What Was History?

Allegorical representation with History depicting the life of Charles XII

The great Renaissance scholar Anthony Grafton wrestled with what Alberti meant by the word istoria, or historia, in both the particular context of his treatise on painting (where it is characterized as the most noble subject of the artist) and more generally. In English we used to talk about “history painting,” which is not far from Alberti’s intent with regard to painting. But humanists like Alberti also had an idea of what constituted history per se, which is worth recognizing. I’m appending some excerpts from Grafton’s essay, which is otherwise available on jstor and academia.edu.

Anthony Grafton, “Historia and Istoria: Alberti's Terminology in Context,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 1999, Vol. 8 (1999), pp. 37-68

History, in the thought of the humanists as well as in that of the ancients, belonged to the art of rhetoric. Seen above all as a narrative designed to embody the principles of morality and prudence in the form of well-told stories about great men, history—so humanist after humanist proclaimed, echoing the sentiments of ancient historians and rhetoricians—was magistra vitae. Its worked examples of good and evil, effective and ineffective conduct moved readers more rapidly and more profoundly than statements of general principle could.

pp. 41-42

Historia, in classical Latin, can refer both to events (res gestae) and to narrative accounts of them (narrationes): both to stories, in general, and to formal historical narratives. Alberti regularly employed the word in these basic senses.

p. 48

Many humanists, however, used "history" in a more precise and loaded way: to refer specifically to the sort of high, instructive account of past politics and war that retired statesmen and generals had written in ancient times. History in this elevated sense referred to narratives of the sort written by Thucydides or Polybius, which provided exemplary stories of successful and unsuccessful conduct. Readers were meant to analyze these, in order to equip themselves with the prudence needed in the active life, and then to emulate or avoid emulating the actions they depicted when faced with similar circumstances.

pp. 48-49

Alberti used "history" in this more capacious and exacting sense of "philosophy teaching through examples" when he conceded, in his bitter Latin work On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Letters, that he was too young to write a real history. Only men of full maturity and true learning could "write histories, which would offer fitting analyses of the characters of kings and of great political events and wars."

p. 50

In this case, Alberti treated history as something more than a well-turned narrative about events already known to the author: it was, or should be, a reflexive, scholarly genre that required its practitioners to be deft at research, honest with themselves and others and able to assemble and compare multiple sources for a single event.

p. 52

At the same time, however, Alberti did something more: he made clear, to the literati who would read the Latin text of his work, that the term "history" was not just polysemous, but unstable. The humanists, as we have seen, followed ancient precedent in defining history as a set of genuine facts, attested by the best sources or witnesses available. But they also insisted that the study of history should serve an affective and moral purpose. Historical accounts taught their readers the principles of morality and prudence, correct behavior decorously carried out—and they did so in the most effective possible way, presenting them not as arid, abstract statements but as concrete, moving embodiments of the truth. But these two views of history could exist only in a tight state of tension. Faced with evil or indecorous conduct, the historian had to violate either the commandment to tell the complete truth or the commandment to provide reliable moral guidance couched in the most attractive form—a point Alberti himself felt keenly, as we have seen, when forced to play the hagiographer.

p. 64