The "ancient tradition of the fathers" takes us back to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries.
Care to elaborate?
"Appeals to the Fathers are a subdivision of appeals to tradition. In the first half of the second century begin the appeals to the sub-Apostolic age: Papias appeals to the presbyters, and through them to the Apostles. Half a century later St. Irenaeus supplements this method by an appeal to the tradition handed down in every Church by the succession of its bishops (Adv. Haer., III, i-iii), and Tertullian clinches this argument by the observation that as all the Churches agree, their tradition is secure, for they could not all have strayed by chance into the same error (Praescr., xxviii)."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06001a.htm