Almost identical in method with the Bene dictines was the work of the Jansenist, Louis Sebastian de Tillemont (1637-1698), on the his tory of the Church and the Roman Empire to 600 A.D. His product was highly objective, being primarily a mosaic pieced together from sources which were selected to harmonize but were not altered. It was one of the earliest of modern historical works to include a critical discussion of the principal sources for each period. His solid work, designed as a pillar of Christian doctrine, was one of the chief sources used by the sceptical Gibbon. A similar example of the new erudite methods was the researches into the history of the Guelfs car ried on by the German philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) in his (Annals of the House of Brunswick.' A step was taken towards the development of internal criticism by the great Italian, Muratori (1672-1750), who made a number of advances over his mas ter, Mabillon. He was as critical of miracles as Blondus and departed widely from the Bene dictine practice of regarding contemporary sources as infallible. The methods of Mabillon and Muratori were combined with some faint anticipation of the romanticist conception of historical development in Rain Thoyras' (1661 1735) (History of England,) which long re mained the chief source on the Continent for the history of 17th century England. Finally, in the co-operative pro duced by the English scholars, Campbell, Sale, Swinton, Bower and Psalmanazar, the erudite school published the most scholarly universal history since the humanist attempt in the (En neades) of Sabellicus. While thoroughly pious in its approach, it has been called by no less authoritative a critic than Fueter the first universal history worthy of the While Vadianus, Muratori and Thoyras had shown at least an embryonic power of criti cizing the credibility of contemporary or ((pri mary," sources and documents, the real begin ning of the searching internal criticism of his torical documents must be assigned to the work of the Jesuits. Having been put upon the de fensive by the Protestant onslaughts, they were compelled to examine the sources of ecclesias tical history to discover what portion of the old traditions and legends would bear the test of scientific scrutiny. By this means they hoped to eliminate the damaging criticism of the Church by Protestant historians who ridiculed the many crude and obviously false legends connected with the Catholic past. The chief example of this Jesuit criticism was the monu mental 'Acta Sanctorum,) begun by the Belgian Jesuits under Bolland's direction in 1643. Here the sources bearing on the lives of the various saints were arranged according to their age and authenticity. A much more healthy spirit of criticism was exhibited by Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) in his (Historical and Critical Dic and in his criticism of the history of Calvinism by Maimbourg. Bayle took especial delight in pointing out the grave discrepancies between the views and opinions of contem porary authorities and did not hesitate to ex tend his methods to the examination of history. Since the period of humanism the his torians of classical antiquity had been regarded with a reverent confidence second only to the ((Fathers.* Valla had questioned some asser tions of Livy, but it was left for Louis de Beaufort (d. 1795) in his sur l'incertitude des cinq premiers siecles de l'his toire romainc,) to prove that the divergence in the accounts of the period by the great classical authorities indicated that the history of Rome before the third century Lc. rested almost wholly on legendary material. The work of Beaufort marked a break with humanism in attitude and method as well as in style. The most obscure member of this critical school, but perhaps the ablest historian before Niebuhr was Jean Baptiste Dubos (1672-1740). His 'Histoire critique de l'establissement de la monarchic francaise dans les Gaules' was the first attempt to turn the new critical methods upon the study of institutions. In as objective a spirit as that exhibited by Ranke he examined the documentary sources for the early history of France and anticipated Fauriel and Cou langes in proving that the Merovingians had merely adapted and not displaced Roman cul ture in Gaul. He also anticipated the roman ticists in possessing a grasp upon the concep tion of the gradual and organic development of civilization which was vastly superior to the catastrophic theory of the contemporary ration alists. In this respect he marked an advance in the direction of Moser. Less critical, but more trul historical was the of by Justus Moser (1720-94), regarded by many as the first real constitutional history, in that it showed the manner in which political institutions develop out of the deeper social and economic forces in the life of a state. It was a disciple of Wiser, Barthold Georges Niebuhr (1776-1831), who is conventionally re garded as the creator of modern historiography, but if the foregoing discussions have shown anything they have proved that no single per sonality or school can be regarded as having brought into existence the totality of modern historical science. Niebuhr, a Dane called to the new University of Berlin by Humboldt in 1810, is one of the best examples of this tend ency to synthesize the progressive methods of his predecessors. He was influenced by Savigny s romanticism in the study of the evolution of legal and political institutions. He followed Moser in his profound conception of the development of political institutions. Finally, he applied to the sources of early Ro man history the critical methods which had been adopted by Wolf in his epoch-making studies of the authorship of the Homeric poems. His 'Roman History) was the first book to combine the best of the newer critical methods with the constructive principles of synthetic in stitutional history, and it was the chief source of inspiration for the historical work of his successors, Leopold von Ranke and r Mommsen.
