Jean Barbeyrac editor of Gerard Noodt

One of the interpretative proposals supporting this research is the various and complex discussions developed on the opposite, yet substantially equivalent risk of the dogmatic acceptance of all the religious 'testimonies' and of the radical, corrosive destructive action of 'historic Pyrrhonism'. Examination of the polemic regarding the value of the fides historica has here taken its initiative from Gronovius' interventions as a symbolic moment wherein it is shown that among the main reasons inspiring the querelle the leading philosophical one is of the certainty of history, the definition, that is to say, of its value and limits, and the conditions which make knowledge of it possible. The study of the documented "fact" (Lex Regia) obliges one to reject every abstract conceptual overlapping to confer a marked historical depth on erudite antiquary work which, as an essential component of theoretical-historiographical discourse, becomes the sign or the look-out post for a new combination of 'philosophical history' and antiquary method, of erudition and philosophy, of reason and history.