Historical criticism. Historical sources and their criticism Criticism of a source according to its content is called
Origin criticism and content criticism. There are usually two sides to historical criticism: origin criticism and content criticism. True, some source scholars deny the need for such a division, sometimes different historians invest in each of these concepts not quite the same content. But for all the vagueness of concepts and the mobility of the lines between them, it is difficult to do without dividing into criticism of the origin and criticism of the content in the analysis of sources.
Origin criticism also has other names that help to understand its essence to some extent: “external”, “initial”, “preliminary”, “preparatory”. Criticism of the origin should reveal: the type (type) of the source, its authenticity, originality or copy; the author of the source, his social origin and position, age, education, party affiliation, nationality, personal likes and dislikes (the dispassionate author of the source, who "calmly looks at the right and the guilty, listening to good and evil indifferently, knowing neither pity nor anger", existed only in the imagination of a brilliant poet); time, place, conditions of creation, the purpose of the appearance of the source, etc. Criticism of the origin gives the source a general description and facilitates the criticism of the content.
The most important task of historical criticism is to clarify the ideological and political orientation of the source. This postulate, however, should not be vulgarized, acting on the principle that a source from an environment close to us is always reliable, and a source from a hostile environment is always unreliable.
3. The founding fathers of historical criticism
Lorenzo Valla. Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) was a brilliant connoisseur of Latin and even wrote a treatise, Six Books on the Beauties of the Latin Language, in which he advocated a return from the corrupted, barbaric medieval Latin to classical Latin. Like other humanists, Valla was an opponent of the church, opposed asceticism as one of the principles of medieval church morality, and preached happiness and enjoyment as the goal of life. Valla considered the main culprits for the political fragmentation of Italy to be the popes, whose claims to secular power during the Renaissance were still very strong.
The legal basis for such claims was a fake known as the Gift of Konstantin. It was a false charter, fabricated in the papal office in the 8th century, according to which the Roman emperor Constantine (306-337) allegedly granted Pope Sylvester I secular power over the entire western part of the empire.
In the treatise Discourses on the False and Fictitious Donation of Constantine, Valla convincingly proved that this was a forgery that could not have been compiled in the 4th century. The arguments of his analysis were as follows: 1) why would Constantine begin to deprive himself of half of his possessions; 2) references to the alleged donation are not found in any other evidence; 3) the letter was written not in classical Latin, which was still in use in the 4th century, but in late barbarian, and, therefore, it was written later and forged. The date of the compilation of the fake (VIII century) was established later.
We are interested in Balla's work not from the anti-church side, but from the side of source studies. Valla laid the foundations for source analysis, although it will be centuries before historical criticism becomes widely used as the most important method of historical research.
The further development of source study analysis from the end of the 18th century was associated with the names of the German university professors of antiquity Wolf and Niebuhr, especially the modern historian L. Ranke.
Wolf and Niebuhr. F. A. Wolf(1759-1884) in his "Introduction to Homer" (1795) examined the Homeric epic.
Historians have used Homer's poems before, but mainly to borrow historical facts. Wolf, on the other hand, investigated the source itself, in particular, put forward the problem of its authorship. He argued that the Iliad was not created by one person, but was a record of folklore works in which the Greek people reflected their ancient past.
Walking, like Wolf, along the path of philological criticism, B. G. Niebuhr(1776-1831) studied the works of the Roman historian Titus Livius and argued that they were based on folk tales. He argued that historical narration is impossible without a prior assessment of witnesses who tell about the past, that is, without a preliminary assessment of the authors of the sources: their awareness, their likes and dislikes, and the ability to reliably convey events.
Wolff and Niebuhr critically studied specific sources on their topics (Homer, Titus Livy). Each of them explored their specific sources gropingly, intuitively. They did not formulate the rules of which the critical method was supposed to consist. Therefore, they themselves could not apply this method systematically and comprehensively, much less could they consciously and deliberately teach it to other historians.
Ranke's creative path. The further development of source study analysis is connected, first of all, with the name of Ranke.
In the life of the modest teacher Leopold Ranke (1795-1886), who taught history and Latin at the gymnasium of the provincial Frankfurt an der Oder, suddenly began a rapid advancement in the educational, scientific and social ladder. He turned out to be a professor and head of a department at the University of Berlin, a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, was elevated to the dignity of nobility, turning into Leopold von Ranke, and became the educator of some of the German heirs to the throne. Bismarck even compared the usefulness of reading Ranke's works with the study of the Bible. This take-off by Ranke began in 1824, when he published his first work, The History of the Germanic and Roman Peoples in 1494-1535, with the accompanying study of sources, Towards a Criticism of Modern Historians, and continued until the end of his life - Ranke died at the height of his fame. Meanwhile, Ranke's views were conservative, lecturer's data were mediocre. What are the reasons for his phenomenal career? What are his merits?
