Philip Schaff · 27 of 60

An Old Italian (Pseudo-Ambrosian) Form of the Apostles' Creed. About A.D. 350

(d) AN OLD ITALIAN (Pseudo-Ambrosian) FORM OF THE APOSTLES' CREED. About A.D. 350.

NOTES.

1. This baptismal creed was copied, together with an Exhortatio sancti Ambrosii ad neophytos de Symbolo, by Dr. Caspari from two MSS. in the Vienna Library, and published in the second volume of his Quellen zur Geschichte des Taufsymbols, Vol. II. (1869), pp. 128 sqq. It is inserted in this Exhortation, not in broken fragments, as is usual with ante-Nicene writers, but continuously, with a connecting itaque after credimus (p. 134). The Exhortation was directed against the heresy of Arianism, and borrows an expression ( Deus de Deo, lumen de lumine ) from the Nicene Creed, but makes no allusion to the Pneumatomachian controversy and its settlement in 381. It seems, therefore, to belong to the middle of the fourth century (350–370). Caspari denies the authorship of Ambrose (who was opposed to committing the creed to writing), and is inclined to assign it to Eusebius of Vercelli or Lucifer of Cagliari, in Sardinia, where the symbol may have been in use.

2. The symbol resembles the older Italian forms of Rome, Milan, and Ravenna. With the Roman it omits the articles descendit ad inferna , communionem sanctorum , and vitam æternam; but, unlike the Roman, it has catholicam after ecclesiam , and the peculiar clause sæculorum omnium et creaturarum regem et conditorem. A similar addition occurs in the Symbol of Carthage ( universorum creatorem, regem sæculorum, invisibilem et immortalem ).

3. Other Italian forms of the Western Creed, see in Hahn, pp. 6 sqq.