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CRITICAL HISTORY

OF THE

ATHANASIAN CREED.

BY

DANIEL WATERLAND, D.D.

FORMERLY MASTER OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; CANON OF WINDSOR ; AND ARCHDEACON OF MIDDLESEX.

Φ Pew Edition, REVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE

πα BR. KING, Μοὶ

LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD.

@xford and Hondon: Pees PARKER AND CO. 1870.

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EDITOR'S PREFACE.

—————— 5 Ξ- Ξ 5:

HE “Critical History of the Athanasian Creed” had its origin in Dr. Waterland’s controversy with Dr. Clarke, and other Anti-Trinitarians, on the subject of the blessed Trinity. First published in 1723, in the interval between his ‘‘ Second Vindication of Christ’s Divinity,’ and his ‘“‘ Farther Vindication,” both of them directly controversial works, it yet is singularly free from polemics; and it is only in the last chapter that he thinks it well to answer the objections of Dr. Clarke, who ‘ out of his abundant zeal to promote Arianism had taken upon him to disparage this ex- cellent Form of Faith.”

After an Introduction, in which the Author explains the scope and method of the work, disclaiming any pretence at originality, and declaring that it professes to be nothing more than a careful digest, in a form convenient for the English reader, of all that he had been able to discover written on the subject, the treatise is divided into eleven chapters, of which eight are concerned with the history of the Creed, and the remaining three with its substance, and its use in the Church of England.

The first chapter sets forth the opinions of the chief modern authorities as to the date and authorship of

1174699

iv EDITOR’S PREFACE.

the Creed, beginning with Gerard Voss, who published his treatise, De tribus Symbolis, in 1642, and ending with Casimir Oudin, whose Commentary on the Eccle- siastical Writers appeared in its final form in 1722. The great majority of the thirty-two authors whom he cites are agreed that the Creed is not the work of Athanasius; and most of them would assign to it an origin in the Western Church, not earlier than the fifth century. Eight of them ascribe it to Vigilius Tapsensis, whilst no two are agreed in upholding the claims of any other Latin writer to its authorship. Dr. Clarke is alone in bringing it down to so late a period as the eighth or ninth century, though Voss and Dr. Cave agree with him in supposing it not to have been generally received till about the year 1000. In the second chapter, Dr. Waterland considers the testimony of more ancient writers to the existence and authority of the Creed. Rejecting the evidence ad- duced from writers earlier than the seventh century as spurious or irrelevant, he attaches some importance to that afforded by a Canon which is attributed to the Synod of Autun, in 670. The first unquestionable testimony, however, is supplied in certain articles of enquiry, preserved by Rhegino, Abbot of Prom in Germany, and referable to the middle of the eighth century. Thenceforward quotations from the Creed are not uncommon, though the title Symbolum is not applied to it by any author before Hincemar, Arch- bishop of Rheims in the middle of the ninth century,

EDITOR’S PREFACE. Vv

and the appellation was not generally in use for some three centuries more. Dr. Waterland quotes in all thirty-six authorities in this chapter, ending with Johannes Plusiadenus, in 1439. Most of them ascribe the Creed to Athanasius, and none to any other author, though Beleth mentions as a common view the theory that it was written by Anastasius.

The third chapter is taken up with the consideration of the ancient commentators on the Athanasian Creed, beginning with Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth, and ending with Peter d’Osma of Salamanca, in the fifteenth century. The first of these is the most im- portant, proving the existence of the Creed at an earlier period than any other evidence which we possess: insomuch that Muratori erroneously supposed Fortunatus to have been himself the author.

The fourth chapter contains an account of the va- rious manuscripts of the Athanasian Creed which Dr. Waterland could trace. The earliest of these is quoted by Bishop Usher as belonging to the end of the sixth century ; but this, as well as the Manuscript of reves, referred to the middle of the seventh century, was already lost in the time of Dr. Waterland ; so that the earliest manuscript then known to exist was that in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, belonging to the end of the seventh century. Between that time and the end of the eleventh century, twenty-two manuscripts are described, most of them being attached to Psalters, mainly of the Gallican version. This chapter closes

v1 EDITOR’S PREFACE.

with an account of the principal Latin versions of the Psalter, severally known as the Italic, Gallican, Ro- man, and Hebraic.

The fifth chapter is occupied with a discussion of the ancient versions of the Creed, among which, adopt- ing the view that Latin was its original language, Dr. Waterland includes the Greek manuscripts. The correctness of this opinion is confirmed by the fact that these do not rank early even among the ver- sions; no copy being known of a date previous to the middle of the fourteenth century. The earliest version of which any trace is to be found was in the Lingua Romana, prevalent in France in the middle of the ninth century: but the earliest extant is in German, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, and is referred by Dr. Waterland to the year 870. Of the following century there are Anglo-Saxon versions, but none of those in French, properly so called, reach higher than the eleventh century. Of the date of the versions in other languages, Dr. Waterland had no information on which it was possible to form an estimate.

From the foregoing evidence, Dr. Waterland argues, in the sixth chapter, that the Creed was received into the Gallican Church as early as the middle of the sixth century. That it was known in Spain within a cen- tury after this is clear, from its being quoted in the Canons of the Fourth Council of Toledo, held in 633 ; and the general affinity between the French and Spa- nish Liturgies would lead us to suppose that it pro-

EDITOR'S PREFACE. Vii

bably then formed a recognised clement in the Spanish services. In Germany it was certainly received in 787, perhaps some years before: while in England we can trace it as early as 799, when considerable portions of it were quoted in a profession of faith made by Dene- bert, Bishop of Worcester. The date of its reception in Italy is very doubtful, and though inclined to trace it to the conquest of Lombardy by Charlemagne, yet Dr. Waterland does not venture to insist on an earlier date than 880 for its regular introduction into the Italian Liturgies. The Roman Church was the last to adopt it among the Western Christians; and we can- not prove that it was admitted into any Roman Liturgy earlier than the Psalter of King Athelstan in 9380. The fact of its admission into the Greek and Oriental Churches has been questioned altogether, but it ap- pears probable, that, though unknown to the Greek Churches in Africa and Asia, yet that it had, for some little time, been accepted by the main body of the Greeks in Europe, with alterations in the Article con- cerning the Procession of the Holy Ghost.

From a consideration of all this evidence Dr. Water- land concludes, in the seventh chapter, that the Athana- sian Creed was probably composed in Gaul: and as it was in sufficient repute for a Comment to be written on it about the year 570, it may fairly be presumed to be from ἃ century to a century and a-half more ancient than that date. But, from internal evidence, he con- ceives that we can fix the time of its composition with

vill EDITOR’S PREFACE.

much greater nicety. It is obviously later than the rise of the heresy of Apollinarius, from the precision with which his tenets are refuted on the subject of the Incarnation ; and it is most probably subsequent to the publication of St. Augustine’s work, De Trinitate, from the use of expressions first worked out in that treatise. This would bring it down to the year 420, nearly fifty years after Athanasius’s death. On the other hand, the absence of any direct refutation of Eutyches, and even the admission of equivocal expressions which might be interpreted as favouring his views, would mark the Creed as earlier than his condemnation at Chalcedon in 451. Similarly, its language seems to place it even before the condemnation of Nestorius at Ephesus in 431; so that its composition is brought within the compass of the ten years between 420 and 430; and as we know that St. Augustine, whose writ- ings had manifestly an important influence upon it, was in close communication with the Church in Gaul during the latter half of this decade, we may ulti- mately fix its date, with great probability, to that time.

After determining the time and place of the com- position of the Creed, Dr. Waterland proceeds, in the eighth chapter, to determine the question of its author- ship. This he decides in favour of Hilary of Arles, as best fulfilling the requisite conditions of time, place, capacity, and authority in the Church. He is also known to have been an admirer of St. Augustine; and

EDITOR'S PREFACE. ix

is said to have written an ‘‘ admirable exposition of the Creed,” of which we have no trace, unless we hold it to be the work in question. The style, moreover, and tenor of his other writings, favour the hypothesis, which is not overthrown by the only objections which have been advanced against it.

The ninth chapter consists simply of the Creed itself, in the original Latin text, supported by passages from authorities of the fourth and fifth centuries, mainly from the works of St. Augustine. To this has been added, in the present edition, an Appendix, comprising passages from the earlier Fathers, setting forth the same doctrines that are stated in the Creed.

The tenth chapter contains Dr. Waterland’s own commentary on the Creed, in which he briefly shews the origin, scope, and meaning of each several Article. He explains the damnatory clauses in the moderate sense In which they were accepted even by the leading Nonconformist Divines of his own day; and is par- ticularly felicitous in his exposition of that portion of the Creed which declares each Person of the blessed Trinity to be encomprehensible, eternal, §¢., and yet the whole to be not Three, but One.

So far the treatise has been purely didactic, but in the eleventh chapter it assumes a controversial form, being occupied with the refutation of the objections brought by Dr. Clarke to its use in our services. In the course of his reply, Dr. Waterland takes occasion to set forth the necessity of Creeds in general, and

Ὡς EDITOR’S PREFACE.

especially the need of gradually expanding the confes- sions of our faith, to meet the errors gradually intro- duced into the world.

At the end of the whole treatise he reprints the work of Venantius Fortunatus, already referred to as the earliest commentary on the Athanasian Creed.

The present edition is based upon the second, pub- lished by the author in 1727. The treatise has been previously reprinted in the several editions of the col- lected works of Dr. Waterland; and in a separate form in 1850 by the Society for Promoting Christian Know- ledge. The references have now, so far as possible, been verified and rendered more complete ; and besides the Appendix to the ninth chapter, a list of the editions used for reference is added by the present editor. Ob- solete and antiquated modes of spelling have been modernized, but in other respects the work is repro- duced as it issued finally from its Author’s hands.

Sr. PETER’S-IN-THE- East, OXFORD, June 24th, 1870.

Α ΒΓ ΤΤΙΓΟ ΑΙ, HISTORY

OF THE

PeTeANASIAN CREED.

REPRESENTING THE OPINIONS or

ANTIENTS and MODERNS CON CERNING. LT:

With an Account of the MANUSCRIPTS, VERSIONS, and COMMENTS, and such other particulars as are of moment for the determining the Age, and Author, and Value of tt, and the Time of its Reception in the Chris- tian Churches.

εὐ ΧΕΙ WATERLAND, DP.

CHANCELLOR of the CHURCH of YORK, and Chaplain an Ordinary to His MAJESTY.

DAE SECOND EDITION Corrected and Improv a.

CAMBRIDGE:

Printed at the UNIVERSITY-PREsS, for CORN. CROWNFIELD, Printer to the UNIVERSITY : And are to be Sold by J. KNap- TON, and R. KNApPLockK, Booksellers in ZOVDOWN. 1728.

TO HIS GRACE

WHEEL 7 23.175.

LORD ARCHBISHOP OF VORK,

PRIMATE OF ENGLAND AND METROPOLITAN.

My Lorp,

I Am desirous of sending these papers abroad under your Grace’s name, in confidence you will be a Patron to them, as you have been to the Author. I would make their way short and easy to the publick esteem, by introducing them first into your Graces acquaintance and good opi- nion; which, if they have once the honour to obtain, I may then be assured that they will be both useful to the world and acceptable with all good men; the height of my ambition.

The subject, my Lord, is the Athanasian Creed, the most accurate system of the Athanasian, that 18, the Chris- tian Faith, of which your Grace ts, by your station and character, by duty and office, and, what is more, by in- clination and principle, and real services, the watchful guardian and preserver.

The happy fruits of it are visible in the slow and in- considerable progress that the new heresy has been able to make within your province, where it died, in a manner, as it first arose, and no sooner began to lift up its head

XIV THE DEDICATION.

but sunk down again in shame and confusion: as vf the plenty of good seed sown had left no room for tares, or they could take no root in a soil so well. cultivated.

While your Grace is promoting the honour and inter- ests of our Holy Faith, in the eminent way, by the wisdom of your counsels, the authority of your precepts, and the brightness of your high example; I am endeavouring, in such a way as I can, to contribute something to the same common cause, tho’ it be but slight and small, tho’ it be only reviewing the fences and surveying the out- works ; which is the most I pretend to in the history here presented.

What advantage others may reap from the publication will remain in suspence ; but Iam sure of one to myself (and I lay hold of it with a great deal of pleasure) the opportunity I thereby have of returning my publick thanks to your Grace for your publick favors. Tho’ this, my Lord, is but a scanty expression for them, and far short, where the engaging manner and circumstances, known but to few, and not to be understood by many, make so con- siderable an addition in the whole, and almost double the obligation upon

My Lorp, Your Graces most obliged, most dutiful, and most obedient humble Servant,

DANIEL WATERLAND.

CAMBRIDGE, MaGp. COLL., Oct. 25, 1723.

THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

--ς.-.

HAT I here present the reader with, will ποῦ re-

quire much Preface. The Introduction intimates the design and use and partition of the Work. The Appendix, which is an additional enlargement beyond my first design, gives account of itself. I subjoin two Indexes for the ease and convenience of such persons as may be disposed, not only to read these sheets, but to study the subject. I should scarce have thought of making Indexes to so small a treatise, had I not found the like in Tentzelius, upon the same subject, and to a smaller tract than this is. His were of considerable use to me, as often as I wanted to review any par- ticular author, or passage, or to compare distant parts relating to the same things, one with another. The benefit, therefore, which I reaped from his labours, I am willing to pay back to the public by mine.

As to the subject of the following sheets, I make no question of its well deserving the thoughts and con- sideration of every studious reader; having before passed through the hands of many the most learned and most judicious men, and such as would not misemploy their time and pains upon a trifle. As to the present management of it, it must be left to the reader to judge of, as he sees cause.

For the chronology of the several parts, I have con- sulted the best authors ; endeavouring to fix it with as much accuracy as I could. Wherever I could certainly

xvi THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

determine the age of any tract, printed or manuscript, to a year, I set down that year: where I could not do it (as in manuscripts one seldom can) I take any probable year within the compass of time when an author is known to have flourished; or for a manuscript, any probable year within such a century or such a king’s reign wherein the manuscript is reasonably judged to have been written; and I generally choose a round number, rather than otherwise, in such indefinite cases and instances.

Thus, for example, first in respect of authors: there is a Comment of Venantius Fortunatus, upon the Athanasian Creed, which I reprint in my Appendix. I cannot fix the age of it to a year, no, nor to twenty years. All that is certain is, that it was made be- tween 556, when Fortunatus first went into the Gal- lican parts, and 599 when he was advanced to the bishopric of Poictiers. Within this wide compass, I choose the year 570. If any one shall rather choose 580, or 590, I shall not dispute it with him, nor doth anything very material depend upon it: but if any good reason can be given for taking some other year rather than 570, I shall immediately acquiesce in it.

As to manuscripts, it is well known there is no fixing them precisely to a year, merely from the hand or character: and there are but few, in comparison, that carry their own certain dates with them. The best judges, therefore, in these matters, will think it sufficient to point out the king’s reign, or sometimes the century, wherein a manuscript was written: and in the very ancient ones, above a thousand years old, they will hardly be positive so much as to the century,

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. XVll

for want of certain discriminating marks between manu- scripts of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries.

It may be asked, then, why I pretend to fix the several manuscripts, hereafter to be mentioned, to certain years in the margin; those that carry no cer- tain dates, as well as the others that do? I do it for order and regularity, and for the more distinct per- ception of things, which is much promoted and as- sisted by this orderly ranging them according to years. At the same time, the intelligent reader will easily understand where to take a thing as certain, and where to make allowances. It is something like the placing of cities, towns, rivers, &c., in a map or a globe: they have all their certain places there, in such or such precise degrees of longitude and latitude; which per- haps seldom answer to the strict truth of things or to a mathematical exactness. But still it serves the pur- pose very near as well as if everything had been adjusted with the utmost nicety; and the imagination and memory are mightily relieved by it. Thus much I thought proper to hint in vindication of my method, and to prevent any deception on one hand, or mis- construction on the other. I have, I think, upon the whole, generally gone upon the fairest and most pro- bable presumption, and according to the most correct accounts of knowing and accurate men: but if I have anywhere, through inadvertency, or for want of better information, happened to mistake in any material part, the best way of apologizing for it, will be to correct it the first opportunity after notice of it.

As to mere omissions, they will appear more, or fewer, according to men’s different judgments, or opi-

b

Xvi THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

nions what to call an omission. J might have en- larged considerably the first chapter, which treats of the learned moderns, though some, perhaps, will think it too large already, and that it might better have been contracted. I have omitted several moderns mentioned by Tentzelius, whose professed design was to take in all; mine is only to take the principal or as many as may suffice to give the reader a full and distinct idea how this matter has stood with the learned moderns for eighty-five years last past.

In this second edition I have considerably shortened my Appendix, by throwing the several parts of it into the book itself, referring them to their proper places. Some few additional observations will be found here and there interspersed, and some corrections, of slight moment as to the main thing (in which I make no alteration) but contributing in some measure to the perfection and accuracy of the Work.

I conclude with professing, as before, that I shall be very glad if what hath been here done may but prove an useful introduction to more and larger discoveries. If anything considerable still remains, either in private hands or public repositories; anything that may be serviceable to clear up some dark part, or to correct any mistake, or to confirm and illustrate any important truth relating to the subject, I shall be very thankful to the person that shall oblige either me with private notice, or the public with new improvements.

CaMBRIDGE, MaGp. COLt., Nov. 1, 1727.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

THE INTRODUCTION, Suewine tHe De- SIGN AND Usk oF THIS TREATISE ; WITH THE MetHop AND PARTITION OF IT

1. THe Oprnions oF THE LEARNED MODERNS CON- CERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED

II. Ancrent TesTrmMontes — 5 : ‘

III. Ancient CoMMENTATORS AND PaRAPHRASTS

UPON THE ATHANASIAN CREED ;

IV. Latin Manuscripts oF THE ATHANASIAN

CREED : ᾿ 3 Σ :

V. Anctent Versions, PrintED oR MANUscRIPT .

VI, Or tHe RECEPTION OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED

IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

VIL. Or tue Time WHEN, AND PLACE WHERE, THE CREED was ComposED : :

VIII. Or tHe ΑΥΤΗΟΙΚ oF THE CREED ὲ >

IX. Tue CREED ITSELF IN THE ORIGINAL Lay-

GUAGE, WITH PARALLEL PAssAGES FROM THE

FATHERS ; ; ; : : 4

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER ΤΧ.-- ῬΑΒΒΑΘῈΒ FROM THE ANTE-NIcENE Fatuers, CoNFIRM- ING THE STATEMENTS OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED ἃ ; 3 : : :

X. A ΟΟΜΜΕΝΤΑΒΥ ON THE ATHANASIAN CREED

PAGE

138 162

173

192 208

xx CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE XI. Tue Cuurcn or Ene anp VINDICATED, BOTH AS TO THE RECEIVING AND RETAINING THE

ATHANASIAN CREED. : 3 ; >) 2a APPENDIX, . : ‘ 2 ὁ : . 948 InpEx or AUTHORS AND Epitions . ; Ὁ ΟΡ Inpex oF Manuscripts . . ; ι wes

InpDEX OF AUTHORITIES . : 2 : ~ 280

A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

THE INTRODUCTION,

SHewine THE Design anp Use or THIS TREATISE; with THE MrerHop AND PARTITION OF IT.

Y design is, to enquire into the age, author, and value of that celebrated confession, which goes under the name of The Athanasian Creed. The general approbation it hath long met with in the Christian Churches, and the particular regard which hath been, early and late, paid to it in our own, (while it makes a part of our Liturgy, and stands recommended to us in our Articles,) will, I doubt not, be considera- tions sufficient to justify an undertaking of this kind: provided only, that the performance be answerable, and that it fall not short of its principal aim, or of the just expectations of the ingenuous and candid readers. No one will expect more of me than my present materials, such as I could procure, will furnish me with; nor any greater certainty in an essay of this nature, than things of this kind will admit of. If a reasonable diligence has been used in collecting, and due pains in digesting, and a religious care in building thereupon, (more than which I pretend not to), it may,

I hope, be sufficient with all equitable judges. Many learned and valuable men have been before

B

2 THE INTRODUCTION.

employed in the same design; but their treatises are mostly in Latin, and some of them very scarce, and hard to come at. I know not that any one hitherto has attempted a just treatise upon the subject in our own language, however useful it might be to the Eng- lish readers; and the more so at this time when the controversy about the Trinity is now spread abroad among all ranks and degrees of men with us, and the Athanasian Creed become the subject of common and ordinary conversation. For these reasons, I presumed, an English treatise might be most proper and season- able: though otherwise, to avoid the unseemly mix- ture of English and Latin (which will here be neces- sary), and because of some parts which none but the learned can tolerably judge of, it might be thought more proper rather to have written a Latin treatise, and for the use only of scholars. However, there will be nothing very material but what an English reader may competently understand: and I shall endeavour to lay before him all that has been hitherto usefully observed upon the subject, that he may want nothing which may be conceived of any moment for the enabling him to form a true judgment. What I borrow from others shall be fairly acknowledged as I go along, and referred to its proper author, or authors; it being as much my design to give an historical account of what others have done, as it is to supply what they have left undone, so far as my present materials, leisure, and opportunities may enable me to do it. Now, to present the reader with a sketch of my design, and to shew him how one part is to hang upon another, my method will be as follows :—

THE INTRODUCTION. 3

I. First, in order to give the clearer idea of what has been already done, and of what may be still want- ing, I begin with recounting the several conjectures or discoveries of the learned moderns.

II. Next, to enter upon the matter itself, and the evidence proper to it, I proceed to lay down the direct testimonies of the ancients concerning the age, author, and value of this Creed.

111. To these I subjoin an account of the ancient comments upon the same Creed, being but another kind of ancient testimonies.

IV. After these follows a brief recital of the most ancient, or otherwise most considerable, manuscripts of this Creed, which I have either seen myself, or have had notice of from others.

VY. After the manuscripts of the Creed itself, I en- quire also into the ancient versions of it, printed, or manuscript; which will be also very serviceable to our main design.

VI. I come in the next place to treat of the ancient reception of this Creed in the Christian Churches; as being a point of great moment, and which may be more certuinly determined than the time of its composition, and may give great light into it.

VII. These preliminaries settled, to introduce to what follows, I then fall directly to the darkest part of all, namely, to the enquiry after the age, and author of the Creed; which I despatch in two dis- tinct chapters.

VIII. Next, I lay before the learned reader the Creed itself in its original language, with the most considerable various lections; together with select pas-

4 THE INTRODUCTION.

sages from ancient writers, either parallel to those of the Creed, or explanatory of it. And lest the English reader should appear to be neglected, I subjoin the Creed in English with a running English Commentary, serving much the same purpose with what is intended by the Latin quotations going before.

IX. I conclude all with a brief vindication of our own Church in receiving, and still retaining this ex- cellent formulary of the Christian faith; answering the most material objections which have been made against us on that account; and shewing the expe- diency, and even necessity of retaining this form, or something equivalent, for the preservation of the Christian faith against heresies. The reader, I hope, will excuse it, if m compliance with custom, and to save myself the trouble of circumlocution, I commonly speak of it under the name of the Athanasian Creed ; not designing thereby to intimate, either that it is a creed strictly and properly so called, or that it is of Athanasius’s composing: both which points will be discussed in the sequel.

CHAPTER I.

