Ars historica

Ars Historica was a genre of humanist historiography in the later Renaissance. It produced a small library of treatises underscoring the stylistic aspects of writing history as a work of art, but also introducing the contributions of philology and textual criticism in its precepts and evaluations.

At the summit of his ars oratoria Cicero had celebrated history as the magistra vitae. In his De Oratore he proposed history as the summit of ars rhetorica, the rhetorical culture in which eloquence is at the service of the truth of human experience.

Within the context of the rhetorical culture of humanism, the ars historica was an attempt to introduce critical and scholarly criteria into historical literature. Its significance was great during the period of confessional struggle between Protestants and Catholics in the later sixteenth century. In addition to the examples of the classical historians (Herodotus and Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus), the contemporary works of Machiavelli and Guicciardini enhanced the prestige of historical writing. Two further Greek writers were classical sources for the ars historica: Lucian of Samosata and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

The attempt to raise history to the status of a classical ars derived impetus from the mid-century critical renewal brought about by the Ars Poetica of Aristotle. The text of Aristotle's Poetics was an inspiration in Italy, renewing the critical discourse about literature. Francis Robortello, known as the father of hermeneutics and an Aristotelian exponent, also wrote the first treatise De arte historica in 1548.

...
Wikipedia