking when he declared that the Reformation had thrown back European culture for a hundred years. The career of humanism was rudely cut short by the appear- ance of Luther. Theology once more became dominant, and secular studies were engulfed in the whirlpool of confessional strife. But the fever contained within itself the germ of its cure. The controversialists of the Middle Ages appealed to reason, their successors to history. Prcecifue historia opus est in ecclesia, declared Melanchthon. Protestantism was compelled not only to prove that the Church of the Medici Popes was not the Church of the early Christians but also to show how degeneration had taken place. The Catholics, for their part, when it became clear that heretical Europe was not to be dragooned, attempted to confound their enemies by the revelation of material facts of which they were unaware. In the fierce struggle victory, not truth, was the aim ; but precious documents were brought to light. When Flacius and his collaborators, under the auspices of the Lutheran princes, hurled the Magdeburg Centuries at the enemy, the Curia directed Baronius to prepare an exhaustive refutation and placed the Vatican archives at his disposal. Though, as Casaubon was to show, the mighty edifice was to a large extent a house of cards, though its author was ignorant of Greek and accepted forgeries and legends with childlike faith, the mass of new material and the apparent completeness of the reply rendered the appearance of the Annals one of the decisive events of the Counter-Reformation.