Not only did the historiography of the enlightenment render history more 'interior' and develop it in its interiority, but it also broadened it in space and time. Here too Voltaire represents in an eminent degree the needs of his age, with his continual accusations of narrowness and meanness levelled at the traditional image of universal history, as composed of Hebrew or sacred history and Græco-Roman or profane history, or, as he says, _histoires prétendues universelles, fabriquées dans notre Occident._ A beginning was made with the use of the material discovered, transported, and accumulated by explorers and travellers from the Renaissance onward, of which a considerable part had been contributed by the Jesuits and by missionaries. India and China attracted attention, both on account of their antiquity and of the high grade of civilization to which they had attained. Translations of religious and literary Oriental texts were soon added to this, and it became possible to discuss that civilization, not merely at second-hand and according to the narratives of travellers. This increase of knowledge relating to the East is paralleled by increase of knowledge not only in relation to antiquity (these studies were never dropped, but changed their centre, first from Italy to France and Holland, then to England, and then to Germany), but also in regard to the Middle Ages, in the works of the Benedictines, of Leibnitz, Muratori, and very many others, who here also specialized both as regards the objects of their researches and as to the regions or cities in which they conducted them, as for instance De Meo in his _Annali critici del Regno di Napoli._