Von Ranke (1795-1886) first became inter ested in history through his studies in classical literature, the influence of romanticism and the reading of Niebuhr. His immediate activity as a historian was initiated by his discovery of the wide divergence between the accounts of the events of the 15th century in Italian his tory as presented by the leading contemporary authorities. This led to the publication in 1824 of his 'History of the Romance and Germanic Peoples, 1494-1535.) Its most significant por tion was the appendix, entitled Kritik neuerer Geschichtschreiber,' and devoted to an analysis of the sources of information for the period that he had covered. This did for in
ternal and interpretative criticism what Mobil lon's treatise on diplomatic had done for ex ternal criticism, or the critical study of texts, It was Ranke's great contribution to historical method to have insisted that the historian must not only use strictly contemporary sources of information, but must also make a thorough study of the personality, °tendencies') and ac tivities of the author to determine as far as possible the personal equation in his record of events. There were two more fundamental characteristics in the historical mechanism of Ranke, namely, the conception derived from the romanticists that every nation and age is domi nated by a prevalent set of ideas, designated by Ranke, the and the doctrine that the historian must view the past wholly freed from the prejudices of the present and must narrate the events of the past usvie es eigentlich ge wesen.p His defects have been pointed out by later writers as the failure to exhaust the sources available for any subject upon which he wrote and a primary concern with political events and dominating personalities to the neglect of the more fundamental facts of economic and social, and even of political, life. While he ranged over the entire history of Europe and the world and left an enduring mark upon every field, it was his contributions to historical methods and teaching which were mainly significant for the growth of historiog raphy. To historical method he contributed primarily through his formulation of the prin ciples of internal criticism and his insistence upon entire objectivity in the treatment of the past. His influence upon historical scholarship through his teaching was probably greater than through the exemplification of his methods• in his written works. That fundamental instru ment for the advancement of historical scholar ship in the academic world — the Historical Seminar — was founded by Ranke in 1833 and it served to train not only the leading German historians, but historical students from all over the world who came to serve in the historical laboratory which he maintained during the period of half a century. When Ranke became too aged to conduct his seminar with effective ness, his greatest pupil, George Waitz, adopted the methods of his master at the University of Gottingen, where nearly every leading medimval ist of the last generation received at least a part of his training.
With the work of Ranke the foundations of modern historical scholarship were finally laid. The progress since his time has consisted pri marily in a further refinement of critical meth ods and their general dissemination among a continually growing body of historical scholars. This progressive expansion of scientific his torical scholarship has been in part the result of the direct imitation of Ranke's methods by his students and in part the outgrowth in every country of those same preliminary conditions and developments which made the work of Ranke possible.
In Germany the growth of the critical school of historiography was primarily the result of the work of Ranke. Among his pupils were Kopke, Jaffe, Waitz, Giesebrecht and Von Sybel who perpetuated the methods of their master in their own writings and teaching. Waitz prob ably surpassed Ranke in the thoroughness and exactness of his scholarship. The existence of independent sources of the new scholarship is best seen in the case of Mommsen, who was a product of the same general circumstances that made the work of Ranke possible, and who fully equalled Ranke in the field of schol arship. In the generation since Droysen, Treitschke and Svbel, the works of the younger contributors to German history have shown more perfectly the objectivity of Ranke and have eliminated the errors due to the rabid patriotism of their predecessors. Moriz Ritter has produced the most detailed and scholarly treatment of the Thirty Years' War and the events of the Counter-Reformation. Bernhard Erdmannsdorffer has dealt with great scholar ship and candor with the period from the Thirty Years' War to the accession of Fred erick the Great and has rejected Droysen's laudatory picture of the early Hohenzollerns and their amission.x' R. Koser, in what is probably the most scholarly biographical pro duct of modern critical historiography, has re moved from Frederick the Great the halo with which he was adorned by Droysen and Carlyle. The period from Jena to the Revolution of 1848 has been studied by Hans Delbriick, Max Leh mann and F. Meinecke with much greater fair ness, poise and scholarship than was exhibited by Treitschke. Erich Marcks and Max Lenz have removed from Bismarck the °Sunday with which he was dressed by Sybel and have laid bare his policies and intrigues. Alfred Stern is engaged upon what is by far the most exhaustive and scholarly history of Europe in the 19th century. Further, the influ ence of the Ecole des Chartes in improving the exact methods of handling documents has been evident in the Germanies in the work of such men as Sickel and the foundation of the Vienna Historical Institute in 1854. The general nature of German historical scholarship as exemplified in the adoption of critical methods is best ob servable in the co-operative work edited by W. Oncken, (Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzel darstellungen' ; and in the der deutschen Geschichte,) which has been in pro cess of publication by the Historical Commis sion of the Munich Academy since 1862. The most erudite and complete synthesis of scien tific historical methodology ever prepared has been produced by E. Bernheim, though G. Wolf has more recently made a creditable contribu tion to this field. The discussion of the ap plication of this new critical scholarship to the field of German political history should not cause one to lose sight of the fact that equal progress has been made in the field of Church history since the days of the Centurians. In terest in this subject was revived by Neander in the first half of the 19th century. In the work of Hinschius, Richter and Sohm on the canon law ; Hauck's history of the German Church; the labors of Hefele and Hergen riither on the councils; Pastor's history of the Popes of the Harnack's monu mental history of Christian dogma, and Kraus' history of Christian art, are to be seen works which rank with the best products of critical political historiography.