I'd say that the application is hardly for historical reasons only. Amateur radio linear amplifiers often used bridge rectifiers having three and four diodes in each leg. Kilowatt linear amps might have had supplies pushing 1500 volts and 2 amps. Although diodes may have been available to handle the PIV as a single unit, they may not have been able to handle the current. In any case, when diodes are in series and reverse-biased, their resistance is very high, but not necessarily equal. If one diode is exceptionally high in reverse resistance, it can take the brunt of all of the reverse voltage being applied, whether as the normal reverse voltage or as a transient spike. High-value resistors across the individual diodes equalized the normal reverse voltage across all the diodes while ceramic caps (10nF or so) across each diode took care of the faster transients.
Dean