[5] As with many of the early programs at Roman Catholic institutions, it drew its strengths from the revival of medieval scholastic philosophy by such scholars as Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, both of whom made regular visits to the university in the 1930s and 1940s.
[8][7]: 112–13 The 1990s saw a further wave of Medieval-Studies foundations, partly prompted by the dynamism brought to the field by its embracing of postmodernist thought and the associated rise of neo-medievalism in popular culture.
Henry Hallam's 1818 View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages has been seen as a key stage in the promotion of the term, along with Ruskin's 1853 Lectures on Architecture.
[9]: 678–79 This gave nineteenth-century Romantic scholars, in particular, the intellectual freedom to imagine the Middle Ages as an anti-modernist utopia—whether a place nostalgically to fantasise about a more conservative, religious, and hierarchical past or a more egalitarian, beautiful, and innocent one.
Instead they argued the so-called 'continuity thesis' that institutions conventionally associated with modernity in Western historiography like nationalism, the emergence of states, colonialism, scientific thought, art for its own sake, or people's conception of themselves as individuals all had a history stretching back into the Middle Ages, and that understanding their medieval history was important to understanding their character in the twentieth century.
[9] Twentieth-century Medieval Studies were influenced by approaches associated with the rise of social sciences such as economic history and anthropology, epitomised by the influential Annales School.
Accordingly, medieval studies turned increasingly away from producing national histories, towards more complex mosaics of regional approaches that worked towards a European scope, partly correlating with post-War Europeanisation.
Thus a range of medievalists have begun working on writing global histories of the Middle Ages—while, however, navigating, the risk of imposing Eurocentric terminologies and agendas on the rest of the world.
Umberella organisations for these bodies include the Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Médiévales (FIDEM) (founded 1987) and Co-operative for Advancement of Research through Medieval European Network (CARMEN).