Confronta i metodi

	Palaeographic Dating	Source Criticism
Campo	Historiography	Historiography
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	1708	1889
Ideatore	Bernard de Montfaucon (Palaeographia Graeca)	Leopold von Ranke; Bernheim and Langlois-Seignobos codification
Tipo	qualitative comparative method	qualitative critical method
Fonte seminale	Guyotjeannin, O., Pycke, J., & Tock, B.-M. (1993). Diplomatique medievale (L'Atelier du medieviste, 2). Brepols. ISBN: 9782503503127	Howell, M., & Prevenier, W. (2001). From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Cornell University Press. ISBN: 9780801485602
Alias	Palaeography, Paleographic Analysis, Script Dating, Hand Analysis	Quellenkritik, Historical Criticism, External and Internal Criticism, Heuristic and Critical Method
Correlati	4	4
Sintesi	Palaeography is the study of historical handwriting, and palaeographic dating is its application to the problem of assigning a manuscript to a time and place by the character of its script alone. Developed as a discipline by the Maurist scholar Bernard de Montfaucon, who coined the term in his Palaeographia Graeca (1708), and complemented for Latin by the work that grew out of Mabillon's diplomatics, palaeography rests on the fact that scripts evolved continuously and regionally. Letter forms, the system of abbreviations, ligatures, the angle and weight of strokes, and the overall layout of the page all changed over time and differed between scribal centers. A trained palaeographer reads these features as a stylistic signature, comparing an undated hand against securely dated specimens to bracket its probable date and origin. Because so many medieval and ancient sources bear no date, palaeographic dating is an indispensable instrument of external source criticism.	Source criticism (Quellenkritik) is the foundational procedure of the historical discipline, by which a scholar interrogates a source before treating any of its statements as evidence. Codified in the nineteenth century by Ernst Bernheim and by Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, and rooted in Ranke's insistence on examining documents at first hand, the method divides into two complementary operations. External (or lower) criticism establishes whether a source is what it purports to be: its authenticity, the integrity of its text, its author, place, and date. Internal (or higher) criticism then asks what the source means and how far its assertions can be trusted, weighing the author's competence, sincerity, proximity to events, and interests. Only after both passes does the historian compare independent sources and synthesize a defensible account. The discipline of the method lies precisely in its refusal to take any testimony at face value.