Many scholars (Kelly, Early Christian Creeds; Kinzig, Faith in Formulae) have discerned a developmental line from the second-century regula fidei, to the fourth-century Old Roman Symbol, to the early medieval text of T, the Apostles’ Creed, attributed to the Merovingian missionary and abbot, Saint Pirmin (Dicta Abbatis Pirminii, PL 89, 1029-1050). This text from the eighth-century Germanic environment was universalized by Charlemagne throughout western Christendom. But what is T’s creedal pedigree? How, exactly, can it be traced to the much earlier regula fidei?
Three hypotheses are possible. First, an Eastern Hypothesis would suggest that the regula fidei impacted the supposed baptismal symbol that the Nicene fathers used as the basis for their creed in 325. After Timothy of Constantinople mandated public recitation of the Nicene Creed (N) in the Greek liturgy in 511, it spread across the Orthodox world, then into the west. Thus, the regula fidei influenced T via N.
Second, a Central Hypothesis would suggest that a line ran through Italy to the trans-alpine environment where Pirmin lived. The Old Roman Symbol (R) was a “daughter creed” of Italian and/or North African regulae fidei. When Charlemagne mandated usage of T, he viewed it as essentially consonant with R. Eventually, the pope in 1014 agreed to replace R with T in the Roman liturgy. Thus, the Italian text of R was the conduit for the regula fidei to impact T.
This paper will support a third theory: the Western Hypothesis, in which the regula fidei of Africa impacted the scholarly community centered on Arles and Lérins in southern Gaul. This area shaped the intellectual environment of Pirmin, who was originally from Visigothic Spain and/or Narbonne in Septimania, before he made his missionary foray to the Rhineland.
My hypothesis will be supported in two ways, each using Tertullian’s regula fidei in De Praescriptione Haereticorum as a baseline example of that text.
First, connections between the North African and Gallic environments will be shown, particularly in Vincent of Lérins, Caesarius of Arles, and John Cassian. Augustinian disputes were under hot discussion in the fifth century, proving that the intellectual conduit between the African world, centered on Carthage, and the coastal communities of Gaul, was wide open.
Second, an examination of the Latin text in Tertullian’s De Praescr. 13 (cross-referenced with Adv. Prax. 9 and De Virg. Vel. 1) will show that specific language can be traced through various African, Gallic, and Spanish creeds to influence Pirmin’s final version of T. The work of Liuwe Westra, The Apostles’ Creed: Origin, History and Some Early Commentaries (Brepols, 2002) will facilitate the tracing of this creedal pedigree.
This paper argues that the regula fidei did impact the Apostles’ Creed—not primarily through the Nicene Creed, nor the Old Roman Symbol, but through various creeds of southern Europe that entered Pirmin’s thought world and written library. Due to Charlemagne’s decree, T achieved universal acceptance in western Christendom. Thus, the regula fidei significantly influenced the creed that is most widely used by Catholics and Protestants today.