The History has judgment

the judge and the inquiry as models of authorship and analytical procedure in the writing of history

Abstract

From Lucien Febvre’s historiographical classic The problem of disbelief in the 16th century: the religion of Rabelais, this article aims to discuss how the fields of law and justice provide specific models of research, analysis and argumentation for historians. With the judge being taken as a model of authorship, a figure that emulates the role played by historians when investigating and writing historiography. History, thus, would have a judicative, evaluative and comprehensive role, giving rise to a process and resorting to a series of procedures similar to those performed by a judge in a judicial process. Could historians be seen as a judge of the times, of events, subjecting the historical characters to a trial? These are the questions we seek to answer.