THe OFINIoNS oF THE LEARNED MoDERNS CONCERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

A.D. 1642. In reciting the opinions of the learned moderns, I need go no higher than Gerard Vossius, who in his treatise de Tribus Symbolis, published in the year 1642, led the way to a more strict and critical enquiry concerning this Creed than had been before attempted. The writers before him, most of them, took it for granted that the Creed was Athanasius’s, without troubling themselves with any very particular enquiry into it: and those few who doubted of it, or ascribed it to another, yet entered not closely into the merits of the cause, but went upon loose conjectures rather than upon any just rules of true and solid criticism. It will be sufficient therefore to begin our accounts from Vossius, who, since the time of his writing, has been ever principally mentioned by writers upon the subject, as being the first and most con- siderable man that has entered deep into it, and treated of it like a critic. He endeavoured to sift the matter thoroughly, as far as he was well able to do from printed books; as to manuscripts he either wanted leisure or opportunity to search for them. The result of his enquiries concluded in the following particulars, some of them dubiously, all of them modestly proposed by him. 1. That the Athanasian Creed is not Athana- sius’s. 2. That it was originally a Latin composure,

6 THE OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED MODERNS

and of a Latin author or authors. 38. That it was made in the eighth or ninth century, in the time of Pepin or of Charles the Great, and probably by some French divine. 4. That the first time it was pro- duced under the name of Athanasius, at least, with any assurance and confidence of it being his, was in the year 1233, when Pope Gregory the Ninth’s legates pleaded it at Constantinople in favour of the proces- sion against the Greeks. 5. That it scarce ever ob- tained in any of the Christian Churches before the year 1000. These were his sentiments when he wrote his treatise de Tribus Symbolis, But in a posthumous piece of his, having then seen what some other learned men had written upon the subject, he was content to say that the Creed could not be set higher than the year 6000". How far Vossius was mistaken in his accounts will appear in the sequel. Thus far must be allowed him, that he managed the argument with great learning and judgment, made a good use of such materials as he was possessed of, and though he was not very happy in determining the age of the Creed, or the time of its reception, yet he produced so many and such cogent arguments against the Creed’s being originally Greek, or being made by Athanasius, that they could never be answered.

1644. The learned Petavius, who in the year 1622 (when he published Epiphanius) had fallen in with the common opinion of this Creed’s being Athanasius’s, did yet afterward in his treatise of the Trinity, pub-

a “Neque ante annum fuisse sexcentesimum, fuse ostendimus

in libro de tribus Symbolis,’—Voss., Harmonia Hvangelica, bk. ii. 96. 13, in vol. vi. p. 215.

CONCERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 7

lished in the year 1644, speak more doubtfully of it; in the meanwhile positive that it was written in Latin?.

1647. The next considerable man, and who may be justly called a first writer in this argument as well as Vossius, was our learned Usher. He had a good acquaintance with libraries and manuscripts, and was able from those stores to produce new evidences which Vossius knew not of. In the year 1647 he printed his Latin tract de Symbolis, with a prefatory epistle to Vossius. He there appeals to the testimonies of Ratram of Corbey, and Adneas, Bishop of Paris, neither of them at that time made public, as also to Hincmar’s of Rheims, (which had been published but had escaped Vossius’s observation), to prove that this Creed had been confidently cited under the name of Athanasius almost 400 years before the time of Pope Gregory’s legates, the time set by Vossius. And further, by two manuscripts found in the Cotton Library, he thought he might carry up the antiquity of the Creed to the year 703, or even to 600. In short, he scrupled not to set the date of it above the year 447: for he sup- poses a Council of Spain, held in that year, to have been acquainted with it, and to have borrowed the Filioque from ite. Thus far he, without any more particular determination about either the age or the author.

Ὁ Petavius de Trinitate, bk. vii. ο. 8, § 7, in vol. ii. p. 392.

¢ Usser de Symbolis, p. 29 (24). N.B. Usher went upon the sup- position that the words, a patre, filioque procedens, were genuine, and not foisted into the Confession of that Council; as they now appear to have been, after a more careful view of the MSS. of best note and greatest antiquity.

8 THE OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED MODERNS

1647. About the same time Dr. Jeremy Taylor (afterwards Bishop of Down and Connor) published his “‘ Liberty of Prophesying,” wherein he expresses his doubts whether the Creed be justly ascribed to Atha- nasius*’. But as he had never seen Usher’s Treatise, nor indeed Vossius’s, nor was at that time furnished with any proper assistances to enable him to make any accurate enquiries into this matter; it may suffice just to have mentioned him, in regard to the deserved name he has since borne in the learned world.

1658. George Ashwell, B.D., published an English treatise, which was printed at Oxford, entitled Ides Apostolica, asserting the received authors and autho- rity of the Apostles’ Creed. At the end of which treatise he has a pretty long Appendix concerning the Athanasian Creed, which is well written, and contaims a good summary of what learned men before him had advanced upon the subject. His judgment of it is, that it was written in Latin, and by Athanasius him- self, about the year 340.

1659. Hamon L’Estrange °, in his ‘‘ Alliance of Di- vine Offices,” gives his judgment of the Athanasian Creed, that it is not rightly ascribed to Athanasius, but yet ancient and extant about the year 600 after Christ.

1659. Leo Allatius about this year printed his Syntagma de Symbolo δ. Athanasii, which no doubt must be a very useful piece, especially in relation to the sentiments of the Greek Churches, and the recep- tion of this Creed amongst them; but I have never seen it; only I learn from Tentzelius (who yet could

4 Taylor, Liberty of Proph., § 2, 36, in vol. v. p. 407. ὁ L’Estrange, Alliance of Divine Offices, ὁ. 4, p. 99.

CONCERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 9

never get a sight of it) and Fabricius, that such a piece was written by Allatius in modern Greek, in 12mo., published at Rome 1658 or 1659. It appears to be very scarce, since none of the learned who have since written upon this Creed, have either referred to it, or given extracts out of it, so far as I have observed ; excepting only something of that kind at Rome, a.p. 1667, by the College de propaganda Fide *.

1668. Cardinal Bona, some years after, in his book de Divina Psalmodia, makes frequent mention of this Creed; touches slightly upon the question about its age and author; takes some cursory notice of what Vossius had said, but nevertheless ascribes it to Atha- nasius, as being composed by him while in the western parts, Zeste Baronio; resting his faith upon Baronius as his youcher 8.

1669. Our very learned Bishop Pearson, in his Ex- position of the Creed, occasionally delivers his opinion that the Athanasian Creed was written in Latin, and by some member of the Latin Church*, and extant about the year 600; though the last particular he builds only upon an epistle attributed to Isidore of Seville, and since judged to be spurious.

1675. Joh. Lud. Ruelius, in his second volume or tome, Conciliorum illustratorum, has a particular dis- sertation, about thirty pages in quarto, upon this Creed. He follows Vossius’s opinion for the most part, re- peating the same arguments’.

f Vid. Tentzel, Judic. &c., p. 147; Fabricius, Biblioth. Greca, vol. v. p. 410. & Bona, de Divina Psalmod., ο. 16, § 18, p. 864. h Pearson on the Creed, Art. 8, p. 569, n. (p. 324, ed. 3); Art. 5, p. 400, n. (p. 226.) i Ruelius, Concil. Lllustrat., vol. ii, pp. 639—670.

10 THE OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED MODERNS

1675. Our next man of eminent character is Pas- chasius Quesnel, a celebrated French divine. In the year 1675, he published his famous edition of Pope Leo’s works, with several very valuable dissertations of his own. His fourteenth contains, among other matters, a particular enquiry about the author of this Creed. He ascribes it to Vigilius Tapsensis, the African*; and so well defends his position, that he has almost drawn the learned world after him. He is looked upon as the father of that opinion, because he has so learnedly and handsomely supported it; but he is not the first that espoused it, for Labbe, about fifteen years before, had taken notice of some that had ascribed this Creed to Vigilius, at the same time signi- fying his dissent from them '.

1676. The year after Quesnel, Sandius, the famous Arian, printed a second edition of his Mucleus, &c., with an Appendix; wherein he corrects his former judgment™ of this Creed, taken implicitly from Vos- sius; and allows, nay, contends and insists upon it, that this Creed was not only known, but known under the name of Athanasius, as high at least as the year 770". He ascribes it, upon conjecture, to one Atha- nasius, Bishop of Spire in Germany, who died in the year 642,

1678. I ought not to pass over our very learned Cudworth, though he has entered very little into the point before us. He gives his judgment, in passing,

k Quesnel, Dissert. xiv. p. 729, &c.

1 Labbe, Dissert. de Script. Eccles., vol. ii. p. 477. m Sandius, Vucl. Histor. Eccles., p. 256.

» Sandius, Appendix, p. 35,

CONCERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 11

of the Creed commonly called Athanasian, that it was written a long time after Athanasius, by some other hand °.

1680. Henricus Heideggerus, in his second volume of select dissertations (published at Zurich), has one whole dissertation, which is the eighteenth, containing near forty pages in quarto. This author takes his account of the Creed mostly from Vossius; does not allow it to be Athanasius’s, only called by his name as containing the Athanasian faith: and he defends the doctrine of the Creed at large against the objections of Dudithius and other Antitrinitarians ; and concludes with a running comment upon the whole.

1681. Wolfgang Gundling, a German writer, the year after, published a small tract, containing notes upon a little piece relating to the religion of the Greek Churches, written by Eustratius Johannides Zialowski. What is chiefly valuable in Gundling, is his account of the Greek copies of this Creed, (printed ones I mean,) giving us six of them together. He occasionally ex- presses his doubts whether the Creed be Athanasius’s, or of some later writer ?.

1683. I may next mention our celebrated eccle- siastical historian, Dr. Cave, who about this time published his Lives of the Fathers, and particularly of Athanasius. His account of this Creed is, that it was never heard of in the world till above 600 years after Athanasius was dead ; but barely mentioned then, and not urged with any confidence till above 200 years after, when the legates of Pope Gregory IX. produced

ο Cudworth, Intellect. Syst., bk. i. ο. 4. p. 620. P Gundling, Notes on Zialowski, p. 68, &c.

12 THE OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED MODERNS

and pleaded it at Constantinople ἃ, The learned doctor, it is plain, took this account from Vossius, and had never seen Usher’s treatise, which one may justly wonder at. Five years after, in his Historia Literaria, he allows that this Creed had been spoken of by Theodulphus, which was within 496 years of Atha- nasius; but not a word yet of any elder testimony or manuscript, though both had been discovered and publicly taken notice of before this time. He still con- tends that the Creed obtained not in the Christian Churches before 1000, nor became famous everywhere before 1238; but inclines nevertheless to ascribe it to Vigilius Tapsensis, who flourished about the year 484".

1684. Dr. Comber, in his book entitled ‘‘ A Compa- nion to the Temple,’’ closes in with the old tradition of the Creed being Athanasius’s, repeating the most considerable arguments usually pleaded for that per- suasion §,

1684. To him I may subjoin Bishop Beveridge, who perhaps about this time might write his thoughts on the Creed, in his Exposition of our Articles, published after his death. He was so diligent and knowing a man, that had he been to consider this matter in his later years, he would certainly have given a more particular and accurate account than that which now appears. He ascribes the Creed to Athanasius, but with some diffidence, and thinks it might have been originally a Greek composition, but that the old Greek

a Cave, Life of Athanasius, § 6, Art. 10, in vol. ii. p. 106. τ Cave, Histor. Literar., vol. i. pp. 146, 371. ® Comber, Companion to the Temple, p. 144.

CONCERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 13

copies have been lost, and that the only remaining ones are Versions from the Latin ¢,

1685. Cabassutius, in his Wotitia Ecclesiastica, hath a short dissertation about the author of this Creed». He contents himself with repeating Quesnel’s Argu- ments, to prove that Athanasius was not the author of it, determining nothing farther, save only that it was originally a Latin composure, known and cited by the Council of Autun, about the year 670.

1687. The celebrated Dupin, in his Ecclesiastical History, sums up the reasons usually urged to prove the Creed is none of Athanasius’s, and assents to them. He determines with confidence that it was originally a Latin composition, and not known till the fifth cen- tury; repeats Father Quesnel’s reasons for ascribing it to Vigilius Tapsensis, and acquiesces in them as haying nothing more certain in this matter ’.

1687. About the same time, Tentzelius, a learned Lutheran, published a little treatise upon the subject, setting forth the several opinions of learned men con- cerning this Creed. He is very full and accurate in his collection, omitting nothing of moment that had been said before him by any of the learned moderns, but bringing in some further materials from his own searches to add new light to the subject. He deter- mines nothing, but leaves it to the reader to make a judgment as he sees cause from a full view of the pleadings.

1688. I may place here the learned Pagi, who in

t Beveridge, on Art. 8, (p. 162), in vol. ix. p. 277.

ἃ Cabassutius, Wotit. Heccles., Dissert. xix. p. 54. τ Dupin, Eccles. Histor., vol. ii. p. 35.

14 THE OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED MODERNS

his critic upon Baronius passes his judgment of this Creed*: which being the same with Quesnel’s, and little more than repetition from him, I need not be more particular about him.

1693. Joseph Antelmi, a learned Paris divine, first began directly to attack Quesnel’s opinion, and to sap the reasons on which it was founded. He published a particular dissertation to that purpose, consisting of eighty-five pages in octavo. He ascribes the Creed to Vincentius Lirimensis, who flourished in the year 434.

1695. The famous Tillemont wrote after Antelmius, for he makes mention of his treatise, and examines his hypothesis, and yet it could not be long after, for he died in the year 1697. He commends Mr. Antelmi’s performance as a considerable work, but inclines still rather to Quesnel’s opinion. All that he pronounces certain is, that the Creed is none of Athanasius’s, but yet as old as the sixth century or older’.

1698. In the year 1698 Montfaucon published his new and accurate edition of Athanasius’s works. In the second tome he has an excellent dissertation upon this Creed, the best that is extant, either for order and method, or for plenty of useful matter. The sum of his judgment is, that the Creed is certainly none of Athanasius’s, nor yet Vigilius Tapsensis’s, nor suffi- ciently proved to belong to Vincentius Lirinensis; but probably enough composed about the time of Vincentius, and by a Gallican writer or writers +.

x Pagi, Critic. in Baron. Ann. 340, §§ 6—8, pp. 120, 121 (p. 440).

y Tillemont, M/émotres, note xxxiv. vol. viii, p. 282 (p. 667).

z “Symbolum ‘Quicunque’ Athanasio incunctanter abjudican-

dum arbitramur.—Afro itaque Vigilio nihil est quod symbolum ‘Qui- cunque’ tribuatur.—non egre quidem concesserim Vincentii etate

CONCERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 15 1698. In the same year, Ludovicus Antonius Mura- torius, an Italian writer, published a second tome of Anecdota out of the Ambrosian library at Milan. Among other manuscripts there, he had met with an ancient comment upon this Creed, ascribed to Venan- tius Fortunatus, who was Bishop of Poictiers in France in the sixth century. He publishes the comment, together with a dissertation of his own concerning the author of the Creed, concluding, at length, that Venantius Fortunatus, the certain author of the Com- ment, might possibly be the author of the Creed too. He entirely rejects the opinion of those that would ascribe it to Athanasius, and disapproves of Quesnel’s persuasion about Vigilius Tapsensis, but speaks fa- vourably of Antelmi’s, as coming nearest to the truth *. 1712. Fabricius, in his Bibliotheca Greca” (highly valued by all men of letters), gives a summary account of the sentiments of the learned relating to this Creed. His conclusion from all is, that thus far may be de- pended on as certain: that the Creed was not com- posed by Athanasius, but long after in the fifth cen- tury, written originally in Latin, and afterwards trans- lated into Greek. 1712. In the same year, the learned Le Quien pub- lished a new edition of Damascen, with previous dis- sertations to it. In the first of these he has several

editam fuisse illam fidei professionem.—Haud abs re conjectant Viri eruditi in Galliis illud (symbolum) fuisse elucubratum.”—

accedere.’’—Muratori, Anecd., vol. ii. p. 222. b Fabricius, Biblioth. Graca, bk. v. c. 2, ὃ 88, in vol. v. p. 315.

16 THE OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED MODERNS

very considerable remarks concerning the age and au- thor of the Athanasian Creed. He appears inclinable to ascribe it to Pope Anastasius I. (who entered upon the pontificate in the year 398) because of some an- cient testimonies, as well as manuscripts, carrying the name of Anastasius in the title of the Creed; but he is positive that the Creed must be set as high as the age of St. Austin, Vincentius, and Vigilius®. And, as Antelmius before had made light of the supposition that the internal characters of the. Creed shew it to be later than Eutyches, he makes as light of the other supposition of the internal characters setting it later than Nestorius.

1714. Natalis Alexander’s new edition of his Eccle- siastical History bears date a.p. 1714. He had ex- amined into our present question some years before (about 1676, when his first edition came abroad), sub- scribing to the opinion of Quesnel, and he does not appear to have altered his mind since. He takes notice of Antelmi’s opinion, and speaks respectfully of it, as also of the author, but prefers the other hypo- thesis *.

1715. I ought not here to omit the late learned Mr. Bingham, to whom the public has been highly indebted for his Origines Leclesiastice, collected with great judgment, and digested into a clear method. He had a proper occasion to say something of the Athanasian Creed in passing, and very briefly. He observes that it was not composed by Athanasius, but

¢ “*Omnino fateri cogor Augustini, Vincentii, et Vigilii xtate extitisse expositionem Latinam Fidei, que postmodum Athanasio

magno attribui meruerit.”—Le Quien, Dissert. Damasc., i. p. 9. ἃ Natal. Alexand., Ecc). Hist., vol. iv. p. 111.

CONCERNING THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 17

by a later and a Latin writer, and particularly Vigilius Tapsensis; referring to such learned moderns as I have above mentioned, for the proof of it, and giving no more than short hints of their reasons °,

1719. Dr. Clarke of St. James’s, in his second edition of his Scripture Doctrine ‘, gives us his last thoughts in relation to this Creed. Referring to Dr. Cave he informs us, that this Creed was never seen till about the year 800, near 400 years after the death of Atha- nasius (they are his own words), nor was received in the Church till so very late as about the year 1000. Yet Cave does not say, ‘‘ was never seen” (for he him- self ascribes it to Vigilius Tapsensis of the fifth century), but only that it was not quoted before the year 800, or nearly, which yet is a very great mistake. What the learned Doctor intended by saying ‘‘ about the year 800,” and yet only ‘‘ near 400 years after the death of Athanasius,” or, as he elsewhere ® expresses it, ‘‘ above 300 years after the death of Athanasius,’ I do not understand, but must leave to those that can compute the distance between 373 (the latest year that Athana- sius is ever supposed to have lived) and the year 800. I am persuaded the Doctor was thinking, that if Atha- nasius had lived to the year 400, then the distance had been just 400 years; but as he died twenty-seven years before, the distance must be so much the less, when it is quite the contrary.

1722. The last man that has given his sentiments in

e Bingham, Oriy. Eccles., bk. x. ὁ. 4, § 18, in vol. iii. p. 92, &c. (vol. iv. p. 112, &c.)

f Clarke’s Script. Doctr., pt. iii. 6. 2,.in vol. iii. p. 205, (p. 379,

2nd edit.) & Ibid., p. 447, 1st ed.

18 ὙΠῈ OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED MODERNS, &c.

relation to this Creed is Casimirus Oudinus, in his new edition of his Supplement (now called a Commentary) to the Ecclesiastical Writers. I need say no more than that he does not seem to have spent much pains in re- examining this subject, but rests content with his first thoughts, ascribing the Creed, with Quesnel, to Vi- gilius Tapsensis >.

These are the principal moderns that have fallen within my notice, and of these the most considerable are Vossius, Usher, Quesnel, Tentzelius, Antelmius, Tillemont, Montfaucon, Muratorius, and Le Quien; as haying particularly studied the subject, and struck new light into it, either furnishing fresh materials, or improving the old by new observations. Some, perhaps, may wish to have the several opinions of the moderns thrown into a narrower compass: for which reason IT have thought it not improper to subjoin the follow- ing table, which will represent all in one view, for the ease and conveniency of every common reader.

h Oudin., Comment. de Scriptor. Eccles., vol. i. pp. 345, 1248, 1322.

A.D.

1642 1644 1647 1647 1653 1659 1659 1663 1669, 1675 1675 1676 1678. 1680 1681) 1683 1684 1684 1685 1687 1687 1688 1693 1695 1698 1698 1712 1712 1714 1715 1719 1722

THE OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED

MODERNS.

Author of the What Century {What Year| When

Writers. Creed. composed in. | composed. | received, Vossius. A Latin author. Not bef. 600} s.p. 1000 Petavius. Doubtful. Bishop Usher. Fifth. Before 447 | Before 852 Bishop Taylor. Not Athanasius. G. Ashwell. Athanasius. Fourth. 340 L’Estrange. Not Athanasius. Before 600 Leo Allatius. Athanasius. Fourth. 940 Card. Bona. Athanasius Alex. Fourth, 340 Bishop Pearson. |A Latin author. About 600 Ruelius. Not Athanasius. Paschas. Quesnel. | Vigilius Tapsensis. Fifth. 484 Before 670 Sandius. Athanasius of Spire. Seventh. Before 642 | Before 770 Dr. Cudworth. |Not Athanasius. | After the Fourth. Heideggerus. Vigilius Tapsensis. Fifth. 484 Wolf, Gundling. | Doubtful. Dr. Cave. Vigilius Tapsensis. Fifth. 484 1000 Dr. Comber. Athanasius Alex. Fourth. 335° Bp. Beveridge. Athanasius Alex. Fourth. Before 850 Cabassutius. |A Latin author. Before 670 Dupin. Vigilius Tapsensis. Fifth. 484 Tentzelius. Doubtful. Pagi. Vigilius Tapsensis. Fifth. 484 570 Antelmius. Vincentius Lirinens. | Fifth. Before 450 Tillemont. Not Athanasius. Sixth, or sooner. Montfaucon. A Gallican writer. Fifth. Before 670 Ant. Muratorius. | Venant. Fortunatus. Sixth. 570 800 Fabricius. A Latin author. Fifth. 663 Le Quien. Anastasius 1. Fourth or Fifth. | Before 401 500 Natal. Alexander. | Vigilius Tapsensis. Fifth. 484 Mr. Bingham. Vigilius Tapsensis. Fifth. 670 Dr. Clarke. Doubtful. Seventh or Eighth. 1000 Oudin. Vigilius Tapsensis, Fifth. 484

CHAPTER II.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES.

Havine taken a view of the moderns in relation to the Creed, we may now enter upon a detail of the an- cients and their testimonies, by which the moderns must be tried. My design is to lay before the reader all the original evidence I can meet with, to give any light either into the age or author of the Creed, or its reception in the Christian Churches, that so the reader may be able to judge for himself concerning the three particulars now mentioned, which are what I con- stantly bear in my eye, producing nothing but with a view to one or more of them.

Ancient testimonies have been pretended from Gre- gory Nazianzen, Gaudentius Brixiensis, St. Austin, and Isidorus Hispalensis, of the fourth, fifth, and sixth cen- turies*; but they have been since generally and justly exploded by the learned as being either spurious or foreign to the point; and therefore I conceive it very needless to take any further notice of them. As to quotations from our Creed, or comments upon it, falling within the compass of the centuries now mentioned, if there be any such, they shall be considered under other heads, distinct from that of ancient testimonies, properly so called, to be treated of in this chapter.

® These testimonies are collected and discussed by Montfaucon,

(Diatrib. in Symb., pp. 719, 720); from whom Dr. Waterland ap- pears to have obtained most of the passages quoted in this chapter.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 21

670. The oldest of this kind hitherto discovered or observed, is that of the Council of Autun in France, under Leodegarius, or St. Leger, the Bishop of the place in the seventh century. There is some dispute about the year when the Council was held, whether in 663, or 666, or 670. The last is most probable, and most generally embraced by learned men. The words of this Council in English, run thus:—‘‘If any pres- byter, deacon, sub-deacon, or clerk, doth not unre- provably recite the Creed which the Apostles delivered by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and also the faith of the holy prelate Athanasius, let him be censured by the Bishop’.” By the faith of Athanasius is here meant what we now call the Athanasian Creed, as may be reasonably pleaded from the titles which this Creed bore in the earlier times before it came to have the name of a Creed; which titles shall be exhibited both from manuscripts and written evidences in the sequel. Yet it must not be dissembled that Papebro- chius, a learned man, and whom I find cited with approbation by Muratorius*, is of opinion that the faith of Athanasius here mentioned, means the Nicene

b “*Si quis presbyter, diaconus, sub-diaconus, vel clericus, sym- bolum quod Sauncto inspirante Spiritu Apostoli tradiderunt et fidem Sancti Athanasii presulis irreprehensibiliter non recensue- rit; ab episcopo condemnetur.”—Augustodun. Synod., in Harduin, vol. iii. p. 1016.

