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Annales Ecclesiastici bore the full title Annales ecclesiastici a Christi nato ad annum 1198 [ecclesiastical annals from the nativity to 1198] and consisted of twelve folio volumes. It was a history of the first 12 centuries of the Church, and was authored by Cardinal Caesar Baronius. Annales Ecclesiastici was first published between 1588 and 1607 as a response to the Lutheran, Historia Ecclesiae Christi [History of the Church of Christ] in which the Magdeburg theologians surveyed the history of the church in order to demonstrate how the Catholic Church represented the antichrist and had deviated from the beliefs and practices of the early church.

Because Baronius was the Vatican librarian, he had access to the use of this material and sources in the archives previously unpublished or omitted. He used these in the development of his work. Accordingly, Annales Ecclesiastici is considered by most as extremely useful and complete. Early Protestant scholars accused it of being "by no means critical; it is intensely Roman Catholic".

The first volume dealt with Gentile prophets, among whom were Hermes Trismegistus, the supposed author of the Corpus Hermeticum, and the Sibylline Oracles of Rome. Some Gentile prophets, it was claimed, had foreseen the Christ's birth, and post-reformation scholars sought to dispute this. These claims were disputed by Isaac Casaubon in his De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI. Similarly, James I of England specifically undertook the task of replying to Baronius' Annales Ecclesiastici and invited De Rebus, one of the fore-most scholars of his day to undertake the task. De Rebus pointed out what he felt were errors in the first half of the first volume of Baronius' text and suggested that the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum were forged by early Christians in an attempt to make their doctrines more palatable to non-believers.

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Infoplease: Baronius, Caesar