Wesleyan University

Arnaldo Momigliano and the History of HistoriographyAuthor(s): Karl ChristReviewed work(s):Source: History and Theory, Vol. 30, No. 4, Beiheft 30: The Presence of the Historian: Essaysin Memory of Arnaldo Momigliano (Dec., 1991), pp. 5-12Published by: Wiley-Blackwell for Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505508 .Accessed: 30/08/2012 16:48

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Wiley-Blackwell and Wesleyan University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto History and Theory.

http://www.jstor.org

ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO AND THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

KARL CHRIST

I

In his humorous but at the same time quite serious after-dinner speech at Bran- deis University, Arnaldo Momigliano looked back on his own intellectual devel- opment: "In a sense, in my scholarly life I have done nothing else but to try to understand what I owe both to the Jewish house in which I was brought up and to the Christian-Roman-Celtic village in which I was born."'" In a certain sense, this sentence contains the key not only to Momigliano's intellectual impetus, but also to the core of his scholarly work: the studies in the field of the history of historiography.

Unlike so many present-day historians, Momigliano did not proceed ac- cording to the absolute dogmas of a new program of historical scholarship, method, or perspective. Rather, his scholarly work grew organically from the connection between personal initiatives and existential forces. The Jewish, Italian, and of course the continental traditions of his discipline he assimilated first; from the period of his exile in England, those of the English and American worlds followed with no less intensity. Through his personal appropriation and reflection, they were transformed into modes of critical evaluation, mediation, and contemporaneity with an unparalleled breadth of range -both in time and in space.

It is, therefore, significant that for Momigliano the dimension of the history of historiography was from the beginning not an isolated concern, but rather one closely connected with concrete historical problems, with the investigation of individual sources or specific phenomena in political and intellectual history. The originality of this approach, its priorities and its results, becomes evident if we look at the milestones in Momigliano's researches and activities.

The historiographical elements of the tradition are already significant in the 1934 monograph on Philip of Macedonia.2 The book opens with an acknowledg-

1. Arnaldo Momigliano, Ottavo contribute alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1987), 432. The present essay builds on many of the formulations and reflections in the more extensive chapter on Momigliano in my Neue Profile der alten Geschichte (Darmstadt, 1990), 248-294. That longer essay contains detailed documentation of the assessments I offer here.

2. Filippo il Macedone. Saggi sulla storia greca del IVsecolo a. C. (Florence, 1934). See also the new edition, with corrections, a new preface by the author, and a bibliographical appendix by the author and Giampiera Arrigoni (Milan, 1987).

6 KARL CHRIST

ment of the achievements of K. J. Beloch and G. Grote- with praise for Beloch's commitment to source criticism and for Grote's common sense. Above all, Momigliano praised Johann Gustav Droysen: "Droysen in fact recognized for once and for all that the essential characteristic of Hellenism is the constitution of a cosmopolitan civilization."3 But this was a return to the early Droysen- the "primo Droysen"; Momigliano rejected the "secondo Droysen" of the second edition of the History of Hellenism, which appeared in 1871, just after the founding of the German Empire. For Momiglicno, this "second Droysen," the historian of Prussian politics, had emphasized the power politics of national unification through the parallel of the roles of Macedonia and Prussia. The early Droysen, on the other hand, had taken the priority of fundamental religious problems as his starting point.

In the study "The Historical Genesis and Present-day Function of the Concept of Hellenism," Momigliano pursued further the ramifications of the problem of Hellenism in historical scholarship.4 To clarify the assumptions for the evalu- ation of Greek history in the early nineteenth century, he referred back to Heyne, Herder, and, most of all, to Humboldt.' But he referred also to Wolf, Boeckh, and Hegel in his analysis, which thus provided a clear profile of the background of Droysen's concept of Hellenism.

Momigliano saw Droysen's achievement in terms of the first decisive investiga- tion of the Greek world in the context of Christianity. At the same time, Momig- liano offered a perspective on the multifaceted application of the concept of Hellenism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century classical scholarship. Most im- portant for him - and for us now - was the task of clarifying the relationships between Hellenistic and Roman civilization within the framework of the Impe- rium Romanum.

