II Source criticism of written sources. II Source criticism of written sources Features of source criticism of Russian medieval acts

The level of significance of a historical source and its value are not the same, since sources reflect reality through the perception of the author, so they all require a critical approach. On a way scientific knowledge source, certain obstacles and difficulties arise, both objective and subjective. To ensure an objective analysis of the source it is necessary:

Explore the source in isolation from the specific historical reality in which it arose;

It is important to know the history of the source text, the circumstances of its creation;

In the process of working on a source, it is also necessary to study the critical literature devoted to it;

Degree must be taken into account scientific study source by previous researchers;

The requirements for criticism of historical sources cannot be reduced even when their number on a particular topic or period is limited.

Source criticism literature contains many attempts to develop principles, methods and criteria for scientific criticism of sources, and among them some general rules and criteria for source criticism can be identified. Source criticism accumulates several groups of methods:

General scientific (analysis, synthesis, historical, logical, retrospective, chronological);

Interdisciplinary (statistical, specific social achievements);

General historical (historical-genetic, historical-chronological, historical-comparative, historical-typological, historical-systemic);

Special source studies (textual and paleographic studies, etc.)

The main methods in source criticism are source analysis and source synthesis. Accordingly, two stages can be distinguished in the analysis of a source: analytical criticism and synthetic criticism.

Analytical criticism is connected with work on a specific source and includes a set of mandatory elements: - determination of the external features of the memo; - proof of its authenticity (authenticity); - reading the source text; - establishing the time, place, authorship, circumstances and motives of origin; - interpretation (interpretation) of the text; - determination of the probability of the source, its reliability, scientific significance.

Analytical criticism is a stage of source research; it organically develops into synthetic criticism. Synthetic criticism has as its object a complex of sources in order to obtain aggregate facts. Synthetic criticism has the opportunity to evaluate the entire complex of sources and their interrelation, interdependence, to reflect the integrity of not only an individual, but also a complex of sources, as a unique cultural phenomenon of the corresponding time.

The set of sources must meet certain requirements. A synthetic expression of these requirements is the concept of “reliability of sources”. The reliability of a set of sources means: firstly, that they include reliability, verified in the process of critical analysis of the source; secondly, they contain sources in a volume optimal for obtaining the totality of all scientific facts with no exceptions; thirdly, it covers sources that make it possible to establish structural, genetic and transformational connections of facts related to the subject being studied.

The presentation of a set of sources depends on the nature of the historical events that they reflect. If for one-time acts of history even a single source can represent them, then to characterize great events and processes it is also necessary to use mass sources and process them modern methods. Thus, the choice of the optimal volume of sources necessary for objective coverage of events depends, first of all, on the nature and scale of the events.

The most important features of source analysis of legislative acts are determined by the fact that this is a source of official origin and purpose. It is necessary first of all to establish the nature of the publication from which they are being studied, i.e. find out whether it is official or not. For research purposes, it is preferable to use official documents in the official publication. This guarantees the authenticity of the source and the authenticity of its text, eliminating the need to specifically check both. For general familiarization with the text (for example, on training sessions) other available publications are also suitable.

Among legislative documents, constitutions are of particular interest to historians, the adoption or revision of which is usually associated with turning points in the life of society, and the content covers a range of the most significant problems for the country. Most often, the constitution is a complete document with a preamble of a motivational and general principle nature, but there have been other examples in history. Thus, during the existence of the dualistic monarchy of Austria-Hungary (1867-1918), different basic laws were in force in its two parts: in Austria it was the constitution adopted in 1861, and in Hungary it was the restored constitution of 1848, which was formed from several separate laws. In a similar way, the constitution of the Third Republic in France, usually dating from 1875, was compiled from separately adopted laws. It was developed in a bitter struggle between monarchists and republicans and did not contain a declaration of general principles government structure; the fact that France is a republic was mentioned only in the article on the powers of the head of state.

