that's the difference between history and chronicle, history is thought and nothing exists outside thought while chronicle is rememberance, both are based on testimonies, documents... though. I quote the full article about Croce, hope it helps. Croce's main identification of philosophy and history influences all his historiographical methodology. The reference work on methodology of history is Zur Teorie und Geschichte der Historiographie. Every history is contemporary history, for history is the unity of life and thought. Every thought is historical, for thought has already been and every history has already thought. Contemporaneity is an intrinsic character of every history, for history is thought, a synthetic unity with life. Only an interest resulting from present life can move the inquiry of an historical event; and contemporary history can be defined really history only if it answers the demands of the present. History is always constructed on documents, for without reference to documents it would remained unproved. As testimonies, documents are simple data or simple facts, they are the statement of the historian's living interest. The difference between history and chronicle is based on the historian's spiritual attitude and not on the selection of historical or non-historical events. Events are historical, for they are thought and nothing exists outside of thought. A non-historical event would not be thought and therefore would not be existing. History is living history, while chronicle is dead history, and after all it is not longer history. Contemporary history as an act of thought is opposed to chronicle as an act of volition. Every history becomes chronicle when it is not more thought, but only remembered. History separate from the alive document is chronicle and it is no more a spiritual action, but just a complex of sounds and empty words. Even if recombined and reordered, chronicles remain empty narrations. Restored, reproduced documents remain always and solely dumb things. Philological history is a simple compilation, often useful, but always deprived of historical thought, for truth does lie in itself but in the extrinsic authority of the documents. Croce criticizes not only the historical form of chronicles, but also poetic pseudo-history. If history is the history of spirit, and if the spirit is the only conceivable value, it follows that history is always history of values. The determining value, however, is not the artistic feeling expressed by poetry, which is neither life nor thought. It is not an error to write poetic pseudo-history, it is an error to pretend to write history instead of poems or narrations. In fact, poetry is a subject that is spiritually inferior to history. Not all history, however, can be universal history if it does not regard a concrete action or event and claims instead to construct empty narrations out of a number of elements. History must not to universal history, but it must be history of the universal. History is thought, therefore it is thought of the universal in its concreteness always determined in the particular. History is expression of judgments, it is synthesis of the individual and the universal. The individual is the subject of the judgment and the universal is the predicate. According to Croce, however, the true subject of history is the predicate, because the judgment determines the way to characterize the universal. Before the Second World War, Croce excludes from his historical methodology the moral evaluation of events. Historians must not apply moral qualifications to events or human beings. Historical consciousness, as thought, is logical and not practical consciousness. The lived history is thought in consciousness, and in thought disappears the antithesis of volition and feeling. In history there are no bad or good events, all events are good if they are conceived in the light of the concept. The history is never executioner, it justifies always. It could be executioner only by becoming unjust, i.e, when it confuses thought with life or the judgment of thought with the attractions and the repulsions of feeling. The task of history instead, according to Croce, lies in setting man free from the oppressive weight of the past. Philosophy is a necessary moment of the methodology of history, i.e., it is the clarification of the constituent categories of the historical judgments.
