The Schlegel brothers assigned to the Christian religion a fundamental role in the development of European literature. The religious spirit of the Middle Ages was regarded as the essential difference between literature in the Classical tradition and those new forms of literary expression which they designated ‘Romantic’. While the Classical literatures had been a product of the pagan religion of Greece and Rome, and had responded to the senses in their depiction of the physiological aspects of men, Romantic literature was felt to embody the spiritual aspirations which beliefs based upon contemplation and mystery had engendered. The increased preoccupation with individual character displayed in modern literature and the lack of importance attributed by modern writers to questions of external form were both viewed as natural consequences of such a change. Chateaubriand's Le Génie du christianisme (1802) had already highlighted, in a masterly and inspired presentation, the poetical qualities inherent in the Christian religion. With the influence later enjoyed by the dramatic lectures of A. W. Schlegel all over Europe came a broad perception of Romantic literature as essentially mediaeval and Christian in character.