Based on the inductive analysis of the previous chapters of the book, the conclusion provides closing remarks on the nature and meaning of the classic and the canon in history. I argue that the ability of some history classics to transcend time stems from their literariness, as it supports the text’s historicity, which include features shared with the classic in literature such as endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. But I introduced other specificities of the historical operation such as the surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity, and a certain appropriation of literariness without damaging the pastness of the past. I emphasize two conclusions. First, I hope to have contributed in some measure to demystifying the idea that ‘classic’ and ‘canon’ are two notions that imply normativity, rigidity, traditionalism, uncritical inertia, or cultural supremacism. Second, I hope that this research will contribute to consolidating the field of ‘historical criticism’, or ‘critical analysis of historical texts’, complementary to but distinct from the theory of history and the history of historiography, which has begun to flourish in historiography in recent decades.

When we think in terms of the durability of historical texts, some works instantly come to mind: Herodotus’, Thucydides’, and Polybius’ war narratives, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Jules Michelet’s History of France, Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, Fernand Braudel’s Mediterranean, and Edward Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, among many others. Historians instantly perceive them as durable texts, part of a canon of history and historiography. I examine in this chapter the conditions that might be considered necessary for historical writing to achieve durability, justify why some historical texts have the potential for durability, propose what conditions of creation and reception enabled this longevity, and discuss what practical lessons we obtain from this inquiry. I begin making some distinctions among the three related concepts of durability, the classic, and the canon. I then try to establish the specific conditions of durability of historical texts, focusing on the concepts of Chronotope (Mikhail Bakhtin), the effect of contemporaneity (Gadamer and Koselleck), temporalization (Heidegger, Ricoeur), timelessness (Hartog), and the connections between the concepts of durability and the practical past (Oakeshott, Hayden White).

This chapter discusses the question of the plurality of historical genres practiced by historians, and their function as a galvanizer of the classics. I proceed first (‘Taxonomies’) by analyzing the theories, definitions, and taxonomies of historical genres developed by ancient scholars such as Cicero and Dionysius to the modern taxonomical project by twentieth century scholars. In the second section (‘Developments’), I provide a brief history of the development of historical genres over time, focusing especially on the moment of their emergence, from ancient and medieval ethnographies, biographies, genealogies, and chronicles to modern monographs and papers. In the last section (‘Reappraisals’), I combine the premodern and modern approaches described in the first two sections, assuming postmodern theories to apply them to the discernment of the classic and the canon in history/historiography. To conclude, I propose an ethical purpose that make historians more attentive to the new developments and possibilities of historical genres, to better adapt the historical form to its content, making it compatible with respect and appreciation for the classics of the discipline. A more comprehensive and flexible approach to historical genres may facilitate the task of those who envisage a more creative and innovative historical writing and production.

This chapter focuses on some specific features of the historical classic, offering a series of reflections to expand a debate on this complex topic. Based on some examples of the Western historiographical tradition, I discuss to what extent historians should engage the concept of the classic, as has been done for literary and artworks. I will argue that it is possible to identify a category of the classic text in historical writing. Because of their narrative condition, historical texts share some of the features assigned to literary texts such as durability, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. Yet, since historical texts do not construct imaginary worlds but try to achieve some realities external to the text, they also have to attain some specific features according to this referential content, such as the surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity, and a certain appropriation of ‘literariness’.

Arguing its relevance in historiography, and its connection with the related concept of the classic, this chapter examines the place of the canon in history: its formation, key turning points, convenience, usefulness, and the desirability of its existence itself. In the first part of the chapter (‘Constructions’), I examine the five main turning points in the formation of the canon in history: Greco-Roman, Collingwood-Croce, narrative history of the 1970s, gender and postcolonial, and global canon. The second part of the chapter (‘Canonizing’) examines three case studies of the canon in history: Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Macaulay’s History of England and White’s Metahistory. The third part (‘Resistances’) explores the rejection of the canon among historians, describes some of its manifestations and reflects on its motivations. The fourth part (‘Paradoxes’) details the main characteristics of the historical canon, points out the differences among other canons such as the literary and artistic, and explores the peculiar combination of art and science that every historical operation entails. The conclusive section (‘Inescapability’) argues for the great paradox of the canon: the impossibility of conducting cultural and intellectual exchanges without it.