ε « Atqui, ut eruditissime adnotavit clarissimus P. Papebrochius, in Respons. ad exhibitionem Errorum par. ii. Art. 13. n. 36, verbis illis fidem 8. Athanasii, minime symbolum Athanasianum desig- natur, sed quidem Nicznum, in quo elaborando plurimum insudasse Athanasium verisimile est. Etenim cur Apostolico symbolo com- mendato Nicenum pretermisissent Augustoduneuses Patres? Cur Athanasiani symboli, cujus tune nullus erat usus in sacris, cogni- tionem exegissent, Nicenumque ne uno quidem verbo commemo- rassent ?’”—Murator., Anecdot., vol. ii. p. 223.

22 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

Creed, which Athanasius had some hand in, and where- of he was the great defender. JI can by no means come into his opinion, or allow any force to his reason- ings. He asks, Why should the Nicene Creed be omitted and not mentioned with the Apostles’? and, why should the Athanasian not then used in the sacred offices, be recommended so carefully without a word of the Nicene? I answer, because it does not appear that the Nicene Creed was so much taken notice of at that time in the Gallican Churches, while the Apo- stolical or Roman Creed made use of in baptism in the Western Churches instead of the Nicene, (which prevailed in the East,) in a manner superseded it; which no one can wonder at who considers how pre- vailing and universal the tradition had been in the Latin Church, down from the fifth century at least, that the Apostolical Creed was composed by the twelve Apostles, and therefore as sacred and of as great autho- rity as the inspired writings themselves. Besides that, it appears from Hinemar, who will be cited in his place, that it was no strange thing even so low as his time, about 850, to recommend the Athanasian Creed along with the Apostles’, without a word of the Nicene. And why should it be thought any objection against the Athanasian Creed that it was not at that time re- ceived into the sacred offices, (supposing it really was not, which may be questioned,) when it is certain that the Nicene was not yet received into the sacred offices in France, nor till many years after, about the time of Pepin or of Charles the Great? There is therefore no force at all in the argument of Papebrochius; but there is this strong prejudice against it, that the title

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 23

there given is a very common title for the Athanasian Creed and not for the Nicene. Nor would the Fathers of that Council have been so extravagantly fond of the name of Athanasius, as to think it a greater commen- dation of the Creed of Nice to call it after him than to call it the Nicene. There is, then, no reasonable doubt to be made but that the Council of Autun in the Canon intended the Athanasian Creed, as the best critics and the generality of the learned have hitherto believed.

But there are other objections of real weight against the evidence built upon this canon. 1. Oudin makes it a question whether there was ever any Council held under Leodegarius, a suffragan bishop under the Arch- bishop of Lyons, having no metropolitical authority ὦ, But it may suffice if the Council was held at Autun, while he was bishop of the place, a good reason why he should be particularly mentioned; especially con- sidering the worth and fame of the man, to say nothing of the dignity of his see, which from the time of Gre- gory the Great, had been the second or next in dignity to the metropolitical see of Lyons. Nor do I perceive any force in Oudin’s objection against St. Leger’s hold- ing a diocesan synod (for a provincial synod is not pretended), though he was no metropolitan. 2. A stronger objection is that the canon we are concerned with, cannot be proved to belong to the council held under Leodegarius. It is not found among the canons of that council published by Sirmondus, from the manu- scripts of the Library of the Church of Angers, but it is from another collection out of the library of the

4 Oudin, Comment. de Scriptor. Eccles., vol. i. p. 348.

24 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

monastery of St. Benignus, of Dijon, with this title only, Canones Augustodunenses; so that one cannot be certain whether it belongs to the synod under St. Leger, or to some other synod of Autun much later. It must be owned that the evidence can amount to no more than probable presumption or conjecture ; where- fore Dupin’, Tentzeliusf, Muratorius%, and Oudin 4, do not scruple to throw it aside as of too suspected credit to build anything certain upon: and even Ques- nel‘ expresses some dissatisfaction about it; only in respect to some great names, such as Sirmondus, Peter le Lande, Godfr. Hermantius, &c., he is willing to acquiesce in it. To whom we may add, LabbeJ, Le Coint *, Cabassutius!, Pagi ™, Tillemont ", Montfau- con °, Fabricius P, Harduin “, and our learned antiquary Mr. Binghim', who all accept it as genuine, but upon probable persuasion rather than certain conviction. Neither do I pretend to propose it as clear and un- doubted evidence, but probable only, and such as will be much confirmed by other evidences to be mentioned hereafter.

760. Regino, Abbot of Prom in Germany, an author

¢ Dupin, Eccl. Hist., vol. ii. p. 35.

Ἢ Tentzel., Judic. Erud., p. 61, &e.

s Murator., Anecdot., vol. ii. p. 223.

4 Oudin, Comment. de Seriptor. Eccles., vol. i. p. 348.

i Quesnel, Dissert. xiv. p. 731.

j Labbe, Dissert. de Scriptor. Eccles., vol. ii. p. 478.

k Le Cointe, Annal. Franc. ad Ann. 663, n. 22.

1 Cabassut., Notit. Eccl. Dissert. xix. p. 54.

m Pagi, Crit. in Baron. Ann. 340, § 6. p. 120.

» Tillemont, J/émozres, vol. viii. p. 283, (vol. viii. p. 668.)

ο Montfauc., Diatrib. in Symb., p. 720.

» Fabric., Bibl. Grec., lib. v. 6. 2, § 88, in vol. v. p. 316.

4 Harduin, Concil., vol. iii. p. 1016.

τ Bingham, Orig. Hecles., bk. x. c. 4, § 18, in vol. iii. p. 94, (vol. iv. p. 120.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 25

of the ninth and tenth centuries, has among other collections, some Articles of Inquiry, supposed by Ba- luzius the editor to be as old, or very nearly, as the age of Boniface, Bishop of Mentz, who died in the year 754. In those articles, there is one to this pur- pose: ‘‘ Whether the clergy have by heart Athana- sius’s tract upon the faith of the Trinity, beginning with Whosoever will be saved,” ἄο. This testimony I may venture to place about 760, a little after the death of Boniface.

794. The Council of Frankfort, in Germany, in their 33rd Canon, give orders that “The Catholic faith of the holy Trinity, and Lord’s Prayer, and Creed, be set forth and delivered to all *.”’

Vossius" understands the canon of the two Creeds Nicene and Apostolical; but I know not why the Apostolical or Roman Creed should be emphatically called Symbolum Fide’, the Creed, in opposition to the Nicene, nor why the Nicene should not be called a Creed as well as the other, after the usual way. Besides that Fides Catholica, &c., has been more pe- culiarly the title of the Athanasian Creed; and it was no uncommon thing, either before or after this time, to recommend it in this manner together with the Lord's Prayer, and Apostles’ Creed, just as we find here. And nothing could be at that time of greater service against the heresy of Felix and Elipandus, (which occasioned the

5. “*Si sermonem Athanasii episcopi de Fide Sancte Trinitatis, cujus initium est, ‘ Quicunque vult Salvus esse,’ memoriter teneat.” —Regin. de Discipl. Eccles., lib. i. c. 1, § 85.

t «Ut fides Catholica sancte Trinitatis, et Oratio Dominica, at- que Symbolum Fidei omnibus predicetur, et tradatur.”—Concil.

Franef., Can. 33, in Harduin, vol. iv. p. 908. ἃ Vossius de tribus Symb. Dissert. iii. ὁ. 26, p. 528.

26 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

calling of the Council,) than the Athanasian Creed ; for which reasons, till I see better reasons to the con- trary, I must be of opinion that the Council of Frank- fort in their 38rd Canon intended the Athanasian Creed, which Charles the Great had a particular respect for, and had presented in form to Pope Adrian L., above twenty years before, as we shall see in another chapter.

809. Theodulphus, Bishop of Orleans in France, has a Treatise of the Holy Ghost, with a preface to Charles the Great, written at a time when the dispute about the procession began to make disturbance. He brings several testimonies in favour of the procession from the Son out of Athanasius; and, among others, a pretty large part of the Athanasian Creed, from the words, ‘‘The Father is made of none,” &c.. to, ‘‘ He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity ’,”’ inclusive.

809. An anonymous writer of the same time, and in the same cause, and directing himself to the same prince, makes the like use of the Athanasian Creed, in the following words: ‘‘St. Athanasius, in the Ex- position of the Catholic faith, which that great master wrote himself, and which the Universal Church pro- fesses, declares the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and Son, thus saying, ‘The Father is made of none”,’”’ &c. This I cite upon the credit of Sirmon- dus in his Notes to Theodulphus.

v “Item idem... . ‘ Pater a nullo est factus,’ &c., usque ad ‘ Qui vult ergo Salvus esse,’”” &c.—Theodulph. de Spiritw Sancto, in Sirmond. Oper., vol. ii. p. 978.

w “TIncertus Autor quem diximus, hoc ipso utens testimonio, Beatus, inquit, Athanasius, in expositione Catholice fidei, quam

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 27

809. It was in the same year that the Latin Monks of Mount Olivet wrote their apologetical letter to Pope Leo III., justifying their doctrine of the pro- cession from the Son, against one John of Jerusalem, a monk too, of another monastery, and of an opposite persuasion. Among other authorities they appeal to the faith of Athanasius, that is, to the Creed, as we now call it. This I have from Le Quien, the learned editor of Damascen, who had the copy of that letter from Baluzius, as he there signifies *.

820. Not long after, Hatto, otherwise called Hetto and Ahyto, Bishop of Basil in France, composed his Capitular, or Book of Constitutions, for the regulation of the clergy of his diocese. Amongst other good rules, this makes the fourth: ‘‘ That they should have the Faith of Athanasius by heart, and recite it at the Prime (that is, at seven o’clock in the morning) every Lord’s Day 9.”

820. Agobardus of the same time, Archbishop of Lyons, wrote against Felix Orgelitanus, where he occa- sionally cites part of the Athanasian Creed. His words are: ‘St. Athanasius says, that except a man doth

ipse egregius doctor conscripsit, et quam universalis confitetur ecclesia, processionem Spiritus Sancti a Patre et Filio declarat, ita dicens: ‘ Pater a nullo est factus,’” &c.—Sirmond, Oper., vol. i. p. 978; cf. p. 967.

x “jn Regula Sancti Benedicti quam nobis dedit Filius vester Domnus Karolus, que habet fidem scriptam de Sancta et insepa- rabili Trinitate ; ‘Credo Spiritum Sanctum Deum verum ex patre procedentem et filio:’ et in Dialogo quem nobis vestra Sanctitas dare dignata est similiter dicit. Et in Fide 5. Athanasii eodem modo dicit.” — Monachi de Monte Oliv., in Le Quien, Dissert. Damase., p. 7.

y “Quarto, ut fides Sancti Athanasii a sacerdotibus discatur, et ex corde Die Dominico ad Primam recitetur.”—Basil., Capzrtul., in Harduin., vol. iv. p. 1241.

28 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

keep the Catholic faith whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly 7.”

852. In the same age flourished the famous Hinemar, Archbishop of Rheims, who so often cites or refers to the Creed we are speaking of, as a standing rule of faith, that it may be needless to produce the particular passages, I shall content myself with one only, more considerable than the rest for the use that is to be made of it hereafter. He directs his Presbyters “to learn Athanasius’s Treatise of Faith (beginning with ‘ Whosoever will be saved’), to commit it to memory, to understand its meaning, and to be able to give it in common words?;” that is, I suppose, in the vulgar tongue. He at the same time recommends the Lord’s Prayer and (Apostles’) Creed», as I take it, without mentioning the Nicene; which I particularly remark for a reason to be seen above. It is farther observable that though Hinemar here gives the Athanasian for- mulary the name of a Treatise of Faith, yet he else- where® scruples not to call it (Symbolum) a Creed ; and he is, probably, as Sirmondus observes‘, the first

z “ Beatus Athanasius ait ; Fidem Catholicam nisi quis integram, inviolatamque servaverit, absque dubio in externum peribit.” — Agobard., adv. dogma Felicis, ¢. 3, in vol. i. p. 5.

a ἐς Unusquisque presbyterorum expositionem symboli atque Ora- tionis dominice juxta Traditionem Orthodoxorum Patrum plenius discat . .. Psalmorum etiam verba, et distinctiones regulariter, et ex corde, cum Canticis consuetudinariis pronuntiare sciat. Necnon et sermonem Athanasii de fide, cujus initium est, ‘ Quicunque vult Salvus esse,’ memorize quisque commendet, sensum illius intelligat, et verbis communibus enuntiare queat.”—Hinem., Capitula ad presbyteros, i. 1, in vol. i. p. 710.

b Vid. Hinem., Opusc. ad Hinemar. Laudunensem, ο. 24, in vol. ii. p. 474.

¢ ‘* Athanasius in Symbolo dicens,” &c.; id.,de Predestin., vol. i. Ρ. 309.

4 Sirmond. | Not. in Theodulph., vol, ii. p. 978.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 29

writer who gave it the name it bears at this day. Which I suppose may have led Oudin into his mistake, that no writer before Hincmar ever made mention of this Creed*; a mistake, which, though taken notice of by Tentzelius ‘ in the year 1687, he has nevertheless again and again repeated in his last edition.

865. In the same age lived Anscharius, monk also of Corbey, and afterwards Archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen in Germany. Among his dying instructions to his clergy, he left this for one; that they should be careful to recite the Catholic faith composed by Athanasius ὅ. This is reported by Rembertus, the writer of his life, and successor to him in the same see, who had been likewise monk of Corbey: so that we have here two considerable testimonies in one.

868. Contemporary with these was Aineas Bishop of Paris, who, in his Treatise against the Greeks, quotes the Athanasian Creed under the name of Fides Ca- tholica™, Catholic faith, producing the same paragraph of it which Theodulphus had done sixty years before.

868. About the same time, and in the same cause, Ratram or Bertram, monk of Corbey in France, made the like use of this Creed, calling it, A Treatise of the Faith’.

© Oudin, Comment. de Scriptor. Eccl., vol. i. pp. 345, 1322.

f Tentzel., Judic. Erud., p. 144.

g ‘Fratres.... admonuit ipse.... ut canerent Fidem Catholi- cam a Beato Athanasio compositam.’’—Rembert., Vit. Anschar., p. 237.

h «Sanctus Athanasius, Alexandrine sedis Episcopus, &c....Item idem in Fide Catholica: quod Spiritus Sanctus a Patre procedat, et Filio. Patera nullo est factus,” &c.—Aineas Paris., adv. Grec., c.19.

i « Beatus Athanasius, Alexandrinus episcopus, in Libello de fide quem edidit, et omnibus Catholicis tenendum proposuit inter cetera sic ait; Pater a nullo est factus, nec creatus, nec geni- tus,” &c.—Ratr., contra Grecor. oppos., lib. ii. ο. 3.

90 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

871. Adalbertus of this time, upon his nomination to a Bishopric in the province of Rheims, was obliged to give in a profession of his Faith to Archbishop Hinemar. Among other things, he professes his great regard to the Athanasian Creed (Sermo Athanasiv), as a Creed received with great veneration by the Catholic Church, or being of customary and venerable use in it*. This testimony is considerable in regard to the reception of this Creed; and not before taken notice of, so far as I know, by those that have treated of this argument.

889. This Creed is again mentioned in the same age by Riculphus, Bishop of Soissons in France, in his pastoral Charge to the Clergy of his diocese. He calls it a Treatise (or Discourse) of Catholic Faith! This I take from Father Harduin’s Councils, as -also the former, with the dates of both.

960. Ratherius, Bishop of Verona in Italy in the year 928, and afterwards of Liege in Germany in the year 953, and restored to his See of Verona in the year 955, did after this time write instructions to his clergy of Verona; in which he makes mention of all the three Creeds, Apostolical, Nicene, and Athanasian ; obliging his clergy to have them all by heart; which

k “Tn Sermone Beati Athanasii, quem Ecclesia Catholica vene- rando usu frequentare consuevit, qui ita incipit ; ‘Quicunque vult Salvus esse, ante omnia opus est ut teneat Catholicam Fidem.’ Pro- fessio Adalberti episcopi Morinensis futuri.”—Harduin., Conecil., vol. v. p. 1445.

1 “JTtem monemus, ut unusquisque vestrum Psalmos, et sermo- nem fidei Catholice, cujus initium, ‘ Quicunque vult Salvus esse,’ et canonem miss, et cantum, vel compotum, memoriter, et veraciter et correcte tenere studeat.”—Riculf., Constitution 5, in Harduin, vol. vi. p. 415.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 91

shews that they were all of standing use in his time, in his diocese at least ™.

997. Near the close of this century lived Abbo, or Albo, Abbot of Fleury, or St. Benedict upon the Loire in France. Upon some difference he had with Arnul- phus, Bishop of Orleans, he wrote an apology which he addressed to the two kings of France, Hugh and Robert. In that apology he has a passage relating to our purpose running thus: ‘‘I thought proper, in the first place, to speak concerning the Faith, which I have heard variously sung in alternate choirs, both in France and in the Church of England. For some, Τ think, say in the Athanasian form, ‘The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither made, nor created, but proceeding:’ who while they leave out ‘nor begotten,’ are persuaded that they are the more conformable to Gregory’s Synodical Epistle, wherein it is written that the ‘Holy Ghost is neither unbegotten, nor begotten, but proceeding”.’”’ I have taken the liberty of throwing in a word or two to make the sen- tence run the clearer. What the author intends is, that some scrupulous persons both in France and Eng-

m ‘Tpsam fidem, id est credulitatem Dei, trifarie parare memo- riter festinetis: Hoe est, secundum Symbolum id est collationem Apostolorum, sicut in Psalteriis correctis invenitur ; et illam que ad missam canitur ; et illam Sancti Athanasii que ita incipit ; ‘ Qui- cunque vult Salvus esse’... Sermonem, ut superius dixi, Athanasii Episcopi de fide Trinitatis, cujus initium est, ‘Quicunque vult, me- moriter teneat.’’— Ratherii, Synod. Hpist.,in Harduin, vol. vi. p. 791.

Ὁ “*Primitus de Fide dicendum credidi; quam alternantibus choris et in Francia, et apud Anglorum Ecclesiam variari audivi. Alii enim dicunt, ut arbitror, secundum Athanasium, ‘ Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio non factus, non creatus, sed procedens :’ qui dum id quod est nec genitus subtrahunt, Synodicam Domni Gregorii se sequi credunt, ubi ita est scriptum; ‘Spiritus Sanctus

nec ingenitus est, nec genitus, sed’ procedens.’””—Abbo Floriacens., Apol. ad Francor. Reges, ο. 15.

92 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

land, recited the Athanasian Creed with some altera- tion, leaving out two words to make it agree the better, as they imagined, with Gregory’s synodical instructions. As to their scruple herein, and the ground of it, I shall say more of it in a proper place. All I am to observe at present is, that this testimony is full for the custom of alternate singing the Athana- sian Creed at this time in the French and English Churches. And indeed we shall meet with other as full, and withal earlier evidence of the same custom, when we come to treat of manuscripts in the following chapters. To proceed with our ancient testimonies.

1047. In the next century we meet with Gualdo, a monk of Corbey, who likewise wrote the Life of Anscharius, but in verse, as Rembertus had before done in prose. He also takes some notice of our Creed, ascribing it to Athanasius 5,

1130. In the century following, Honorius, a scholas- tic divine of the Church of Autun, in his book en- titled ‘‘ The Pearl of the Soul” (which treats of the sacred or Liturgic offices), reckons up the several Creeds of the Church, making in all four: namely, the Apostolical, the Nicene, the Constantinopolitan, and the Athanasian. Of the last he observes, that it was daily repeated at the Prime’. He ascribes it to Athanasius of Alexandria, in the time of Theodo- sius, where he is undoubtedly mistaken in his chro- nology. For if he means the first Athanasius of Alex-

© **Catolicamque Fidem quam composuisse beatus

Fertur Athanasius.”—Gualdo, Vit. Ansch., ο. 107, p. 322. P ‘*Quarto, fidem ‘ Quicunque vult,’ quotidie ad Primam iterat,

quam Athanasius Alexandrinus Episcopus, rogatu Theodosi1 Impe- ratoris edidit.”—Honor., Gemm. Anima, lib. ii. ο. 59, p. 1086.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 33

andria, he is too early for either of the Theodosiuses: and if he means it of the second, he is as much too late. But a slip in chronology might be pardonable in that age, nor does it at all affect the truth of what he attests of his own times.

1146. Otho, Bishop of Frisinghen in Bavaria, may here be taken notice of, as being the first we have met with who pretends to name the place where Atha- nasius is supposed to have made this Creed, Triers, or Treves, in Germany‘. It is no improbable conjecture of M. Antelmi', that the copy of the Creed found at Treves being very ancient, or the most ancient of any, and from which many others were taken, might first occasion the story of the Creed’s being made at Treves, and by Athanasius himself, who by his exile thither might render that place famous for his name to all after ages.

1171. Arnoldus, in his Chronicle, informs us of an Abbot of Brunswick, who attending the Duke of Bruns- wick at this time in his journey into the East, had some disputes with the Greeks at Constantinople upon the Article of Procession, and pleaded the usual pas- sage out of this Creed, whose words are to be seen in the margin’. What is most to be noted is the title of Symbolum Fidei, which now began to be common to this form, as to the other Creeds.

4 ‘‘Tbidem manens in Ecclesia Treverorum sub Maximino ejus- dem Ecclesiw Episcopo, ‘ Quicunque vult,’ &e., a quibusdam dicitur edidisse.”—Otto Frising., Chronic., lib. iv. cap. 7, p. 44 (al. p. 75).

r Antelm. de Symb. Athan., p. 27.

s “Unde Athanasius in Symbolo Fidei: Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio non factus, nec creatus, nee genitus, sed procedens, Ecce Spiritum Sanctum a Patre dicit procedere et a Filio.”—Henric. Abb. apud Arnold., Chron. Slavor., lib. iii. c. 5, p. 248.

D

94 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

1178. Robertus Paululus, Presbyter of Amiens, in the diocese of Rheims, speaking of the offices recited at the Prime, observes that the piety of good Chris- tians had thereunto added the Quicunque vult, that the articles necessary to salvation might never be forgotten any hour of the day *.

1190. Beleth, a celebrated Paris divine, is the oldest writer that takes notice of this Creed being commonly ascribed to Anastasius, though he himself ascribes it to Athanasius". Tentzelius’ marks some differences between the prints and the manuscripts of this author, and betwixt one manuscript and another. But as the difference, though in words considerable, is yet very little in the sense, it is not material to our present purpose to be more particular about it.

1200. I must not omit Nicolaus Hydruntinus, a na- tive of Otranto in Italy, who sided with the Greeks, and wrote in Greek against the Latins. He understood both languages, and was often interpreter between the Greeks and Latins in their disputes at Constantinople, Athens, and Thessalonica*. He wrote several tracts, out of which Leo Allatius has published some frag- ments. ‘There is one relating to the Athanasian Creed,

t “His addidit fidelium devotio, ‘ Quicunque vult Salvus esse,’ ut Articulorum Fidei qui sunt necessarii ad salutem, nulla diei hora obliviscamur.”—Rob. Paulul., in Hugo de 8. Victor. de Offic. Ecel., lib. ii. c. 1, vol. iii. p. 223 (p. 265).

α ἐς Notandum est quatuor esse Symbola ; minimum quod a cunc- tis communiter in quotidiana oratione dicitur, quod Apostoli simul composuerunt. Secundum est quod in Prima recitatur, ‘ Quicunque yult Salvus esse τ quod ab Athanasio Patriarcha Alexandrino contra Arrianos hzereticos compositum est, licet plerique eum Anastasium fuisse falso arbitrentur.’”—Beleth de Divin. Offic., ο. 40, (p. 334, ed. Venet.).

v Tentzel., Judic. Hrud., p. 91.

x Fabric., Bibl. Grec., lib. v. ὁ. 42, ὃ 12, in vol. x. p. 293.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 35

which must here be taken notice of; being of use for the certifying us that this Creed was extant in Greek at and before his time. It is this: ‘‘ They (the Greeks) do not know who made the addition to the Faith of Athanasius, styled Catholic; since the words, ‘and of the Son,’ are not in the Greek (Form) nor in the Creed (of Constantinople ¥).”’

