Mind your language
I SETTLED DOWN the other Sunday morning after Mass to Mr Ferdinand Mount's interesting attack in The Spectator on me and other Catholic hack writers (I never realised how much he hated me). In it he uses the sentence: 'Nowhere is the desire for reconquista more evident than in present-day Catholic historiography.' Mr Alan Watkins recently referred to F. W. Maitland as 'our greatest historian'; Mr Mount himself speaks of J. J. Scarisbrick and Eamon Duffy as 'distinguished histori- ans'. When does a historian become a his- toriographer?
Most people would now think of historio- graphy as the study of the principles of his- tory and of history as the study of events. The first edition of the Oxford English Dic- tionary is ignorant of this distinction. It regards a historiographer as 'a writer or compiler of history'. The term is surpris- ingly old, dating back to the 15th century. Nicholas Udall, the author of the unfunny comedy Ralph Roister Doister, who was sacked as headmaster of Eton for unmen- tionable acts, wrote in 1542 of `Valerius Maximus and other Historiographers'.
The OED recognises historionomer as `one versed in the principles of history', but no one seems to use the word. Indeed the new edition of the OED gets remark- ably excited about history altogether.
Here are four definitions of historicism absent in the previous edition. If you can remember them, parties will never be the same again:
1. The attempt, found esp. among German historians since about 1850, to view all social and cultural phenomena, all cate- gories, truths, and values, as relative and historically determined, and in conse- quence to be understood only by examin- ing their historical context, in complete detachment from present-day attitudes. [1895].
2. A tendency in philosophy to see histori- cal development as the most fundamental aspect of human existence, and historical thinking as the most important type of thought, because of its interest in the con- crete, unique, and individual. [1939].
3. The belief that historical change occurs in accordance with laws, so that the course of history may be predicted but cannot be altered by human will; the resulting atti- tude to the social sciences, of regarding them as concerned mainly with historical prediction. [1901].
4. Excessive regard for the institutions and values of the past; spec in Architecture, the use of historical styles in design. [1939]
A nifty use of the comma, I think you'll agree. But with these simple definitions
under your belt, when someone passes an olive and uses the term historicism, you may have every confidence in questioning him: 'Yes, but what do you mean by Kis- t oricism?'
Dot Wordsworth
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