section_path: Modern perceptions and historiography
section_name: Modern perceptions and historiography
paragraph_text: Modern perceptions and historiography
  
  According to David Lindberg, the medieval period has frequently been described as a "time of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition" which placed "religious authority above personal experience and rational activity". This is a legacy of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when scholars favourably contrasted their intellectual culture with the past. 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 viewed the Middle Ages as a time of ignorance and superstition. One misconception is that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat. This is untrue; lecturers in medieval universities commonly argued that evidence indicated the Earth was a sphere. Science historian Edward Grant said, "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".
  
  During the 19th century, the brutality of the French Revolution sparked intense nostalgia for the medieval period. This medievalism inspired several influential intellectuals, including British historian Thomas Carlyle (d. 1881), French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (d. 1879), and German composer Richard Wagner (d. 1883). Romantic nationalism sought the origins of modern nations in the Middle Ages, stimulating oppressed ethnic groups' national awakening and the expansionism of empires. The professionalisation of historical study began with the German historian Leopold von Ranke (d. 1886). He emphasised primary sources and studied several aspects of history, but his students focused on political history. Historians of the French Annales school such as the medievalist Marc Bloch (d. 1944) broadened their perspective, examining culture, society, and identity. Marxism, with its emphasis on class conflict, influenced historical research in the Soviet Bloc. Monographs on the medieval history of certain groups such as women, Jews, slaves, heretics and homosexuals have been regularly published since the 1970s, with the influx of people from diverse social backgrounds into universities.