Due to the fact that any legislative act expresses an officially accepted point of view, the question of who exactly compiled and edited the text of the document is often not of significant importance for the historian. Wording is often borrowed from documents of a more or less similar nature, including from the legislation of other countries. But if the law was adopted as a result of a long discussion, during which the positions of different social and political forces presented in amendments, additions and other proposals collided, the composition of those who in one way or another participated in the creation of the final text requires careful analysis. When studying the constitution, it is important who was on the commission for its development (if there was one), how active individual members of the commission were, who became the rapporteur who presented the draft approved by the commission for approval by the authorized legislative body. All this can be established if, in addition to the study of the constitution, sources reflecting the course of the legislative process are involved (see the next chapter for details).

The time and place of adoption of a legislative act are known from its text. But monosyllabic answers to the questions “when” and “where” are not enough: this is only a “link” to a certain historical situation, in the context of which the general meaning and features of the document being studied become clear. The consular constitution of 1799, which gave full power in France to Napoleon Bonaparte, consolidated the actual state of affairs after his coup d'etat (it was Napoleon who radically changed the article of the constitution on the equal rights of the three consuls with an amendment on the powers of the first consul, which he himself became). During the development of the constitution of the Second Republic in France (1848), there was a June uprising of the workers of Paris, which influenced the activation of the right in the debate on the draft constitution and the removal from it of the provision on the “right to work” associated with the uprising. The republic established in Germany after the November Revolution of 1918 was named Weimar after the location of the National Assembly that adopted its constitution: legislators preferred the quiet city, famous for the names of Goethe and Schiller, to Berlin, which was engulfed in ongoing revolutionary uprisings.

A legislative monument must be considered taking into account its genealogical connections, i.e. relationship with previous documents of a similar nature. This will make it possible to trace the direction in which legal norms have changed, and to judge whether pre-existing laws on this range of issues were implemented. Borrowing the experience of other countries (especially when developing constitutions) is not always effective, because the same institutions operate differently on different historical grounds. Thus, the US Constitution adopted in 1787 served as a model for a number of Latin American constitutions, but if in the US it, with amendments, remains in force to this day, then in countries Latin America After they won independence, the constitutions were changed many times.

When analyzing constitutions, it should be borne in mind that the system of political institutions reflected in them may be very different from the actually existing one. It is known that during Jacobin dictatorship In France, it was not the constitution of 1793 that was in force, but the so-called revolutionary order of government. On the other hand, in the 20th century, neither in Italy nor in Germany under totalitarian regimes were the previous constitutions abolished (the liberal Albertine Statute of 1848 and the constitution of the Weimar Republic) - their formal preservation did not prevent Mussolini and Hitler from building the organization of power in their own way. The very fact of the existence of a constitution in a particular country does not mean, therefore, that this country actually lives by its principles.

Comparison with reality is necessary when analyzing not only the constitution, but also any legislative act. History is replete with examples of laws that “don’t work.” Without considering the question of how certain laws were implemented in practice, the historian risks exaggerating the importance of legislative documents as a source of his research.

Direct information contained in sources of this type is associated with the prevailing ideas in a given society about what is the norm and what is a deviation from it. Indirect information should be sought not so much in the regulatory provisions themselves, but in their motivation contained in the preamble to the document. The preamble is focused on the perception of a social environment with certain traditions and values, with ideas that have become firmly established in everyday life, which it was not the intention of the legislator to “decipher” - he took them for granted. But it is important for a historian to recognize in a document a reflection of such phenomena, hidden information about them.

Let us turn, for example, to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, adopted on August 26, 1789 and later included as a preamble in the constitution of 1791. It clearly shows the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment (the idea of ​​natural and inalienable rights belonging to man from birth, the that the root of social disasters and the vices of governments is oblivion of these rights and ignorance, which can be defeated by constant reminders of them, an appeal to “simple and indisputable principles” accessible to reason). In the language of the Declaration, elementary arithmetic calculation allows us to identify the key concepts and terms for its drafters, among which the indisputable priority belongs to natural and civil rights and law: of the 17 articles of the Declaration, “law”, “rights” are mentioned in 10, “law” - in 9, while “property” is in 2, “equality” or “equal” is in 2. In other words, what the Declaration speaks about in addition to its direct purpose is revealed: the indirect information contained in it relates to the characteristics of the mentality of French society at the origins of the new political culture.