From this passage we may learn that there was a Greek copy of the Athanasian Creed at this time; that it wanted the words ‘of the Son,” that it was looked upon as Athanasius’s, and that the title was, ‘‘ The Catholic Faith of St. Athanasius,” which is its most usual title in the Latin copies. I may just hint to the reader, that though both πίστις in the Greek and fides in the Latin might justly be rendered Creed in Eng- lish, rather than faith, whenever it stands for a formu- lary or confession of faith as it does here; yet be- cause I should otherwise want another English word for σύμβολον in the Greek, and Symbolum in the Latin, I therefore reserve the word Creed in this case for distinction sake, to be the rendering of Symbolum, ΟΥ̓ σύμβολον, and nothing else. But to proceed.

1230. Alexander of Hales, in Gloucestershire, may here deserye to be mentioned as shewing what Creeds were then received in England. He reckons up three only, not four, (as those that make the Nicene and Constantinopolitan to be two,) namely, The Apostles’, the Nicene or Constantinopolitan, and the Athana-

¥ Ὅτι καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀγνοοῦσι, τίς 6 πρασθήσας ἐν TH πίστει τοῦ ἁγίου ᾿Αθανασίου, τῇ καθολικῇ λεγομένῃ, ὡς ἐν τῷ ἑλληνικῷ οὐχὶ τοῦτο, ὕπερ ἐστὶ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ υἱοῦ, περίεχεται, οὔτε ἐν τῷ TUUBdAW.—LeO Allat. de Consens, Kecl. Occident., de., lib. iii. ec. 1, § 5, p. 887.

96 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

sian”, where we may observe that the Athanasian has the name of a Creed, which yet was not its most usual or common title in those times, only the schoolmen for order and method sake chose to throw it under the head of Creeds.

1238. I am next to take notice of the famed legates of Pope Gregory 1X., (Haymo, Radolphus, Petrus, and Hugo,) who produced this Creed in their conferences with the Greeks at Constantinople. They asserted it to be Athanasius’s, and made by him while an exile in the Western parts, and penned in the Latin tongue *. They had not assurance enough to pretend that it was a Greek composition; there were too many and too plain reasons to the contrary.

1240. In this age, Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, in his Synodical Constitutions, exhorts his clergy to make themselves competent masters of the Psalm called Quicunque vult, and of the greater and smaller Creed, (that is, Nicene and Apostolical,) that they might be able to instruct their people’; from whence we may observe that at this time the Athana- sian formulary was distinguished here amongst us from the Creeds properly so called, being named a Psalm,

z ““Notandum quod cum sint tria Svmbola: primum Apostolo- rum, secundum patrum quod canitur in Missa, tertium Athanasii, quod canitur in Prima.”— Alex. Ales., Pars iii. q. 82, § 5, in vol. i. fol. 280.

a Ὁ ἅγιος ᾿Αθανάσιος ὅταν ἐν Tots μέρεσι τοῖς δυτικοῖς ἐξόριστος ἣν, ἐν τῇ ἐκθέσει τὴς πίστεως. ἣν τοῖς λατινικοῖς ῥήμασι διεσάφησεν, οὕτως ἔφη. ὋὉ πατὴρ ἀπ᾽ οὐδενός ἐστι, ὅσο. --- Vefinitio Apocri- sariorum Greg. 1Χ., in Harduin, vol. vii. p. 157.

Ὁ «*Habeat etiam saltem quilibet eorum simplicem intellectum, secundum quod continetur in Psalmo qui dicitur, Quicunque vult, et tam in majori quam in minori Symbolo, ut in his plebem sibi commissam noverint informare.”—Spelm., Conc., vol. ii. p. 246.

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 37

and sometimes a hymn, (as we shall see from other evidences to be produced hereafter,) suitably to the place it held in the Psalters among the other Hymns, Psalms, and Canticles of the Church, being also sung alternately in churches like the other.

1250. We may here also take notice of a just re- mark made by Thomas Aquinas of this century: that Athanasius whom he suj poses the author of this formu- lary, did not draw it up im the way of a Creed, but in a doctrinal form, which however was admitted by the authority of the Roman see as containing a com- plete system of Christian faith °.

1255. Walter de Kirkham, Bishop of Durham, in his Constitutions, about this time, makes much the same order that Walter Cantilupe had before done, styling the Creed a Psalm also as usual *.

1286. Johannes Januensis, sometimes styled Johannes Balbus, makes mention of this Creed in his Dictionary or Catholicon, under the word Symbolum. He reckons, up three Creeds, and in this order, Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian. The name he gives to the last is Symnbolum Athanasii, thrice repeated *,

ς ἐς Athanasius non composuit manifestationem Fidei per modum Symboli, sed magis per modum cujusdam doctrine: sed quia in- tegram Fidei veritatem ejus doctrina breviter continebat, au- thoritate summi Pontificis est recepta, ut quasi regula Fidei habe- atur.”—Aquinas, Secunda Secunde, q. 1. Art. 10, § 3, in vol. xi. part 2, p. 8.

4 «*Habeat quoque unusquisque eorum simplicem intellectum Fidei, sicut in Symbolo tam wajori quam munori; quod est in Psalmo, ‘ Quicungue vult,’ et etiam ‘Credo in Deum,’ expressius continentur.”—Spelm., Conc., vol. ii. p. 294.

ὁ ἐγ] sunt Symbola ; scilicet Apostolorum, quod dicitur in Ma- tutinis, in Prima, et in Completorio: item Nicenum, quod dicitur in diebus dominicis post Evangelium: item Athanasii, quod dici- tur in Prima in dominicis diebus alta voce... . Symbolum autem Athanasii quod contra Hereticos editum est, in Prima dicitur, quasi jam pulsis Hereticorum tenebris.... Ad id editum est Sym-

98 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

1287. Ina synod of Exeter, in this century also, we have mention again made of the Athanasian Creed under the name of a Psalm, and as such distinguished from the two Creeds‘ properly so called; though the name of Psalm was also sometimes given to the Creeds, and to the Lord’s Prayer’ likewise, since those also were sung in the church.

1286. William Durants, or Durandus, the elder, Bishop of Menda, in France, recounting the Creeds, makes their number three, mentioning the Athanasian in the second place between the Apostles’ and Nicene. He follows the same tradition which Otho Frisingensis did before, that this Creed was made at Triers or Treves®. It is scarce worth noting that some copies here read Anastasius, since the circumstances plainly shew that Athanasius is the man intended, and that Anastasius can be nothing else but a corrupt reading.

1330. Ludolphus Saxo, the Carthusian, numbers three Creeds, with very brief but good hints of their uses respectively: the Apostles’ useful for a short com- pendious instruction in the faith; the Nicene, for

bolum Athanasii qui specialiter contra Hereticos se opposuit.”— Johan. Januens., in voce Symbolum.

Ε ἐς Articulorum Fidei Christianorum saltem simplicem habeant intellectum, prout in Psalmo, Quicunque vult, et in utroque Sym- bolo continentur.”—Spelm., Conc., vol. 11. p. 370.

& Ina MS. of Trinity College, (called Rythmus Anglicus), written about 1180, is a copy of the Apostles’ Creed, and another of the Lord’s Prayer, with these titles: ‘The Salm the Me Clepeth Crede ; The Salm that is cleped pr. nr.’ ‘This manner of speaking seems to have been borrowed from the Germans; for Otfridus, as is observed by Lambecius, gives the name of a Psalm to the Apostles’ Creed.—Lambec., Catal., vol. ii. p. 760.

h ἐς Nota, quod triplex est Symbolum. Primum est Symbolum Apostolorum, quod vocatur Symbolum minus. ... Secundum Sym- bolum est, ‘ Quicunque vult Salvus esse,’ &c., ab Athanasio, patri- archa Alexandrino, in civitate Treviri compositum. .. . Tertium est Niceenum quod.... vocatur Symbolum majus.” —Gul. Durant.,

Rational. Divin. Offic., lib. iv. ο. 25, §§ 6—9, p. 199.

c= ice)

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES.

fuller explication; and the Athanasian, for guard or defence‘ against heresies.

1837. William of Baldensal or Boldesale, a German Knight, ought here to be mentioned as being the first writer extant that ascribes the Creed to Eusebius, (of Verceil, in Piedmont,) along with Athanasius. The reason, I presume, was the better to account for the Creed’s being originally Latin. Baldensal’s treatise, being the History of Piedmont, wherein he makes the remark, is not yet published I suppose; but Cardinal Bona informs us that the manuscript was in his time in the library of the Duke of Savoy, at Turin *.

1360. Manuel Caleca, a latinizing Greek, wrote a treatise upon the Principles of the Catholic Faith, published by Combefis, in his new Auctarium to the Bibliotheca Patrum, tome the 2nd, where we find some passages to our present purpose; particularly this, that Caleca ascribes the Creed to Athanasius, and supposes it to haye been presented by him to Pope Julius). I know not whether he be not the first writcr that mentions that circumstance, nor whether he reports it from others, or from his own invention.

1960. About the same time Johannes Cyparissiota,

i “Tria sunt Symbola: primum Apostolorum ; secundum, Ni- ceni Concilii: tertium, Athanasii, Primum factum est ad Fidei Instructionem. Secundum, ad Fidei explanationem. ‘Tertium, ad Fidei defensionem.”—Ludolph. Sax. de Vit. Christi, ο. 83, p. 732.

k “Tn hoe autem Symboio, sive componendo, sive e Greco in Latinum traducendo Adjutorem tuisse Athanasio Kusebium, Ver- cellensem episcopum, refert Gulielmus Baldesanus in Historia Pes demontana, que manuscripta Taurini asservatur in Bibliotheca Ducis Sabaudize, ex Tabulario Vercellensis Ecclesiz.’”—Bona de Di- vin. Psalm., c. 16, § 18, p. 864.

1 Ταύτην yap ἐὰν ph τις πιστῶς πιστεύση, σωθῆναι ov δύναται, ὡς ὁ μέγας ᾿Αθανάσιυς ἐν τῇ πρὸς ᾿Ιούλιον πάπαν Ῥώμης τῆς πί- στεως ὁμολογίᾳ προσέθηκεν.--- δι] Calec., de Fid., ο. 10, p. 254. Cf. Calec., Contr.. Grec., lib, ii. c. 20, p. 416.

40 HISTORY OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED,

surnamed ‘the Wise,” wrote his Decads, which are pub- lished in Latin in the Brbliotheques of Turrianus’s ver- sion. What we are to observe from him is, that he cites this Creed in the name of Athanasius, and as if it were made at the Council of Nice™. It seems, after it once passed current that Athanasius was the author, there was great variety of conjectures about the place where, and the time when, he composed or presented this Creed.

1439. I shall mention but one more, as late as the Council of Florence, or a little later, and that is Johannes (afterwards Josephus) Plusiadenus, a latin- izing Greek, who wrote a dialogue in defence of the Latins. What is observable in him is, that he makes the Creed to have been presented by Athanasius to Pope Liberius, instead of Julius®.

I have now come low enough with the Ancient Testimonies, if I may be allowed so to call those of the later times. A few of the first and earliest might have sufficed, had I no other point in view but the mere antiquity of the Creed: but as my design is to treat of its reception also in various places and at various times, and to lay together several kind of evidences which will require others, both early and late, to clear up and explain them, it was, in a manner, necessary for me to bring my accounts as low as I have here done. Besides that several inferior incidental ques-

m “*Maonus Athanasius in expositione Fidei, in prima Synodo, ait,” &¢.—Joan. Cypariss., Decad. ix. ¢. 3.

"‘O θεῖος τῷ ὄντι Kal ἱερὸς ᾿Αθανάσιος, ἐν TH ὁμολογία τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πίστεως, ἥν ἐξέθετο πρὸς Λιβέριον Πάπαν, ἧς ἡ ἀρχὴ, ὅστις ἂν βούληται σωθῆναι, τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιόν φησιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ, οὐ ποιητὺν, οὐ κτιστὸν, οὐδὲ γεννητὸν. ἀλλ᾽ ἐκπορευτόν.---- Plusiad., p. 628 (in Combef. not. ὧν Calec., p. 297).

ANCIENT TESTIMONIES. 41

tions will fall in our way, for the resolving of which most of the testimonies I have here cited will be ser- viceable in their turn, as will appear more fully in the sequel. I have omitted several testimonies of the later centuries, such as I thought might conveniently be spared, either as containing nothing but what we had before from others more ancient, or as being of no use for the clearing up any that we have, or for the settling any point which will come to be discussed in the following sheets. The rule I have set myself in making the collection, and which I have been most careful to observe, was to take in all those, and none but those, which are either valuable for their antiquity, or have something new and particular upon the sub- ject, or may strike some light into any doubtful ques- tion thereunto relating.

I shall shut up this chapter, as I did the former, with a Table, representing in one view the sum and substance of what has been done in it. ‘The several columns will contain the year of our Lord, the authors here recited, the country where they lived, and the title or titles by them given to the Creed. The titles ought to appear in their original language wherein they were written, which my English reader may the more easily excuse, since they have most of them been given in English above, where it was more proper to do it. The use of such a Table will be seen as often as a reader has a mind to look back to this chapter, or to compare several evidences of different kinds, proving the same thing one with another.

A TABLE OF THE ANCIENT TESTIMONIES.

A.D, Authors. Country. Title of the Creed. 670 |Council of Autun. France. | Fides Sancti Athanasii Preesulis. 760 |Articles Inqu. Regino.| Germany.|Sermo Athanasii Episcopi de Fide, 794 Counce. Franckfort. Germany. | Fides Catholica Sancte Trinitatis. 809 |Theodulphus. France. 809 | Anonymous. France. |Expositio Catholice Fidei, Athanasii. 809 |Monks of M. Olivet. | Judea. | Fides Sancti Athanasii. 820 |Hatto, or Hetto. France. |Fides Sancti Athanasil. 820 |Agobardus. France. 852 |Hinemar. France. |Sermo Athanasii de Fide, Athanasii Symbolum. 865 | Anscharius. Germany.|Athanasii Fides Catholica. 868 | Bertram. France, |Libellus Athanasii de Fide. 868 | Aneas Paris. Franee, |Athanasii Fides Catholica. 871 | Adalbertus. France, |Sermo Beati Athanasii. 889 | Riculphus. France, |Sermo Fidei Catholice. 960 | Ratherius. Italy. SermoAthanasii Episc.de Fide Trinitatis. 997 | Abbo, or Albo, France. | Fides secundum Athanasium. 1047 |Gualdo. France. | Fides Catholica Athanasio adscripta. 1130 | Honorius. France. |Fides Quicunque vult. 1146 | Otho. Bavaria. |Quicunque vult, &e. 1171 | Duke of Brunswick. | Germany.|Athanasii Symbolum Fidei. 1178 |Robertus Paululus. France. |Quicunque vult, &c. 1190 | Beleth. France. | Athanasii Symbolum. 1200 |Nic. Hydruntinus. Italy. Tod ἁγίου ᾿Αθανασίου πίστις ἡ ΚΚαθολική. 1230 | Alexander Alens. England. | Athanasii Symbolum. 1233 |P. Gregory’s Legates. "ExOeots τῆς πίστεως. 1240 | Walter Cantilupe. England. | Psalmus Quicunque, &e. 1250 |Thom. Aquinas. Italy. Athanasii Manifestatio Fidei. 1255 | Walter Kirkham, England. |Psalmus Quicunque, &ce. 1286 |Jobhn Januensis. Italy. Symbolum Atbanasii. 1286 |Durandus. Franee. |Athanasii Symbolum. 1287 | Exon. Synod. England. |Psalmus Quicunque. 1330 |Ludolphus. Saxony. |Athanasii Symbolum. 1337 | Baldensal. | Germany. | Athanasii Symbolum, 1360 | Man. Caleca. Greece. |‘H τῆς πίστεως ὁμολογία τοῦ ᾿Αθανασίου. 1360 | Joan. Cyparissiota. Greece, |Athanasii Expositio Fidei. 1439 |Joan. Plusiadenus. |Greece. Ἢ τῆς πίστεως ὁμολογία τοῦ ᾿Αθανασίου.

CHAPTER III.

ANCIENT CoMMENTATORS AND PARAPHRASTS UPON THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

Awncrent Comments, or Paraphrases, may be properly mentioned after Ancient Testimonies, being near akin to them, and almost the same thing with them. I call none ancient but such as were made before the year 1500, and therefore shall carry my accounts no lower, nor quite so low as that time.

A.D. 570. The first comment to be met with on this Creed is one of the sixth century, composed by Venan- tius Fortunatus, an Italian by birth, but one that travelled into France and Germany, became acquainted with the most eminent scholars and prelates all over the West, and was at length made Bishop of Poictiers in France. His comment on this Creed has been pub- lished from a manuscript about 600 years old*, out of the Ambrosian Library at Milan, by Muratorius, in his second tome of Anecdota, in the year 1698. There can be no reasonable doubt but that the comment really belongs to the man whose name it bears. 1. Be-

« “Est porro nobis in Ambrosiana Bibliotheca Membranaceus Codex annos abhine ferme sexcentos manu descriptus; ut ex cha- racterum forma, aliisque conjecturis affirmari posse mihi videtur. Heie, praeter alia opuscula multa, Tres Symboli expositiones ha- bentur, quarum unam tantum nune publici juris facio.

“Prima ita inscribitur, Expositio Fidei Catholice. Alteri nullus titulus prvefixus est. Postrema vero hunc pre se fert ; Expositio Fidei Catholic Fortunati. ... Fortunatus autem, heic memoratus, alius a Venantio Fortunato non est, quem Insulze Pictaviensis Ec-

clesie, quem Christiane poetices ornamenta zternitate donarunt.” —Murator., Anecdot., vol. ii. p. 228.

44 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

cause in the same book there is also a comment upon the Apostles’ Creed” ascribed to Fortunatus, and which is known to belong to Venantius Fortunatus, and has been before printed among his other works. 2. Because it appears highly probable, from what Venantius For- tunatus has occasionally dropped in his other un- doubted works*, that he was really acquainted with the Athanasian Creed, and borrowed expressions from it. 8. Because in the expositions of the Apostles’ and Athanasian Creeds, there is great similitude of style, thoughts, and expressions, which shews that both are of the same hand, and indeed, the other circumstances considered, abundantly proves it. It would burden my margin too much, otherwise it were easy to give at least half-a-dozen plain specimens, where either the expressions, or turn of thought, or both, are exactly

b “Expositionem quoque continet (Codex Ambrosianus) Aposto- lici Symboli, cum hae inscriptione: Incipit expositio a Fortunato Presbytero conscripta. Kadem vero est ac edita inter Fortunati Opera. Tum sequuntur gemine ejusdem Symboli explicationes, tres Orationis Dominic, et duze Athanasiani Symboli expositiones incertis auctoribus script, tandem, ut diximus, Expositio Fidei Catholice Fortunati legitur. Quocirco quin ad Venantium quoque Fortunatum opusculum hoe sit referendum, nullus dubito.” — Murator., Anecdot., vol. ii. p. 331.

¢ “Preclarum in primordio ponitur celestis testimonii funda- mentum, quia Salvus esse non poterit, qui recte de Salute non cre- - diderit.”—Fortunat., Lxpos. Symb. Apost. in Bibl. Max. PP., vol. x. p. 592.

‘*Non Deus in carnem est versus, Deus accipit artus: Non se permutans, sed sibi membra levans. Unus in ambabus naturis, verus in ipsis AEqualis matri hine, par Deitate Patri. Non sua confundens, sibi nostra sed omnia nectens. De patre natus habens divina, humanaque matris, De patre sublimis, de genetrice humilis.” Fortunat., 110. viii, Carm. v., vv. 33, &c.; in Bibl. Max. PP., vol. x. p.o74.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 45

parallel. Such as think it of moment to examine, may easily be satisfied by comparing the comment on the Apostles’ Creed, in the tenth tome of the last Bibliotheque, with the comment on the Athanasian in Muratorius. 4. I may add, that the tenour of the whole comment, and the simplicity of the style and thoughts, are very suitable to that age, and more so than to the centuries following. These reasons con- vince me that this comment belongs to Venantius Fortunatus, composed by him after his going into France, and before he was Bishop of Poictiers, and so we may probably fix the date of it about the year 570, or perhaps higher. There is an older manuscript copy of this comment (as I find by comparing) in the Museum at Oxford, among Junius’s manuscripts, num- ber 25%. I am obliged to the very worthy and learned Dr. Haywood, for sending me a transcript of it, with a specimen of the character. It is reasonably judged to be about 800 years old. It wants in the beginning about ten or a dozen lines: in the other parts it agrees with Muratorius’s copy, saving only some slight in- sertions and such various lections as are to be expected in different manuscripts not copied one from the other. From the two copies compared may be drawn out a much more correct comment than that which Mura- torius has given us from one, as will be shewn at the end of this work.

I intimated above, that Muratorius supposes this Venantius Fortunatus to be the author not of the comment only, but Creed also. But his reasons which plead strongly for the former are of no force at all in

4 The title, Lxpositio in Fide Catholica.

46 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

respect of the latter, which he is so sensible of him- self, that while he speaks with great assurance of the one, he is very diffident of the other®. And indeed, not to mention several other considerations standing in the way of his conjecture, who can imagine Venan- tius Fortunatus to have been so vain as, after com- menting on the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed, to fall to commenting upon a composition of his own?

This comment of Fortunatus is a great confirmation of what hath been above cited from the Council of Autun; for if the Creed was noted enough to deserve a comment upon it so early as the year 570, no wonder if we find it strongly recommended by that Council in the year 670, a hundred years after. And it is ob- servable that as that Council recommends the Apo- stolical and Athanasian Creeds, without saying a word of the Nicene; so Fortunatus, before them, comments upon those two only, taking no notice of the third.

I cannot take leave of this comment without ob- serving to the reader, that in Pareus’s Notes on this Creed, I have met with a passage which I am not well able to account for. He cites a comment upon this Creed under the name of Euphronius Presbyter!; does not say whether from a print or a manuscript; but

e “Hujus Symboli auctor esse potuit Venantius Fortunatus: saltem fuit is hujus Expositionis auctor.”—Murator., Anecdot., vol. ii. p. 217.

**Non ita meis conjecturis plaudo, ut facilius non arbitrer Expo- sitionem potius quam Symbolum huic auctori tribuendam.” — Id., Ὁ. 231.

f «* Kuphronius presbyter in expositione hujus Symboli Athanasii, Fides, inquit, Catholica, seu universalis, dicitur: hoc est, recta, quam Ecclesia universa tenere debet.” — David. Parei not. ad Symb. Athan., p. 118. Edit. An. 1635. The words are not in the edition of 1627,

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 47

the words he produces are in this very comment of Fortunatus. Who this Euphronius is I can nowhere find; nor whether an ancient or modern writer. There was an Euphronius Presbyter (mentioned by Gregory of Tours), who lived in the fifth century, and was at length Bishop of Autun; but I never heard of any writings of his more than an epistle ascribed to him and Lupus of Troyes. There was another Euphronius, who was Bishop of Tours, with whom Fortunatus had some intimacy: whether his name appearing in any MS. copy of Fortunatus’s tracts, might occasion the mistake, I know not. Bruno’s comment has the very same passage which Pareus cites, only in a different order of the words; but neither will this help us to ac- count for its beg quoted under the name of Euphro- nius Presbyter, which has no similitude with the name of Bruno, Bishop of Wurtzburgh. I would not, how- ever, omit the mentioning this note of Pareus, be- cause a hint may sometimes lead to useful discoveries, and others may be able to resolve the doubt though I am not.

852. Our next commentator, or rather paraphrast, is Hincmar of Rheims: not upon the whole Creed, but upon such parts only as he had occasion to cite; for his way is to throw in several words of his own, as explanatory notes, so far as he quotes the Creed §. And he sometimes does it more than he ought to have done to serve a cause against Gothescaleus, which I may hint in passing; to say more of it would be fo- reign to our present purpose.

ε Hinem. de non Trin. Deit., ec. 2, 4, 18, in vol. i. pp. 452, 464, 469, 552, 553.

