How did diplomatics develop into a historical science?

Diplomatics developed into a historical science primarily through the need to establish rigorous standards for verifying the authenticity of official documents. While the term relates to ancient practices of folding documents, the field emerged as a formal discipline in the 17th century to resolve disputes over the legitimacy of medieval records.12

The decisive impetus for this development was a controversy between the Jesuit scholar Daniel van Papenbroeck and the Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon. After Papenbroeck claimed that many early-medieval monastic documents were forgeries, Mabillon published his seminal work, De Re Diplomatica (1681). In this text, Mabillon established the fundamental principles for analyzing the internal and external features of manuscripts, effectively founding diplomatics as a reputable science.341

Following Mabillon’s work, the field continued to evolve through the publication of comprehensive treatises and the establishment of specialized institutions, such as the École des Chartes in 1821. Later, 19th-century scholars like Theodor von Sickel further refined the science by developing techniques for comparing scripts and differentiating between legal procedures and their formal documentation.4