For a correct assessment of the content of legislative documents, an accurate interpretation of the vocabulary used, the meaning of individual legal formulas and concepts, which may change over time, is essential. Without taking this into account, the historian risks modernizing the source, introducing into it something that does not meet the conditions of its creation.

In texts of more or less significant length (again, primarily in constitutions that were discussed for a long time, adopted in parts or supplemented by later amendments), “inconsistency” of individual provisions or even contradictions between them may be discovered. Thus, the French constitution of 1791, together with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, included an article proclaiming that people “are born and remain free and equal in rights,” and on the other hand, it gave the right to vote only to the so-called active citizens, the number of which was limited to several qualifications, including property. Legal exceptions to general rule or other reservations may significantly narrow the actual scope of its application. Therefore, individual parts of the law should be compared with each other, thus revealing its actual, factual significance.

The normative nature of legislative acts determines the features of criticism of the reliability of this type of sources. Their main content is not a statement of what exists on this moment, but instructions to be fulfilled for the future. The amount of factual information required to be verified here is small. Only in the motivational part of the law can one find a reference to certain specific circumstances that prompted its adoption, and the most important of them are not always named. A statement of the motives that guided the legislator is the main thing to which criticism of the reliability of such sources should be directed.

Source criticism (analysis) is the decisive stage research work over the documents. Its purpose is to determine the degree of completeness and reliability of the factual content of the source and to create the prerequisites for extracting reliable information from it.

According to modern ideas, the technique source analysis includes the following procedures and operations:

1. Determination of external features of the source;
2. Establishing the origin of the source:

a) establishing the authenticity of the monument,

b) finding out the history of the text, determining its original and subsequent versions, reading the text,

c) determining the time and place of origin of the text, identifying its author (attribution),

d) finding out the reasons, goals and historical circumstances of the appearance of the text, defining it social functions in past;

3) Interpretation or interpretation of the text: clarification of the meaning of the text, its correct understanding;

4) Studying the actual content of a written source and determining its compliance with historical reality;

5) Source synthesis of the monument.

In the present sequence, the first three procedures, including the interpretation of the text, essentially constitute external criticism of the source. The final phase of source criticism represents internal criticism.

1. Determining the external features of a written source

Establishing the external features of a written monument helps determine its authenticity and date the text. This procedure includes identifying the writing material (paper, parchment, fabric, birch bark, etc.), writing or printing tools, type of writing, handwriting or font, and the external design of the text. When determining the external features of a monument, data and methods of paleography, sphragistics, filigree studies and a number of other auxiliary historical disciplines are used.

The most significant external feature is undoubtedly type of letter. Russian writing has changed over time. And therefore, even the most general idea of ​​the stages of its development makes it possible to date the text. The most ancient type of writing in Rus' was charter, existed in the XI-XV centuries. from the 14th to the beginning of the 16th century it was used half-tired During the period of formation and strengthening of the centralized Russian state, cursive writing of the 16th-17th centuries. IN XVIII century a simplified type of cursive writing was established. Next, experts highlight civil letter XIX beginning XX centuries and since 1918 modern letter.

Initially, parchment, birch bark, and wood were used as writing materials. In the 14th century, foreign-made paper appeared in Rus'. Since the 15th century, paper has become the main written material. Russian paper came into use at the beginning of the 18th century. During production, each full sheet of paper was marked with a watermark (filigree). By restoring the watermark, you can date the text. Special reference books on filigree will help you do this. The best among them include the books by N.P. Likhachev Paleographical meaning of paper watermarks (in 2 volumes, St. Petersburg, 1898-1899) and S.A. Klepikov Filigree and stamps on paper of Russian and foreign production of the 17th-20th centuries . (M., 1959). The ink used to write medieval manuscripts was usually brown or brown. There were also black ones. Scribes used goose feathers as writing tools.

