Valla, however, examined the language of the Donation, found
that it simply could not have been composed in the fourth century,
and denounced it as a forgery. Valla’s work provided a template
for the more rigorous study of early Christian documents that was
soon to take off in a radically new direction. In northern Europe,
a revolt against the authority of the bishops of Rome was to
have a significant impact on the study of early Christianity.
Confronted by the challenges to its authority issued first by
Martin Luther (1483–1546) and other Protestant reformers, the
church of Rome appealed, as it had always appealed, not only
to scripture, but also to tradition. Above all, the popes asserted
that as the successors of the apostle Peter they were the supreme
spiritual authorities in Christendom. In turn, this compelled the
emerging voices of Protestantism to counter the Roman argu-
ments. Although the Protestants were keen to justify their actions
on the basis of biblical precepts, they nevertheless saw the
strength of arguments informed by appeals to Christian tradition
(Meyendorff 1991: 782). Thus, for example, Luther defended
his controversial liturgical innovations by citing support from
Cyprian, a third-century bishop of Carthage, and Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria for much of the fourth century. In the
process, early Christianity became one of the battlefields on which
the forces of Protestant reform and Roman Catholic revival fought
out their ideological campaigns (Backus 1991: 292–5, 301–2).
As part of their challenge to the Roman church’s claims
to represent the true traditions of Christianity, the Lutherans
sponsored a massive historical enterprise, coordinated by the
extraordinary Croatian biblical scholar Matthias Francowitz,
known as Flacius Illyricus (1520–75). The result was Historia
Ecclesiae Christi(History of the Church of Christ), published at
Basel between 1562 and 1574, and better known, perhaps, as the
Magdeburg Centuries. It was a highly polemical work, which
sought to show how the ‘pure’ church of the early Christians
was gradually brought under the ‘demonic’ influence of Rome
(Ditchfield 1995: 273–8). The Roman response was swift and, in
the end, more sustained. Under the guidance of Cesare BaronioTHE HISTORICAL QUEST FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY
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