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WILHELM VON GIESEBRECHT[1]
When Giesebrecht died, on 18th December last, there was no difficulty or difference in fixing his place amongst his peers. His rightful rank was ascertained and undisputed. He never became a European classic, like Ranke and Mommsen alone of the German historians. He was neither the head of a school, like Waitz, nor the chief of a party, like Sybel. Disciples of Baur knew more than he about the growth of doctrines, and disciples of Richter about ecclesiastical institutions. Sohm and Gierke were superior to him in politics and law ; Ficker and Denifle were more powerful originators. He did not speak with authority of the things that came before Clovis or after Manfred. Nobody turned to him for explanation of the fitful slumber of the civil code, the rise of universities, the philosophy of Abelard, or the significance and proportion of Citeaux. His limitations were distinctly marked, and they were part of his strength. He spent a long life of labour in mastering a single epoch and writing a single book. But among all his countrymen employed on the Middle Ages no one was more widely known, and read, and trusted ; and his Kaiserzeit was the nearest mediaeval equivalent of the Römische Geschichte and the Zeitalter der Reformation.
He gave himself up, until he was near forty, to the occult studies of the critic, and acquired an almost faultless knowledge of the sources, in print and manuscript, down to the thirteenth century. His training and skill were
- ↑ English Historical Review, vol. v. 1890.
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