From the concern with the problematic of Droysen's position and of Hel- lenism in general, Momigliano's studies in the history of historiography pro- ceeded in two directions, both of which were motivated no doubt also by external impulses. On one side, he devoted himself to a general review of the Italian investigations into Greek history; on the other, he examined the structure of the history of the Imperium Romanum. His 1934 bibliographical study of works in Greek history was set in very personal terms.6 For Momigliano did not simply survey the pertinent publications in Italian ancient history and classical scholar- ship; rather, he formed his account into an overview of contemporary Italian intellectual culture, including the philosophical endeavors of Croce and Gentile.

A short time later Momigliano completed his study, "La formazione della

3. "11 Droysen ha infatti visto una volta per sempre che il carattere essenziale dell'Ellenismo e la costituzione di una civilta cosmopolitica": Filippo il Macedone, xvi.

4. Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana 16 (1935), 10-37; also Contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1955), 165-194.

5. In this regard, see L'Antichit& nell'Ottocento in Italia e Germania, ed. K. Christ and A. Momigliano (Bologna, 1988).

6. "Studieniuber griechische Geschichte in Italien von 1913-1933,"inItalienischeKulturberichte, ed. Romanisches Seminar der Universitat Leipzig 1 (1934), 163-195; Contributo, 299-326.

MOMIGLIANO AND THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 7

moderna storiografia sull'impero romano. "7 Certain experiences in the presenta- tion of the history of the Roman Empire for the Enciclopedia Italiana had led him to recognize that the universality of the Imperium Romanum cannot be adequately understood without simultaneous consideration of the Christian church.8 In this respect modern scholarship on the Roman Empire was entirely unsatisfactory; in order to correct this picture, Momigliano pointed to the path of modern historiography on the Roman Empire with particular reference to his basic idea. Machiavelli, Sigonius and Gothofredus, Tillemont and Bossuet, Montesquieu and Voltaire, Herder and Gibbon, Niebuhr, Hegel, Mommsen, and Ranke -all founding conceptions of the modern period were again called to mind, in order to document the narrowness of present-day specialized schol- arship. Just as in the case of Hellenism, the transformation in the overall inter- pretation of an historical process was revealed.

II

During his years in Oxford, Momigliano was able to pursue his studies in the history of historiography with ever more intensity. As early as 1944, the essay "Friedrich Creuzer and Greek Historiography" was concerned chiefly with the reassessment of a fundamental classical work.9 Friedrich Creuzer's monograph Die historische Kunst der Griechen in ihrer Entstehung und Fortbildung ("The Origin and Development of the Historical Art of the Greeks"; 1803) was placed in the context of its German intellectual world; Creuzer was reassociated with the brothers Schlegel, and with Heyne and Schelling. As Momigliano wrote:

Indeed, it belongs to those years around 1800 which mark the beginning of a new era for historical studies in Europe and can still offer much inspiration. What was done in ancient history was then immediately relevant to history in general. The methods of Greek and Roman history were still exemplary. The results thus obtained were of general interest. Ancient history has now become a provincial branch of history. It can recover its lost prestige only if it proves again capable of offering results affecting the whole of our historical outlook. One of the ways is, quite simply, to regain contact with those writers of the past who treated classical subjects of vital importance to history in general. Creuzer produced a book of this kind.10

Already at this point it was clear that Momigliano's understanding of the history of historiography did not imply absorption in the sterile, antiquarian inventory of tradition. From the outset it aimed to strengthen the position of

7. "The Formation of Modern Historiography on the Roman Empire," Rivista storica italiana 48 (1936), 1:35-60; 2:19-48. Offprint: Turin, 1938. Also, Contributo, 107-164.

8. See the articles on "Roma" and "Impero" in the Enciclopedia Italiana (1936), XXIX, 628- 654; 661-663.

9. The essay appeared first in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946), 152-163; subsequently in the Contributo, 233-248. For an account of Momigliano's contacts during his exile and the second world war, see Oswyn Murray's essay "Momigliano e la cultura inglese," Rivista storica italiana 100 (1988), 422-439. [This essay appears in translation on pages 49-64 of this volume-ed.]

