Note 97 — Chapter IV

See J. G. Droysen, Grundriss der Historik, p. 19: "Critical classification does not exclusively adopt the chronological point of view.... The more varied the points of view which criticism uses to group materials, the more solid are the results yielded by converging lines of inquiry." The system has now been abandoned of grouping documents in a Corpus or in regesta, as was done formerly, because they have the common characteristic of being unedited, or possibly for the exactly opposite reason. At one time the compilers of Analecta, Reliquiæ manuscriptorum, "treasuries of anecdota," spicilegia, and so on, used to publish all the documents of a certain class which had the common feature of being unedited and of appearing interesting to them; on the other hand, Georgisch (Regesta Chronologico-diplomatica), Bréquigny (Table chronologique des diplômes, chartes et actes imprimés concernant l'histoire de France), Wauters (Table chronologique des chartes et diplômes imprimés concernant l'histoire de Belgique), have grouped together all the documents of a certain species which had the common character of having been printed.