"The Ranke Method". Using previous achievements, in particular the methods of philological analysis by Wolf and Niebuhr, Ranke developed a system of techniques for analyzing sources, which contemporaries began to call "Ranke's method". The foundations of this analysis were already contained in the study "To the Critique of Recent Historians" - in fact, part of his first work with a story about the sources used in his writing and how they were used. Among the sources were the works of the Florentine politician Guicciardini and the Roman memoirist Giovio, who lived at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century. It was impossible to reconcile their testimonies due to the great inconsistency, and in order to establish the historical truth, Ranke drew on the testimony of other contemporaries, whose appearance he had previously found out, as if subjecting them to “cross-examination”. This is the basis of the "Ranke method": it finds out the origin of each source, the competence of the author of the source, the degree of trust in it, and then compares the sources used to establish a true picture of the past.
Although the "Ranke method", or, more precisely, the method of historical criticism, did not arise from scratch, it represented a discovery in science. Several times historians have used this method unintentionally, gropingly. "Ranke distracted it from the unconscious actual application and generalized it into a logical formula, which could henceforth be passed on through school to a whole generation of minor historians" 1 .
With the arrival in 1825 at the University of Berlin, Ranke turned historical criticism into an academic discipline. Seminars, which he introduced into university practice for the first time, became a convenient form of academic teaching of historical criticism. Students and young historians, in time not only German ones, took part in their work, eager to join the latest methods of researching historical sources. Ranke created an extensive school, his students took chairs in most German universities. Thanks to the activities of Ranke's seminar and the growing authority of his school, the principles of historical criticism spread not only in Germany, but also beyond its borders.
In addition, Ranke began to study archival materials and revealed their significance for the study of the past, and it was with him that the use of archives began, without which historians have not imagined themselves ever since.
That is why Ranke is deservedly called the "father of historical criticism."
The next important part of AS Lap-po-Danilevsky's work is the chapter devoted to historical criticism. The scientist speaks of the need to replace the collection of technical rules with a general, systematic and complete doctrine of criticism. At the same time, he emphasizes that criticism pursues its cognitive goal and therefore it cannot be confused with the doctrine of interpretation. "The purpose of scientific criticism is to establish the scientific-historical value of a source."
Criticism, according to the scientist, arises under the influence of doubt about the value of what interests the researcher, if the historian has not eliminated his doubt by interpretation, when he encounters disagreements between the testimony of sources, etc.
All criticism presupposes the existence of a criterion according to which something is recognized as valuable. In scientific and historical criticism, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky takes as such a criterion, first of all, truth (absolute and factual), as well as the criteria of authenticity or inauthenticity, reliability or unreliability.
Due to the fact that a source can have scientific and historical value in a double sense: as a historical fact and as an indication of a historical fact, there are differences in cognitive purposes, and accordingly, the scientist distinguishes two types of criticism:
- 1) criticism that establishes the scientific and historical value of the source as a fact;
- 2) criticism that establishes the scientific and historical value of the testimony of the source about the fact.
This division, the scientist notes, to a certain extent coincides with the division of criticism into:
- "historical" and "philological",
- "external" and "internal"
- "criticism of authenticity" and "criticism of authenticity". The main task of the first type of criticism is to clarify
authenticity historical source. In this regard, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky considers the concept of "authenticity":
If the historian has reason to assert that the actual source is the very fact that this source appears to him (that its author is really the same person as he appears to be, that this source arose at the time and place that are indicated in it, that this source really retained the same form and content that it received when it appeared, that it really had the same meaning that it ascribes to itself), he recognizes it as authentic.
As a criterion for establishing authenticity, the scientist names two concepts.
First, the concept of the unity or disunity of consciousness. The unity of consciousness is understood as the logical consistency of the author's thoughts, the unity of the goal and its fulfillment in the source, identical or very similar features of creativity in a number of works by one author. If the historian finds contradictory elements of the source or its parts, that is, notices disunity in it, then there is reason to doubt its authenticity.
Secondly, the concept of the correspondence or non-correspondence of the source to the culture and the individuality to which it refers. To establish the correspondence of the source with the culture of a given area, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky suggests using the methods of systematic typifying interpretation, and with the culture of a given time - the methods of evolutionary typifying interpretation. A comparative study of the work under study with the sources of a given culture is also possible.
The scientist also applies the above criteria in order to establish groups of interconnected sources. A group is understood as a set of sources that are in some dependence.
The construction of a group of "related" sources consists primarily in establishing one of them that is recognized as an "archetype", the original or the main source that influenced the emergence of the rest, derivative members of the group (copies, sources containing borrowings from the main one, etc.). Further, such a construction needs to study the relationship in which dependent sources are located among themselves. The search for an "archetype" is based on the general criteria of authenticity and inauthenticity of the source.
In connection with the above concepts, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky dwells on the question of the relationship between the original and the copy.
In his opinion, the unity of consciousness is not fully reflected in the copy, even if it is impeccably made by the author himself - and even more so if the copy is made from someone else's original. Therefore, the copy cannot be recognized as the original. At the same time, "the original is a product in which the individual act of creativity and its performance have merged." The scientist also considers it possible to establish differences between the original and the copy using the matching criterion. When a work does not correspond to the culture or personality to which it is attributed, then it is not the original, not the original, but a copy.