Most of the handwritten monuments of the 11th-17th centuries. was formatted in the form books, letters and scrolls. Old books differed in format, depending on the size of the paper sheet. 1/4 formats were used; 1/8; 1/16 and 1/32 sheets. As a rule, handwritten books were compiled from notebooks of 16 pages. The notebooks were numbered. The binding of the book was made of wooden boards, which were necessarily covered with leather or fabric. Certificates were written on separate sheets on one side. If one sheet was missing, then other sheets were glued to it from below and the result was a rather long scroll. When stored, the scrolls were arranged in pillars (columns). The size of the columns can be judged from the Council Code of 1649, composed of 959 sheets. Its length eventually exceeded 300 m. Ordinal and inventory notes were made on the blank back side of the columns. In 1700, columnar office work was abolished due to inconvenience.

Elements of the external design of the text also include those that have changed over time manuscript decorations: ligatures, ornaments and miniatures. Elm was a special decorative style of writing that had a certain ratio of the height of the letter to its width and characteristic curls. By handwritten ornament, experts understand the totality of its constituent elements: initial, header, ending and margin decorations. Initial beautifully drawn initial letter of the text. In addition to the initial at the top there was screensaver ornamented design at the beginning of the text. Often an ornamented design was placed at the end of the text. This ending. An ornamental design made in a certain style was also placed on the margins. Many manuscripts featured colored drawings miniatures(faces). Manuscripts painted with miniatures were called obverse. Thus, in particular, the great chronicle was named vault XVI century, containing 16 thousand drawings.

If necessary, other external data of the written certificate are also analyzed. Having examined the external features of the monument, we can begin to establish its origin.

1. Determining the origin of the source.

The source is the creation of socio-cultural systems, corporations and institutions that functioned in the past. The past in a written monument is the result of their functioning and interaction presented in it. And restoring the past means reconstructing the sociocultural complex reflected in the document and the social relations associated with it. Therefore, it is very important to determine the origin of the source. For, ultimately, only this will make it possible to assess the nature of his subjectivity, determine the degree of reliability of his data and obtain factual material for creating a historical picture.

Identification and selection of sources or source heuristics, then criticism or analysis, and then summing up, synthesis.

Initially, it is necessary to provide the researcher with sources for his scientific work. This takes the historian up to 90% of his time. Last years Electronic sites come to the aid of historians. The presence of websites does not free the historian from source study work. After the researcher has identified the documents he needs, he selects sources. This means which of the selected sources need to be studied in order to obtain the optimal amount of source information. Sources may contradict others.

Sources from the ancient period are very few. When we talk about the newest period, the complex of sources increases sharply. Therefore, it is necessary to narrow the topic, because a lifetime is not enough to study all the sources. But we still won’t be able to study the topic objectively enough. Some source experts believe that historians should study all sources. Other historians believe that all written sources can be divided into two classes: a mass source, or ordinary, and a unique, or special one. Mass sources, characterized by repeatability of information. For unique ones, repeatability of the form of content (memories, diaries). Mass sources do not need to be studied frontally, every single one, they need to be studied selectively. Unique sources - on the contrary, you need to study everything.

Criticism stage. After the researcher has identified the sources needed for the work, he begins to analyze and judge the sources. This is a comprehensive, objective analysis. Usually there are two sub-stages: criticism of origin and criticism of content. The concept of origin includes the time and place of appearance in history. Studying a source begins with reading it. There are problems associated with reading sources - an old source, written in a dead language. As a result incorrect translation source, its content is distorted.

The next operation of criticism is interpretation or interpretation. In different centuries, different words could have different meanings (in the 17th century, “solicitor” was a nobleman, in the 18th century, an official, in the second half of the 18th century, a lawyer). The external environment influenced the content of the source, so the researcher must take all this into account.

