of this activity, as in so much else, was Rome. Throughout the
middle ages, a number of catacombs continued to be visited, much
in the way that Jerome records they were in the fourth century
(see p. 43). In the late sixteenth century, however, new discov-
eries began to be made, which excited the minds of the historical
scholars of Counter-Reformation Rome, Cesare Baronio among
them. Systematic exploration had to wait two decades, however,
until the task was taken up with great energy by Antonio Bosio
(c.1575–1629), dubbed by a later generation of Christian archae-
ologists as ‘the Columbus of the catacombs’. Bosio’s investiga-
tions were meticulous: for twenty years he explored the vast maze
of underground passages beneath Rome, taking notes, making
drawings, and seeking out every possible literary reference to the
catacombs. The results were published, posthumously, in 1634 in
four great volumes entitled Roma Sotterranea (Subterranean
Rome). With Bosio, it might be claimed that the modern study
of early Christian archaeology had its origins (Stevenson 1978:
47–52; Frend 1996: 13–16).
The rise of modern scholarship
Bosio’s work on the catacombs was published just over a decade
before the treaty of Westphalia (1648) brought decades of bitter
and brutal warfare between Roman Catholics and Protestants
to an end. But if the struggle now turned away from physical
violence, debates between the two sides over early Christianity
lost nothing of their vigour. Many of the trends that we have seen
emerge in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation now settled into
customary practice. Among Roman Catholics, energetic scholarly
efforts were focused on investigating and codifying the traditions
that they believed linked them to the early Christians. Such tradi-
tions were not merely the stuff of dry scholarship, but had
consequences for how the church saw itself and its rivals in its
own day. Thus the various forms of emerging Protestantism could
be condemned as revivals of the heresies of the ancient church
(cf. Wiles 1996: 52–61). At the same time, Roman Catholicism
THE HISTORICAL QUEST FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY1
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