Of great interest are the arguments of AS Lappo-Danilevsky about the so-called "imaginary sources". The scientist classifies plagiarism and fakes as such.
A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky distinguishes between plagiarism in the broad sense: “intentional and secret borrowing of any part of someone else’s work that has some value” - and plagiarism in a narrower sense, which consists in “appropriating someone else’s discoveries, inventions or original observations and conclusions with intentional concealment of the very source of borrowings and without independent processing of at least the form of the borrowed.
As for the fake, then, characterizing its nature in a broad, psychological sense, the scientist dwells on the categories of the subject and object of such a source. Under the subject of counterfeiting, he means “anyone who deliberately passes off his (manufactured) artificial product as a real one by means of lies or deceit. In this case, the subject is content only with the external similarity between his product and the original. The object of the counterfeit is the counterfeit product itself.”
From a cognitive point of view, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky notes, the criterion of falsity is more complicated than the criterion of unauthenticity of the source. In order to come to the conclusion that the product he is studying is fake, the historian must quite specifically establish the identity of the compiler of the forgery and his motives, have reason to assert that the creator discovered an evil will in his creation, namely, he wanted to pass off his artificial product as a real one by deception.
The scientist proposes to use the concept of a fake product in the historical, educational and legal sense. In the historical and cognitive sense, it is possible to deliberately pass off an artificial product as a real one by means of deceit, if we attribute to it the meaning of a real source. In the legal approach, the product is assigned a legal value that it does not have. In the latter case, we are talking about forgery.
In the concept of fakes, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky distinguished various shades depending on the motives for their appearance and the degree of artificiality of a fake product. The motives for counterfeiting are “passion for counterfeiting”, personal gain, the desire for wealth, fame, genealogical calculation, political interests, etc. The degree of artificiality of a fake product can be partial or complete. Partial forgery is sometimes called falsification. It should be borne in mind that a complete fake can be presented either as an original or a copy, or contain only a retelling of an imaginary source, links to it.
In view of the fact that a fake is an artificial product of the evil will of a person, a “materialized lie”, the methods for detecting it are in many ways similar to the methods for establishing the inauthenticity of a source. A fake is detected by the "artificiality of the general appearance of the product, its excessive preservation or, conversely, demonstrative archaism," etc. The technical method of interpretation is also suitable in this case.
At the same time, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky drew attention to the fact that a source can be authentic and still be unreliable - and vice versa. Therefore, the researcher must distinguish the concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity from the concepts of reliability and unreliability of the source.
A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky believed that the second type of criticism, which establishes the scientific value of the testimony of a source, is based on the concept of its credibility or unreliability.
The main criterion of reliability, according to the scientist, is the criterion of truth - actual and absolute.
The historian recognizes the source as reliable if, on the basis of his testimony about the fact, he can scientifically judge the same fact, as if he himself experienced or did not experience actually) him in his sensory perception. And, conversely, he considers a source unreliable if, on the basis of his testimony, he cannot judge such a fact in the above sense.
Obviously, this concept of the reliability or unreliability of the source was formulated by A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky from the epistemological point of view.
In the event that the testimony does not deserve to be recognized as unconditionally true or unconditionally untrue, it is necessary to find out the degree of its reliability or unreliability.
“The degree of reliability of an indication depends on the ratio in which “its true elements” are to the totality of the elements included in the indication.” But at the same time, one cannot be content with counting them, but one must weigh the value of each element. The degree of unreliability of the indication is determined by finding out the ratio in which "its incorrect elements" are to the totality of all the elements that form the indication.
According to the scientist, it should be borne in mind that such a concept is applied not to a fact, but to knowledge about a fact revealed in a testimony about it. One cannot speak about the degree of certainty or unreliability of a fact that happened or did not happen, but one can argue about the degree of certainty or unreliability of knowledge about a fact.
A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky, as a criterion for establishing the degree of reliability or unreliability of a source, suggested answering two questions:
- 1) a recorded fact could or could not have happened;
- 2) was or was not he in reality.
When answering the first question, the historian, according to A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky, must proceed from the concept of the systematic unity of consciousness in general and from the standpoint of the correlation of this testimony with “absolute truth”, judge its meaning, namely, whether it corresponds or not to the “laws consciousness" and "laws of nature".
When answering the second question, it is not enough to be satisfied with the criterion of "absolute truth", it is also necessary to establish criteria for the factual truth of testimony. The most important of these are the concepts of the unity of consciousness contained in a given testimony, and of the correspondence of the work with the culture and the individuality to which it belongs.
The historian constantly uses another criterion suitable for establishing the factual reliability of testimony: the knowledge that he receives about each new fact that interests him must be brought into line with his knowledge about the rest of the facts already known to him. According to the scientist, two varieties of the above correspondence can be distinguished: consistency (consistency) of evidence and coincidence (identity of independent) evidence.
