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Three Middle English Poems on the Apostles' Creed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

R. H. Bowers
R. H. Bowers*
Affiliation:
University or Florida, Gainesville
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Extract

Three distinct but often interwoven topics—a commentary on the doctrinal import of the Apostles' Creed, a relation of the circumstances of its actual formulation, and a narration of the subsequent careers of the Apostles—constituted themes of pleasure and curiosity to the medieval hagiographer and poet. Surviving Old English texts illustrate the first and third topics clearly: the Fata Apostolorum in the Vercelli Book (fol. 52v–53r), and the Credo in Deum Omnipotentem in Bodley MS. Junius 121 (fol. 46r–47r). An early Middle English text in British Museum MS. Nero A.xiv (fol. 131v) preserves uniquely a truncated version of the Creed. While it would be impossible to state with any certainty the approximate date when these traditions reached England from the Continent, we may safely assume that they were well established in the vernacular as well as in Church Latin from early Christian times.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 1955 , pp. 210 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

1 See George P. Krapp. The Vercelli Booh (New York, 1932), pp. 51–54; E. V. K. Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems (New York, 1942), pp. 78-80; EETS OS No. 34, p. 217. See also W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), p. 159.

2 E.g., Philip Schaff, Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiae Universalis (New York, 1877), i, 23.

3 In his Book of Faith, ii,v (cited in J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, London, 1950, p. 5), Pecock denied both the apostolic authorship of the Creed and the Descent into Hell. For Wyclif's views, see H. B. Workman, John Wyclif (Oxford, 1926), ii, 150.

4 Curt F. Bühler, in an important article, “The Apostles and the Creed,” Speculum, xxviii (April 1953), 335–339, has established 15 separate traditions of attribution.

5 The standard work on hagiography, Hippolyte Delehaye, S.J., Les légendes hagiographiques (Brussels, English trans. by Mrs. V. M. Crawford, London, 1907), may be supplemented by John M. Mecklin, The Passing of the Saint: A Study of a Cultural Type (Chicago, 1941). Gordon H. Gerould's Saints' Legends (New York, 1916) surveys English material and should be supplemented by Charles W. Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles in Early England (Ithaca, 1947).

6 Carleton Brown and Rossell H. Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943), Nos. 311, 1374, 2700. There is a verse rendition of the Creed in Lambeth MS. 853, p. 39, copied down ca. 1430 according to Furnivall; see EETS OS No. 24, p. 101.

7 See J. P. Oakden, Alliterative Poetry in Middle English (Manchester, 1935), i, 103–118.

8 These transcriptions silently expand all obvious abbreviations and introduce editorial pointing and normalized capitalization.