GERARD JOHN VOSSIUS

...in the preface of the Institutes, as Scipio Gentilis taught in the second book of his Addenda Parerga: literally "side-works" or supplemental studies, chapter 26.

Regarding ornaments, however, Zabarella is mistaken in thinking they are borrowed from the art of Oratory. Since the method of decorating a speech, a poem, and a history are all different, it belongs to Oratory to handle the ornaments of speeches, to Poetics those of poetry, and to the Art of History to handle the ornaments of histories. Therefore, I do not agree with Zabarella when he suggests that while ornaments are required for history, nothing else remains of history besides them. One can see how many serious and useful precepts remain for history, both from those things we will discuss later and from the fact that all ancient historians labored so hard in crafting and shaping speeches. We will show later that this is also a duty of the historian.

We conclude, therefore, that although history is strictly neither an art, nor a science, nor even a formal discipline, yet the art of history original: "historicon" is an art. This is because it deals with universal principles. This cannot be said of history itself, which is occupied with particular events, with the goal that universal precepts may be gathered and illustrated from them. In a loose sense, however, no one would deny that it is a discipline and a science, since it is learned and known.

a Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, Book 1, chapter 12, where he disputes whether a part of history can exist.

The argument of Sextus Empiricus a—that there is no art of history because history deals with particulars, which are infinite—is easily refuted.

b Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Book 1, chapter 3. c We cannot traverse the infinite in our minds.

For it is indeed true, as Aristotle says b, that it is impossible to traverse the infinite c original: "ἀδύνατον τὰ ἄπειρα διελθεῖν" (adynaton ta apeira dielthein). However, history does not propose to cover all particulars, but one or several. It is not individual particulars that are infinite, but rather the sum total of all particulars.

d Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, in the third book of his work examining the vanity of pagan learning, chapter 3.

This view is not contradicted by the objections raised against history by Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola d. Among other things, he says that the art of history does not seem to be an art because history mixes so many fables with the truth. He provides many examples of this. Finally, he concludes:

Shall any technical method or theoretical study be applied to these matters, and things of this kind, which take their origin from false and empty histories, and end in various and inexplicable obscurities, fashioned at the whim of anyone?

But if these arguments prove anything, they only show that history itself is not an art. We admit this willingly. Yet it by no means follows from this that there is no