To determine the reliability or unreliability of the testimony of a source, as A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky noted, the study of the genesis of the testimony has independent significance. At the same time, the circumstances and conditions for the emergence of the test testimony, the reasons and motives for its appearance are studied in detail, the conditions of the given place and time, the position that their author occupied in society are clarified. The genesis of indications is clarified in connection with the general properties of human nature and depending on the conditions of the culture in which they arose. A detailed study requires the identity of the author or witness.
The "Methodology of History" ends with A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky's reflections on the general significance of historical sources.
The conclusions of the scientist have not lost their modern sound even today. A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky notes:
Historical sources have both theoretical and practical significance. In a theoretical sense, they are important for the knowledge of historical reality. In practical terms, they are needed in order to act in it and participate in the cultural life of mankind.
From a general epistemological point of view, the historical source acquires a special kind of significance, since without historical sources it is impossible to construct the history of mankind, which can only be learned from them.
But, the scientist warns, historical knowledge based on historical sources turns out to be only "more or less probable." Firstly, because the material at the disposal of the researcher is rather "accidental". And, secondly, because the historian rarely manages to achieve a "full understanding and proper evaluation" of the testimony of a source.
However, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky argues further, due to the close connection between the manifestations of culture, random gaps in one kind of sources can sometimes be filled in by data from other sources. Gaps formed in a given group of sources or in one of them can be restored by reconstructing the archetype or restoring lost parts. The concept of “random material” is more applicable to the remnants of culture than to historical legends, since “the more important a fact is for a certain social group, the more likely it is to somehow be reflected in the minds of contemporaries or even several generations and cause them to side any recollection or assessment.
In addition, according to A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky, the historian must keep in mind that each source receives its full “its own meaning” only as a result of its scientific processing. But in many cases, interpretation and criticism cannot achieve completely accurate results and are forced to be content with "an understanding of the source that is only more or less close to the truth." Consequently, the conclusions obtained by interpreting and criticizing the source can easily turn out to be "only more or less probable."
At the same time, the scientist emphasizes, "historical material (controlled by interpretation and criticism) is still suitable for the knowledge of historical reality." Moreover, "the wider the range of sources to which the historian turns, the more he can count on achieving his goal." Further, A. S. Lap-po-Danilevsky concludes:
One should not unduly underestimate the importance of historical material for the knowledge and construction of historical reality: it suffers, of course, from significant gaps and is not always amenable to successful interpretation and criticism, but it also contains such treasures of human thought, the study of which is sufficient to construct the history of our culture. , at least in its most important features, and contribute to its development in the future.
Discussing the significance of sources for the cognition and construction of historical reality, the scientist emphasizes that they themselves turn out to be "facts from the history of culture that arose under its influence" and "can more or less significantly affect its subsequent development." A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky concludes his work with the words of the meaning of historical sources in the continuity of culture: “Without the constant use of historical sources, a person cannot participate in the fullness of the cultural life of mankind.”
Thus, the "Methodology of History" is an integral, theoretically reasoned concept. And S. Lappo-Danilevsky defined the tasks of the methodology of source study, formulated the concept of a historical source as the central link of his scientific concept, correlated with it other theoretical foundations of science and methods of source study - classification, doctrines of criticism and interpretation, determination of the meaning of historical sources. The scientist considered the main questions of the methodology of source study in the system of historical knowledge.
For almost a century, Russian historiography was dominated by the point of view that A. S. Lappo Danilevsky belonged to neo-Kantian direction of the philosophy of history. However, recently a different view has been formed, the essence of which is that the philosophical concept of the scientist is close to phenomenology E. Husserl, based on the ideas of the unity of the world and scientific knowledge about it. So, A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky saw in humanity a special, endowed with consciousness part of the world whole (O. M. Medushevsky).
A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky creatively rethought contemporary epistemological concepts: the positivism of O. Comte, the neo-Kantian philosophy of V. Windelband and G. Rickert, and the sociological ideas of N. K. Mikhailovsky. He did not agree with the neo-Kantians in opposing the nomothetic and ideographic approaches in science and believed that in historical research they coexist and complement each other. Thus, the main position of neo-Kantianism was not only not shared, but even refuted by it.
Consideration of the morphological features of documents at the empirical level has become the main goal of the positivist trend. The positivist historian studied historical sources as and only as they are presented in direct empirical perception.
The philosophical paradigm that has been able to combine the philosophical and empirical approaches into a single whole is the phenomenological approach to historical phenomena. A. S. Lap-po-Danilsvsky, as the founder of the phenomenological concept of the methodology of history, put forward the thesis of “recognition of alien animation”, which means that there is a universal connection between man and man, a certain possibility of their mutual understanding. This affirms the possibility of animate exchange through the realized products of purposeful human activity. Phenomenological philosophy, based on the thesis of the integrity and consistency of the surrounding world, allows a new approach to understanding the vast empirical material accumulated in the field of source studies. The similarity and difference of historical sources can be studied as a manifestation of their unity and diversity. It turns out that it is possible to consider any of them as a historical phenomenon and apply to them a single method of revealing their source capabilities.
