Diplomatics as a discipline begins in the seventeenth century with an argument between a Jesuit and a Benedictine monk about the authenticity of charters. The Benedictine’s seminal treatise De Re Diplomatica gave the discipline an identity, the core of which is preserved in treatises on ‘pure’ Diplomatics, and also specifically on papal Diplomatics, up to the present day. The discipline’s boundaries did not remain static, however, and already in the eighteenth century a tradition of applying Diplomatics to substantive historical problems had begun. After World War II Heinrich Fichtenau defined the contours of applied Diplomatics.