manuscript, executed in a Lombardic hand, and decorated with rich initial letters and pictures. After the Calendar comes a Psalter followed by the Canticles, Gloria in excelsis, Te Deum, Lord's Prayer, Apostles' Creed, Athanasian Creed and Litanies. For the other contents it may suffice to refer to M. Batiffol's account. This must be the same book which is noticed by Waterland as a Breviary and Psalter for the use of the monks of Monte Casino, mentioned by Pagi and Quesnel. He adds that the title assigned by it to the Quicunque is 'Fides Catholica edita ab Athanasio Alexandrinae sedis Episcopo.'

It is needless and would be tedious to notice any more MSS. of the Athanasian Creed. The number of extant copies of it in Latin is very great; and those to which I have drawn attention are but a selection, and must not be regarded as a comprehensive and exhaustive series even for the period which they embrace-from the eighth to the eleventh century. But they sufficiently illustrate the early use and reception of the Quicunque in the Western Church. They are found in books of various kinds, collections of Canons, of Formularies of the Faith and Dogmatic treatises, and Psalters; and the Psalters are typical of various countries, Gaul, Germany, Italy and England. At the risk of being tedious I have described in some degree the contents of these books, inherited by us from antiquity, with the view of showing their nature and importance and the position in them of our Creed, and more particularly of tracing, where possible, the age and locality which produced them.

CHAPTER IV.

COMMENTARIES OR EXPOSITIONS.

THE Athanasian Creed in the ancient Western Church was frequently made the subject of comment and exposition for the purpose of instruction in the fundamental truths of the Trinity and Incarnation. These expositions, which seem to have originated in a series of notes upon the text, are often found in manuscript Psalters written by the side of the Creed in a separate column, or in two marginal columns with the Creed in the centre, the several verses being accompanied by their respective comments, but they are also found as distinct documents, especially in collections of dogmatic and doctrinal treatises and expositions.

1. The earliest is probably the Commentary attributed to Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian by birth who migrated into France about the year A.D. 565, and became Bishop of Poictiers late in the sixth century. He must have died very early in the succeeding century, but the exact date of his death is not known. Both Muratori (who was the Librarian of the Ambrosian Library at Milan in the early part of the eighteenth century) and Waterland assign the work without doubt to him, and the latter thinks that the date of it may be fixed with probability about the year 570, or even higher1. But there is great diversity of 1 Muratori, Anecdota, vol. ii. p. 331; Waterland, History of the Athanasian Creed, pp. 43-45, Oxford edition, 1870.

opinion upon the subject, the authorship of Venantius Fortunatus being denied for instance by the writers of the Literary History of France: it is also denied by the editor of his works, Michael Angelus Luchi, who considers that the style of our Commentary is dissimilar from that generally observable in the writings of Venantius; and recently Professor Heurtley, who at first accepted without hesitation the opinion of Muratori and Waterland, afterwards avouched himself to be less satisfied than formerly' upon the point. It must be acknowledged that the evidence for the authorship of Venantius is not conclusive. It rests upon a single MS., and that a MS. not earlier than the eleventh century— with one exception the latest of the MSS. in which the Commentary is found. In that Codex the Commentary is entitled 'Expositio fidei catholicę Fortunati.' There can be no doubt that the expositio, not the fides catholica, is here referred to as the work of Fortunatus. Even if this were not the obvious sense of the words, it would be sufficiently proved by the fact that the Athanasian Creed is not unfrequently described as 'Fides Catholica' simply: some instances of which have been already noticed. Neither can there be any reasonable doubt that the Fortunatus here intended is Venantius Fortunatus, for in this same volume, which is of great bulk and contains a variety of documents, the Commentary of that author upon the Apostles' Creed also occurs, and that previously, and it is described by the title Expositio a Fortunato presbitero conscripta.' Fortunatus presbiter is the well-known appellation of Venantius Fortunatus. Thus the testimony of this MS. seems clear enough; but of the other known MSS. of the Commentary not a single one attributes it to Fortunatus, nor indeed to any author. To turn to internal evidence, there is on the one hand a certain resemblance of thought between the

Commentary of Venantius Fortunatus on the Apostles' Creed and our Commentary on that of St. Athanasius, arising probably from their both being drawn in some degree, directly or indirectly, from Rufinus's Commentary on the Apostles' Creed, and there is also in two instances a remarkable coincidence of expression between the two documents, which would suggest that if they were not both by the same hand, one must have been borrowed from the other; and on the other hand, there is at least one important discrepance between the two works, which seems to forbid us regarding them as written by the same person1.

