1. Humanism and Reformation
Whereas late medieval ecclesiastical historians [13] preferred the genres of chronicles, annals, and vitae (Biography; Hagiography), Humanism brought epoch-making changes of direction with its new critical and philological erudition and its programmatic turn to the texts of Antiquity (ad fontes, “to the sources”). The invention of printing also led to the production of a wide range of reliable editions in Christian histori…