The history, said the French Academy in 1654, is the account of the things worthy of memory. It is collective memory, not simple juxtaposition of individual, biological or genealogical memories.
All the difficulty in defining the history lies in the composition even of the community, the choices which this one in the past carries out that she wants to preserve or obliterate, even the deteriorations authorized in the account of this past.
The trade of historian does not merge any more, today, with the establishment of a consensual “truth” not disturbing. But the traversed way is long since the origins until the contemporary definition of the rights and duties of a historian.