Assessing the contribution of his teacher, S. N. Valk defined the essence of the concept of A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky as "the phenomenology of culture." Creation at the beginning of the 20th century. the phenomenological concept of the methodology of history has become a decisive historiographical fact for the subsequent development of the theory and methodology of source studies.
Bibliography
Sources
Lappo-Danilevsky A.S. Methodology of history / A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky. - M., 2006.
Lappo-Danilevsky A.S. Essay on Russian diplomacy of private acts. Lectures given to students of the "Archival Courses" at the Petrograd Archaeological Institute in 1918 / A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky. - Pg „ 1920.
Research
Valk S. N. A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky. Essay on Russian diplomacy of private acts / S. N. Valk // Russian Historical Journal. - 1922. - No. 8.
Grevs I. M. A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky: Experience in the interpretation of the soul / I. M. Grevs // Russian Historical Journal. - 1920. - Prince. 6.
Ivanov G. M. Historical source and historical knowledge / G. M. Ivanov. - Tomsk, 1973.
Historical Science and Methodology of History in Russia in the 20th Century: On the 140th Anniversary of the Birth of Academician A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky. - St. Petersburg, 2003.
Malinov A. Alexander Lappo-Danilevsky: historian and philosopher / A. Malinov, S. Pogodin. - SPb., 2001.
Medushovskaya O. M. History of source studies in the XIX-XX centuries. / O. M. Medushevsky. - M., 1988.
Medushovskaya O. M. Lappo-Danilevsky / O. M. Medushevsky // Public Thought of Russia in the 18th - early 20th centuries. Encyclopedia. - M., 2005.-S. 249-250.
Medushovskaya O. M. Methodology of history as a strict science / O. M. Medushevsky // Lappo-Danilevsky A. S. Methodology of history: in 2 volumes - M.: ROSSPEN, 2010. - V. 1. - P. 23-84.
Medushovskaya O. M. Modern foreign source studies / O. M. Medushovskaya. - M., 1983.
Medushovskaya O. M. Theory and methodology of cognitive history / O. M. Medushovskaya. - M., 2008.
Pronshtein A.P. Theory and methods of historical source study in the work of A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky “Methodology of history” / A. P. Pronshtein// Source study of national history. 1989. - M., 1989.
Rostovtsev E. A. A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky and the St. Petersburg school / E. A. Rostovtsev. - Ryazan, 2004.
Rusina Yu. A. Scientific legacy of A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky (to the question of the theory and methodology of source study) / Yu. A. Rusina // Document. Archive. Story. Modernity: Sat. scientific tr. - Issue. 2. - Yekaterinburg: Publishing House of the Ural State University, 2002. - S. 246-263.
Rumyantseva M. F. Alexander Sergeevich Lappo-Danilevsky (introductory article) / M. F. Rumyantseva // Lappo-Danilevsky A. S. Methodology of history: in 2 volumes - M .: ROSSPEN, 2010. - T. 1. - S. 5-23 .
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1.1. External and internal criticism of historical sources. The subject of study of auxiliary historical disciplines
When recreating a true picture of the historical past, researchers use a variety of historical sources in their work. historical sources- all evidence of the past that is associated with human activities and reflects the history of human society. Any object to which human labor activity has been applied at least twice is a historical source.
Historical sources are:
· material (various objects of everyday life and culture created by human civilization);
· ethnographic (preserved traditions in the manners and customs of peoples);
· oral (folklore);
· linguistic (outdated words and names, which in ancient times were called various phenomena and objects);
· written (signs made on organic or inorganic material that can be identified as writing);
· film, photo, phono, video documents.
Historical sources are varied and in order to prove their authenticity they must be subjected to criticism. Criticism of sources is divided into external and internal.
External criticism is, first of all, obtaining information about the origin of the source. This is what they do auxiliary historical disciplines- establishing the time and place of compilation of the source, authorship, conditions of its writing, authenticity, as well as restoring the original text.
Auxiliary historical disciplines allow you to analyze the text, language data, proper names, geographical information, monitor the form, handwriting, writing signs and writing material.
Purpose of external criticism – determination of the degree of legitimacy of using the source in a scientific study.
Internal criticism It is based on the study of the content of the source and aims to establish its reliability, that is, to determine the degree of correspondence of life events to their reflection in the source. The completeness of the information and the scientific value of the source is established. In internal criticism of the source, it is necessary to identify social status, national and cultural affiliation of the author. The author can ignore or modify some facts and, on the contrary, highlight those of them in which he is interested in detailed coverage. A certain influence on the author is exerted by historical setting where he lives and works. Source science deals with internal criticism of a historical source.
source study - This is an auxiliary historical discipline that needs to be singled out in the first place, which develops a methodology and theory for the study and use of historical sources. Source studies are engaged in methods of identifying, classifying historical sources, developing a comprehensive methodology for processing, studying and using sources.
