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Historians don't state facts randomly. They don't fabricate them either. They follow what we call the Historical Method, or Quellenkritik, or Critique historique.

What's the purpose of the Historical Method?

Human societies leave written or non-written documents. For the sake of this argument I will only focus on written documents, especially since non-written documents are more often related to archaeological or art history studies than historical studies. Those scientific disciplines are deeply connected and they feed off each other but they each present specific methods related to their fields of inquiry. The written document is the specificity of the historian. Therefore I'll mostly focus on that.

The 17th century saw the rise and triumph of centralized states in Europe. Those states heavily relied on an administrative workforce to control, regulate and expand their authority. If the verbal agreement was still paramount in the 15th century, it wasn't the case anymore. However, a greater number of "paper pushers" meant that you needed to ascertain the validity of written documents. How could you be sure that a royal or papal letter was legitimate? You had to know how the documents were made and what they displayed. It became even more crucial when kings and princes pushed territorial claims as casi bellorum to legitimize going at war with their neighbours. Louis XIV, for example, became an expert at that game.

In the meantime, Jesuits were poking anywhere they could. They were highly educated, quite erudite, and they loved to prove people wrong—which partially contributed to their downfall. A group of them, the Bollandists, settled in the Low Countries and specialized in proving that hagiographies (the biographies of saints) were full of nonsense and historical inacuracies. It threatened the livelyhood of several religious congregation which relied on popular pilgrimage. Who would worship a relic that contained the bones of a made up saint?

Dom Mabillon rose to the challenge, on the matter of old Merovingian charters, and came up with a method to prove or disprove the validity of a document. He fathered diplomatic, the study and science of authentic documents. Do you wonder how Sherlock Holmes solved A Scandal in Bohemia? Well, he showed quite the diplomatic prowess in the very first chapter when he identified the origin of the paper upon which a letter was sent to him. We know Sherlock Holmes only solved murders through hard science: Sir Conan Doyle obviously thought of diplomatic as one of them.

The scene is actually a very good imaginary depiction of what a diplomatic examination should go for.

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The note was undated, and without either signature or address.

“There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o'clock,” it said, “a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask.”

“This is indeed a mystery,” I remarked. “What do you imagine that it means?”

“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?”

I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.

“The man who wrote it was presumably well to do,” I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. “Such paper could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff.”

“Peculiar—that is the very word,” said Holmes. “It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up to the light.”

I did so, and saw a large E with a small g**, a** P, and a large G with a small t woven into the texture of the paper.

“What do you make of that?” asked Holmes.

“The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather.”

“Not at all. The G with the small t stands for ‘Gesellschaft,’ which is the German for ‘Company.’ It is a customary contraction like our ‘Co.’ P**, of course, stands for ‘Papier.’ Now for the** Eg**.** Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer.” He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. “Eglow, Eglonitz—here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking country—in Bohemia**, not far from Carlsbad**. ‘Remarkable as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous glass factories and paper mills.’ Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make of that?” His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.

“The paper was made in Bohemia,” I said.

“Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper, and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts.”

The first thing you look for in a document are the date, the signature and the place it was made if there is any indication of it. Most medieval charters were already very specific on such things and mentioned who ordered the document, who wrote it, who signed it, to whom it was addressed, where it'd been written, etc. Sherlock had no such luck: no date, no signature and no address were displayed on the Bohemian letter.

That's why he looked at the material aspect of the document: the paper. Merovingians documents were often written on papyrus (that's why many of them didn't survive the passing of time). Late medieval charter were commonly written on parchments. Early modern documents are often written on paper. There are several kind of papyrus, parchment and paper. Those many and various types have been recorded by historians since Mabillon. Brichet has given an extensive directory on watermarks, for example. That's what Sherlock goes for once he's observed the letter was written on paper. Paper very often displayed a watermark before the industrial era. It showed its place of origin, which workshop had crafted it. I personnaly observed watermarks in a 15th century manuscript and it greatly helped me to date when it was made thanks to Brichet's directory.

Last but not least, Sherlock delves into a bit of philology. His observations are a bit blunt but they illustrate what to go for once you've dealt with the material aspect of a document: look closely at grammatical structures, lexicography and syntax. That's how Lorenzo Valla proved, back in the 16th century, that the pope's territorial claim to central Italy was based on a fake document! Once you know how Cicero wrote, for example, you can spot wether he's the author of a Latin text or not.

There is one thing Sherlock left out, however, and that is paleography: the study of the written word. What are their shapes? We do not write today as people used to write. There are regional and historical trends. I could open a digitized manuscript online and determine whether it dates from the 15th or the 14th century or if it was made in Italy or Germany only by looking at its scripta. I do have Derolez's directory about gothic scripts at home.

So this is the purpose of the historical method: to ascertain through empirical observations whether a document is true or false.