10. Contributo, 233-234.

8 KARL CHRIST

ancient history for the present, and at the same time to revitalize it for the future. This purpose is at the heart of the especially rich study of "Ancient History and the Antiquarian."" Momigliano here describes the development of antiquarian interests in the modern period as "a new humanism"; the age of the antiquarians, he argues, led precisely to a revolution in historical method. 12 For the antiquarians taught "how to use non-literary evidence, but they also made people reflect on the difference between collecting facts and interpreting facts."'3

Once having called attention to the origins of antiquarian research in antiq- uity, Momigliano turned to the controversies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries about the value of historical sources. In particular, he recalled one of the greatest and most exemplary achievements in the eighteenth-century examination of the transmission of non-literary evidence: the discovery of pre-Roman Italy. The critique of the conflict between antiquarians and histo- rians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries revealed a surpising connection:

The antiquary rescued history from the sceptics, even though he did not write it. His preference for the original documents, his ingenuity in discovering forgeries, his skill in collecting and classifying the evidence and, above all, his unbounded love for learning are the antiquary's contribution to the "ethics" of the historian.'4

The high point of the first postwar phase in Momigliano's concern with the history of historiography is the inaugural lecture as the professor of ancient history at University College London in 1952. In the address on "George Grote and the Study of Greek History," altogether one of his most impressive lectures, Momigliano paid homage, in a way, to the great liberal tradition of University College, to his distinguished predecessors in the chair of ancient history, and not least to George Grote himself. '" His exposition provided a deeply informed survey of the modern historiography on ancient Greece, an analysis of the crisis in this field, and one of the most vigorous arguments for its significance.

Momigliano began with the late eighteenth-century work of William Mitford and John Gillies, works which ushered in a new epoch in the British historiog- raphy of Greece. "What was really new," he wrote, "was, however, political discussion embodied in a Greek History, such as one could read in Mitford and Gillies."'6 Momigliano then connected these highly influential English works with the previous continental as well as Irish projects of C. M. Olivier, the Abbe de Mably and Thomas Leland. He emphasized particularly Leland's comparison of Philip II of Macedonia with Frederick the Great. Thus under the rubric of the history of historiography, Momigliano reestablished, as it were, his own, personal ties to "Filippo il Macedone," along with the reminder, made en pas-

11. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950), 285-315; Contributo, 67-106. 12. Contributo, 67. 13. Ibid., 69. 14. Ibid., 102. 15. Ibid., 213-231. 16. Ibid., 215.

MOMIGLIANO AND THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 9

sant, that already in the seventeenth century, Samuel Pufendorf had chosen the Macedonian king as the object of his research.

The example of John Gillies, the "anti-democratic historian of Greece," afforded a parallel between contemporary political phenomena and evalua- tions within Greek history. The result of this far-reaching investigation was as follows:

However that may be, the simple facts I have stated compel us to revise ideas on the development of historiography in the nineteenth century. It is commonly believed - and I have said so myself-that Niebuhr was chiefly responsible for starting the discussion on Demosthenes and Philip in Germany during the Napoleonic wars and that Droysen discovered the analogy between Macedon and Prussia. Droysen is also credited with the original idea of a history of the period intervening between Alexander and Augustus. It now appears that the discussion of the fourth century in terms of modern political principles-and even of Prussia-had started almost a century before Droysen. Though Droysen's penetrating vision of the Hellenistic age as the age of transition between Paganism and Christianity cannot be compared with Gillies' limited political interests, it is undeniable that he had a predecessor in this respect too.'7

Momigliano thus suggested that George Grote's project of a new representa- tion of Greek history had to compete not only with, Mitford's work, but also with that of Thirlwall, which had begun to appear in 1835. But although Thirlwall had been strongly influenced by the German philosophical and schol- arly tradition, Grote's approach revealed itself as much more direct and per- sonal:

Grote ... found all that he wanted in ancient Greece: the origins of democratic govern- ment and the principles of freedom of thought and of rational inquiry. His major discovery in the field of Greek thought-the revaluation of the Sophists - was the result of his search into the relations between Greek democracy and intellectual progress.18

In his analysis of Grote's great work, Momigliano sought not only to uncover his personal valuations and goals, but at the same time to place the author within the social, political, and intellectual structures of his time. Above all he reinforced the links with the philosophical radicals -with John Stuart Mill as well as with Sir George Lewis. Nevertheless, the individuality of Grote's work was underscored: "What gives Grote's History its almost unique distinction is this combination of passionate moral and political interests, vast learning, and respect for the evidence."'9 Impressively, Momigliano documented the uncom- monly powerful resonances of Grote's work across Europe: "All the German studies on Greek History of the last fifty years of the nineteenth century are either for or against Grote."20

If Momigliano then traced the phenomena of the crisis in Greek history of that time, it may be said that not a few of them still apply in our own. Equally

17. Ibid., 217. 18. Ibid., 221. 19. Ibid., 222. 20. Ibid., 225.

10 KARL CHRIST

applicable today may be the general observation made in the consideration of Grote: "Greek History is essential to the formation of the liberal mind, but in its turn the liberal mind is religious in examining the evidence."2'

Notwithstanding his reservations in matters of detail, Momigliano asserted:

When all is said, it remains true that Grote possessed the all-redeeming virtue of the liberal mind. He was determined to understand and respect evidence from whatever part it came; he recognized freedom of speech, tolerance, and compromise as the conditions of civilization; he respected sentiment, but admired reason.22

No matter how contingent on the hour these observations may have been, Momigliano had every reason to identify with the tradition which had informed his teacher, Gaetano de Sanctis, and his entire school.

III

The programmatic uptake of the London inaugural lecture was followed by a long series of individual studies in the widest variety of formats. Only a very general survey will be attempted here. Highly personal biographical portraits of significant historians and other scholars of antiquity take their place alongside comprehensive analyses of classic historical works; systematic surveys of re- search appear alongside tightly constructed abstracts on historical problems; critical discussions of the ramifications of new methods appear alongside studies in the history of reception.23 A list alone of the names of the figures treated along the immense spectrum of Momigliano's purview includes Petrarch, Scipione Maffei, Vico, Gibbon, Niebuhr, Bernays, Ranke, Fustel de Coulanges, Burck- hardt, Beloch, Eduard Meyer, Max Weber, Croce, Rostovtzeff, De Sanctis, Fraccaro, Dumezil, Leo Strauss, Vidal-Naquet, Marcel Mauss -and these are only the most important.

A final phase in Momigliano's efforts in this field was initiated in 1972, the year of the first in the renowned series of seminars in the history of historiography at the Scuola Normale di Pisa. Examined there in close sequence were the contributions of Wilamowitz, Eduard Schwartz, Karl Reinhardt, Freeman, Eduard Meyer, Hermann Usener, Karl Otfried Muller, Johann Jacob Bachofen, and other representatives of the European classical tradition. The problems in the history of German scholarship were addressed as well, despite the degree of personal suffering that Momigliano himself had endured at the hands of its perverted descendants. A whole series of late studies, for example "German Romanticism and Italian Classical Studies" and "Classical Scholarship for a Classical Country: The Case of Italy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centu-

21. Ibid., 230. 22. Ibid., 231. 23. The sources for the studies referred to in this passage are collected in the eight volumes of

the Contributi alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1955-1987). The ninth and tenth volumes in the series are forthcoming. See especially the Quarto contribute (Rome, 1969), 667-727; Sesto contribute (Rome, 1980), 843-860; Ottavo contribute (Rome, 1987), 433-449.

