RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Athanasian
logical controversies, the dogmatic formulas of Augustine, and the doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Spirit. The evidence of the manuscripts, too, is insufficient. Several of them give it without any author's name, and of the seven oldest commentaries only two mention Athanasius in the title and one in the introduction. Besides all this, it is not difficult to account for its attribution to Athanasius.
II. History of Discussion: But, however generally these facts are recognized, there is little positive agreement as to any other origin. The period of study of the subject which reaches from Voss to 1870 produced a bewildering variety of hypotheses. Voss himself conjectured that it grew up on Frankish soil under Pepin or Charlemagne, as a consequence of the controversies over the filioque; his contemporary, Archbishop Ussher, ati. Theories tributed it to an unknown author be-
of Origin, fore the middle of the fifth century; and Quesnel to Vigilius of Thapsus (c. 500), in which he was followed by Cave, Du Pin, and many others. Antelmius was for Vincent of Lerins (c. 430); Muratori for Venantius Fortunatus (d. c. 600); Lequien doubtfully suggested Pope Anastasius I (d. 401); Waterland, whose book is the most learned and authoritative of the older discussions, favored Hilary of Aries (d. 449); and Speroni referred it to Hilary of Poitiers (d. 367).
A new period in the study of the subject opened with 1870, the impulse coming from England, where the creed is publicly recited in the Anglican liturgy on certain days, not without opposition. The commission for the revision of the Prayer-book in 1689 had recommended the insertion of a note explaining away the " damnatory clauses," and the question of its retention came up again before the Ritual Commission appointed in 1867, with no practical result except to stir up fresh interest in the creed and advance its study. Ffoulkes tried in 1871 to assign it to Paulinus of Aquileia (d. 802); Swainson published a learned, if not uniformly satisfactory, book in 1875, coming to the conclusion that it was a composite product, which assumed its present form between 860 and 870. Lumby's book, published in 1873, was in substantial agreement with Swainson, dating the crystallizing process between 813 and 870. The theory of two sources was also accepted, with notable modifications, by Harnack in his Dogmengeschichte. He saw in the Trinitarian section an exposition of the Nicene Creed, growing up by degrees in Gaul from the fifth century and assuming its present form in the sixth; to this was added perhaps in the eighth or ninth the second half, about whose origin nothing can be certainly said except that it is older than the ninth century. Ommanney and Burn added new material but no new results. An independent French investigation by Morin urged the claims of Pope Anastasius II (496-498).
Of these hypotheses, those which point to Anastasius I and II do not deserve serious consideration, even if they receive a specious attractiveness from the fact that some of the manuscripts (though the later ones) give the name, and a thirteenth century compilation treats " of the third symbol, that
2. Facts as to Manuscripts.
of Pope Anastasius"; but Morin himself admits that without this no one would ever have thought of the theory, which has really no other support than
the stupidity of medieval copyists.
In order to form an opinion of the
other theories, it is necessary to glance
at the facts as to the manuscripts.
Down to 1870 eight were named as ancient, viz.: (1) a psalter in the Cottonian Library, which Ussher put in the time of Gregory the Great; (2) the Psalterium Aethelstani in the same collection, dated by Ussher 703; (3) the Codex Colbertinus 784, dated by Montfaucon c. 750; (4) the Sangermanensis, about the same age; (5) the Codex regius 4908, c,800; (6) the Codex Colbertinus 1339, called Psalterium Caroli Calvi ; (7) the Codex Ambrosianus, which Muratori in 1697 thought to be over a thousand years old; (8) a psalter in Vienna, presented by a Frankish king Charles to a pope Adrian, thought by Waterland to belong to the first year of Adrian I (772). Recent investigations have altered the status of several of these. That supposed to be the oldest, the one named first above, lost after Ussher 's time and rediscovered in 1871 in the so-called Utrecht Psalter, is now believed by experts to be of the ninth century, and thus not much older than (6), which was certainly written between 842 and 869. The second is now known to be a compilation of three pieces, that containing the creed being later than the ninth century. The fourth can no longer be used as a basis for argument, since it is lost. The fifth may not be older than (6); and (8) is considered to belong to the time of Charles the Bald and Adrian II (867-872) Of all these manuscripts, then, only that numbered (7) above can be shown to be older than 800 — as not only Muratori, Waterland, and Montfaucon believed it to be, but also such modern scholars as Ceriani, Reiff erscheid, and Krusch have maintained. Yet this is not the only one to place the origin further back, if only a little further, than 800. Two more must now be added: (9) Paris. 13, 159, a psalter from Saint-Germain-des-Pres, not the same as (4), assigned on strong grounds to c. 795; and (10) Paris. 1451, a collection of canons dated with apparent probability 796. The manuscripts, then, place the date of the Quicunque at least as early as the end of the eighth century
The same evidence is given by the oldest commentaries. Waterland and the older students of the question knew of only one commentary older than that attributed to Bruno of Wilrzburg (d.
1045) — the so-called Expositio Fortu-
3. Ancient nati. The latter, first published by
Commen- Muratori from the Codex Ambrosianus
taries. 79 (eleventh or twelfth century), was
ascribed by most of the earlier investigators to Venantius Fortunatus (d. c. 600), and regarded as the oldest evidence of the existence of the Quicunque. At present there are sixteen extant manuscripts of this Expositio, besides three codices which give the bulk of it in the form of glosses Its ascription to Fortunatus, resting only on the comparatively late authority of the Codex Ambrosianus, and easily to be explained there by the fact that the codex begins with his exposition
Athanasian