“In Luther’s view the Middle Ages, whose history was fashioned by the Popes, was a period of darkest night.... This view of the Middle Ages, particularly of the chief factor in mediæval life, viz. the Church in which it found its highest expression, is one-sided and distorted.” Such is the opinion of a modern Protestant historian. He is sorry that false ideas of the mediæval Church and theology “have been sheltered so long under the ægis of the reformer’s name.”[364]--“It will not do,” a lay Protestant historian, as early as 1874, had told the theologians of his faith, speaking of Köstlin’s work “Luthers Theologie,” “to ignore the contemporary Catholic literature when considering Luther and the writings of the reformers.... It is indispensable that the condition of theology from about 1490 to 1510 should be carefully examined. We must at all costs rid ourselves of the caricatures we meet with in the writings of the reformers, and of the misunderstandings to which they gave rise, and learn from their own writings what the theologians of that time actually thought and taught.” “Paradoxical as it may sound, it is just the theological side of the history of the Reformation which, at the present day, is least known.”[365] During the last fifty years German scholars have devoted themselves with zeal and enthusiasm to the external and social aspect of the Middle Ages. That great undertaking, the “_Monumenta Germaniæ historica_,” its periodical the “Archiv,” and a number of others dealing largely with mediæval history brought Protestants to a juster and more objective appreciation of the past. Yet the theological, and even in some respects the ecclesiastical, side has been too much neglected, chiefly because so many Protestant theologians were scrupulous about submitting the subject to a new and unprejudiced study. Hence the astonishment of so many when Johannes Janssen, with his “History of the German People,” and, to pass over others, Heinrich Denifle with his work on Luther entered the field and demonstrated how incorrect had been the views prevalent since Luther’s time concerning the doctrine and the ecclesiastical life of his age. Astonishment in many soon made way for indignation; in Denifle’s case, particularly, annoyance was caused by a certain attitude adopted by this author which led some to reject in their entirety the theologico-historical consequences at which he arrived, whilst even Janssen was charged with being biassed. Other Protestants, however, have learned something from the Catholic works which have since made their appearance in greater numbers, have acknowledged that the ideas hitherto in vogue were behind the times and have invited scholars to undertake a more exact study of the materials.