On the Use of Natural Law 55 Renaissance historiography ha a didactic function existing parallel to its official task. It could make reference to human interrelationships, although also this has a political purpose. In Germany humanists normally wrote ecclesiastical history, which must be seen as a part of the religious conflicts of the time. Here Melanchton was an influence among Protestants. This was also another reason why political history was left to jurists.® The works written could be monographs, about the life of a prince or about a certain war, for example. This was one common form of humanistic historiography. Universal history was the other great trend. At the beginning and for a long time it was of strongly religious character.® Later it became secularized, but then the total picture was no longer as coherent as had previously been the case. In Germany, the Dutch neostoical school, whose most prominent proponent was Lipsius, also became important. The task of politics was to create order. In this, history had a special purpose: to provide models. These were primarily taken from classical antiquity. All this led to studies of the past with the explicit purpose of creating a handbook of political ethics and of statecraft. Among the German universities these ideas were particularly prominent at Strassburg and Jena.^® Samuel Pufendorf may obviously be put into this context. He was a jurist and his historical works were written within both of the genres mentioned here. His first book was in universal history, the infamous Severinus Monzamhano, in which he wrote about Germany, and, later, his Introduction to the History. Among his monographs the most famous in Swedish history were on Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina, and on Charles Gustavus, and, in Brandenburgian history, on Frederick WilliamIII and the fragment on Frederick III. Pufendorf as a Historian Pufendorf had studied at Leipzig and Jena, receiving his deepest intellectual influences at the latter university. The teaching of law at these two academies had long belonged to the more conservative school in Germany, but later the ncostoical school had an impact at Jena.^^ Pufendorf can be said to belong to this school, even if his greatest interest was contem^porary history. The work on German history was published under a pseudonym. It was written when Pufendorf was a professor at Heidelberg. Swedish students listened to his lectures there and spoke about them when they returned ® Krieger p 173 f. » ibid, pp 173—175. Notker Hammerstein, Jus und Historic, Göttingen 1972. p 238 f. Schug loc. cit., Hammerstein loc. cit.
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