ABSTRACT

Modern historiography originates in the fifteenth century with the Italian Renaissance and the break from Christian-influenced medieval historiography. Before (and sometimes into) the modern era, historians gave largely haphazard accounts of political events and figures or dogmatic Christian interpretations of a universal history whose meaning was the salvation of humankind. In Christian historiography, “truth” was found in biblical revelation, and the role of the historian was to show how divine law informed secular events, to periodize history according to major stages in God’s plan, and to glorify his will. St. Augustine drew a sharp distinction between the earthly city and the City of God, between profane and sacred time, and he located truth, meaning, and stablity only in the divine kingdom. In such schemes, human actions and events were reduced to a religious meaning. It was still possible in the seventeenth century for historian Jacques Bossuet to claim that the “long sequence of particular causes which make and break empires, depends on the secret commands of divine Providence” (quoted in Hampson 1968:22).