The introduction of the book provides the heuristic, analytical, and methodological keys for the interpretation of the concepts of the classic and the canon in historiography. It details the interdisciplinary approach that has made this study possible, blending literary criticism, the critical analysis of historical texts, the theory of history, the history of historiography, hermeneutic philosophy, sociology, and biblical studies. It exposes the difficulties presented by the analysis of historiographical categories such as the classic and the canon, which privilege stability over instability and permanence over change. Finally, it lists the main primary sources used and synthesizes the content of each of the five chapters of the book, each of them dedicated to the main concepts analyzed: durability, classic, canon, genre, and genealogy.

For much of history, from the dawn of Greek historiography to the postmodern 1970s, genealogy has been synonymous with continuity of origins and blood identity, and therefore closely connected with the concepts of the classic and the canon. Yet, during the last half century, specially thanks to the Nietzschean and Foucauldian philosophical deployment, it has shed its narrative garb to become an agent of discontinuity, and thus the nemesis of the classic and the canon. Many scholars have analyzed the modern development of genealogies after Nietzsche’s alleged foundational statement and its Foucauldian reception. But none of them has provided a systematic history of the trajectory of this concept, from antiquity to the present. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by providing a history of the concept of genealogy and its associated ideas, delving specifically into its historiographical uses, and connecting it to the four previous concepts discussed in the book. I will, specifically, emphasize its polysemy, try to locate what has remained and what has changed in this long trajectory, and explain the (only recently) radically opposed nature (nemesis) between the concepts of genealogy and canon – and the implications that this opposition brings to historiography.

THE CONCEPT OF identity, originating from the social sciences, particularly psycho-logy, and even the experimental sciences, especially psychiatry, has been imported into the historical discipline during recent decades. Therefore, any attempt to define this concept calls for insight into the origin of its creation and consolidation in the disciplinary, academic, and scholarly panorama.

In this chapter I analyze the growing importance acquired by the concept of identity in historiography. This concept has been defined as “the process of construction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or a related set of cultural attributes, that is given priority over other sources of meaning.” The historiographical concept of identity is then closely tied to that of culture, and is therefore linked to the current prevailing historiographical trend, the new cultural history. Hence, in recent decades, history has been enhanced by means of incorporating and assimilating the concept of culture, originating from symbolic anthropology, and that of identity, from psychology and psychiatry. This new conceptual marriage has replaced both the grand narratives of postwar paradigms, the most radical postmodernist positions, and the linguistic turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Historiography has ceased to be concerned with analyzing rigid social and economic structures and with the anti-referential excesses of a radical postmodernism, and is increasingly placing greater emphasis on describing, analyzing, and inter preting “the mechanisms created by an individual or social group in order to recognize themselves and be recognized by the rest of the social conglomerate.” This approach allows resolution of the trend towards fragmentation in contemporary knowledge with reasonable certainty.

Firstly, we must start from the fact that the analysis and application of the concept of identity refers to two key realities in the study of history: individuality (which in much of academic literature written in English is identified by the term “self”) and collectivity. This dual facet of the concept is important, because both individuality and collectivity bring out and emphasize each other according to the historiographical moment in time. Broadly speaking, from the 1930s to the 1970s, the historical discipline became polarized in the study of social processes, more linked to the collective, by means of the emergence of trends grouped together by Lawrence Stone under the name of “paradigms”— namely, Marxism, Structuralism, and Quantitativism—in his programmatic article on the revival of narrative in 1979.

