ABSTRACT
The broad impression given by literary and religious historians is that the Catholic Revival was part of the Romantic Movement; which implies that religious medievalism, the Gothic Revival and Catholicism are romantic, or more romantic than classic. English religious medievalism was not an isolated phenomenon, and was invigorated by the more defined religious medievalism of the Continent. The first seeds of the romantic revolt floated from England to the Continent, rather than vice versa, and the work of Thomas Percy, Richard Hurd and James Macpherson turned many European minds to the distant past. The development of historicism was a crucial factor in the growth of medievalism. Historicism supposes that the truth and value of phenomena are best perceived in the light of the immediate historical context, and, sometimes, in the light of an alleged historical development, involving entities such as Culture, National Spirit, Humanity or Reality.
