Edinburgh Napier University

  The Romans envisioned history as a moral didactic, the purpose of which was to present stories about deeds accomplished by historical figures and to challenge readers to emulate those deeds, often by contrasting, for rhetorical purposes, the supposed moral excellence of the historical past with a degenerate present. These historical writings were, in many ways, closer to storytelling than to anything that would now be recognised as history. The Roman conceptualisation of history as a form of moral instruction endured into the 16th century and was embraced by the great humanist writers of the Renaissance, including Buchanan and Boece in Scotland.

The model of history as moral didactic was not seriously challenged until the jurist and professor Alciato adapted Renaissance techniques of literary criticism and palaeography to the study of Roman law and its historical reception (a process known now as legal humanism). His pupils in France subsequently applied Alciato’s techniques to the study of their own municipal law. During this process, lawyers transformed history into a study of the authentic origins of institutions and of the processes by which those institutions developed.

In Britain, the first writer to apply the principles of legal humanism in a comprehensive fashion was Thomas Craig whose Jus feudale analysed the origins and evolution of feudal law both in Scotland and in Europe more widely. Craig’s text was thus also the first serious British study of comparative law.

The idea that history could be a study of structures and processes, rather than a normative expression of morality, originates with the profession and practice of law. This paper will study the part played by lawyers in developing the modern academic discipline of history, particularly in Scotland