The expansion of diplomatics as a discipline

Abstract

The author discusses the origins of diplomatics as a distant intellectual discipline in the second half of the seventeenth century. With the strong influence of classical philology and positiveness, diplomatics became more refined and specialized. The field created a structure which is formed by certain steps to be taken in the study and analysis of a document according to a taxonomy. He concludes by examining diplomatics in the 1950s when the field, though rooted in the analysis of ancient documents, tests the borderlines between documentary analysis and historical research.