A protestant theologian with an axe to grind is hardly unbiased. Post from a LEGITIMATE secular source like the Encyclopedia Britannica, then get back to us.
The first step in being objective is to admit bias. Every human source is biased, including secular sources. It is a function of being finite. It can't be avoided. APU is just being a realist.
But Schaff is recognized on all sides as a source that must at least be considered. He had his perspective, as we all do, but he did his homework, and is reputed to have set the standards in the international theological community for excellence in the study of Christian history.
If you feel he is wrong, show where.
BTW, you recommended Encyclopedia Britannica. My dad used to own a full, grand set of the EB volumes. I grew up from a small child reading that material, just for the sheer fun of it. I found the EB online entry on the matter pitifully shallow by comparison, worse than Wikipedia. Sad. Perhaps I need to get the premium membership:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/282296/Saint-Ignatius-of-Antioch
Long story short, many volumes have been written on the Ignatian epistles, and many more will be written. The debate is far from over. Even the brilliant 19th Century Anglican Bishop Lightfoot, whose major work was supposed to have settled the matter once for all in favor of authenticity for the seven epistles of the middle recension, contains within it evidence of unresolved oddities.
For example, Lightfoot uses philological and theological differences to convincingly discredit the idea that Polycarp's and Ignatius' epistles could have been written by the same person, but in so doing he shows Polycarp, who supposedly comes before or at least contemporaneous to Ignatius, is oblivious to a (locally) monarchical episcopate, and entrenched in the practice of direct quotation of Scripture to establish his arguments. In short, on those two points he is much more like a Presbyterian than a Roman Catholic. This is in sharp contrast to Ignatius, again a supposed contemporary, yet who reflects ecclesiastical ideas that seem to belong to a later time, and who oddly makes almost no direct use of Scripture. If these two men knew and worked with each other in common cause, Polycarp the mentor and Ignatius the student, how could this be?
So while we might be safe in regarding the Ignatian epistles of the middle recension to be
informative, it's impossible for any thinking Christian to just blindly accept such texts as
authoritative. We here all (or at least most) have a common ground of accepting Scripture as authoritative, despite all attacks against it, and despite our disagreements on how to use it, because we both view it as inspired. But nothing binds us to writings that are not only not inspired, but are still indefinite in their connection to real history.
Peace,
SR