I Domenicani e la scrittura della storia

In line with the epistemology of the Middle Ages, the normative texts of the order of the Preachers only credited historiography with a subordinate and functional role in the formation of the Dominican friars. However, an early, rough census shows a sizable production of historiographical texts by Dominican authors in the Middle Ages and in the Age of Humanism. While institutional historiography played a central role, the historiographical practice of the Preachers actually covered almost all of the genres of historiography practiced between the thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Some initial surveys on the universal and general histories composed by the Preachers in the fourteenth century reveal that constant research into the forms of organisation and the structures of historical narrative was being undertaken, and that this research is a distinctive feature of the Preachers’ work.