48 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

1033. 5. Bruno, Bishop of Wurtzburgh in Germany, has a formal comment, and much larger than Fortu- natus’s, upon the Athanasian Creed. It is at the end of his Psalter, and has been several times printed with it. Father Le Long reckons up six editions" in this order :—1. At Nuremberg, in folio, a.p. 1494. 2. By Antonius Koburger, in quarto, a.p. 1497. 3. By Cochleus, at Wurtzburgh, in quarto, a.p. 1591. 4. At Leipsic, in quarto, 1533. 5. In the Cologne Sr- bliotheque, a.D. 1618, tom. xi." 6. In the Lyons Bibl. PP., a.p. 1677, tom. xviii. -The old editions are scarce and not easy to be met with. IJ have seen two of them in our Public Library at Cambridge, those of 1494 and 1583. There is an elegant one of the former (as I conceive by the description sent me by a learned gentleman), in the Bodleian, at Oxford: it is im vel- lum, in a black and red letter, reserved among the manuscripts, and marked Laud KE. 81. The title at the beginning, J%des Anastasiii; at the end, Fides Athanasti. The two editions of 1497 and 1581 I never saw. I have seen one by Antonius Koberger, in quarto, bearing date a.p. 1494*, in the Bodleian, marked

bh <*Qommentarii in totum Psalterium et in Cantica Vet. et N.

Testamenti, in fol. Norembergze, 1494. In quarto, per Antonium Koburger, 1497. Idem a Joan. Cochleo restitutum in quarto, Herbipoli, 1531. Lipsiz, 1533, Bibl. PP, Coloniensis et Lugdunen- sis.” —Le Long, Bibl. Sacr., vol. ii. p. 674.

i Bibliotheca Magna Veterum Patrum, 15 vols. fol. Col. 1618.

ij ‘ Anastasii’ is evidently a mere misprint, as in the body of the comment the name of Athanasius occurs throughout. The only copy of this edition now in the Bodleian, so exactly corresponds with the details given by Dr. Waterland of the two which he de- scribes as distinct, that it seems probable that he is mistaken on this point. It is now marked Auct. Q. 1, 5, 19. The edition of 1497 is also in the Bodleian.

k «Per Antonium Koberger impressum Anno incarnationis Deita- tis millesimo quadringentesimo, nonagesimo quarto, finit feliciter.”

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 49

F. 40. Bishop Usher makes mention of an edition in 1591}, and seems to have known of none older, I should have suspected 1531 to be a false print for 1533, had not Le Long confirmed it that there is such an edition as 1531, and named the place where it was printed; though I cannot but observe that he makes a folio of it in his first tome™, and a quarto in the second, which is to me an argument that he had never seen it, but perhaps took the hint from Usher. But leaving the printed editions of this comment of Bruno’s, let us next say something of the manuscripts of it, and their differences from the prints, or from each other. There are many manuscript copies which I shall men- tion in order.

1. The first and most valuable manuscript is in the library of Wurtzburgh, as old as the author, left by him as a legacy to that Church. The first printed edition (if I mistake not), was taken from that very original manuscript", which at the lowest computation must

1 ἐς Psalterii editio vulgata Latina, obelis et asteriscis distincta, eum Brunonis Herbipolensis Episcopi co:nmentariis, Anno 1531, a Johanne Cochleo in lucem est emissa.’”’—Usser de Hditione LXX. Interpr., p. 104.

m “Psalterium vetus obelis et asteriscis distinctum, cum Com- mentariis 8. Brunonis, studio Johannis Cochlei editum, in fol. Her- bipoli, 1531, in quarto Lipsiz 1553.” —Le Long, Bibl. Sacr., vol. i. p. 274.

» ἐς Posteris Filiis suis (S. Bruno) memorabilem et sanctum Psal- morum Librum, ex quo ille impressus est, sumptuose scriptum, quasi hereditatis spiritualis non minimam portionem reliquit.”—Prolog. ad Editionem Anni 1494,

“‘Preciosum istum pietatis Thesaurum posteritati post se reli- quit, et quidem insigni scriptura sumptuose descriptum . .. extat Do- num illud memorabile et conspicuum in locuplete antiquorum volu- minum Bibliotheca Ecclesie Herbipolensis: quod sane religiosa pietate, velut Hereditas quedam hujus Sancti Patris Custoditur.” —Joan. Cochl., Prolog. ad Edit. Ann, 1833, in Bibl. Max. PP., vol. xviii, p. 65.

E

50 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

be 680 years old. The title of the Creed, Fides Catho- lica S. Athanasii Episcopt.

2. There is a second which I have seen in Trinity College, in Cambridge, annexed to a Psalter described at large by the learned Mr. Wanley in his catalogue ®, and judged by him to have been written about the time of King Stephen; so that this is about a hundred years later than the former, or about 580 years old. No title to the Creed.

3. There is a third of much the same age with the former, or some years older, in the Bodleian, at Oxford, marked Laud, H. 61. Catal. No. 1824. The title of the Creed, Fides Catholica Sancti Athanasii Episcopi *.

4. In the Bodleian also is another, (Laud. E. 71. Catal. No. 9944.) Athanasii Symbolum cum Glossis. This, as I am certified by a learned gentleman, is Bruno’s comment. The title of the Creed, Fides Sancti Athanasti Episcopt.

5. In Merton College is another, an ancient copy of Bruno’s comment, Catal. No. 675—208, (P. 1, ὅτ.)

6. In St. John Baptist’s College, Oxon. (Catal. No. 1874, G. 428.) Commentarius in Symbolum Athanasii. By the beginning and concluding words (a transcript of which has been sent me by a worthy member of

ο Wanley, Catalog. MSS. Septentr., Ὁ. 168.

P No, 96 in Mr. Coxe’s Catalogue, ana referred by him to the end of the eleventh century. It formerly belonged to the Church of St. Kykian, in Wurtzburgh.

4 No. 17 in Mr. Coxe’s Catalogue, and referred by him to the twelfth century.

r No. 208 in Mr. Coxe’s Catalogue, and referred by him to the thirteenth century.

5. No. 31 in Mr. Coxe’s Catalogue, and referred by him to the thirteenth century.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 51

that society) I am well assured that it is Bruno’s comment.

7. There is another in Balliol College (Catal. No. 210. marked B. 9*.) Athanasit Symbolum cum Commentario.

8. Another I have seen in the Cathedral library at York, which may be 500 years old. No title.

9. There is another in the library of St. German de Prez, about 500 years old. Montfaucon, having met with it, published it" as an Anecdoton; not know- ing that it was Bruno’s comment. It is not indeed quite ‘so full, nor anything near so correct as the printed copy: but still it is plainly Bruno’s comment, the title, Tractatus de Fide Catholica.

10. There is also in my Lord Oxford’s library ¥, a modern manuscript of this comment, written at Augsburg, in the year 1547: copied from Bruno’s original MS. (by order of Charles Peutenger, son to the famous Conrad), where the title is, Hides Catholica Sancti Anastasii Episcopt. The mistake of Anastasii for Athanasii, we find, had crept into the German copies some centuries before: wherefore this is not to be wondered at. All the older copies, as well as the original manuscript, have Athanasi in the title, where there is a title, and Athanasius in the beginning of the comment.

The manuscripts which I have here recited, all but the first, seem now to be of no great use; if it be true, as I suppose, that the first prints were taken from the

t No. 32 in Mr. Coxe’s Catalogue, and referred by him to the end of the twelfth century. He describes it as Symbolum Athana- sianum cum commento Brunonis Herbipolensis.

α Montfaucon, Athanas. Oper., vol. ii. p. 735. v Now the Harleian Collection in the British Museum.

52 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

very original at Wurtzburgh. It is certain that they are very imperfect, and uncorrect (I have collated three of them) in comparison of the printed copies: I could not observe above two or three places, and those not very material, where the printed conies seem to have followed a false reading, or may be corrected by those manuscripts. One thing I a little wondered at, that the three manuscripts of St. Germans, Trinity College, and York, should all leave out some para- graphs which appear in the printed copies, and the same paragraphs: but I have since found that those very paragraphs were taken out of Fortunatus’s com- ment, and belong not properly to Bruno’s. This, I presume, the first copiers understood, and therefore omitted them. Probably Bruno’s own copy might at first want them, (though they must have been added soon after,) or, if Bruno himself inserted them, yet he had left some mark of distinction which was understood at that time, though not by the editors of this comment so many years after. But to proceed.

1120. In the next age, the famous Peter Abelard wrote comments upon this Creed, which are printed amongst his other works. The title in the prints is, Petri Abaélardi Expositio Fidei, in Symbolum Athanasii. I suspect that the editor has added the latter part, 7a Symbolum Athanasvi, as a hint to the reader. The comment is a very short one, scarce three pages in quarto, and, for the age it was wrote in, a pretty good one ; though, as I conceive from some flaws in it, printed from a copy not very correct.

1170. Of the same century is Hildegarde, the ecle- brated Abbess of St. Rupert’s Mount, near Binghen on

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 53

the Rhine. She wrote “" Explications of St. Benedict’s Rule, and of the Athanasian Creed,’ which may be seen, Bibl. Max. PP., vol. xxiii. p. 596.

1210. Simon Tornacensis, priest of Tournay, in the beginning of the thirteenth century taught divinity at Paris with great reputation, His manuscript works are in many libraries, and among his other writings there is ‘‘An Exposition of the Athanasian Creed *.” Oudin reckons up four manuscript copies of it, in as many distinct libraries, and acquaints us where they are to be found, and of what age they probably are.

1215. Contemporary with the former is Alexander Neckham, an Englishman, Abbot of Cirencester, or Circeter, in Gloucestershire. He wrote a comment on the Athanasian Creed, which is extant in manuscript, in the Bodleian, at Oxford, (marked E. 7, 8. Catal. No. 2339.) co-eval, probably, with the author’.

There is another copy of the same comment in the Bodleian also, E. 6. 11. No. 2330. The title, Exposztvo Fidei Catholice a Magistro Alexandro Edicta. ‘'Yhis copy is abuut fifty years later than the former. It may be of use to note down the first words of the comment ’. It is drawn up in the scholastic way, and is pretty large, making ten folio leaves with double columns, in E. 7, 8. and four folio leaves with three columns, and a very small hand in Εἰ. 6. 11.

x “‘ Expositio Symboli, per Simonem Tornacensis Ecclesiae Cano- nicum, et Parisiensem Doctorem, que incipit ; Apud Aristotelem argumentum est ratio faciens fidem, sed apud Christum argumen- tum est fides faciens ra:ionem.’’—Ouuin, De Scriptor. Lccles., vol. iii. p. 5.

y Tue title of this copy is, Hxpositio super Symbolum A thanasi.

2 * Hee est enim victoria que vineit mundum, fides nustra, dSig- nanter dicit ‘ vult,’ et non dicit, ‘ Quicunque Salvus erit.’”

δ4 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

1230. Not long after, Alexander Hales, before men- tioned, wrote comments upon the same Creed, which are published in his Swmma, part the third, under Quest. 82. His method of commenting is, to raise doubts and scruples all the way he goes, and to answer them in the seholastie form ; referring sometimes to the Fathers of the Church, and particularly to St. Austin, to whom he ascribes Gennadius’s treatise de LHeclesias- ticis Dogmatibus, according to the common error of that time. But I proceed.

1340. There is another commentary upon this Creed, written, as is said, by Richardus Hampolus, Richard Rolle, of Hampole, a native of Yorkshire, and a monk of the order of St. Austin. It contains, in a manner, Bruno’s comment entire, with several additions and in- sertions, either of the author’s own, or sueh as he had borrowed elsewhere. It has been twice printed, first at Cologne, in the year 1536, and afterwards in the Bibl. Max. PP., vol. xxvi. p. 624.

I am in doubt concerning the author of that com- ment, having reason to believe that the three copies mentioned by Tentzelius*, preserved in the Gotha, Basil, and Leipsic libraries, are so many copies of this very comment which passes under the name of Ham- pole, and yet one of them is judged to be above 500 years older® than 1686, which is 150 years before

a Tentzel., Jud. Erud., Prefat. et p. 224.

Ὁ Tentzelius writes thus :—‘‘ Opportune ad manus meas pervenit respousio Ampl. Felleri, qua rationem Codicis Latini Lipsiensis in prefatione a me citati prolixius exposuit. Ait enim, membrana- ceum istum codicem ante CCCCC. annos et ultra, elezanter scrip- tum videri ; additas etiam esse non interlineares tantum notas, sed et marginales utrinque ; in dextro videlicet et sinistro paginarum latere: rubricam autem Symboli nostri ita se habere ; Fides Anas-

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 55

Hampole’s days. It is possible that Joachim Fellerus, the compiler of the catalogue of the Leipsic library, might mistake in judging of the age of the manuscript, but it appears much more probable that the editors of that comment were mistaken in ascribing it to Ham- pole. However that be, I would here observe, that there is in Magdalen College, in Oxford, a comment intituled Lxpositio in Symbolum Athanasianum per Ja- nuensem (Catal. No. 2256, 115°) which is no other than this very ¢ mment that passes in the prints under the name of Rich. Hampole. The catalogue’s ascribing it to Januensis, was owing, I suppose, to an occasional passage in that manuscript relating to the Athanasian Creed, cited from Johannes Januensis’s Catholicon, or dictionary, under the word Symbolum. The comment, however, I say, is the same with that which passes for Hampole’s, as may plainly appear from the beginning of it, which I have transcribed into the margin’; only filling up an omission in it, occasioned, as is very com- mon, by the repetition of the same word. There may be a good use made of that manuscript in Magdalen tasii Pape. In dextro prime pagine hee legi verba: Hee ratio Fidei Catholic traditur in veteribus Codicibus, et reliqua, qu antea ex MS. Bibliothece Ducalisattuli, Unde patet, easdem plane Glossas in utrogue Codice reperiri; presertim quum in sinistro alterius margine, hec etiam verba legi referat Fellerus: Hic beatus Anastasius liberum arbitrium posuit,” &¢.—/b., p. 225,

¢ No. 115 in Mr. Coxe’s Catalogue, and referred by him to the beginning of the fifteenth century.

4 “ Heee ratio Fidei Catholice traditur etiam in veteribus Codic - bus a beato Athanasio Alexandrino conscripta. Et puto, quod idcirco tam plano et brevi sermone tradita sit, ut omnibus Catuolicis, et minus eruditis, tutamen defensionis prestaret adversus illam tem- pestatem [quam contrarius ventus, hoc est, diabolus, excitavit per Arrium ; quam tempestatem] qui fugere desiderat, hance Fidei uni- tatem (al. veritatem) integram et inviolabilem teneat. Ita enim

incipit ipsum opusculum, dicens, ‘ Quicunque vult Salvus,’ &. Hie beatus Athanasius liberum arbitrium posuit,”’ &c.

56 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

College, for correcting the printed copy, which is very faulty both in words and order. The comment ought to begin as it begins in that manuscript, and not with the words, Je beatus Athanasius, as in the prints. The editors did not understand, or did not consider, the nature and composition of that comment. The author, whoever he was, had made two columns, one on each hand, with tne Athanasian Creed in the middle. On the left-hand, which is the first place, he set Bruno’s comment, and on the right-hand, in the other column, he carried down another comment either of his own or borrowed. The first note on the right-hand was plainly designed for an introduction to the rest, and therefore ought to be set first, though the editors, considering only the position of the notes, began from the left-hand, with the first words of Bruno’s comment. ‘The Oxford copy observes the true natural order, and may very probably be of good use all the way through for the better digesting and metho- dizing that comment or comments, being in reality two comments mixed and blended together.

I should observe of the Oxford copy, that after the comment there is in the same hand this note, /Z@e con- seripta sunt a quodam antiquo libro. Possibly this may be of some use for the determining whether that com- ment be really Hampole’s or no. For if the manu- script be not much later than 1415 (it must be so late, since it fixes that very date to Dr. Ullerston’s Exposi- tion of the Six Psalins) it may be probably argued that anything of Hampole’s, who flourished but about eighty years before, would not have been called anti- quus liber, an ‘ancient book.’ But this I leave to

THE ATHANASIAN CREED, 57

farther enquiries, not insisting upon it, since the argu- ment is but probable at the best; and I do not know but the manuscript may be several years later than 1415, though hardly later than the middle of that century. Ullerston is undoubtedly the latest author in that collection. Petrus Florissiensis, or Floreftiensis (otherwise called Petrus de Harentals), wrote in 1374°: Januensis, Gorrham, Lyra, and Hampole are all older than he: the last, therefore, is Ullerston, who was pro- bably still living when that manuscript was written. But enough of this.

1380. To the Latin comments here mentioned I may add an English one, which I may suppose to be Wickliff’s. If it be not his, yet certainly it is of his time, and not far from the middle of the fourteenth century. I will first give some account of this English comment, and then shew both why I ascribe it to Wickliff, and why I do it not with full assurance, but with some degree of diffidence. I first met with it in a manuscript volume (in 12mo.) belonging to the library of St. John’s College in Cambridge. The volume contains an Kng- lish version of the Psalms and Hymns of the Church, with the Athanasian Creed, produced paragraph by paragraph in Latin, interspersed with an Engli-h ver- sion of each paragraph, and commented upon quite through, part by part. After the comment follow Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus, all in old English, without gloss or comment. Now the reasons why I incline to ascribe the comment to Wickliff are these :—

1. Dr. Langbaine, of Queen’s College in Oxford, in

e See Oudin, de Scriptor. Eccles., vol. iii. p. 1218.

δ8 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

a letter to Bishop Usher bearing date a.p. 1647, testi- fies that he had seen such a comment, and that he found it to be Wickliff’s by comparing the beginning of it with Bale’. This, very probably, is the same comment, though there is no such manuscript now in Magdalen College, Oxon., as was in Dr. Langbaine’s time.

2. All those parts of Scripture which go before and after this comment in the same volume, are of the same version with that of Wickliff’s Bible in the library of Emmanuel College, without any difference (except that St. John’s copy, being older, retains the more ancient spelling,) as I am well assured by comparing them together, so that if those parts be Wickliff’s, it may appear very probable that the comment is his too, Indeed, our very learned Wharton was of opinion that the version commonly ascribed to Wickliff* was really John Trevisa’s, who flourished in the time of Richard the Second, was a Cornish man by birth, and Vicar of Berkely in Gloucestershire about the year 1887"; in which year he finished his translation of the Poly- chronicon. But Mr. Wharton’s reasonings in this matter have appeared to others not satisfactory!, and have in

f ‘¢ While I was there (in Magdalen College Library), tumbling amongst their books, I light upon an old English comment upon the Psalms, the Hymns of the Church, and Athanasius’s Creed ; which I presently conjectured (though there be no name to it) to be Wickliff’s. And comparing the beginning with Bale, found that I had not erred in the conjecture.” —Langbaine, among Usher’s Letters, p. 513.

g Wharton, “ποίαν. Histor. Dogmat., p. 425—427.

Β Τὴ that year he finished his version of Higden’s Polychronicon, as the MSS. testify: and as is plain from its being finished in the thirty-fifth year of Thomas Lord Berkely, the fourth of that name, which agrees exactly with that year, and with no other.

i Oudin, de Scriptor. Hecles., vol. iii. p. 1044.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 59

part been confuted*. I shall not enter far into that dispute, being almost foreign to my purpose, and it is not very material whether Wickliff or Trevisa (if either) be judged the author of the comment. This only I may observe by the way, that Mr. Wharton’s argument, drawn from the Norfolk manuscript of the Gospels (Cud. 254), which he is positive belongs to Wickliff, appears to be of some weight, so far as con- cerns the New Testament, and the inference may reach to several parts of the Old Testament also. Either Mr. Wharton must have been mistaken in ascribing the Norfolk copy to Wickliff, or else, for anything I see, his argument will stand good. The charac- teristic which he lays down whereby to distinguish Wickhiff’s version (namely, the frequent insertion of synonymous words) will by no means agree with the common version: and then the specimen he gives of the two different renderings of Luke ii. 7, is directly contrary’, But a fuller discussion of that point may be left with those who have more leisure, and have more particularly studied it. Iam content to suppose that the common version ascribed to Wickliff is really his: perhaps he might give two editions of it™; or

k Le Long, Bibl. Sacr., vol. i. p. 426.

1 Wickletus sic reddit: ‘‘And puttide Him in a Cratche; for place was not to Him in the comyn Stable.”

Alter interpres sic: ‘‘ And leide Him in a Cratche ; for there was no place to Him in no Chaumbre.”—Wharton, p. 426.

Ihave a manuscript of the New Testament, belonying to our College library, which reads Luke ii. 7 according to the first reading, and which has many instances of synonymous insertious everywhere: it is a different version from that which is commonly ascribed to Wickliff.

m ‘« Patet, aut antiquiorem fuisse quandam Κ΄. Scripture transla-

tionem Anglicam, aut duplicem tuisse translationis Wicleviane Editionem.”—Wharton, p. 436.

60 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

else Trevisa’s may be little more than Wickliff’s ver- sion, corrected and polished with great liberty, both as to sense and expression, where it appeared needful. That Trevisa really did translate the whole Bible into English, is positively asserted by Caxton, in his pre- face to Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychro- nicon™, and by Bale°®, who gives us the first words of the preface to it. To proceed.

3. A third reason I have for the ascribing the com- ment to Wickliff is, that some parts of it seem to suit exactly with his humour, and manner, and way of thinking, particularly the gird upon Pcpes and Car- dinals in the close Ὁ,

Nevertheless, I am far from being positive in this

n “Ranulph Monke of Chestre first Auctour of this Book, and afterward Englished by one Trevisa Vicarye of Barkley; which atte request of ove Sr. Thomas Lord Barkley translated this sayd Book, the Byble, and Bartylmew de proprietatibus rerum out of Latyn into Englysh.”—Caxton, Pruhemye to bis Edit. 1482.

ο **Tn Anglicum idioma, ad petitionem preedicti sui domini de Barkeley, transtulit totum Bibliorum opus: Utrumque Dei Testa- mentum lib, ii. (His pretace beginning) Ego Johannes Trevisa Sacer- dos.””—Bal., Cent. vii. c. 18, p. 518.

N.B. Bale seems to be mistaken in saying that Trevisa con- tinued the Polychr. to 1397. For Trevisa ended with 1907. And Caxton declares that bimself continued the history for 103 years farther, to 1460. (Jn this Dr. Waterland appears to have been misled by a mistake of Caxton’s, since the true date of the end of John Trevisa’s translation is 1387. as Dr. Waterland himself states above. The last date mentioned in Trevisa’s text is 1557 ; which is perbaps the cause of Caxton’s mistake. See Babington’s Pretace to Hig- den, vol. i. p. xii. n.)

Ρ “And algif this Crede accorde unto Prestis, netheles the higher Prelatis, as Popis and Cardynals, and Bisshops shulden more spe- cially Kunne this Crede, and teche it to Men undir hem.”—Comm. on the Athan. Creed.

Compare some words of Wickliff’s Bileve.

“1 suppose, over this, that the Pope be most oblishid to the kepivg of the Gospel among all Men that liven here; for the Pope is highest Vicar that Christ has here in Erth.”—Collier, Heel. Hist., vol. 1. p. 128,

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 61

matter: much may be offered to take off the force of these reasons, or to counterbalance them. 1. This very comment is annexed to a manuscript commentary upon the Psalms and Hymns of the Church, now in Trinity College Library in Cambridge; which commentary ap- pears not to be Wickliff’s, though supposed to be his by Mr. Wharton*. The English version of the Psalms, going along with that commentary, is not the same with that of Wickliff’s Bible: I have compared them. The commentary and version, too, are reasonably judged to be Hampole’s. I find by a note left in a blank page at the beginning (signed J. Russel) that there is a copy of this commentary in the Royal Library (E. 15, 12), but imperfect; the prologue the very same, and ex- pressly ascribed to Richard of Hampole, from whence it may be justly suspected that the comment upon the Athanasian Creed at the end, appearing in part (for two leaves are cut out), is Hampole’s as well as the rest. There is in Bennet Library, in Cambridge, an- other manuscript copy of the same commentary (marked 1—1. Catal., p. 69) with the comment upon the Creed entire. The prologue I found to be the same as in the other, as also the comment on the first Psalm; by which I judge of the rest’. The comment on the Can- ticles at the end is likewise the same, only the Canti- cles are not all placed in the same order. At the

4 ‘*Commentarius in Psalmos, aliosque Sacre Scripture ac Li- turgie Eeclesiastice Hymnos, MS. in Collegio 8. Trinitatis Cantab. F, Commentarius in priores 89 Psalmos habetur MS. in Bibliotheca Lambethana.’”’—Wharton, sec. Wicklef., Append. ad Cav. H. L.,

. 4.

