A revisionist view incorrectly identifies a growing awareness of historical and cultural relativity by scholars of Roman law in sixteenth-century France with a modern historical consciousness. Friedrich Meinecke more correctly identified historicism as the juncture of the ideas of individuality and development. The perception by these Renaissance scholars of successive changes in language and law only constitutes an awareness of individuality, not of an idea of development. They conceived of an entity as unfolding from a germ or essence, an essential (...) quality which defined it as an individuality. They could not conceive of an entity as developing in relation to its circumstances. (shrink)

Featuring a foreword by the eminent historian Anthony Grafton, this fascinating book draws upon a diverse range of sources-ancient histories, medieval theology, ...