The next stage of criticism is the time of creating the source. When reading a document, we strive to find out when this source was created. Documents are usually dated, but sometimes the date is missing. The document can be dated by what it was written with, what it was written on (they began to write on paper no earlier than the mid-14th century). Depending on the content, it happens that some ruler is mentioned. The author of the source can be conscientious, he wrote the whole truth, but he took false sources as a basis, so his work will also become false.

The next aspect of criticism is the authenticity of the source. It is necessary to find out whether the person wrote the source of which he indicated himself as the author. “Testament of Catherine 2”, “Song of Mstislav”, etc. are false.

The following is textual analysis, i.e. studying the history of the text. We need to find out why this text was created - the purpose.

After this, the historian proceeds to criticize the content of the source. Any source contains information and content. The researcher looks at two aspects - the completeness of the source and its reliability. The first refers to information capacity, i.e. the researcher looks at what the author of the source writes about, what he wanted to say, what he wrote, what the author knew about but did not write, there is explicit information and there is hidden information. The completeness of a source is studied by comparison with other sources devoted to the same event. Does it contain unique information? After this, the researcher proceeds to study the reliability of the source. It reveals to what extent the writing of facts corresponds to real historical events. This is the apotheosis of criticism. There are two methods for identifying the truth:

1. Comparative technique: the source of interest to us is compared with other sources. We must take into account that when making comparisons, we should not demand absolute coincidence in description from sources. Some similarity can be expected. Different types sources describe the same events differently.

2.Logical technique: divided into two subtypes: studying from the point of view. formal logic, study from t. view. real logic.

Synthetic criticism. Some believe that it does not exist. Other sources say that it includes the construction of a certain model historical event, created from selected, analyzed facts. Third party, version: at this stage, the researcher summarizes all the information from the received sources and draws a conclusion about the significance of this source as a historical monument. This position is the most correct.

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The formation of scientific knowledge about sources is determined by the general process of evolution of historical science and coincides with the main stages of its history. The development and generalization of scientific ideas about sources and methods of their analysis occurred initially in the course of research practice of establishing the authenticity of a source, determining the degree of reliability of the facts generalized by it. Only towards the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. refers to the appearance in foreign and Russian historiography of special works containing a theoretical understanding of the accumulated experience in studying sources.

Historical source– all monuments of the past created in the process of human activity, involved in historical research and testifying to the history of society.

Source study– a special historical science that develops a theory and methodology for identifying and analyzing historical sources.

Subject source studies are the patterns of the emergence of historical sources and the objective reflection of the historical process in them.

The objectives of source study are to develop, on the basis of its theoretical and methodological principles, the study of the degree of adequacy of sources in relation to historical reality, as well as to develop methods for identifying, selecting and subsequent processing of the information contained in it.

There are different approaches to classifying sources:

One of the first classifications was the division of sources into residues, i.e. relics of historical reality (documentary and legal materials), and legends, i.e. reflection of this reality in the consciousness of the creator of the source (chronicles, memoirs);

The most common is the classification of sources by types and types.

The type combines sources that differ in the way information is encoded and stored. There are 7 types of sources: written, material, ethnographic, oral, linguistic, photographic and film documents, sound documents.

A type is understood as a historically established set of sources, which is characterized by the same internal form of the source (structure), resulting from the unity of origin, content, and purpose of the source during its creation. Written sources are divided into the following types: chronicles, legislative acts, office documentation, private acts, statistical sources, periodicals, documents of personal origin (memoirs, diaries, letters), literary monuments, scientific works.

Classification by content (by domestic, foreign, socio-economic policy).

Division into mass and unique sources.

The main methodological principles of historical knowledge include:

the principle of objectivity – presupposes a comprehensive study of historical phenomena in all their complexity, versatility and inconsistency;

the principle of historicism – the need for a specific historical approach to the source, i.e. research of those events and processes that led to the emergence of this source;

the principle of partisanship - puts it at the center of the study of its source social analysis: identifying the interests of which class this source served;

principle of complementarity.