His earlier work Bibliotheca selecta (1593) announced a programmatic role for history as a guiding principle in his organization of his Jesuit encyclopedia in Historia, in Disciplinis.
Possevino's De Humana Historia, Book 16, is a first elaboration of his re-edition of the culture of the ars historica as part of a papally sanctioned programme of Catholic learning.
[3] Possevino's title is in direct contest with the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem 1560 of Jean Bodin.
Obscuring the uses he was to make of this heterodox source, the Jesuit issued a censure of the work in his Iudicium of 1592 and had it placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum.
With this work Possevino refashioned the ars historica culture and literature of the Late Renaissance as a cornerstone of the Jesuit classicism of the Baroque.