Historicity

The state or fact of actually having existed in history. The characteristic of an object having historical authenticity.Magna CartaMemorabilia associated with different people and events commands varying sorts of interest. Similarly, the power of even the most historic objects is relative. In December of 2007, Sotheby's sold a copy of see thumbnail to rightMagna Carta, one of seventeen extant from 13th century England. Actually a copy of a copy, it was signed by King Edward I eighty-two years after King John signed the original Magna Carta in 1215, and yet this document's historicity is so compelling, the highest bidder paid $21,321,000 ?the most ever paid for a page of text. If you click on the link to a larger view of it, you can print a copy of this copy of a copy. What will be that print's historicity? What could make its historicity compelling thousands of years in the future?Quote A dealer in antiquities holds up two identical Zippo lighters, one of which supposedly belonged to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and says, "One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object has ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it? ... You can't. You can't tell which is which. There's no 'mystical plasmic presence,' no 'aura' around it." Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), American science fiction writer. The Man in the High Castle, 1962.(pr. HIS-tə-RI-sə-tee)Also see art history, collectible, counterfeit, description, forgery, material culture, memory, posterity, posthumous, provenance, quality, realia, replica, reproduction, seal, simulacrum, souvenir, and time.