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1. Concept Ars historica (Latin, “historical art”) denotes the systematic reflection of the historical discipline on the nature of its scholarship [14]. It is supplemented by work on the history of historiography [12]; [17].Horst Walter Blanke 2. Humanism Some ancient authors (e.g. Lucian) already discussed problems of historical theory, but the ars historica would only establish itself as a textual genre in its own right in the time of Humanism[11]. The writings of Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1560) [9] and Jean Bodin (1566) [3] founded a Europe-wide tradition that would be…

1. General 1.1. Terminology Most 19th- and 20th-century lexicons define a historian as a person who studies and writes about history; Grimm calls a Historiker (historian) a  Geschichtsforscher  und -schreiber (researcher and writer of history) [1] (see Historiography). There have been writers dealing with historical events since the beginning of literacy in Europe (Homer and Moses, or Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Polybius, and Tacitus). Only since the late Enlightenment, however, have there been professional historians. In his introduction to a translation of a…