Aphorisms on Historiography

Historiography (Gk. ιςτωρ, “wise man, judge” + γραφια, “writing”) is the rhetorical mode in which a writer documents facts, synthesizes them into events, and also suggests an interpretation of them. If historians study the past, historiography studies historians.

For any event, its historiography can be either medieval or modern, designations that are not fixed but fluid, not stable markers in a timeline but variable functions of a discursive situation. That is, medieval (L. medius, “middle” + aevum, “age”) historiography is not history written between the fifth and thirteenth centuries but history that clearly belongs to an era before ours, and modern (L. modo, “just now”) historiography is not the history written since the eighteenth century but history that we recognize as our own. The following attempt to explain what distinguishes medieval historiography from modern – to determine where to draw the line – is rather over-determined, but I hope to offer a heuristic for understanding the trends in historiographical change.

I begin with the thesis that any significant event will empower an individual, who will in turn empower an institution, which will itself empower an ideology. These aspects of authority subside in the same order. First the individual will die, then sooner or later the institution established by the individual will collapse, and finally the ideology supporting the institution will be forgotten.

Fundamentally an argument concerning what an event empowered, history can exhibit a rhetorical mode inflected with either politics or law. Politics (Gk. πολις, “city, state”) is the public discourse concerned with the exercise of power for the purpose of altering the government of a given geographical space. Law (L. lex, “law”) is the code of ethics that governs a defined people as a system of rules, not only the commanding authority that posits the rules but also the institutional mechanism for adjudicating questionable behavior to determine innocence and guilt.

A history inflected with politics is an epideictic narrative of an event, usually an eye-witness or immediately-subsequent account that tries to influence its reader’s attitude toward the recent past by praising or blaming persons and their actions in its very report.

A history inflected with law is a forensic narrative of an event, usually a reconstruction after some time that tries to influence its reader’s attitude toward the distant past by asserting or implying an ethical code of conduct in order to express the guilt or innocence of the persons involved in its narrative.

A political history creates a code of ethics, for the praiseworthy are to be imitated, but a legal history is created by a code of ethics, for only after right and wrong have been asserted, and legal and illegal posited, can innocence and guilt be determined.

Political history is the voice of the empowered, so authority is more important than evidence, but legal history is the safeguard of the nation, focusing on the action performed rather than the actor. Political history relies not on evidence but testimony and debate, which are always suspect in a legal history because they rarely satisfy the strict procedural requirements for adjudication.

Political history can only last so long after an event occurs. The political history of an event does not immediately cease when those empowered by the event lose their power, though, for it tends to linger for some time. Political history only ends with the death of those who remember the reign of the institution empowered by an event, which is to say that an ideology can last two, sometimes three generations after the collapse of its individual or institutional embodiment.

If history is originally born out of a practice inflected with politics, it is eventually reborn in a specifically legal rendition. Once an ideology no longer compels political argument, the version of history inflected with law becomes dominant. Legal history thus subsumes political history as affidavit.

Legal-minded historians turn away from the politicized account of events spewed by those in bed with the empowered, preferring instead a legalized rendition of events that adjudicates culpability with due process. This legal history insists upon a lawyer-like presentation of evidence, objections to inadmissible testimony like hearsay, and appeals to fair and impartial judgment.

The moment when history becomes legal is the moment when historiography becomes modern. That is, when those that remember the reign of the institution empowered by an event are no longer around to assert that ideology, the history of that event will shift into something we recognize as our own.

In general, history is written because humans die, and their memories must be documented, and a specifically modern history begins only after the death of those who remember the effect of an event. Medieval history documents what is remembered, modern history what never was seen.

In sum, the temporal distance from an event conditions the rhetorical mode of its history. Historiography will be seen as medieval when it is political, contemporaneous with the ideology empowered by the event addressed. Historiography will be seen as modern when it is legal, an author looking back on an event after the ideology empowered by that event has been eclipsed.