5. The Rise of Modern Critical Historical Scholarship.—Professor Gooch, in his scholarly and informing account of the development of historiography in the 19th century, points out that prior to the beginning of the last century historical science labored under four serious handicaps — the catastrophic theory of historical causation and the contempt for the medieval period, which had characterized the rationalist school; the absence of any extensive collection of original sources; the lack of critical methods in handling historical materials; and the failure to provide for any systematic and competent teaching of the subject-matter or methods of history. It has already been pointed out how the had corrected the faults of the rationalists by insisting upon the law of continuity in historical development and by looking upon the medieval period as the most fruitful age for historical research, and it has also been briefly shown how the pride of ex uberant nationalism had led to the provision of magnificent collections of source material for the history of every leading modern nation. It now remains to trace the rise of critical scholar ship in the field of history and to show how critical methods were widely disseminated through the development of the professional teacher of history.
It was shown above that the promising rise of critical methods in the use of historical ma terials as an incident of humanism and ex emplified in the work of Blondus, Beatus Rhenanus, Vadianus and Zurita had been checked and smothered in the fierce religious controversies of the period of the Reformation. By the latter part of the 17th century, however, the volume of polemic had tended to decline and it was again possible to assume to some extent an objective attitude and to begin a dispassion ate search for truth. This development of sci entific historical method passed through two natural and normal stages: first, the develop ment of those auxiliary sciences, such as diplo matic, chronology, paleography, epigraphy and lexicography, which would enable the historian to ascertain the genuineness of a document; and, second, the growth of internal or interpre tative criticism, which passes beyond the mere establishment of the authenticity of the docu ment and examines into the degree of the credi bility of its author.
The first of the above steps in the growth of modern historical science was primarily the work of those same Benedictine monks of the Congregation of Saint Maur who had been so active in the preliminary period of the collec tion of the sources of French history. Their priority in this movement seems to have been due to the fact that not being a militant order they did not have to appear as vigorous apolo gists for Catholicism and that they also had the advantage over lay writers in not being com pelled to glorify a particular city, province, family or dynasty. In the quiet libraries of their monastery they brought into existence an indispensable portion of the mechanism of the modern historian. The leader of the historical scholars of the Order was Jean Mabillon (1632 1707), who created the science of diplomatic— or the critical method of determining the au thenticity of documents. In 1675 a Jesuit his
torian, Papebroch, made a sweeping claim that many of the documents upon which the Maur ists had relied were worthless. Mabillon de voted the next six years to the preparation of his reply, and in 1681 his opponent was crushed under the erudition of the (De re diplomatica,) which remained the standard treatise on the subject until it was displaced in the present generation by the volumes of Sickel, Ficher and Giry. The basis of modern paleography and archeology was laid by Dom Bernard Montfaucon (1655-1741) in his (Paleographia graeca> and his expliquee et rep resentee en While a layman, Charles du Fresne Du e.. had founded historical lexicography in his mediae et in nine (1678), the Benedictines left their impress upon this field in the famous re vision of Du Cange's work by Dom Carpentier (1768). Finally, m a great co-operative work, begun by Dantme and Durand, and finished in 1790 by Dom Clement, de verifier les dates,' chronology was at last taken from the hands of Eusebius and Jerome and put on a scientific foundation. Of course, the Benedic tines did not limit their efforts wholly to the perfecting of methods of research, but applied these methods in the production of voluminous works and source collections on Church and national history. The advance in scientific method which they into existence can scarcely be overestimated. Before this time there had either been no attempt to cite sources or the citations had been hopelessly confused; there had been no general practice of estab lishing the genuineness of a text; and there had been no hesitancy in altering the text of a document to improve the style. Now docu ments were searchingly examined as to their authenticity, the text was quoted with exactness, and the citations were invariably included and given with scrupulous accuracy. It is, however, easily possible to overestimate the modernity of the Maurists; they were as near to Timmus as to Ranke or Gardiner. Their critical methods were almost entirely limited to external or textual criticism— to an examination of the genuineness of the document. They were greatly inferior to the school of Voltaire in examining the credibility of contemporary au thorities and generally regarded the contents of an authentic primary source as entirely iden tical with absolute truth. Neither did they pos sess anything of the romanticist conception of historical development and the continutiy and organic nature of cultural evolution. They were nearer to scientific antiquarians than to modern historians. Nor were they sceptical of ecclesiastical tradition. They labored under the pious opinion that the truth would sub stantiate the contentions of the Church, but in reality provided their rationalist contem poraries and successors with a supply of scholarly information with which to rout the ecclesiastics.