The Progress of History from Barbarism to Civilization: Social Change in Duelling and Chivalric Orders

Abstract

Through the thick descriptions and dense narrations of his histories Jacques Basnage elicited an erudite, disciplined historiography that rejected seventeenth-century historical Pyrrhonism. He moreover espoused enlightened values, in each of his histories, that would characterize later eighteenth-century historiography. For excample, in his Annales des Provinces-Unies, his theme, as we have seen, was liberty. Christian barbarity toward Jews so profoundly disquieted the author of the Histoire des Juifs that Basnage advocated outright religious toleration and political integration of Jews. Earlier, in the Histoire de l’Eglise depuis Jésus-Christ jusqu’à présent, the author traced what he called the “law of the progress of truth” through the ages to demonstrate refinement in religious thought. Freedom to worship according to the dictates of one’s conscience he also carried to its logical conclusion. Basnage’s most radical religious solution, in his controversial histories of the papal bull Unigenitus, embraced the wisdom of the “democratized” laity in reaching decisions on doctrinal questions.