The fifth chapter explores the sacralisation and liturgification of the royal investiture ceremony in eighth- and ninth-century Western Europe. With the progressive fusion of the rites of unction and coronation in the Carolingian monarchy, the royal investiture ceremony was sacralised and liturgified, and confirmed the increasingly prominent function of the bishop as its ordinary minister. Ceremonial liturgification and iconographic Christification are the two main processes in the consolidation of the ideology and practice of Western monarchies from the eighth century. Carolingian ceremonial practices developed the basic ceremonies of royal accession which would become prevalent in medieval Europe and early modern monarchies, and constitute the main formative period for the ideology and rituals of medieval royalty in the West, between the mid-eighth century and the mid-ninth century. This sacralisation preludes the transgressive nature of the performance of self-coronation among some late Western medieval kings, in which the mediating function of the priest will be damaged. The iconographical Christ substitutes (or, perhaps more accurately, is transferred from) the pagan and theocentric models of pre-Carolingian ceremonies and rites.

This chapter analyses the five steps in the itinerary of the royal accession of the kings of Navarra from the eleventh century to the fourteenth: the effects of the restoration of the kingdom of Navarra in 1134 with the investiture of García Ramírez, against the will of the Pope; Theobald I of Champagne’s oath, which took place some years after his accession to the throne in 1234; the reintroduction of the anointment with Theobald II in 1257; Joanna II and Philip III of Navarra’s oath and anointment in 1329; and Charles III’s self-coronation in 1390. The evolution of the Navarrese royal accession ceremonies emphasises two specific characteristics of Navarrese politics: resistance to ecclesiastical mediation and consensualism. Charles III’s majestic self-coronation should not be regarded thus as an isolated or exceptional ritual since it responds to the tradition of the other Iberian kingdoms in which the ceremony of self-coronation had been enacted, reflects the particular idiosyncrasy of the kingdom of Navarra and reacts to a particular need generated in a given context, reinforcing once more the idea of the malleability of the rituals and the power of the king’s agency.

Based on the inductive analysis of the previous chapters of the book, the conclusion provides closing remarks on the historical, political, social, religious and symbolic meanings of the practice of self-coronation among medieval kings, using a long-term approach. From a political point of view, self-coronations are proofs of the activation of individual agency rather than the stability of established structures in the Middle Ages. This ritual demystifies certain anthropological tendencies to constrain the rites to the boundaries of their particular context or to fix them in an essentialist symbolic meaning. From a social perspective, medieval self-coronations pushed for collective innovation and dynamism. These rituals were in a perpetual state of flux, confirming anthropologists’ belief that ritual symbols are not static, absolute objectifications, but social and cultural systems, gathering meaning over time and altering in form. This contextualised approach to the seminal concept of the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’ requires us to revise a vision of the past altered by the lens of the modern nation-state and modern rationalism. Some of its qualities may be projected onto the present. The king’s skill in avoiding ecclesiastical mediation may help to explain the frontiers and limits between the temporal and spiritual, between politics and religion, which is essential for the stability of modern societies. In the end, the analysis and interpretation of self-coronations lead us to debunk the myth or grand narrative of the process of secularisation.

The eighth chapter studies the possible occurrence of Frederick II’s self-coronation in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Sunday, 17 March 1229, an event that remains shrouded in mystery. It is still difficult to discern the borders between reality and fiction, desire and its realisation, invention and propaganda. This chapter engages with the question of the extent to which we can affirm the historicity of Frederick II’s self-coronation. It addresses the crucial issue of the nature of this gesture, recognised as transgressive by posterity – but, importantly, not always by contemporaries – in the context of preconceived ideas about the relationship between the temporal and spiritual.It emphasises the provocative nature of Frederick’s ritual with the crown: an excommunicated king wearing the crown in the Holy Sepulchre, in the absence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, opposed by the military orders, eyed suspiciously by the aristocracy of Outremer and fighting off the armies of his former father-in-law in Sicily. It is natural that this gesture was received in the West with the opprobrium the emperor and his collaborators expected.