medieval authors lacking any reliable information about partic-
ular martyrs would indulge audiences with pious fictions. For
example, whereas all the contemporary accounts of the excava-
tion of the relics of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius by
Ambrose of Milan in 386 (see p. 43) agree that these saints were
hitherto completely unknown, this did not stop someone in the
middle ages from compiling an entirely fanciful account of their
trial and execution (Humphries 1999: 223).
Another area in which the middle ages perpetuated the view
of early Christianity that had evolved in the fourth and fifth
centuries was the fascination with the foundation and early history
of bishoprics. We saw that this was one of the ways in which
Eusebius sought to demonstrate that the church had maintained
its integrity since the earliest times. Throughout the middle ages,
lists of bishops for various cities were compiled, maintained, and
sometimes shamelessly concocted. Such records were not the stuff
of dry scholarship, but were incorporated into the life of the
church. Bizarre (and unimaginably boring) though it may seem
to us, lists of bishops were actually read out on major feast days,
thereby affirming the links of a particular congregation with the
very earliest days of Christianity (Humphries 1999: 1–4).
The chief virtuosi of this practice were, of course, the
bishops of Rome. It was on the basis of such lists, going back to
Peter, the chief of Christ’s apostles, that during the middle ages
(and indeed beyond) the church of Rome claimed supremacy
throughout Christendom. Moreover, accounts of the succession of
Roman bishops were often adopted as a chronological framework
by historians writing in other parts of western Europe (Momigliano
1990: 148–9). Yet Rome’s authority did not go unchallenged, and
one of the tactics adopted by its rivals was to claim an apostolic
foundation of their own. Thus, for example, in the eleventh
century, when the pope Gregory VII (1075–83) sought to assert
his authority over the church of Milan on the basis of his position
as the successor of the apostle Peter, the Milanese responded that
their church had also been founded by an apostle, and fostered aTHE HISTORICAL QUEST FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY
46