Jules Michelet (21 August 1798  9 February 1874) was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions. In his 1855 work, Histoire de France (History of France), Jules Michelet was the first historian to use and define the word Renaissance ('Rebirth' in French), as a period in Europe's cultural history that represented a drastic break from the Middle Ages, creating a modern understanding of humanity and its place in the world.