The subject of study of source studies is written sources.
The main tasks of source study:
1. Identification of sources, search for sources;
2. Establishment of the text (identification of later inserts - intercolations). Reading the text.
3. Establishing the origin of sources - authorship, place of writing, year of writing, authenticity, establishing the purpose of writing.
4. Determining the completeness of information, the political orientation of the document.
5. Synthesis of historical sources.
Source study, having separated from the auxiliary historical disciplines, is currently striving to become a special historical discipline.
1.1. External and internal criticism of historical sources. The subject of study of auxiliary historical disciplines
When recreating a true picture of the historical past, researchers use a variety of historical sources in their work. historical sources- all evidence of the past that is associated with human activities and reflects the history of human society. Any object to which human labor activity has been applied at least twice is a historical source.
Historical sources are:
· material (various objects of everyday life and culture created by human civilization);
· ethnographic (preserved traditions in the manners and customs of peoples);
· oral (folklore);
· linguistic (outdated words and names, which in ancient times were called various phenomena and objects);
· written (signs made on organic or inorganic material that can be identified as writing);
· film, photo, phono, video documents.
Historical sources are varied and in order to prove their authenticity they must be subjected to criticism. Criticism of sources is divided into external and internal.
External criticism is, first of all, obtaining information about the origin of the source. This is what they do auxiliary historical disciplines- establishing the time and place of compilation of the source, authorship, conditions of its writing, authenticity, as well as restoring the original text.
Auxiliary historical disciplines allow you to analyze the text, language data, proper names, geographical information, monitor the form, handwriting, writing signs and writing material.
Purpose of external criticism – determination of the degree of legitimacy of using the source in a scientific study.
Internal criticism It is based on the study of the content of the source and aims to establish its reliability, that is, to determine the degree of correspondence of life events to their reflection in the source. The completeness of the information and the scientific value of the source is established. In internal criticism of the source, it is necessary to identify social status, national and cultural affiliation of the author. The author can ignore or modify some facts and, on the contrary, highlight those of them in which he is interested in detailed coverage. A certain influence on the author is exerted by historical setting where he lives and works. Source science deals with internal criticism of a historical source.
source study - This is an auxiliary historical discipline that needs to be singled out in the first place, which develops a methodology and theory for the study and use of historical sources. Source studies are engaged in methods of identifying, classifying historical sources, developing a comprehensive methodology for processing, studying and using sources.
The subject of study of source studies is written sources.
The main tasks of source study:
1. Identification of sources, search for sources;
2. Establishment of the text (identification of later inserts - intercolations). Reading the text.
3. Establishing the origin of sources - authorship, place of writing, year of writing, authenticity, establishing the purpose of writing.
4. Determining the completeness of information, the political orientation of the document.
5. Synthesis of historical sources.
Source study, having separated from the auxiliary historical disciplines, is currently striving to become a special historical discipline.
Source criticism is a decisive stage in the research work on documents. Its purpose is to determine the degree of completeness and reliability of the actual content of the source and create the prerequisites for extracting reliable information from it.
According to modern concepts, the method of source study analysis includes the following procedures and operations:
1. Determination of the external features of the source;
2. Establishing the origin of the source:
a) establishing the authenticity of the monument,
b) finding out the history of the text, determining its original and subsequent versions, reading the text,
c) determining the time and place of occurrence of the text, establishing its author (attribution),
d) finding out the reasons, goals and historical circumstances for the appearance of the text, determining its social functions in the past;
3) Interpretation or interpretation of the text: finding out the meanings of the text, its correct understanding;
4) The study of the actual content of the written source and the determination of its correspondence to historical reality;
5) Source study synthesis of the monument.
In the present sequence, the first three procedures, including the interpretation of the text, essentially constitute an external critique of the source. The final phase of source criticism is internal criticism.
Establishing the external features of a written monument helps to determine its authenticity and date the text. This procedure includes finding out the writing material (paper, parchment, fabric, birch bark, etc.), writing or printing tools, type of writing, handwriting or font, and the external design of the text. When determining the external features of the monument, data and methods of paleography, sphragistics, filigree studies and a number of other auxiliary historical disciplines are used.
The historian works only with a genuine source. Therefore, the real source study analysis begins after its authenticity is established. This is a key operation. It is caused by the presence of a large number of fake and unreliable documents. Fakes are not what they claim to be: to be a source on the history of the declared socio-cultural system, they represent other social phenomena. Therefore, the establishment of the authenticity of evidence is considered to be the determination of its true socio-cultural affiliation. In other words, to determine authenticity means to establish whether it really reflects the declared socio-cultural system and whether it arose at a certain time and in a certain place.
This is the essence of determining the authenticity of the source under study. Next, it is necessary to outline the range of techniques and means used in this operation. Why should we deal with the methods of falsification. By their nature, they can be divided into falsifications in content and forgeries in form. The first includes completely forged documents. Some of them can be executed in compliance with external signs of authenticity (handwriting, seals, etc.). Forgeries are recognized by content by content-cultural analysis.
