"The academic field known as early Christian archaeology had its roots in Italy in the wake of the Renaissance (Frend 1996, 11-22), although the goal of unearthing the relics of saints and Christian holy sites in an ancient and medieval tradition (se, e.g., Chabarria Arnau, Chapter 29). The first explorers of the Christian monuments of Rome in the late fifteenth century were guided by the antiquarian pursuit of the ancient world, which included classical remains as much as early Christian monuments (Schuddenboom 2017). While competing national drives to collect antiquities fueled Classical archaeology in Europe, the Protestant Reformation infused the archaeology of early Christian remains with a more burdensome, apologetic role: assessing the Catholic version of Christian history through the material culture of its early believers. In 1632, for example, the Catholic priest Antonio Bosio published his exploration of the Christian communities in Rome and to challenge Protestant attacks on the Roman church's ancient pedigree. While both polemic and curiosity guided these initial explorations, the first investigators forged a relationship between Christian material remain and the theology, history, and institutions of the early church."