Early Christianity

writings about the saints (known generically as ‘hagiography’),

publishing the texts as the Acta Sanctorum(The Deeds of the

Saints) from 1643. Once again, there was an obvious link between

scholarly enterprise and the spirit of Catholic renewal: the

volumes of the Acta Sanctorumpresented texts relating to saints

according to their place in the liturgical year: thus the volumes

were devoted to months (or parts of months), listing the saints in

the order of their feast days (Hay 1977: 159–61). A similar enter-

prise, albeit proceeding chronologically through the centuries and

focusing on monastic saints, was initiated by the Maurists, a

French congregation of Benedictine monks. Members of the order

also undertook to prepare editions, based on the best possible

manuscripts, of various early Christian authors such as Ambrose

of Milan (Knowles 1959).

Just as the study of martyrs was given new impetus in the

Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation, so too was the

investigation of the early histories of individual Christian commu-

nities. As a result, the lists of bishops that had been carefully

recorded in the middle ages were now the subject of detailed anti-

quarian review. Thus in Italy Ferdinando Ughelli (1596–1670)

oversaw production of the Italia Sacra(Ditchfield 1995: 331–51),

while in France the Assembly of Clergy, made up of bishops

and abbots, was responsible for coordinating compilation of the

Gallia Christiana. Such works, which narrated the history of

the church by focusing on its constituent local congregations,

risked pointing up divisions in the church.^1 In deference to such

concerns, it was no accident therefore that Ughelli’s Italia Sacra

began with ‘Rome, that first of all churches, the mother of sane

dogma, the pinnacle of apostolic honour, the most noble seat of

the supreme pontiff ’ (quoted in Humphries 1999: 3). The force

of tradition, then, remained strong.

Such excursions into the history of early Christianity were

accompanied by efforts to collect and collate its archaeological

remains. The antiquarian investigations into the surviving arte-

facts of pagan antiquity gave rise to a similar interest in the

material record of the early Christians, and the centre for much

THE HISTORICAL QUEST FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY

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