Forgeries in form usually have genuine content. But some of them have fabricated outward signs. Others, while being genuine in appearance, include fake inserts of text, entries, scribal notes, and so on. So chronicles, letters and office documents were forged more. As experience shows, the form was more often falsified. Therefore, in establishing the authenticity of the source, an important role is played by the analysis of its external features: material, writing, design. The chronological and metrological data available in the text, the form or structure of the text, its style features are also used. If necessary, meaningful information is taken into account: inaccurate information, errors, logical contradictions, discrepancies and cultural inconsistencies.
The most important thing in a written source is its text. By definition, a text is a logically connected sequence of sentences that forms a message. It is built according to the laws of the given language and taking into account the sign system used. It is the written message that is the remainder and representative of the reconstructed socio-cultural system. Therefore, working with him is the main prerequisite for restoring the historical facts reflected in the source.
The text that reached the researcher in the course of its functioning in the past was subjected to repeated author's, editorial and censorship corrections. Many texts were replicated or copied. And the historian usually deals with several versions of the same text. The life of Alexander Nevsky, for example, came to researchers in 15 editions and hundreds of lists. Therefore, before starting work with the text, the historian studies its history. It defines the original, author's copy, sets later edited (censored) versions. The editing of the text gave it a certain political direction. In addition, the researcher identifies all copies and lists. A copy is a complete repetition of the text, a list is an approximate or selective transcription. Further, the historian works with the original. If there is none, then the researcher restores it, clearing it of later editorial and censorship layers, or reconstructs it from copies and lists, eliminating the errors and insertions of the copyist.
Having received or restored the original, the historian proceeds to read it. The medieval text is preliminarily codified: it is divided into words and sentences, and punctuation marks are placed. Then the text is translated into modern Russian as close as possible to the original. When translating, it is very important to find the exact meaning of the words, terms and expressions used in the message, not paying attention to the similarity of many Old Slavonic and Russian words. In fact, very often their meaning is different, so you should definitely work with dictionaries.
After the text has been restored and translated, one should begin to study the external circumstances of its appearance.
Time and place of origin, authorship are the fundamental external characteristics of written evidence. They determine the spatio-temporal and cultural framework of the historical facts contained in the source and create decisive prerequisites for assessing the reliability of its information. Let's consider separately each of the noted operations.
Most Russian documents of the Middle Ages and modern times have a date in the text, a stamp or near the signature. She takes the truth. However, when a historian works with a copy or revision of a text, he must find out whether this date is not the time of the compilation of this version.
The next step in source study is to determine the place of origin of the analyzed document.
Determining the place of creation of a written certificate is very important. The localization of the source helps to find out the reasons, goals, historical, cultural and local conditions of its origin and existence, to find the author and, ultimately, to correctly interpret its content. When working with spatial information, the historian must know the political and territorial division of the country, its geography, toponymy, local features of culture and language at the time under study and in their historical development. Therefore, for the localization of the document, he uses the data of historical geography, historical toponymy and historical linguistics. Together with them, the researcher often uses materials from historical metrology, paleography, heraldry, sphragistics, and a number of other auxiliary historical disciplines.
After the localization of the written news, the historian turns to the establishment of authorship.
Determining the author (attribution) of a written source is a key task of external criticism. By identifying the author or compiler of a document, one can get a more accurate idea of the place, time, causes and conditions of its occurrence and more fully reveal its social and political orientation. Having studied the worldview, practical activity and socio-cultural affiliation of the author, the historian will be able to correctly interpret the text and determine the degree of reliability of the information reported in it. Even incomplete non-personalized (corporate-cultural) attribution of the source is important. After collecting all possible indirect information about the alleged author, it is synthesized and holistically generalized. Next, the identity of the author is identified. This process includes two stages. First, the historian makes a group identification, then he makes a personal identification. Group identification establishes the maximum possible circle of persons suitable for the author's role. Individual identification of a person includes the collection of information about the life and activities of all selected persons, their subsequent comparison with the original data and the maximum possible reduction of applicants. Further, through analysis, the final choice is made in favor of one or another person.
Having established all the external aspects of the origin of the source, it is necessary to determine the internal, socio-cultural causes and conditions for its appearance.
Finding out the reasons, goals and historical circumstances for the appearance of the text, determining its social functions in the past
As a work, the source belongs to a particular author. At the same time, it is a product of a specific culture of the past. Its emergence was caused by certain specific historical conditions, causes, goals and objectives of the functioning of this socio-cultural system. Therefore, it is very important to understand what was the historical reality in which this source arose and functioned. Without this, it is impossible to correctly understand and interpret the content of the written evidence.
All conditions in which the source is born can be divided into external and internal. Internal circumstances are the needs, goals, tasks and functions of the socio-cultural system that generated this written message. It is culture itself with its defining meanings, ideals and values. External circumstances are generated by the functioning and development of culture in a certain historical environment. They are the result of the impact on a given culture of other socio-cultural complexes: another social group, culture, time.