MOMIGLIANO AND THE HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 11

ries," documented once again the focal points of an intellectual ellipse which Momigliano always considered extraordinarily fertile.24

IV

Momigliano made no absolute claims for his own method; nor did he presume to have evolved an entirely new theory of historical scholarship or, still less, an Historic for our own time. He loved the concrete work in the field of the history of historiography and spoke only very rarely in the fundamental terms of the following two examples. In the preface to this 1966 Studies in Historiography, he wrote: "I am a student of the ancient world, and my primary aim is to understand and evaluate the Greek and Roman historians and the modern historians of the ancient world. Neither common sense nor intuition can replace a critical knowledge of past historians."25 And in his discussion of new trends in historicism, he wrote:

The inevitable corollary of historicism is history of historiography as the mode of ex- pressing awareness that historical problems have themselves a history. This, however, has produced books the sole purpose of which is to prove that every historian and any historical problem is historically conditioned -with the additional platitude that even a verdict of this kind by the historian of historiography is historically conditioned.

Such an expression of pure relativism, in my opinion, is not defensible. History of historiography, like any other historical research, has the purpose of discriminating between truth and falsehood. As a kind of intellectual history which purports to examine the achievements of a historian, it has to distinguish between solutions of historical problems which fail to convince and solutions ( hypotheses; models; ideal types) which are not worth being restated and developed. To write a critical history of historiography one must know both the authors one studies and the historical material they have studied.26

V

Momigliano's lifelong theme was the historical dimension of the contacts among cultures, religions, and civilizations. For this reason we can trace an arch from the concerns of his scholarly work back to the experiences of his youth. It is possible that in the period of his old age, his declining physical health, and the awareness of approaching death, the roots of his existence and the origins of his own development became clearer to him than they had been in the earlier years of constant journeying and hence of the constantly changing intellectual impressions made on him by his varying spheres of activity. The identity of life and work remains unmistakable.

24. "German Romanticism and Italian Classical Studies," in Storia delta Storiografia 9 (1986), 62-74; also, Ottavo contribute (Rome, 1987), 59-72. "Classical Scholarship for a Classical Country: The Case of Italy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," TheAmerican Scholar (Winter 1988), 119-128; Ottavo contribute, 73-89.

25. Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), viii. 26. "Historicism Revisited," in Sesto contribute (Rome, 1980), 31-32.

12 KARL CHRIST

If, in this respect, the London inaugural lecture of 1952 came to be valued as exemplary of his convictions, this would be entirely corroborated by a review of his entire work in the field of history of historiography. The respect for "evidence from whatever part it came," for which he held Grote in such high esteem, and above all the allegiance to "the liberal mind" which Grote exempli- fied remained primary values. The history of historiography should not allow itself to be compromised either by dogma or by ideological formulations.

Momigliano certainly welcomed the worldwide expansion of scholarly work in the field of the history of historiography and its development through institu- tions and new publications, a process in which he actively collaborated -not least in the life of this very journal, with which he enjoyed a long and close association. But at the same time he saw more clearly and earlier than others the dangers that grew with the field. For this reason he referred time and again to the dialectic between the investigation of sources and the history of historiog- raphy; for this reason he grew no less tired in his concern for an adequate understanding of the transmission of ancient sources than he did in his revival of an at least partially dissipated tradition.

According to Momigliano, contact with the classic masters of historiography should serve not only as the backdrop for the development of modern innova- tions and perspectives, but should lead first and foremost to the strengthening of the intellectual potential of the discipline, to its vitalization and security in the face of the fashionable trends which threaten from all sides. In his view, only the safeguarding of the historical foundations and precise knowledge of the history of historiography solidly based on them would ensure the continua- tion of historical scholarship into the future. As all his new initiatives have always shown, the consequences of his convictions in this area stretched far beyond the traditional boundaries of ancient history.

It is clear that Momigliano's perspectives and priorities in the history of historiography cannot simply be duplicated or extended. The unique existential conditions of his scholarly work are much too strong for that. But the appeal to the great masters of historiography which he advocated steadfastly as a counterbalance to the tendencies to rhetoricize, intellectualize, and ideologize history will always entail for us a return to Arnaldo Momigliano himself as the mark of his enduring presence in our enterprise.

Philipps-Universitdt Marburg

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY MICHAEL P. STEINBERG