From Humanist to Enlightenment Historiography: A Case Study of Francois Eudes de Mezeray

Abstract

During the seventeenth century historians in France developed new conceptions about history and applied new methodologies of historical writing. Not yet content to leave behind the Renaissance view that history was an art, and not yet comfortable with the Enlightenment claim that history was a science, these seventeenth-century writers created a transitional genre of historical writing. Called by contemporaries the histoire raisonnee,e it was a fluid genre which absorbed some elements of the Renaissance style, transformed others to accord with seventeenth-century values and tastes, and cast away those unnecessary embellishments which detracted from its goals. As a result of its new orientation, the histoire raisonnee also laid the foundations for the broader based, more critical history of the Enlightenment in France. Thus the histoire raisonnee was a unique style of historical writing which modulated between Renaissance and Enlightenment historiography. This article will use the works of Franc;ois Eudes de Mezeray (1610-1683) both to illustrate the genre of the histoire raisonnee and to show how the histoire raisonnee evolved from the histoire d'humanisme. The works of Mezeray have been selected for this study for several reasons. Mezeray was a royal historiographer, pensioned during the