τ Qy. whether there be not one or two more copies of the same in the Bodleian. See the Bodleian Manuscripts in the General Catalogue, No. 2438, 3085.

62 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

bottom of the second leaf of the commentary there is left this note by an unknown hand, Author hujus Libri, Richardus, Heremita de Hampole. Now if this commentary really be Hampole’s, of which I can scarce make any question, it will appear highly pro- bable that the comment on the Creed is his too. 2. What favours the suspicion is, that here the com- ment is annexed to other comments in like form with itself, and not to mere versions, as in the manuscript of St.John’s library. Nay, further, this comment on the Creed, as it appears in St. John’s copy, has the several parts of the Creed in Latin, and in red letter, prefixed to the respective version and comment; just as we find in Hampole the several parts of each Psalm exhibited first in Latin and in red letter, which cir- cumstance is of some weight. 3. Add to this, that there are some expressions in the comment on the Creed very like to those which are familiar with the author of that commentary on the Psalms, such as these, ‘‘it is seid comunly, that ther ben, «ce. Clerkis sein,’ thus and thus; so that from similitude of style an argument may be drawn in favour of Ham- pole as well as for Wickliff. These considerations suffer me not to be positive on the other side. The comment may be Hampole’s, or it may be Wickliff’s; which latter opinion I the rather incline to for the reasons before given, appearing to me something more forcible than the other. And I may farther observe that there is in Sidney College, in Cambridge, a very old copy of Hampole’s commentary, which runs through the Psalms, and all the ordinary Hymns and Canticles, but has no comment upon the Athanasian Creed an-

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 63

nexed, though the MS. appears very whole and entire. This makes me less inclinable to suspect the comment upon the Creed being Hampole’s; it is more probably Wickliff’s, as I before said. However it be, the com- ment may be useful, and if it should prove Hampole’s, it must be set forty years higher than I have here placed it. The distance of thirty or forty years makes no great alteration in any language, so that merely from the language, especially in so small a tract, we can draw no consequence to the author, excepting such peculiarities as may have been rather proper to this or that man, than to this or that time.

1478. To the comments before mentioned I may add one more, a Latin one, printed as I suppose, about the year 1478, though it carries not its date with it. The author is Peter d’Osma, called in Latin, Petrus de Osoma‘, or Petrus Oxomensis, or Uxomensis. The comment makes about seventy pages in quarto, and is drawn up in the scholastic way, with good judgment and accuracy, considering the age it was written in. The book was lent me by Mr. Pownall of Lincoln, a gentleman of known abilities, and particularly curious in searching out and preserving any rare and un- common pieces, printed or manuscript. I do not find that this comment has been at all taken notice of in any of our Libliotheques, or in any of the catalogues of the books printed before 1500. Even those that give account of the author, yet seem to have known nothing of the printing of this piece: probably there were but very few copies, and most of them soon de-

s **Commentaria magistri Petri de Osoma in Symbolum ‘ Qui-

cunque vult,’ &c., finiunt feliciter. Impressaque Parisiis per ma- gistrum Uauiricum, cognomento Gering.”

64 ANCIENT COMMENTS UPON

stroyed upon the author’s falling under censure in the year 1479. The author, if I judge right, was the same Peter Osma who was Professor of Divinity in Sala- manca, and adorned the chair with great reputation for many years. He began to be famous about the year 1444, and at length fell under the censure of a provincial synod, held under Alphonsus Carrillus, Archbishop of Toledo, in the year 1479*. He was condemned for some positions advanced in a book which he had written upon the subject of Confession. The positions, nine in number, are such as every Protestant professes at this day"; being levelled only at the cor- ruptions of popery in doctrine and discipline; but the good man was forced to submit and abjure, and to profess an implicit belief in whatsoever was held for faith by the then Pope Sixtus IV. Such, in short, is the account of our author, one of the most learned and valuable men of his time, by confession even of his enemies. At what particular time he composed his comment on the Athanasian Creed, I cannot say; only that it was between 1444 and 1479. I have placed it according to the time it was printed as nearly as I am able to judge of it.

These are all the ancient comments upon the Atha- nasian Creed that I have hitherto met with, or heard of, excepting only such as have no certain author, or none mentioned.

Muratorius informs us of two comments without names, which are in manuscript, in the Ambrosian

t Nicol. Antonius, Bibliotheca Hispana vetus, lib. x. ο, 16, ὃ 900, &c., (vol. ii. p. 203.)

u See the Positions and Censure in Carranza.—Summ. Concil., p- 463, &e., (880, &c.)

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 65

Library, near 600 years old. One of them bears for its title, Expositio Fidei Catholice ; the other has no title. By the age of the manuscripts, (if Muratorius judges rightly thereof,) one may be assured that they are distinct and different from any of the comments below Abelard: and that they are neither of them the same with Bruno’s or Fortunatus’s, may reasonably be concluded, because Muratorius was well acquaint- ed with both, and would easily have discovered it. Whether either of them may prove to be Abelard’s, which has for its title, Mxpositio Fide’, and may suit well with the age of the manuscripts, I know not. Muratorius, while he makes mention of Bruno and Hildegardis, whose comments he had seen, says no- thing of Abelard’s; so that possibly one of his manu- script comments may prove the same with that. But if neither of them be the same with Abelard’s, nor with each other, they must be allowed to pass for two distinct comments, whose authors are not yet known.

Nothing now remains but to close this chapter with a Table, as I have the former, representing im one view a summary of what is contained in it.

A TABLE OF THE ANCIENT COMMENTS.

A.D.; Commentators, Country, Title of the Creed, 570 Venant. Fortunatus. | Poictiers. Fides Catholica. 859. Hinemar, | Rheims. Symbolum Athanasti. 1033 Bruno. | Wurtzburgh. | Fides Catholica Sancti Athanasii 1110 MS. Ambrosian. |Italy. Fides Catholica, [ Episcopi. 1110 MS. alter Ambros, | Italy. 1120 Pet. Abaelardus. | France. Symbolum Athanasii. 1170 5. Hildegardis. | France, 1210\)Simon Tornacensis, | France. Symbolum Athanasii. 1215 Alex. Neckham. England, Fides Catholica. 1280. Alexander Hales. | England, Athanasii Symbolum. 1340| Rich. Hampolus. England, Athanasii Symbolum. 1380 John Wickliff. England, Crede, or Salm, of Attanasie. 1478 Petr. de Osoma. Spain. Athanasti Symbolum,

CHAPTER ΤΥ.

Latin Manuscripts ΟΕ THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

I conFinE myself in this chapter to the Latin manu- scripts, since the Creed was undoubtedly written origi- nally in Latin, and therefore the manuscripts in any other languages will be more properly treated of in another chapter among the versions. None of the learned at this day make any question but that the Creed was originally a Latin composure. This they pretend to be certain of, and unanimously agree in, however doubtfully they may speak of other things, or however they may differ in their opinions about the age or author. Even those, many of them, who have as- cribed the Creed to Athanasius, have yet been obliged by plain and irresistible evidence to acknowledge, with the legates of Pope Gregory IX., that it was originally Latin. The style and phraseology of the Creed; its early reception among the Latins, while unknown to the Greeks; the antiquity and number of the Latin manuscripts, and their agreement (for the most part) with each other, compared with the lateness, scarce- ness, and disagreement of the Greek copies, all concur to demonstrate that this Creed was originally a Latin composure rather than a Greek one: and as to any other language besides these two, none is pretended.

I proceed, then, to recount the Latin manuscripts as high as we can find any extant, or as have been known

ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS, &c. 67

to have been extant; and as low as may be necessary, or useful to our main design.

A.D. 600. The oldest we have heard of is one mentioned by Bishop Usher, which he had seen in the Cotton Library, and which he judged to come up to the age of Gregory the Great*. This manuscript has often been appealed to since Usher’s time, and upon the credit of Usher, by the learned on this subject: as particularly by Comber, L’Estrange, Tentzelius, Tillemont, Le Quien, Muratorius, Natalis Alexander, and perhaps several more. Montfaucon takes notice of Usher’s manuscript ; but observes that Usher himself allowed the character to be much later than the time of Gre- gory ἢ: which would have been a strange inconsistency in Usher, who forms his argument for the antiquity of the manuscript from the character itself, and from the ancient kind of picture. But Montfaucon is plainly mistaken, confounding what Usher had said of another manuscript, in Bennet Library at Cambridge 5, with

a “*Tatino-gallicum illud Psalterium in Bibliotheca Cottoniana vidimus: sicut et alia Latina duo, longe majoris antiquitatis ; in quibus, preeter Hymnum hune (sc. Te Deum) sine ullo authoris no- mine, Hymni ad Matutinas, titulo inscriptum, et Athanasianum habebatur Symbolum, et Apostolicum totidem omnino quot ho- diernum nostrum continens capitula. In priore, quod Gregorii I. tempore non fuisse recentius, tum ex antiquo picture genere col- ligitur, tum ex literarum forma grandiuscula, Athanasianum qui- dem, Fidei Catholice, .... alterum vero Symboli Apostolorum prefert titulum. In posteriore, quod Regis A‘thelstani aliquando fuit, Apostolicum, vice versa, Symbolum simpliciter, alterum au- tem Fides Sancti Athanasii Alexandrini nuncupatur.”— Usher, de Symb. Pref., p. 4 (2, 3).

> “Codicum omuium qui hactenus visi memoratique sunt, anti- quissimus ille est qui ab Usserio laudatur, evo Gregorii Magni conscriptus ; si tamen ea vere sit ejus MS. etas: nam addit Usserius, scripturam evo Gregorii longe esse posteriorem.” — Montf., Diatr., p. 721.

¢ “In Psalterio Greco Pape Gregorii, ut prefert titulus (scrip- tura enim xvyo Gregorii longe est posterior) Psalteriv videlicet

68 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

what he had said of the Cotton manuscript at West- minster. The two manuscripts are very distinct, and different as possible; nor has the Bennet manuscript any Athanasian Creed in it: only its being called Gregory’s Psalter occasioned, I suppose, the mistake of making it the same with the other. Tentzelius ἡ seems first to have confounded them together; and pro- bably Montfaucon followed him implicitly, not having Usher at hand to consult, which would immediately have discovered the fallacy. Were there no other ob- jection against Usher’s manuscript beside what hath been mentioned, all would be well; but it is of greater weight to observe, that there is not at this day in the Cotton Library any such manuscript copy of the Atha- nasian Creed, nor indeed any Latin Psalter that can come up to the age of Gregory, or near it. There is an ancient Psalter (marked Vespasian A.) written in capitals and illuminated, and which might perhaps, by the character, be as old as the time of Gregory the Great, were it not reasonable to think, from a charter of King Ethelbald, written in the same hand and at the same time, and formerly belonging to it*, that it Greco et Romano, Latinis utroque literis descripto, quod in Bene- dictini, apud Cantabrigienses, Collegii Bibliotheca est reconditum.” —Usher, de Symb., p. 9. This MS. is marked N.15 in the Cata- longue of MSS. of C. C. C., Cambridge, p. 44.

4 Tentzel., Judic. Hrudit., p. 49; Hxercit. Select., vol. i. p. 29.

e “Constat vero ex Historia et Synopsi bibl. Cottoniane, quam in ingens Reip. literarie beneficium edidit amplificandis bonis literis Latus doctissimus Thomas Smithus noster, et indiculo Psal- terii Latini in majusculis scripti cum versione Saxonica inter- lineari, quod notatur Vespasian. A. I, Chartam hane (Aithelbaldi R. Australium Saxonum) ex isto MS. exscissam esse. Quod etiam illius qauum mensura que cum foliis illius MS. quadrat, tum etiam manus in utroque prorsus eadem, tum denique Locus MSS., unde

scissa est, inter folia x. et xi., codicem vertentibus ostendit.’’— Hickes, Dissert. Epist., p. 67, (at the end of vol. ii. of his Thesaurus.)

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 69

cannot be set higher than the date of that charter, A.D. 7386. But I should here observe, that that charter is not in the larger capitals, as the Psalter itself is, but in the smaller capi'als, the same hand that the several pieces in that manuscript, previous to the Psalter, are written in; and how far this may affect our present argument I cannot say. Possibly the Psalter itself, being in a different hand, may be older than those previous pieces, as it is certainly much older than the additional pieces at the end, which are not in capitals, great or small.

This Psalter has the Ze Deum annexed to it, with the title of Zymnus ad Matutinum, as Usher’s had ; and also the Athanasian Creed, with the title of des Catholica ; but both in a very different and much later hand than that of the Psalter itself, later by several centuries, as the very learned Mr. Wanley' judges, who sets the age of the Psalter about 1000 years, but of the Athanasian Creed, &c., at the time of the Nor- man Conquest. A suspicion, however, may from hence arise, that this very Psalter, with what belongs to it, might be the Psalter, &e., which Usher spake of, espe- cially since there is none other in the Cotton Library at all like it. But, on the contrary, it is to be con- sidered, that this manuscript has no Apostolical Creed at all in it, which Usher affirms his to have had; nor has it the Zymnus Matutinus, beginning with Gloria in excelsis Deo, which Usher’s also had $; nor is the Creed

f Wanley, Catal. MSS. Septentr., p. 222.

s ‘Ad finem veterum Psalteriorum Latinorum, cum A postolico et Athanasiano Symbolo, etiam Hymnus iste (sc. Gloria, &c.) ha- betur aajectus. In antiquissimo Cottoniano ἀνεπίγραφος est: in

70 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

in capitals, as one would imagine Usher’s to have been by what he says of it; neither is it at all probable, that if Usher had intended the Psalter now extant in the Cotton, he should give no hint of the Saxon version going along with it, especially considering that it might be made an objection to its antiquity ; nor do 1 think that so inquisitive a man as Usher could either have been ignorant of the age of Ethelbald, or of his charter having been once a part of that manuscript. In his Historia Dogmatica®, he takes notice of this very Psalter (now marked Vespasian A.), and of the Saxon version in it, and hkewise of its being in the same hand with Ethelbald’s charter; and there he sets the age of it no higher than the year 736 (that is, above 130 years later than Gregory I.), without the least hint that he had ever mistaken the age of it before, or had thought otherwise of it than he did at the time of his writing this later treatise. These considerations per- suade me that Bishop Usher had seen some other ma- nuscript, which has since that time, like many more’, been lost or stolen from the Cotton Library. He that was so accurate in every tittle of what he says of King Athelstan’s Psalter (mentioned at the same time), could never have been so negligent, or rather plainly careless, in respect of the other. I conclude, therefore, that there really was such a Psalter as Usher describes, with the Athanasian Creed in it, such as he judged to

AXthelstaniano proximo, Hymnus in die Dominico ad Matutinas, inscribitur.”—Usher, de Symbol., p. 42 (33).

h “In Bibliotheca D. Roberti Cotton extat Psalterium Romanum vetustissimum, cum versione interlineari Saxonica ; character item cum charta Aithilbaldi Anglorum Regis, anno 736 data.’’—Usher, Hist. Dogmat., p. 104.

iT. Smith, Pref. ad Catalog. MSS. Bibl. Cotton.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 71

be of the age of Gregory I., from more marks than one; and how good a judge he was in those matters is well known to as many as know anything of that great man. But how far his judgment ought to sway, now the manuscript itself is lost, I must leave with the reader.

660. Next to this of Bishop Usher we may place the famous manuscript of Treves, from which the Colbert manuscript (to be mentioned hereafter in its place) was copied. Mr. Antelmi* sets it as high as the year 460, upon a presumption that the Colbert manuscript is as old as the year 600, and that 150 years may reasonably be allowed between the Colbertine copy and that from which it was copied. Tillemont, supposing or admit- ting the Colbertine to be near the age that Antelmi mentions, yet thinks fifty years difference might be suf- ficient, and that therefore the age of the Treves manu- script might be fixed at 550, or thereabout!. But, since the Colbert manuscript cannot reasonably be set much higher than 760, as we shall see in its proper place, I shall not pretend to set the Treves manuscript above 660, and that only under the favourable allow- ance of a probable conjecture. The authority of this manuscript of Treves stands upon the credit of a pas- sage prefixed to the Colbertine copy ™, which declares that the latter was copied from a manuscript found at Treves. It was not a copy of the entire Creed, but began at the Second Part, which relates to the Incar- nation; for, after the words ‘‘ believe rightly the In-

k Antelm., de Symb. Athan., p. 26.

1 Tillemont, Mémoires, vol. viii. p. 283 (670).

m ἐς Η 9 inveni Treviris in uno libro scriptum, sic incipiente,

Domini nostri Jesu Christi et reliqua. Domini nostri Jesu Christi fideliter credat.’—Apud Montf., Diatrib., p. 728.

72 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

carnation of our Lord Jesus Christ”’ (being only part of the foregoing sentence) follows; ‘‘ for the right faith is, that we believe,’’ and so on to the end of the Creed. This remaining part of the Creed is very different from the common copies, and seems to have been so con- trived with design, as I shall have occasion to observe mere at large in the sequel. And it is to me an argument that the manuscript was written while the Eutychian controversy was at the height, about the end of the fifth century, or beginning of the sixth, though I here set it a great deal lower, because this is not the place to explain that matter fully, nor would I too far indulge a bare conjecture. It is sufficient to suppose it written in the seventh century, as it was undoubtedly copied from as early if not earlier than the eighth.

700. After the manuscript of Treves may justly fol- low the Ambrosian manuscript, which is in the Am- brosian Library at Milan, a copy of which has been published by Muratorius, in his second tome of Anec- dota. It was brought thither from the famous monas- tery of Bobbio, (of High-Lombardy, in the Milanese, ) founded by Columbanus, a.p. 613. The character of the manuscript is Langobardick, and it is Judged by Muratorius (who has more particularly examined it) to be above 1000 years old". By his account then, who

n “Tn alio etiam Vetustissimo Ambrosiane Bibliothece Codice ante mille et plures annos scripto, Symbolum idem sum nactus.”— Murator., vol. i. p. 16.

** Caterum opusculum Hoe (Bachiarii Fides) mihi depromptum est ex antiquissimo Ambrosiane Bibliothece Codice, quem ante annos minimum mille conscriptum, characterum forma non dubi- tanter testatur. Fuit autem olim celebris Monasterii Bobiensis, et ex illo in Ambrosianam translatus a magno Card. Federico Borromeo,” &c.—Murator., vol. ii, pp. 8, 224.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 73

wrote in the year 1698, we ought to set the age of this manuscript higher than 698. Yet, because Montfau- con, who in his travels through Italy had also seen it, puts it no higher than the eighth century °, we shall be content to place it between the seventh and eighth, or in the year 700, to make it a round number. There are in this manuscript some readings different from the common copies, which shall be carefully noted here- after. It is without any title.

703. We may next set down King Athelstan’s Psalter, of which Bishop Usher had taken notice, making it next in age to the other most ancient one of the age of Gregory I. He and Dr. Grabe both fix the date of it to the year 703, from the Rule of the Calen- dar found in it?. Dr. Smith, in his Catalogue of the Cotton Manuscripts, inclines to think that the manu- script is later than that time, but taken from one that was really as early as the year 7038, the later copyist transcribing (as sometimes has been) the book and the Rule word for word, as he found them?. Allowing

ο “ Codex VIII. Seculi, charactere Langobardico, in quo Gen- nadii de Keclesiasticis Dogmatibus, Bachiarii Fides, Symbolum Athanasii, omnia eadem manu.”—Montfaue., Diar. Jtal., p. 18.

» “ Psalterium illud anno ere nostre Christiane 703, longe ante /Echelstani regnantis tempora, ex rezulis Kalendario in libri initio subjunctis seriptum tuisse deprehendi.’”’—Usher, de Symb., p. 8 (6).

“Quod Regis Althelstani fuisse dicitur, atque anno 703 scrip- tum est.”—Grabe, Prolegom. in Vetus Test., vol. iv. ο. 3, § 7.

4 “ Hic vero veneranuee antiquitatis liber fere ante mille annos deseriptus ; ut quibusdam ex Calendario, quod annum Cnristi 705, certo designat, illic prefixo videtur. Sed cum librarios eandem temporis adnotationem, quee ad vetustissimos codices proprie et peculiariter spectat, suis exemplaribus apposuisse sepissime obser- vaverim.... an sit ille ipse codex autographus qui tantam pre se ferat wtatem, vel annon potius seculo, aut circiter, ante tem- pora Aithelstani descriptus, vix pro certo praestarem ; ad poste- riorem sententiam faventiori animo inclinaturus.’”—Smith, bid/.

74 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

this to have been the case here (though it be only con- jecture), it may still be true that there was a manuscript of the age of 703 with this Creed in it, from whence the later one, now extant, was copied, which serves our purpose as well, and the rest is not material. But it should not be concealed that the Psalter (in this manu- script) is in small Italian, and the above-mentioned Rule in a small Saxon hand, which may, in some measure, weaken the argument drawn from the age of one to the age of the other; so that at length our evidence from this manuscript will be short of certainty, and will rise no higher than a fair probable presumption. I have nothing farther to observe, but that the Psalter wherein this Creed is, is the Gallican Psalter, not the Roman, and the title is, Wides Sancti Athanasii Alexandrini, ‘‘The Faith of St. Athanasius of Alexandria.”

760. We may now take in the Colbertine copy, of which I have before spoken, referring the date of it to the year 760, or thereabout. Montfaucon sets it above the age of Charles the Great’, allowing it to have been written about the time of Pepin, who began to reign in the year 752; so that I cannot be much out of time in placing it as I have done. It is written in Saxon

Cotton. Histor., p. 44. (This passage could not be found in Dr. Smith’s Preiace. )

τ “ Nongentos superat annos Colbertinus codex 784, Saxonicis descriptus literis, et mea quidem sententia, ante xtatem Caroli Magni evitus .... Sunt qui codicem illum 1100 annorum esse adfirmaruut: verum periti quique xvo circiter Pipini exaratum arbitrantur.””—Montf., Diatr., p. 721.

“ΝΟ. tamen Codicis Colbertini auctoritate nititur heec opinio, quem arbitratur Anthelmius 1100 annorum. Etenim (quod pace viri eruditissimi, et amicissimi dicatur) multo minoris wtatis co 1ex esse comprobatur ; nemo enim peritus cui librum exhibuerim, octavo cum seculo antiquiorem estimavit.”—Ib., p. 724.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED, 75

character, and is imperfect, wanting the first part, above one-half of the Creed, just as the manuscript of Treves, from which it was copied.

760. The manuscript of St. Germans at Paris is entire, and of the same age with the former*. It is marked No, 257, and written in a Saxon letter as well as the other. A specimen of the hand, with the three first paragraphs of the Creed, may be seen in Mabillon'. The title, Fides Sancti Athanasii Episcopi Alexandria. It differs in some places from the common copies (as shall be noted hereafter), though not near so much as the Colbert manuscript before mentioned,

772. Next to these is the famous manuscript of Charles the Great, at the end of a Gallican Psalter, written in letters of gold, and presented by Charlemagne, while only king of France, to Pope Adrian I., at his first entrance upon the Pontificate, in the year 772. Lam- becius, in his catalogue of the Emperor’s Library at Vienna, where this manuscript is, gives a large account of it". The title is, Lides Sancti Athanasii Episcopi Alexandrini.

800. There is another manuscript in the Royal Library at Paris, marked 4908, which Montfaucon judges to be near 900 years old’. He wrote in the

s ‘Paris saltem antiquitatis est Sangermanensis noster, num. 257. Saxonicis pariter literis exaratus, qui titulum habet, ‘ Fides Sancti Athanasii Episcopi Alexandrie.’”—Ib., p. 721.

t Mabill., de re Diplom., lib. v. p. 351.

