Philology is a historical discipline and as such, it cannot fail to be interested in its own origins. From its earliest forms in Hellenistic Alexandria, philology has attempted to understand and preserve older texts. With the development of a Christian body of texts in Greek and later also in Latin, this discipline only became relevant again in the Renaissance, when numerous new texts were rediscovered. In the next few centuries the new culture of the Republic of Letters led to a flowering of classical philology, which stressed the common European culture. Romantic scholars applied the new methodologies to vernacular texts and this in its turn led to ‘national’ philologies which began to lead their own lives.