Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/19

Rh should also dominate the study of church and Reformation history, that entirely new methods be created, hitherto hidden sources brought to light, and radically new goals set.

This transplanting of the methods of Ranke's school into the field of church history, although already demanded and applied, especially by Renter in Breslau and Goettingen, and also by Kolde in Marburg and Erlangen,2 gained greater momentum since the beginning of the eighties. It was a stupendous step onward and not only forced the older church historians either to reform their methods or be dropped by the wayside, but also possessed the added advantage, that church history gradually lost its isolated position, and instead of being regarded as an isolated sphere was looked upon as something the understanding of which is only complete when linked with the understanding of contemporaneous events in secular history. And here again it was Kolde who grasped this truth more clearly than any one else and helped it to victory.3 It was also Kolde who proved that church history, even if placed within the range of secular history, does not lose its peculiar purpose and identity, nor that an impairment in any manner follows therefrom.

The second factor was this: In 1877 there appeared the first volume of the voluminous work "Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters," by Johann Janssen, professor in the catholic gymnasium of Frankfurt on the Main, and already in 1886 the fifth volume of this history was finished. In Frankfurt historical interests had always been cultivated. It had been the seat of the "Monumenta Germanise Historica" before these were transplanted to Berlin. In this old imperial city the Rankean school had worked like a leaven among