ἃ Lambecius, Catal. Biblioth. Vindobonens., lib. ii. c.5, pp. 261, 296, ἅς. ‘* Carolus Magnus proprio carmine suo testatur se illum codi- cem summo Pontifici Hadriano I. dono misisse ; et quidem, ut ego arbitror, illo ipso anno 772, cujus die decimo Februarii jam me- moratus Hadrianus in summum Pontificem electus est.”

v ἐς Regius Codex, num. 4908, annorum pene nongentorum, nul-

10 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

year 1698. So if we place it in the year 800, we shall want a little of 900 years from that time. He supposes it of very near the same age with the Vienna manuscript. It bears no title, nor any name or note of the author. It contains no more than the first part of the Creed, as far as the words et tamen non tres eterni, sed unus ; the rest is torn off and lost. 850. I may here place a manuscript of Bennet Col- lege Library in Cambridge, whose age I cannot cer- tainly fix to a year, but by all circumstances it cannot well be supposed later than this time. It is at the end of a Psalter, which, by comparing, I find to be a Gal- lican Psalter. Bishop Parker left a remark in it about its being in the possession first of one of the Arch- bishops of Canterbury, and at length conveyed down to the hands of Becket*, who was Archbishop of Can- terbury in the year 1162. The great antiquity of the manuscript appears from the martyrs, confessors, and virgins addressed to in it, all of the early times’. There are some few variations in this copy, such as are also found in the most ancient manuscripts of this Creed, particularly the word ef, frequently inserted before Spiritus Sanctus, which has been since erased

lum habet titulum, nullumque auctoris nomen. /qualis ipsi est, qui memoratur a Lambecio,” &c.—Montf., Diatr., p. 721.

x “Hoe Psalterium [N. X.] laminis argenteis deauratum, et gemmis ornatum, quondam fuit N. Cantuar. Archiep. tandem venit in manus Thome Becket quondam Cant. Archiep. Quod tes- tatum est in veteri scripto.’’—Matth. Cant., Catal. MSS. C.C.C., C.

. 48.

y “Τὴ Litaniis, Orate pro nobis, Sancte Contestor, Sancte He- rasme, Sancte Oswolde, &c. Martyres. Sancte Cuthberte, Sancte Germane, Sancte Placide, Sancte Columbane, Sancte Caurentine, &c. Confessores. Sancta Brigida, Sancta Eugenia, Sancta Eulalia, Sancta Petronella, &c., Virgiues. Et non sunt hisce recentiores.” —Catal. MSS. Ὁ. C.C., C., p. 43.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. Vi

by some officious hand. The title is observable, Δ 68 Sancti Anasthasii Episcopi ; Anasthasii for Athanasii, by a transposition of syllables.

860. Montfaucon informs us of a manuscript in the Colbert Library, No. 13839, which once belonged to Charles the Bald’, who died in the year 877; began to reign 840. It cannot therefore be much amiss to fix upon 860 for the date of it. The title it bears is, Fides Athanasit.

883. There is a second manuscript copy of the Athanasian Creed in the library of Bennet (or Corpus Christi) College, marked N.O. V. It is at the end of a Gallican Psalter, in the same hand, and carrying its certain date with it. It was written in France, by order of Count Amadeus, or Achadeus*, and in the year 883, as appears from the Litany». The title is, Ides Catholica.

930. Mr. Wanley gives us an account of a Roman Psalter in the Royal Library (formerly of St. James’s), with an interlinear Saxon version to it, written about the time of King Athelstan®. Among the Canticles at the end there is also this Creed, under the title of HHymnus Athanasti de Fide Trinitatis, quem tu concele- brans discutienter intellige. This is in red ink. The

z **Colbertinus No. 1339, qui fuit Karoli Calvi imperatoris, in- seribitur ; Fides Athanasii.”—Monttauc., Diatrib., p. 721.

a ‘* Ad finem Psalterii, Achadeus, misericordia Dei comes hune Psalterium scribere jussit.”—Catal. MSS., C.C.C., C., p. 46.

Ὁ « Oratur, ut Marinum Apostolicum in Sancta religioue conser- vare digneris, ut Karlomannum Regem perpetua prosperitate con- servare digneris: ut Keyinam conservare digneris: ut Fulconem Episcopum cum omni grege sibi commisso in tuo apto servitio con- servare digneris.’”"—Catal. MSS. C.C.C., C., p. 47.

¢ Wanley, Cutul. MSS. Septentr., p. 182. Wanley, however, only gives the title Hymnus Athanasii.

78 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

title seems to have been then customary in England, as may be probably argued from a Saxon version (to be hereafter mentioned) of the same age, or very near, and bearing the same title 4.

957. In the Archbishop’s Library at Lambeth there is a Gallican Psalter, written, according to Mr. Wanley*, in the time of King Edgar, or a little before. At the end there is the Athanasian Creed in the same ancient hand, with an interlinear Saxon version. The title, Fides Catholica Sancti Athanasti Episcopt.

970. There is another manuscript copy of this Creed, much of the same age with the former, in my Lord Oxford’s elegant library, richly furnished with all kinds of curious and valuable manuscripts. This Creed is at the end of a Gallican Psalter, and has an inter- linear Saxon version to it. Mr. Wanley, who was so kind as to acquaint me with it, and to favour me with a sight of it, refers it to the time of King Ed- gar, who began his reign in 959, and died in 975. The title is, Hides Catholica Athanasti Alexandrini Episcopt.

1081. In the Cotton Library there is a Gallican Psalter, with Saxon interlined (marked Vitellius, E.18), which Mr. Wanley refers to the year 1091, The Athanasian Creed, at the end as usual among the other Canticles, bears the title of Evdes Catholica Athanasit Episcopt Alexandrini.

4 Hymnus Athanasii de Fide Trinitatis. Wotton, Conspectus Brevis operis Hickesiani, p. 77.

e Wanley, Catal., p. 269. “ Eadgari Regis Anglosaxonum tem- poribus, aut paulo ante, ut videtur, exaratus.”

Wharton, Auctar. Hist. Dogm., p. 374, ‘‘ Alfredo parum recentior

videtur.”

f Wanley, Catal., p. 222, 224. Smith, Catal. Cotton., p. 101.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 79

1050. In the Norfolk Library, now belonging to the Royal Society at London, there is also a Gallican Psalter, whose age is fixed by Mr. Wanleys to the time of Edward the Confessor. The Creed is in it, and has an interlinear Saxon version running along with it. The title, Fides Catholica Athanasii Alex.

1064. In Bennet College Library is a manuscript copy of this Creed without any title. The Psalter, wherein it is, is called Portiforium Oswaldi, and is marked K.10. An account of the book may be seen in Mr. Wanley*, and in the Catalogue, p. 30.

1066. I may here place the Cotton Manuscript before mentioned, bound up with the ancient Roman Psalter, marked Vespasian A., though of a very different and much later hand. The Creed has an interlinear Saxon version, as usual, and its title is Mvdes Catholica. Mr. Wanley judges it to be as old as the coming in of the Normans'.

1066. Of the same age * is the Roman Psalter in our Public Library at Cambridge, with the Latin text in black letter, a Saxon version in red, and the titles in green. The Creed is interlined with Saxon, as well as the Psalter, but has no title; for from this time, I conceive, the title began to be left out in some copies for brevity sake, or because it was thought superfluous.

It will be needless to take notice of any manuscripts below this time, excepting only such as contain some- thing particular.

& Wanley, Catal., p. 291. h Tbid., p. 110. i |bid., p. 222. Smith, Bibl. Cotton. Histor., p. 35. k Wanley, Catal., p. 152.

80 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

1087. Quesnel’, and after him Pagi™, speaks of a manuscript copy of this Creed in a Breviary and Psalter for the use of the monks of Mount Cassin, judged to be about 600 years old. This is the same Breviary that Quesnel has made observations upon in another work"; and there he fixes the age a little below 1086—paulo post annum 1086. ‘he title of the Creed is, Hides Catholica edita ab Athanasio Alexan- drine sedis Episcopo. ‘There is the like title to the Creed in the triple Psalter of St. John’s College, Cam- bridge, about the same age, or older, (marked B. 18,) Incipit Fides Catholica edita ab Athanasio Archiepiscopo Alexandrine civitatis. And there is such another title in a Psalter of the Norfolk Library, (No. 155,) Fides Catholica edita a Sancto Athanasio Hpo.; but the hand is modern.

1120. In my Lord Oxford’s Library I had a sight of a manuscript written in Germany about 600 years ago, for the use of the Church of Augsburg, which bears for its title, Fides Anastasit Episcopt.

1150. In the Norfolk Library is a Psalter (marked No. 230) with an interlinear version Normanno-Gal- lican; the Psalter is Gallican, and the title of the Creed at the end, Fides Catholica.

1240. Usher takes notice of a copy of this Creed then in the Royal Library at St. James's, (formerly be- longing to Louis IX.) ; the title, Pvdes Catholica.

1300. Montfaucon informs us of a Latin and a French copy of this Creed found in a manuscript about 400

1 Quesnel, Dissert. xiv. ad Leon. Oper., p. 732.

m Pagi, Critic. in Baron. Ann. 340, § 8, p. 121, (vol. 1, p. 441.) " Quesnel, Observat. ad Breviarium, p. 827.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 81

years old, placed in opposite columns. What is re- markable is, that the Latin has for its title Canticum Bonifacti, and the French over against the other, Ce chant fust St. Anaistaise qui Apostoilles de Rome®.

1400. In the Bodleian at Oxford there is a manu- script copy of this Creed (No. 1205), which has for its title, Anastasit Expositio Symboli Apostolorum. It is about 300 years old, and belonged once to the Carthu- sian monks at Mentz. The Carthusians are particu- larly noted for their more than common veneration for this Creed, reciting it every day at the Prime, as Cardinal Bona testifies both of them and the Ambro- sians?, which I remark by the way. I observe that the German copies of this Creed, for five or six hun- dred years upwards, have most commonly Anastasius instead of Athanasius. I make no question but that this first arose from a mistake of the copyists, and not out of any design. One may perceive that Anastasius is sometimes written where Athanasius of Alexandria must have been intended. I suppose, at first, some copies had accidentally Anasthasius for Athanasius (as one in Bennet College Library mentioned above), by a transposition of letters or syllables, as easily happens in writing or speaking: thus Phrunutus for Phurnutus, Marivadus for Varimadus, and the like. Now when the copyists had thus introduced Anasthasius (Anas-tha for Atha-nas), those that came after left out the ὦ to make it Anastasius, that being a common name, which the other was not. This I thought proper to hint, that it may appear how little reason there is for ascrib-

ο Montfaucon, Diatrib., pp. 722, 727

» Bona, de Divin. Psalmod., c. 18, §§ 5, 10, pp. 897, 900.

G

82 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

ing this Creed to Anastasius, whether of Rome, or of Antioch, or any other.

I have now run through the manuscripts of greatest note or use, either for antiquity or for anything particu- lar, to give light to our further enquiries. Two only I have omitted, which have been thought considerable ; not so much in themselves, as upon account of the other tracts they were found to be joined with. The one is the manuscript found in the library of Thuanus ( Codes Thuaneus), annexed to some tracts which were once supposed to belong to Vigilius Tapsensis, though now certainly known to be none of his. Quesnel was much pleased with the discovery of this manuscript, as fa- vouring his hypothesis about Vigilius Tapsensis 4. And Antelmius has taken some pains in confuting him, shewing that the supposed works of Vigilius are none of his*, and that if they were, yet no certain argument could be drawn from thence to make Vigilius author of the Creed, since it is a common thing for tracts of several authors, especially if they relate to the same subject, to be tacked to each other.

The second manuscript is one that was found an- nexed to the ‘‘ Fragments of Hilary of Poictiers®*;”

a ἐς Absoluta Dissertationum nostrarum editione, inveni Codicem Touaneum, in quo Dialogus Vigilii Tapsensis adversus Arianos, Sabellianos, et Photinianos legitur, sub hoc titulo: ‘ Incipit Alter catio Athanasii cum Heresibus.’ Post hune Tractatum habetur Symbolum Nicenum, et Formula Fidei Ariminensis Concilii, quam proxime sequitur Symbolum Athanasianum cum hac Epigraphe: ‘ Fides dicta a Sancto Athanasio Episcopo.’ Porro, conjecture nostre de autore hujus Symboli, Vigilio, non parum suffragatur, quod in antiquissimo codice illigatum reperiatur Opusculo cui nomen Atha- nasii pariter pretixum legitur, sed quod Vigilii Tapsensis esse ins dubitatum habetur,” &c.—Quesnel, in Addend., p. 913.

r Montfauc., Athan. Op., vol. 11. pp. 603, 724.

s “Tnvenitur id similiter in Fragmentis Hilarii historicis in Cod.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 83

which circumstance was thought a reason for ascribing this Creed to Hilary. Vossius first, and after him many others, throw it off as a very slight argument, since the manuscript pretended is very modern; nor is the Creed ascribed to Hilary in that manuscript, but only bound up with his ‘‘ Fragments,” as any other work might be, however little akin to them. Mont- faucon takes notice of this matter in few wordst; Tentzelius more at large“. It is sufficient for me just to have hinted it.

Having now given as particular account as was need- ful of the more ancient Latin manuscripts of this Creed, I may just observe, that as to modern ones they are in- numerable, there being scarce any manuscript Latin Psalter of modern date but what has the Creed in it, and generally without a title. I may next subjoin a table of the manuscripts here recited, representing in one view the age, the title, the country where written, and the kind of Psalter wherein found: all which cir- cumstances will be of use to us in our following en- quiries. Particularly, as to the Psalters, it will be of moment to observe whether they be Roman or Gal- lican, because from thence we may be able to discover in what places or countries this Creed was first re-

veteri Part. 2, sub finem.”—Felckman, Var. Lect. Oper. Athan., p. 89.

t “Hilario nonnulli adsecriptum voluerunt, quia nimirum in codice quodam exstat post Hilarii Fragmenta. Quasi vero id non vulgo et in plerisque codicibus observetur, ut multa diversorum opera consequenter in manuscriptis describentur. Cum autem in ejusmodi codice post Hilariana opera, nullo premisso auctoris nomine compareat; hinc, uti jam supra diximus, inferendum, tum exaratum fuisse cum pro Athanasiano nondum vyulgo habe- retur.”’—Montfaue., Diatrib., p. 723.

« Tentzel., Judic. Erud., pp. 2, ὃ, &c.

84 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

ceived, according to their use of this or that Psalter. But because, perhaps, some readers may be at a loss to know what we mean by those different names of Roman and Gallican Psalters, it may not be improper here to throw in a few previous instructions relating to the different kinds of Latin Psalters, and the names they have gone under.

There are four kinds or sorts of Latin Psalters, which have passed under the names of Italic, Roman, Gallican, and Hebraic. One of them was before Jerome’s time; the three last are all Jerome’s, as he had a hand, more or less, in every one of them. I shall treat of them distinctly in their order as follows :—

I. The Italic Latin Psalter is of the old translation, or version, such as it was before Jerome’s time. I shall not enter into the dispute whether it were one version, or many. The common opinion is, that there were several Latin versions before Jerome’, but one more eminent than the rest, called Italic*, as being received into common use in Italy’. However that be, it is become customary with such as treat of this subject to speak of all that was extant before Jerome as of one version, under the name of Vetus Vulgata, or Versio

v “Qui enim Scripturas ex Hebreea Lingua in Linguam Grecam verterunt numerari possunt, Latini autem interpretes nullo modo: ut enim cuique primis Fidei temporibus in manus venit Codex Grecus et aliquantulum facultatis sibi utriusque lingue habere videbatur, ausus est interpretari.”—August., de Doctr. Christian., lib. ii. c. 11, vol. iii. p. 25.

x “Tn ipsis autem interpretationibus Itala ceteris preferatur : nam est verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate sententie.’’—August., ID ΟΣ ΓΟ pale

y ‘ Ecclesia Latina a principio, vel ferme a principio, usa est ver- sione Latina Testamenti Vet. ex Greca τῶν 6 translatione facta, que Itala vulgo dicebatur, quoniam in Italia prius usitata in alias

inde Latinorum Ecclesias recipiebatur.’’—Hodius, de Biblior. Text. Origin., lib. iii. pars 2, ὁ. 1, p. 342.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 85

Italica, There are entire Psalters of this old version, printed and manuscript”, though now nowhere in use in Divine offices, except such parcels of it as, having been anciently taken into the Roman missals, or other old Liturgies, remain there still, the people being ac- customed to them, and there being no great necessity for changing them; but all the entire Psalters in use are of another kind. Martianay, in his edition of Jerome’s works, once intended to give us an entire and correct Psalter (with some other of the sacred books) of the old Italic version ; but the various lections were so many and so different, that the work appeared too laborious and difficult, for which reason he then laid it aside*. This version, or versions, is what all the Latins used before Jerome, and many also after him, the Africans especially, down to the sixth century at least, or beginning of the seventh.

2. The Roman Psalter is not very different from the old Italic. It is nothing else but that old version, cursorily and in part corrected by Jerome in the time of Pope Damasus, a.p. 383. It has had the name of Roman, because the use of it began the soonest and continued the longest in the Roman offices. It ob- tained in Gaul near as soon as at Rome, but was laid aside in the sixth century, when Gregory of

z Le Long, Bibl. Sacr., vol. i. p. 248.

a Appendicem Sacrorum aliquot voluminum, juxta Veterem Vulgatam usu receptam ante Hieronymum, hoc loco edendam sta- tueramus: sed quum operi manus jamjam accederet, tantam inter MSS. Codices hujus versionis Latinz deprehendimus dissonantiam, ut impossibile esset vel solas variantes horum codicum lectiones adnotasse nisi maximo temporis intervallo. Quare ne in sequentem annum differretur editio hujus Divine Bibliothecee, Appendicem

predictam latiori operi, ac majori otio reservavimus.”—Martian., Not. ad Hieronym., vol. i. p. 1419.

86 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

Tours» introduced the other Psalter, since called Gal- lican. The Roman Psalter, however, still obtained at Rome till the time of Pope Pius Y.°, and it is still used in the Vatican church, and some few churches besides.

3. The Gallican Psalter is Jerome’s more correct Latin translation made from Origen’s Hexaplar4, or most correct edition of the Greek Septuagint, filled up, where the Greek was supposed faulty, from the He- brew, distinguished with obelisks and asterisks, denot- ing the common Greek version in those places to be either redundant or deficient. Many of the old manu- scriptse still retain those marks; but more have left them out, I suppose, to save trouble. This more correct Psalter was drawn up by Jerome in the year 389, and obtained first in Gaul about the year 580, or, however, not later than 595; from which circumstance it came to have the name of Gallican, in contradistine- tion to the Roman. From Gaul, or France, it passed over into England before the year 597, and into Ger-

Ὁ ἐς Psalmos autem cum secundum LXX. interpretes Romani ad- hue habeant ; Galli et Germanorum aliqui secundum emendatio- nem quam Hieronymus Pater de LXX. Editione composuit, Psal- terium cantant: Quam Gregorius, Turonensis Episcopus, a patribus Romanis mutuatam, in Galliarum dicitur Ecclesias transtulisse.”— Walafrid. Strab. de Reb. Hecles., α. 25, p. 196 (p. 690).

e¢ Bona, de Rebus Liturg., lib. ii. ec. 3, p. 506. Hodius, lib. iii. pars 2, c. 4, p. 383. Mabill., de Curs. Gallic., p. 398.

4 Hieron., Hpist. ad Sunn. et Frelet., in vol. ii. p. 627.

e The Cotton Mannseript of 703, and the Bennet of 883, Lam- beth of 957, Lord Oxford’s of 970, and Bruno’s own manuscript of 1033, besides many more in France, England, and other coun- tries. ‘‘ Quanta porro fuerit diligentia nostratium in describendo hocce Psalterio, cum asteriscis et obelis, non aliunde testatum volumus quam ex infinita copia Codicum MSS. qui cum talibus dis- tinctionibus supersunt usque hodie in Gallicanis Bibliothecis.”— Martian., Hieronym. Op., vol. i. Pvolegom. ii. 6. 5.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED, 87

many, and Spain, and other countries. The popes of Rome, though they themselves used the other Psalter, yet patiently connived at the use of this in the Western Churches and even in Italy, and sometimes privately authorized the use of it in churches and monasteries‘, till at length it was publicly authorized in the Council of Trent, and introduced a while after into Rome itself by Pius V. It was admitted in Britain and Ireland before the coming of Augustine the Monk, and pre- vailed after, except in the church of Canterbury ὅ, which was more immediately under the Archbishop’s eye, and more conformable to the Roman offices than other parts of the kingdom. It has been said® that this very Gallican Psalter is what we still retain in our liturgy, called the reading Psalms, in contradistinction to the other Psalms in our Bibles of the new transla- tion. But this is not strictly true: for the old trans- lation, though it be taken in a great measure from the Gallican, has yet many corrections from the Hebrew, (where they were thought wanting,) first by Coverdale in 1535, and by Coverdale again, 1539, and, last of all, by Tonstall and Heath in 1541; according to which

f “ Anno 1369, Urbani V. autoritate Sancitum, ut Cassinenses Psalterio Gallicano uterentur.”—Montfauc., Diarv. Jtal., p. 331. P. Adrian, long before, had recommended the Gallican Psalter to the Church of Bremen. See below in ec. vi., and Bona, de Rebus Liturg., p. 506.

gs ‘*Ante adventum Augustini Monachi, primi Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, in Angliam, i.e. ante annum 597, Ecclesiz Britan- nice et Hibernice Psalterium Gallicanum receperant. Augustinus hue a Gregorio M. missus Romanum secum advexit, et Kcclesie suze Cantuariensi tradidit. Sed loco illius invaluit tandem, per omnes Keclesias Anglicas, usus Gallicani.”—Hodius, lib. iii. pars 2, c. 4, p. 384.

h “‘Hodienum in Liturgia Ecclesis Anglicane retinetur editio

Gallicana: at versio illa que habetur in Bibliorum voluminibus, queque pro authentica agnoscitur, ex Hebrico est.”—-Ibid.

88 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS OF

edition is the Psalter now used in our liturgy, as I have learned by comparing: and it had been before taken notice of by Durell’. But this in passing.

4. The Hebraic Latin Psalter means Jerome’s own translation, immediately from the Hebrew, made in the year 391. This, though otherwise of great esteem, was never used in the public Church offices*. There are but few copies of it in comparison, because this Psalter, as before hinted, having never been in com- mon use like the Roman and Gallican, has been con- fined to a few hands. We are not to expect an Athanasian Creed in this Psalter, as not being intended for the use of the choir, neither are we to expect to meet with it in the Italic Psalters, which are few, and which were grown, or growing out of use before the Athanasian Creed was brought into the public offices. But in the Roman and Gallican Psalters we may find it; and it will be of moment to observe in which of them it is found. Indeed, some manuscript Psalters there are which have the Roman and Gallican together in opposite columns, the Gallican always set first’. Others have the Hebraic and Gallican set column-wise, as the former, and some have all the three versions of Jerome placed in the like order. Dr. Hody informs us of two such manuscripts, to which may be added

i Durell, Hecles. Anglican. Vindic., α. 27, p. 306.

k «*Tertium est de Hebrzeo in Latinum quod Teronymus trans- tulit de Hebreeo in Latinum. Sed non est in usu Ecclesiae, sed viri studii literati et sapientes eo utuntur.’—Roger Bacon, apud Ho- aium, l. ὁ.

“* Hee autem (versio ex Hebreo) ideo recepta non fuit, quia duse priores, quotidiano usu in Ecclesiis frequentate, sine magna divini officii perturbatione non poterant abrogari.”—-Bona, de Rebus Li- turg., lib. ii. 6. 3, p. 5063; cf. Hodium, p. 385.

