BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH HISTORY.--The scientific study of the history of France only begins with the 16th century. It was hampered at first by the traditions of the middle ages and by a servile imitation of antiquity. Paulus Aemilius of Verona (_De rebus gestis Francorum_, 1517), who may be called the first of modern historians, merely applies the oratorical methods of the Latin historiographers. It is not till the second half of the century that history emancipates itself; Catholics and Protestants alike turn to it for arguments in their religious and political controversies. Francois Hotman published (1574) his _Franco-Gallia_; Claude Fauchet his _Antiquites gauloises et francoises_ (1579); Etienne Pasquier his _Recherches de la France_ (1611), "the only work of erudition of the 16th century which one can read through without being bored." Amateurs like Petau, A. de Thou, Bongars and Peiresc collected libraries to which men of learning went to draw their knowledge of the past; Pierre Pithou, one of the authors of the _Satire Menippee_, published the earliest annals of France (_Annales Francorum_, 1588, and _Historiae Francorum scriptores coetanei XI._, 1596), Jacques Bongars collected in his _Gesta Dei per Francos_ (1611-1617) the principal chroniclers of the Crusades. Others made a study of chronology like J.J. Scaliger (_De emendatione temporum_, 1583; _Thesaurus temporum_, 1606), sketched the history of literature, like Francois Grude, sieur of La Croix in Maine (_Bibliotheque francoise_, 1584), and Antoine du Verdier (_Catalogue de tous les auteurs qui ont ecrit ou traduit en francais_, 1585), or discussed the actual principles of historical research, like Jean Bodin (_Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem_, 1566) and Henri Lancelot Voisin de La Popeliniere (_Histoire des histoires_, 1599).