1 The pairs of passages containing this verbal resemblance are as follows:— (1) Nec quaeratur quomodo genuit filium? quod et angeli nesciunt, prophetis est incognitum. Unde illud dictum est, Generationem illius quis enarrabit?... Nec a nobis discutiendus est sed credendus,' &c.-Venantii Fortunati Expositio Symboli.

'Nec quaeratur quomodo genuit Filium, quod et angeli nesciunt, prophetis est incognitum, unde eximius propheta Esaias dicit Generationem eius quis enarrabit?... Nec inenarrabilis et inaestimabilis Deus a servulis suis discutiendus est, sed fideliter credendus.'—Expositio fidei catholicae Fortunati.

The Oxford Junius MS. for genuit Filium reads genitus sit, but the Milan MS. and Paris 1008 read genuit Filium.

(2) Quod vero Deus maiestatis de Maria in carne natus est, non est sordidatus nascendo de Virgine. . . . Denique sol aut ignis, si lutum inspiciat, quod tetigerit purgat, et se tamen non inquinat.'—Venantii Fortunati Expositio Symboli.

Etsi Deus, Dei filius, nostram luteam et mortalem carnem . . . adsumpsit, se tamen nullatenus inquinavit.... Quia si sol aut ignis aliquid immundum tetigerit, quod tangit purgat, et se nullatenus coinquinat.'-Expositio fidei catholicae Fortunati.

In both these cases the idea of the two documents seems to be derived originally from Rufinus, but the verbal resemblance between them is far closer than between either of them and that author.

The passages referred to above as presenting an important discrepance are the following:

'Iudicaturus vivos et mortuos: Aliqui dicunt vivos iustos, mortuos vero iniustos; aut certe vivos, quos in corpore invenerit adventus Dominicus, et intelligamus mortuos iam sepultos. Nos tamen vivos et mortuos, hoc est, animas et corpora pariter iudicanda.'-Venantii Fortunati Expositio Symboli.

A note in the edition of Venantius printed at Rome in 1786 states that intelligamus in the above is omitted by some MSS.

The authorship of the Commentary being thus uncertain cannot be taken as determining the date of its composition. Are there any other criteria by which we may arrive at an approximate conclusion upon the point? In the first place, from the fact of there being known to us six, if not seven, manuscripts of the document belonging to the ninth century

one of them to the early part of it-the inference is unavoidable that it must have existed prior to that century, unless indeed the earliest was the original copy of the author, which there is no reason for believing it to be. And this inference receives a very clear confirmation from a Commentary lately-in 1892-printed for the first time from a MS. at Orléans and attributed by the editor to Theodulf1, which in two passages, one of which I shall produce in extenso by-and-by, evidently borrows from and follows our document. We have here a clear proof that the latter must have been composed prior to the ninth century, inasmuch as the Orléans exposition, even though it be not the work of Theodulf, which is indeed very doubtful, cannot be of a later date, the MS. being assigned to that century by M. Delisle.

Thus external evidence points to the conclusion that the Fortunatus Commentary belongs to a higher antiquity than the ninth century. Internal evidence supplies us with grounds for a nearer approximation to its date, as the late Dr. Heurtley, Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford,

AndInde venturus iudicare vivos et mortuos. Vivos dicit eos quos tunc adventus Dominicus in corpore vivendos invenerit, et mortuos iam ante sepultos; et aliter dicit vivos iustos et mortuos peccatores.'-Expositio Fidei catholicae Fortunati.

It will be observed that Venantius accepts neither of the alternative interpretations mentioned by the commentator on the Athanasian Creed, as by St. Augustine in several places. In the interpretation which he adopts he follows apparently Rufinus.

1 Théodulfe, sa vie et ses œuvres, par M. Cuissard. Orléans, 1892.