(1538–1607) – better known by the Latin version of his name,
Caesar Baronius, and one of the leading lights of Counter-
Reformation Rome – a team of scholars compiled the Annales
Ecclesiastici(Ecclesiastical Annals). As its title suggests, this
was a year-by-year account of the history of the church from its
origins designed to prove, against the Magdeburg Centuries, that
it was the church of Rome that was the true inheritor of early
Christian traditions. It had been Jesus Christ himself who had
established the church, and he had then entrusted its care to Peter,
whose successors were, of course, the popes (Ditchfield 1995:
278–85). Baronio’s Annaleswere to be immensely successful:
editions of varying completeness were reprinted endlessly until
the nineteenth century, in stark contrast to the mere three print-
ings enjoyed by the Magdeburg Centuries. As such, they hint
at an important division that had arisen in the attitudes of
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism to early Christianity. For
the Protestants it was biblical Christianity, the early church as
presented in the books of the New Testament, that was to become
of greatest importance (Duffy 1977: 287–92). Roman Catholics,
by contrast, continued to emphasize their continuity with the
traditions of the early Christian centuries even after the times of
the apostles (Ditchfield 1995: 277–8).
It might seem incredible to us at the beginning of the third
millennium that early Christianity should have evoked such
passions. To us it seems a remote period, separated from us by
a gulf of centuries, but to many in the period of the Reforma-
tion the early Christians were a vibrant, living presence among
them. We have noted already that, throughout the middle ages,
Christians continued to celebrate the suffering of early Christian
martyrs. The phenomenon continued into the early modern period
(Ditchfield 1995: 36–42), but at the same time there was an effort
to place knowledge of these early saints on a much surer footing.
A guiding light for this enterprise shone forth from various
Flemish Jesuit priests, the most prominent of whom was John van
Bolland (1596–1665). With his colleagues Bolland (also known
by the Latin form of his name, Bollandus) collected and edited
THE HISTORICAL QUEST FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY1
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