Reprints and Translations of the History

Abstract

The question with which this book began was what and where are the materials necessary for a full and accurate appraisal of de Thou’s historiography? In preceding chapters we have established the means to obtaining a correct text of the History and have also described a number of other writings by de Thou, his secretaries, and his editors, which aid in explaining and interpreting that text. This chapter concludes our study of the works of de Thou by considering a quite different reason for erroneous interpretations of the historian, the publication of parts of the History as translations or extracts. With one or two exceptions these publications have no scholarly value, and reflect the intentions of the given publisher or translator rather than those of de Thou. Yet it is almost solely through these publications that de Thou’s ideas are known today.