And then the primary framework of modern historiography was invented.  A hunt was launched for manuscripts which were declared as ancient. The main body of sources on the history of antiquity appeared over only 2 centuries - the 15th and 16th.  How this happened is well known not only to critics of traditional historiography, but also to the traditionalists themselves.

   The ancient manuscripts appeared according to a scheme which is well seen in the example of one of the brightest forgers of that time, Poggio Bracciolini. He, an author of historical and moralistic books, was in the full sense of the word the dominant influence of his century.  Many found it possible to define the first half of the Italian 15th Century as Poggio's century.   Florence raised a statue to him, which was carved by the sculpture Donatello.

     With the cooperation of the Florentine scholar and book collector Niccolo Niccoli, Poggio Bracciolini established a kind of permanent study of ancient literature and attracted a whole series of collaborators and partners to the business.

      Poggio Bracciolini and Bartolomeo di Montepulciano made thefirst of their "finds" in the era of the Council of Constance.  In a forgotten, damp tower of the St. Gall monastery, in which a prisoner would not survive even three days, they chanced "to find" safe and sound a heap of ancient manuscripts:  essays by Quintilian, Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus, Nonius Marcellus, Probus and others.    After some time, Bracciolini supposedly discovered fragments "from Petronius" and "the Bucolics" of Calpurnius.   

        Poggio's clients were the Medici, the aristocratic families of England , the House of the Dukes of Burgundy, Cardinal Orsini, Colonus, the wealthy such as Bartholomeo de
Bardis, and universities.  He became very rich on "ancient" manuscripts.