"The Roman Popes, their Church and State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" is the most famous work of the Protestant historian Leopold von Ranke and can still be found on many bookcases.

The modern practice of history was an invention of 19th-century Germany. Its godfather, the rock-ribbed Leopold von Ranke, spurned belles-lettristic history in favor of archival research. Rankean ...

Leopold von Ranke (Prussian, 1795-1886). Ranke, the father of objective historical inquiry, wrote sixty works in all, including the multi-volume studies History of the Popes, History of England, ...