Quicunque was required to be learnt by clerks before the eighth century. But we do not know for certain that this scribe was a clerk.

Since writing the above, my sense of the importance of the point at issue has induced me to show in detail, by a comparison of the two documents, that the Trèves fragment was founded upon the Athanasian Creed, according to the view which I have here, as on a former occasion, asserted, and therefore that the contrary hypothesis of Dr. Swainson and Dr. Lumby is untenable. The proof of my position I believe amounts to demonstration. It will be found at a subsequent stage of this work in the form of an excursus on the relation between the two documents.

EARLY VERNACULAR VERSIONS OF THE

I

ATHANASIAN CREED.

AM indebted to the kindness of the Rev. W. D. Macray, of the Bodleian Library, for drawing my attention to a little work edited at Hanover in 1713, under the following title :-" Incerti monachi Weissenburgensis Catechesis Theotisca sæculo IX. conscripta, nunc vero primum edita, . . . in unum collegit ac præfatione . . . illustravit. ... J. Georgius Eccardus." It consists of the Lord's Prayer, a list of "Peccata criminalia," the Apostles' Creed, the Athanasian, and the Gloria in excelsis, each with a German translation. In the preface the editor says: Opusculum quod ex vetusto et circa seculi noni medium exarato codice membranaceo Gwelferbytanæ nunc edimus, Theotiscam Catechesim inscripsimus; and further on: "Etatis Carolinæ esse Catechesim, quam hic primi edimus, vel apices codicis manuscripti adspicienti manifestum est. Stylus ipse Theotiscus medio sæculi noni ævo apprimè convenit, ut judicabunt omnes in lectione talium monumentorum periti. Primo codicis folio inscripta erant

hæc verba: Codex Monasterii Petri et Pauli in Wissenburg." This was a Benedictine Abbey founded

K

in 624 by Dagobert. In the judgment, therefore, of Eccard, this work belongs to the middle of the ninth century, the grounds of his opinion being the style of the German in which the documents contained in it are rendered, and the date of the manuscript from which he edited it; and he conjectures that it may have been drawn up at the Council of Maintz, A.D. 847, possibly by Otfrid. He states that in the MS. the Quicunque vult is introduced without any title; but that a Commentary upon it, which appears in the same MS., is entitled, "Expositio super fidem catholicam quicunque vult salvus esse," by which he adds it is distinguished from the "Fides Catholica Hieronymi," which is another document comprised in the same codex. He also mentions in the preface that in the tenth century Notkerus Balbulus subjoined a German translation of the Athanasian Creed to his paraphrase of the Psalms; and he gives an account of the various testimonies to its antiquity known in his day, all of which, with one or two exceptions of no moment, are noticed by Waterland. The early German version of the Quicunque, thus edited by Eccard, has been also recently edited by Massman, from the MS. at Wolfenbüttel (Latinized Guelferbitana); and the latter agrees with the former in assigning the manuscript to the ninth century. And together with this version, Massman has edited that of Notker from a MS. at Vienna. It should be noted that Eccard merely suggests the conjecture that Otfrid may have been the author of the version in the Catechesis Theotisca. "Monachus Weissen

bergensis sive Otfridus sive quis alius." A third and later German version is edited by Massman, together with the two before mentioned from two Munich manuscripts.1

Thus there are extant several ancient German translations of the Quicunque, one being as early as the middle of the ninth century. It is a circumstance of considerable interest and moment in the history of this Creed, that at so early a period it was not only used and recited by the clergy in Germany, but was also employed as a manual of popular devotion and instruction in that country. For had it been intended solely for the clergy, there would have been no need or occasion for putting out a vernacular translation of it together with one of the Lord's Prayer and Apostles' Creed. Dr. Swainson says that the Wolfenbüttel MS., before referred to, is assigned by Massman to the eighth century; but in this assertion he is certainly mistaken. It may not be amiss here to remind my readers that Waterland adduces as evidence of the popular use of the Creed in Gaul in the middle of the ninth century the order of Hincmar's Capitulum, that presbyters should be able to explain it in "communibus verbis," or in the vernacular language, and as evidence of the same circumstance in England in the tenth century, an Anglo-Saxon version of it in a MS. of that date in the Lambeth Library, numbered 427-a Psalter. In the British Museum MS. Reg. 2, B. V. already men

1 MASSMAN, 'Die Deutschen Abschwörungs,' Leipsig, 1839, pp. 40, 30, also 88-107.

tioned, which belongs to the early part of that century, the Quicunque appears with interlinear notes in Saxon. It has a Saxon interlinear gloss, or version, also in another British Museum MS.-Arundel, 60-a Psalter written at the end of the eleventh century, in Wessex, probably at Winchester. In the Eadwine Psalter, executed at Canterbury, it has a Norman, as well as a Saxon, interlinear version.