The historical circumstances that give rise to the source leave a very strong imprint on its content. The socio-cultural functions of the monument in the past play a special role in this. Its functions explain the reasons for the appearance of the text and determine the influence of the current conjuncture on it.
internal criticism.
Internal criticism is the next and final stage of the critical analysis of the source. At this stage, source criticism is based on hermeneutics, theory, and the art of interpreting historical (and generally literary) texts. It is important for the cognizing subject to reveal as much as possible the degree of reliability and scientifically significant value to the informative content of the source, its factology. At the same stage of the work, the social orientation and orientation of the attribution of the document are revealed.
The stochnikologist, in essence, is a philologist and historian rolled into one. First, he considers the source as part of the reality of the past, and then - as part of the reality in which he himself is. He evaluates the source logically, referring now intentionally, now unintentionally to the information contained in it. The structure of the research presentation is changing - it is dictated by the desire to reveal as fully as possible all the wealth of social information that a source can give, put in connection with the data of modern science. “The historian seeks to look beyond the texts in order to obtain from them information that they do not want to give and cannot give by themselves.”
The researcher reveals the fullness of the social information of the source, solves the problem of its reliability. He puts forward arguments in favor of his version of the veracity of the evidence, substantiates his position. If the stage of source interpretation involves the creation of a psychologically reliable image of the author of the source, the use, along with the logical categories of the cognitive process, of such categories as common sense, intuition, sympathy, empathy, then, in turn, at the stage of content analysis, logical judgments and evidence prevail, data comparison , analysis of their consistency with each other.
Turning to the analysis of the actual content and evaluating the reliability of the information in the document, the researcher prepares it for inclusion in the source base being formed. It is the basis for building a historical picture. As a result of the procedure, the source becomes part of the contemporary scientific and social culture of the historian.
Consider the content of this procedure. As you can see, it includes: firstly, the identification of all the historical facts available in the news, the disclosure of the completeness of its sociocultural information and, secondly, the determination of the correspondence between the actual content of the source of historical reality, the assessment of the accuracy and reliability of its data. Thus, it should first be established what historical events, facts are displayed by this source and what historical topics can be studied on the basis of its information. Then it is necessary to determine the reliability of his data on all historical facts, topics and aspects presented in the text. To this end, it is necessary to take into account the socio-cultural affiliation of the evidence, the personal characteristics of the author, the functions of the source and the historical conditions for its occurrence. Subsequently, this will free his information from subjective distortions.
Specifically, to assess the reliability of the news, you need to do the following. First of all, find out what national and social environment the source came from, outline the range of values and ideals of this environment and determine its influence on the author in the selection, recording and evaluation of events, facts and persons. It is also very important to find out the character and worldview of the author, his personal attitude to the events and persons described. It is very important in assessing the reliability of written information to take into account such aspects as the knowledge of the author, the sources of his information (rumors, eyewitness accounts, personal impressions, documents), methods of collecting and processing information and his analytical abilities. In addition, one should keep in mind the influence on the author of the social atmosphere and the political situation at the time of the creation of the work.
These operations are mostly related to narrative sources with a strong author's beginning. The analysis of impersonal, documentary evidence is, of course, simpler and more objective. The attention of the source specialist is focused on the functions of the institution that created the document, the goals and objectives of the source, the described object, the structure and content of the document, methods of collecting, processing and publishing data, etc. are also taken into account.
Synthesis is the final stage in the study of a work. Its goal is to restore the integrity of the source as an organic part of the culture of its time, the socio-cultural community that produced it. Thus, restoring the holistic image of a legislative act, it is necessary not only to restore the process of its creation in the system of law-making institutions, but also to inscribe it in the system of social, political and, especially, legal culture of a given society.
Conclusion
Historical sources - the whole complex of documents and objects of material culture that directly reflected the historical process and captured individual facts, and past events, on the basis of which the idea of a particular historical era is recreated, hypotheses are put forward about the causes or consequences that entailed certain historical events.
The purpose of studying historical sources is to extract the facts necessary to solve the problem under study. Thus, the work of the historian begins with the formulation of the question to which the scientist wants to find an answer.
In source studies, various classifications of sources are used.
Classification by type is the most important, corresponding to the main task of source study.
Each of the types of historical sources listed in the control work (material, ethnographic, linguistic, oral, electronic and written sources) requires a special approach.
But for the historian, written sources are of particular importance.
Thus, the process of historical research combines work with sources and the use of theoretical knowledge. It is in this way that the historian can reveal the patterns of historical development.
Literature
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3. Kovalchenko I.D. Methods of historical research. M., 2007.-195 p.
4 Racer C.A. Fundamentals of textology. 2nd ed. M.: Enlightenment, 2008.-278 p.
5. Golikova A.G. Methods of working with historical sources. M.: Academy, 2014.-30 p.
6. Medushovskaya O.M. Source study., 2007.
7. Samorodov D.P. Introduction to history and fundamentals of scientific-historical methodology. M., 2005.
8. [Electronic resource] - Access mode: https://ru.wikipedia.org