From the outset of the 19th century, Ashkenazi Jews turned to the writing of Jewish history to gain a sense of Jewish identity at a time when piety no longer inspired them. Historicism had come to be the guiding way of thinking throughout most of Europe and Jewish thinkers turned to its methods not only to explore their own identity, but also to reconfigure the history of the West. To that end, they applied historicist methods to the study of Christianity and Islam with the goal of demonstrating the central, foundational role of Judaism in Western civilization.