The Authenticity of Sources and the Reliability of Informants

Abstract

Textbooks of historical research usually distinguish between the external and the internal criticism of the sources. The former is often termed (after Langlois and Seignobos) erudite criticism or (after Bern-heim) lower criticism; the latter is called higher criticism or, as has been mentioned earlier, hermeneutics. Assimilating the principles of criticism, especially those of external criticism, was for a long time-from the birth of the erudite approach in the 17th century-the main component of the methodological training of historians. It has remained so to this day, but as we move away from the positivist and idiographic approach, which attaches excessive importance to source-based knowledge, historians must be given more and more elements of the general methodology of history.