1 Hodius, 1. ο.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 89

a third, now in Trinity College in Cambridge, which has the Athanasian Creed with Bruno’s comment in it, as intimated above. Another such triple Psalter there is in St. John’s College of the same University, as before hinted; and in my Lord Oxford’s library is a fine old Latin Bible, where the Psalms appear under all the three versions. Nay, some manuscripts have the Greek also with the other, making a fourth column: an account of this last sort may be seen both in Dr. Hody and Le Long™. These double, triple, or quadruple Psalters came not in, I presume, before the end of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh; for Berno Augi- ensis of that time acquaints us with the occasion and use of them, and how they came to be so contrived ", When the Roman way of singing, first adapted to the Roman Psalter, had been introduced into France and Germany (which was first done in the eighth century), in process of time it bred some confusion in the two Psalters, mixing and blending them one with the other, that it was difficult to distinguish which words be- longed to this, and which to that. To remedy this

m Le Long, Bibl. Sacr., vol. i. p. 244.

u “Inter cetera, ex emendata LXX. interpretum translatione Psalterium ex Greco in Latinum vertit (Hieronymus) illudque can- tandum omnibus Gallie, ac quibusdam Germanie Ecclesiis tradidit. Et ob hoe Gallicanum Psalterium appellavit, Romanis adhuc ex corrupta vulgata editione Psalterium canentibus; ex qua Romani cantum composuerunt, nobisque usum cantandi contradiderunt. Unde accidit quod verba, que in diurnis vel nocturnis officiis ca- nendi more modulantur, intermisceantur, et confuse nostris Psalmis inserantur ; ut a minus peritis haud facile possit discerni quid nos- tre, vel Romane conveniat editioni. Quod pius pater ac peritus magister intuens, tres editiones in uno volumine composuit: et Gallicanum Psalterium, quod nos canimus, ordinavit in una columna; in altera Romanum, in tertia Hebreeum.”—Berno Augiens. Hpist. inedit., apud Mabill., de Curs. Gallic., § 21, p. 396. Hodius, de Biblior. Text. Origin., p. 382.

90 ANCIENT LATIN MANUSCRIPTS, &c.

inconvenience, a way was found out to have both the Psalters distinctly represented to the eye together, in two several columns, and thus came in the kind of Psalters before mentioned. We easily see why the Gallican used to be set in the first column, namely, be- cause those Psalters were contrived by the French and Germans, who made use of the Gallican, and so gave the preference to their own. If I have detained my reader a little too long in this digression about the Psalters I hope the usefulness of the subject may make him some amends and be a just apology for it. I now return to our Creed, and what more immediately be- longs to it; closing this chapter, as I promised, with a table, representing a summary or short sketch of what hath been done in it.

A TABLE OF MANUSCRIPTS,

Manuscripts, |Psalters. Titles of the Creed. Bp. Usher’s. Fides Catholica. Treves. Ambrosian. Cotton 1. Gallican. | Fides Sancti Athanasii Alexandrini. Colbert 1. St. Germans. Fides Sancti Athanasii Episcopi. Vienna. Gallican. | Fides Sancti Athanasii Episcopi Alexandrini. Regius, Paris.

Benet Coll. Cant. I. |Gallican. | Fides Sancti Anasthasii Episcopi.

Colbert 2. Fides Athanasii,

Benet C. 2. Gallican. | Fides Catholica.

St. James’s 1. Roman. |Hymnus Athanasii.

Lambeth. Gallican. | Fides Catholica S. Athanasii Episcopi.

Harleian 1. Gallican, | Fides Catholica Athanasii Alexandrini Episcopi.

Cotton 2. Gallican. | Fides Catholica Athanasii Episcopi Alexandrini.

Norfolk 1. Gallican. | Fides Catholica Athanasii Alexandrini,

Benet 6. 3.

Cotton 3. Fides Catholica.

Cambridge. Roman.

Cassinensis. Fides Catholica edita ab Athanasio, &c.

Harleian 2. | Fides Anastasii Episcopi.

Norfolk 2. Gallican. | Fides Catholica.

St. James’s 2. Fides Catholica.

Friars Minors. Gallican. | Canticum Bonefacii. [Rome. Ce Chant fust St. Anaistaise qui Apostoilles de

Bodleian. Anastasii Expositio Symboli Apostolorum.

CHAPTER V. Ancrent Versions, Prrnrep on Manuscript.

Some account of the ancient versions of the Athana- sian Creed may be of use to shew when and where it has been received, and what value hath been set upon it, at several times and in several countries. I shall note the time in the margin when the first version into any language appears to have been made; and 1 shall rank the versions of the several countries according to the chronological order of those first versions re- spectively.

Frencu VERSIONS.

A.D. 850. Under the name of French versions I com- prehend all versions made at any time into the vulgar language then current in France, whatever other name some may please to give them. I beg leave also to comprehend under the same name all oral versions de- livered by word of mouth, as well as written ones; otherwise I am sensible that I ought not to have begun with French versions. I do not know that the Gauls, or French, had any written standing version of this Creed so early as 850, or for several centuries after. Their oldest versions of the Psalter are scarce earlier than the eleventh century, and of the entire Scripture

a See Le Long, Bibl. Sacr., vol. i. p. 818, &e.

92 ANCIENT VERSIONS OF

scarce so early as the twelfth; and we are not to expect a written version of the Athanasian Creed more ancient than of their Psalter. But what I mean by setting the French versions so high as I here do, is, that the Athanasian Creed was, as early as is here said, inter- preted out of Latin into the vulgar tongue for the use of the people by the clergy of France in their verbal instructions. This is the same thing, in effect, with a written standing version, as supplying the place of it, and is as full a proof of the general reception of the Creed at that time as the other would be. Now that the Athanasian Creed was thus interpreted into the vulgar tongue in France as early as the year 850, or earlier, I prove from the words of Hincmar, above cited, giving orders to the clergy of his province to be able to express this Creed communibus verbis, that is, 1n their vulgar or mother tongue. What that mixed kind of language which they then used should be called is of no great moment to our present purpose to enquire. Some perhaps, with Vitus Amerbachius and Bishop Usher’, will call it Teutonic, or German, because Franks and Germans, being originally the same, spake the same language. But I see no consequence that because Franks and Germans used the same language, therefore Franks and Gauls, mixed together, must still keep the same, any more than that a mixed nation of Normans and Saxons must all agree either in Norman or Saxon. One would rather expect in such a mixed people a mixed language too, as usually happens in such cases, As to France in particular at that time, Mr. Wharton has plainly shewn that the language there

b See above, p. 28. ¢ Usher, Histor. Dogmat., p. 111.

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spoken was very widely different from the Teutonic or German.

The Concordate between the two brothers, Lewis and Charles, at Strasburgh, puts the matter out of dispute, where one expressed himself in the Teutonic, the other in the language then current in France, called Roman- ensis, or Rustica Romana, corrupt Roman, or Latin‘, nearer to the Latin than to the German, but a confused mixture of both. Such was the language then vulgarly spoken in France, as appears from the specimen of it given by Wharton from Nithardus. And this, I pre- sume, is the language into which our Creed was inter- preted in Hincmar’s time ; for which reason I have set the French versions first. If any one shall contend that the Teutonic prevailed then in the diocese of Rheims, though not in the other parts of Gaul more remote from Germany, I shall not think it of moment to dispute the point, since it is not material to our present purpose.

As to the French versions, properly so called, writ- ten standing versions, I have said that none of them reach higher than the eleventh century. Montfaucon gives us one, though imperfect, 600 years old°; that is, of the eleventh century, and very near the end of it, about 1098, 600 years before the time of his writing; and this is the oldest that I have anywhere found men- tioned. Next to which, perhaps, we may reckon that in Trinity College, in Cambridge ; I mean the interlinear version, which Mr. Wanleyf calls Normanno-Gallican,

4 Wharton, Auctar. Histor. Dogmat., p. 344.

© Montfaucon, Diatrib., pp. 721, 727, and 733, where it is quoted at length.

£ Wanley, Catal. MSS. Septentr., p. 168.

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about 580 years old. And next to that the Norfolk manuscript (No. 230), before mentioned, about the same age with the other; and Mr. Wanley informed me of two more in my Lord Oxford’s library. There is one in the Cotton Library (Nero, C. 4) above 500 years old, according to Mr. Wharton’. Montfaucon gives us another above 400 years old". But it is need- less, and foreign to my purpose, to number up all the versions: the first in its kind is what will be chiefly

serviceable to our following enquiries.

GERMAN VERSIONS.

870. As to written and standing versions, the Ger- man, so far as we find any records, ought to have the first place. There is in the Emperor’s library at Vienna‘ a German, or Teutonic, version of this Creed, made by Otfridus, monk of Weissenberg, in the ninth century: the manuscript, as Lambecius assures us, is coeval with the author. There have been several later German versions, a brief account of which may be seen in Lambecius*, Tentzelius'; and Le Long™, but more particularly in Tentzelius. It is sufficient to my pur- pose to have taken notice of the first and most con- siderable in its kind.

Awneio-Saxon VERSIONS.

930. There have been Anglo-Saxon versions of this Creed as early as the time of King Athelstan, as ap- pears from the manuscript of the Royal Library, with

5. Wharton, Auctar. Histor. Dogmat., p.390.

h Montfaucon, Diatrib., p. 722.

i Lambec., Catal. Biblioth. Vindobon., lib. ii. c. 5, pp. 460, 768. k Ibid., c. 8, p. 763.

1 Tentzel., Judic. Hrud., Pref. and p. 226.

τ Le Long, Bibl. Sacr., vol. i. p. 376.

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an interlinear version, noted above, and which I place in 930. The Lambeth manuscript of 957 has also an interlinear Saxon version, both which manuscripts con- firm the account given of an Anglo-Saxon copy of this Creed, printed from a Latin manuscript, interlined with Saxon, out of the church of Salisbury. The version itself seems to have been made about the middle of the tenth century, or about 950, which suits very well with the age of the manuscripts before mentioned. Only this we may expect, that the Saxon copies of those manuscripts will be found much more correct than the Sarum copy (and so I find that of Lambeth is, having a copy of it by me, which I owe to the civility of the very learned Dr. Wilkins), being written at a time when the Saxon language was less corrupted, and re- tained more of its primitive purity; whereas the Sarum copy was written”, as is conjectured, after both Danes and Normans had much altered the language. I before observed that the title in Dr. Wotton’s copy is Zymnus Athanasii, as in St. James’s copy; and there is some- thing farther worth the noting, which is the Rubric following the title, directing the Creed to be sung alternately °, which confirms the account given by

n “¢Versionem istam circiter medium decimi seculi esse factam ipsius sermonis cum puritate (ubi non hallucinatur interpres) con- juncta proprietas ostendit. Recentius vero descriptam fuisse, sub Nortmaunorum in Angliam Adventum, non tantum librarii lin- guze Saxonice haud gnari recentior manus in qua exaratur, sed prayum illud AnglosDanicum, vel forsan Anglo-Nortmannicum, scribendi genus demonstrat.”—Wotton, Wot. ad Brevem Conspect. Operis Hickesiani, p. 75.

ο Hymnus Athanasii, de Fide Trinitatis.

* <©Quem tu concelebrans, discutienter intellege. Incipit de fide,” On which Dr. Wotton makes this note :—

* “Tta MS. Hoc est, Quem tuantiphonatim, vel alternatim psal- lens, animo percipe.”—p. 77.

96 ANCIENT VERSIONS OF

Abbo Floriacensis? of the custom of the Gallican and English Churches in that age. But to proceed. From the time we have had any version of this Creed into our country language, we may reasonably conclude that such versions have varied by little and little in every age, in proportion to the gradual alteration in our lan- guage, till at length the version became such as it stands at this day. Such as are desirous of having a specimen of the Creed in very old English verse may find one in Dr. Hickes’s Thesaurus; and they may see a good part of a prose version in old English (though considerably later than the other) in Wickliff’s Com- ment, before mentioned; or an entire version into the English of that time in a manuscript of Pepys’s Library, now belonging to our college, No. 2498, p. 368. I may here note, that all our Saxon and English versions down to the time of the Reformation, or to the year 1548, were from the Latin only, and not from any Greek copy; and after that time, upon the return of Popery, the old version from the Latin came again into use for a while, as appears by the Primer set forth by Cardinal Pole in Queen Mary’s days, a.p. 1555. But these and the like observations are out of the compass of my de- sign, and so I pass on.

Greek VERSIONS.

IT have before intimated that this Creed was origi- nally Latin, and therefore the Greek copies can be no more than versions; and they appear to be very late also, in comparison to the former. However, since the

P See above, p. 31. a Hickes, Thesuur. Linguar. Septentr., vol. i. p. 228.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 97

Greek is one of the learned languages, since the Creed has been ascribed to a Greek author, and has been also supposed by many to have been written in Greek, it will therefore be proper to give as particular and as distinct account as is possible of the Greek version or versions. Our enquiries here will lie within a little compass, for the Greek copies are neither many nor ancient. Montfaucon, a very diligent searcher into these matters, frankly professes that he had never seen any Greek copy of this Creed so old as 300 years, nor ever heard of any that was ancient’. He scruples not to say farther, that there had not been yet seen any Greek record, of certain and undoubted credit, whereby to prove that this Creed had been known to the Greek Church for more than 500 years upwards’. He speaks only of Greek records; as to Latin ones, they afford sufficient proof that this Creed was pleaded against the Greeks in the dispute about the Procession, in the eighth or ninth century at latest, and therefore must have been in some measure known to them. The Greeks and Latins had some dispute on that head in the Synod of Gentilly, not far from Paris, in the year 767, under King Pepin. But perhaps this Creed was not

r “Sane nullum vidimus Grecum hujus Symboli Codicem qui trecentorum sit annorum ; nec antiquum alium a quopiam visum fuisse novimus.”—Montfaucon, Diatrib., p. 727.

s “ Adjicere non pigeat non visum hactenus fuisse Grecorum quodpiam monumentum (certum scilicet ac indubitatum) quo ab annis plus quingentis notum Ecclesi# Grece fuisse Symbolum, Qui- cunque, possit comprobari.”—Ib., p. 721.

To the same purpose speaks Combefis of this Creed :—

** Vix enim extat preeterquam in recentiorum collectaneis, libris- que eorum polemicis, quibus ipsum vel impugnant, vel etiam de- fendunt ; idque volunt illi qui aiunt non haberi in Grecorum libris ; non enim sic stupidi videntur ut negent Grece haberi.”—Combef.,

Jot. ad Man. Calec., p. 297.

H

98 ANCIENT VERSIONS OF

pleaded at that time; at least it does not appear that it was.

It cannot be doubted but that the Greeks had heard something of this Creed from the Latins as early as the days of Ratram and AZneas Parisiensis, that is, above 850 years ago, when the dispute about the procession between the Greeks and Latins was on foot; this the testimonies above cited plainly shew. But this is not enough to prove that the Greek Church had yet any value for this Creed, or that there was then extant any Greek copy of it.

1200. Nicolaus Hydruntinus, cited above, who flou- rished under Alexius I[V., Emperor of the East, and Pope Innocent III., that is, in round numbers about 1200, gives us the first notice of this Creed being ex- tant in Greek in his time. He observes, that the Article of the Procession from the Son was not in the Greek copy of this Creed, as neither in the Nicene, blaming the Latins, as I apprehend, for interpolating both. The censure was just with respect to the Nicene Creed, but not with respect to the Athanasian, which certainly never wanted that Article, as is plain from the agreement of the Latin copies, and the earliest of them, those of a thousand years date, which I remark by the way. As to our present purpose, this is certain, that some time before Nicolaus of Otranto wrote, the Creed had been translated into Greek by a Greek, or at least by one that took part with the Greeks in the question about the Procession. It can hardly be imagined that Nicolaus had translated it himself, and that he appealed to his own version. There must have been a version before, undoubtedly ; and one can scarce suppose less

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 99

than fifty or one hundred years before, since both the time and author of it were forgotten, and this Greek version passed with Nicolaus for Athanasius’s original, Manuel Caleca‘, who wrote about the year 1360, intimates that there had been Greek copies long before his time, and that the most ancient of all had the Article of the Procession from the Son, and that the older Greeks who wrote against the Latins did not pre- tend to strike out that Article, as those did that came after. Could we depend upon this report we might then be certain that the Greek copies of the time of Nicolaus Hydruntinus, were late in comparison, and that there had been other Greek copies much more ancient. But this I leave to the consideration of the learned. However this fact be, one thing is certain, that the oldest Greek copy could be only a version, whether sooner or later.

As to Greek copies now extant in manuscript, they are but few and modern. I may here give a short account of them, of as many as I have hitherto found mentioned in books or catalogues of manuscripts.

1. There is one in the Emperor’s Library at Vienna, said to be in paper, ancient, and of good value*. These

t «MTestantur autem hance ipsam fidei confessionem sancti viri (Athanasii) esse, atque id dictum ita se habere, qui contra Latinos multo ante scripserunt ; quam sibi ut adversim frustra labefactare nituntur. Atque, ut intelligi datur, tune quidem adhuc servaba- tur; postmodum vero pertinaciores ad contradicendum facti, ome nino illam auferre voluerunt: etsi modo nihilominus curiose inqui- rentibus raro, licet in vetustissimis codicibus, ita habere invenitur.” —Man. Calec., contr. Gree., lib. ii. ; in Bibl. Max. PP., vol. xxvi.

p. 414.

« “ CCXLY. Codex MS. Theologicus Grecus est Chartaceus, anti- quus, et b»nz note in 4to., constatque foliis 341.

“‘Continentur eo Hee.

«Primo, Xe.

100 ANCIENT VERSIONS OF

words are too general to fix any certain date upon. One may guess from the paper, that the manuscript is not very ancient, since paper came not into frequent or common use before the thirteenth century. But not to insist upon a disputable argument (since cotton paper, though not common, was however sometimes used as early as the tenth century), one may judge more cer- tainly from what is written in the same volume, and, I suppose, in the same hand (for Nesselius makes no distinction), that the copy of the Creed is not earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century. Maximus Planudes makes a part of the manuscript: he flourished about the year 1340.

2. There is another Greek manuscript of this Creed in the same library, a paper one too, and said to be © pretty ancient, by Nesselius, who gives account of it’. From the mention therein made of the Creed’s being presented to Pope Julius, I should be apt to conclude that the manuscript is not earlier, nor copied from any earlier, than Manuel Caleca’s time, or the fourteenth century; but there are other marks, particularly some pieces of Julianus Cardinalis, which demonstrate that

“‘TIdo et quidem a fol. 77, ad fol. 79: S. Athanasii Archi- episcopi Alexandrini Symbolum Fidei, cujus titulus et principium, Tov ἁγίου ᾿Αθανασίου Tov μεγάλου. “Ootis δ᾽ ἂν βούληται σωθῆναι, πρὸ πάντων χρὴ κρατεῖν πίστιν," &c.—Nessel., Catal., νο]. 1. p. 344,

v * CXCmus Codex MS..... est Chartaceus, mediocriter anti- quus, et bone note, in 4to. Constatque nune foliis 332, et ad J ohannem Sambucum—olim pertinuit. Continentur eo Hee. I. primo,” ἄο.

“XVIII. Et quidem a fol. 303, ad fol. 304. S. Athanasii magni, Archiepiscopi Alexandrini, Confessio Catholica Fidei, ad 5. Julium Pontificem Romanum ; cujus et titulus et principium Tod ἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἘΣ fou τοῦ μεγάλου ‘Oporoyla τῆς καθολικῆς πίστεως ἣν ἔδωκε πρὸς Ιούλιον Πάπαν Ῥώμης. Τῷ θέλοντι σωθῆναι,"

&c.—Nessel., Catal., vol. i. p. 281.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 101

the manuscript cannot be much older than the middle of the fifteenth century.

3. Felckman had a manuscript copy of this Creed in Greek, without any title to it, or any author named *. I can say nothing to the age of it, for want of further particulars.

4, Felckman had another manuscript out of the Palatine Library (which library is since transferred partly to the Vatican, the rest to Munich, &c.), with a title to it, σύμβολον τοῦ ἁγίου ᾿Αθανασίου, St. Athana- sius’s CreedY. The title alone is a sufficient argument of its being modern to any that consider what were the more usual and ancient titles represented above. It is to be noted, that those two manuscript copies are so nearly the same, that they make but one copy in print, which has been inserted in all the editions of Athana- sius’s works after Felckman’s, as well as in his, and makes the fifth in Gundlingius?, who gives us six Greek copies of this Creed. It is observable that this copy owns not the Procession from the Son; from whence we may infer that it was not made by the Latins, or, however, not by any who were not friends to the Greeks.

x “‘Extat hoe Symbolum in nostro Codice II. anonymo, sed absque titulo et nomine authoris ; unde et sic editum.”—Felckman, Var. Lect. in Athan., p.83.

“Tncipit ; εἴ τις θέλει σωθῆναι, πρὸ πάντων χρὴ αὐτῷ τὴν καθολι- κὴν κρατῆσαι πίστιν, &e.

y “‘Invenimus id ipsum etiam post in codice quodam Palatine Bibliothecw, expresse Athanasio inscriptum (licet id recentiores Greeci nolint, ut videre est ex epistola Meletii Constantinopolitani Patriarch ad Douzam) ex quo etiam discrepantias quasdam no- tabimus.

“ Incipit ; εἴ τις θέλει σωθῆναι, πρὸ πάντων χρεία ἐστὶν ἵνα τὴν

καθολικὴν κρατήσῃ πίστιν," &c.—Felckman, 2b.

* Gundling., not. ad Zialowsk., p. 76.

102 ANCIENT VERSIONS OF

5. Lazarus Baifius’s copy*, which he had from Venice in the time of Francis I., in the year 1533, was published by Genebrard, in the year 1569. This copy probably was contrived by a Latin (having the Proces- sion from the Son in it), or, at least, by some honest Greek who would not vary from the original. I con- clude this Greek copy to be modern, from the title, for a reason before hinted.

6. There was another manuscript copy” of this Creed, which Nicolaus Bryling first printed at Basil, and afterwards H. Stevens in France, in the year 1565. This also must, in all probability, be very modern, because of σύμβολον in the title. It acknowledges the Procession from the Son, conformable to the original.

7. In the Roya! Library at Paris (No. 2502) there is another manuscript Greek copy of this Creed *, writ- ten in the year 1562, published by Genebrard, 1569, and said by him to belong to the Church of Constan- tinople. This was taken from an older manuscript,

a “Titulus: ἜἜκθεσις ὁμολογίας τῆς καθολικῆς πίστεως τοῦ μεγά- λου ᾿Αθανυσίου πατριάρχου ᾿Αλεξανδρείας πρὸς ᾿Ιούλιον Πάπαν.

“TIncipit. “Ὅστις ἂν βούληται σωθῆναι, πρὸ πάντων χρὴ κρατεῖν τὴν καθολικὴν πίστιν." ---αΘπΘὈγαγα, p. 3.

υ “Titulus: Σύμβολον τοῦ ἁγίου ᾿Αθανασίου.

“Incipit : Ὅστις βούλεται σωθῆναι, &c.—Genebrard, 1. ὁ.

¢ “De Grecis autem codicibus pauca suppetunt dicenda, cum unum tantum nobis inspicere licuerit, scil. Reg. 2502. In quo pate Symbol superiore seculo exaratum.’’—Montf., Diatrib.,

« 722.

**Secunda, quam edimus formula, jam olim publici juris facta per Genebrardum anno 1569, quam ait 1116 esse Ecclesize Con- stantinopolitane, extat in Regio Codice Num, 2502, olim ex Bib- liotheea Johannis Huralti Boistallerii a Carolo 1X. Venetias legati : in quo Codice hee leguntur, ante Dialogum §. Athanasii cum Ario, .... Transcriptus et recognitus liber hic est, ex vetustissimo ex- emplari Cretico ; Venetiis an. 1562, impensa facta aureorum Χ. eS Sacerdos transcripsit et habuit.” —Montf., Dzatrib., p- 727.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 103 but how much older cannot certainly be known ἃ. One may imagine from the title’, and beginning of it, that the form is the same with one of those in the Emperor’s Library, and that they were copied one from the other, or both from a third copy. This ma- nuscript acknowledges the Procession from the Son. I had understood, from Mountfaucon’s general way of expression, that Genebrard had published his copy from this very manuscript of the Royal Library (No. 2502). But observing that Genebrard’s wants some words (ἀΐδιος ὁ πατὴρ, ἀΐδιος ὁ vids, ἀΐδιον τὸ πνεῦμα TO ἅγιον) which Mountfaucon’s copy has, I conclude that he meant only the same form, as to matter and words, for