Middle Ages Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Modern perceptions and historiography== {{see also|Dark Ages (historiography)|Medieval studies|Middle Ages in popular culture}} [[File:Gossuin de Metz - L'image du monde - BNF Fr. 574 fo42.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=A page from a manuscript depicting the earth with people standing on it.|Medieval illustration of the [[spherical Earth]], in a 14th-century copy of ''[[Gautier de Metz|L'Image du monde]]'']] The medieval period is frequently caricatured as a "time of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition" that placed "religious authority above personal experience and rational activity" ([[David C. Lindberg|David Lindberg]]).{{sfn|Lindberg|2003|p=7}} This is a legacy from both the [[Renaissance]] and [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] when scholars favourably contrasted their intellectual cultures with those of the medieval period. Renaissance scholars saw the Middle Ages as a period of decline from the high culture and civilisation of the classical world. Enlightenment scholars saw reason as superior to faith, and thus viewed the Middle Ages as a time of ignorance and superstition.{{sfn|Davies|1996|pp=291β293}} The caricature of the period is reflected in some more specific notions. One misconception is that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the [[Myth of the flat Earth|Earth was flat]].{{sfn|Russel|1991|pp=49β58}} This is untrue, as lecturers in the medieval universities commonly argued that evidence showed the Earth was a sphere.{{sfn|Grant|1994|pp=626β630}} Science historian [[Edward Grant]] even argues, "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason, they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities".{{sfn|Grant|2001|p=9}} In the {{nowrap|19th century}}, the brutality of the [[French Revolution]] raised an intense nostalgia for the medieval period. This [[medievalism]] gave inspiration to several influential intellectuals, including the British historian [[Thomas Carlyle]] (d. 1881), the French architect [[EugΓ¨ne Viollet-le-Duc]] (d. 1879), and the German composer [[Richard Wagner]] (d. 1883). [[Romantic nationalism]] sought the origins of modern nations in the Middle Ages, stimulating both oppressed ethnic groups' [[national revival|national awakening]] and the expansionism of empires.{{sfn|Rubin|2014|pp=6β9}} The professionalisation of historical studies began with the German historian [[Leopold von Ranke]] (d. 1886). He put a special emphasis on primary sources, and studied several aspects of life, but his students mainly focused on political history. Historians of the French {{lang|fr|[[Annales school|Annales]]}} school, such as the medievalist [[Marc Bloch]] (d. 1944), broadened their perspective, also intensively examining culture, society, and identity. [[Marxism]] with its emphasis on [[class conflict]] directly influenced historical research in the [[Soviet Bloc]]. Monographies on the medieval history of certain groups such as women, Jews, slaves, heretics and homosexuals have been regularly published from the 1970s, not independently of the influx of people of diverse social background into the universities.{{sfn|Arnold|2021|pp=8β15}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page