Christian History Institute

“I believe in God the Father Almighty…” (Dicta abbatis Pirminii de singulis libris canonicis scarapsus, ca. 724).

Art from the wall of Pirmin’s tomb in Hornbach. Photo by William Schlemmer.

Pirmin is a missionary-monk who has come from the far west of Europe to found a monastery at Reichenau on the Lake of Constance. It is but the first of many such establishments he will found in Switzerland, Alsace, Bavaria, and elsewhere in Frankish and Germanic lands. Like many missionaries before and after him, he realizes that his converts need a manual to help them govern their lives.

And so he prepares a short book. Like almost all works of the time in the western church, it is compiled in Latin. But his Latin is of poor quality. He calls it Dicta abbatis Pirminii de singulis libris canonicis scarapsus. It consists of useful excerpts and guidelines for newly baptized believers with many Scripture citations.

Pirmin attempts to teach the new believers why man was created (he thinks it was to fill a gap left by fallen angels), how Satan was vanquished (by Christ’s humility) and the vocation of the Christian (to follow Christ). He lists eight fundamental sins. These are lust, gluttony, fornication, wrath, despair, recklessness, vainglory, and pride. He warns against other sins such as sorcery.

If this was all he taught, his book would be even more forgotten than it is. What makes Scarapsus so special is that in it Pirmin gives the first complete record of the Latin version of the Apostles’ Creed as we know it today.

“Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, creatorem caeli et terrae. Et in Iesum Christum Filium…”

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth; and in Jesus Christ His only (begotten) Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven; and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there He shall come to judge the quick [living] and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic [universal] Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.”

Following a myth common in his day, Pirmin assigns each part of the creed to a different apostle. Allegedly the twelve gathered together before leaving Jerusalem to fulfill the Great Commission, and each contributed a piece of the creed to ensure that the faith they taught would remained uncorrupted no matter where it traveled. Under this scenario, Peter provided the segment on the Father, John on the Son, James on the Virgin birth, and so forth.

Parts of the creed are already very old in Pirmin’s day. The Bible shows that Philip had his Ethiopian convert confess Christ as the Son of God. Paul wrote about a “form of doctrine” which many scholars consider to have been a creed. Many early Christian writers had referred to the “symbol” (as they called the creed), but none recorded it in its entirety (and those fragments differ from Pirmin’s in details). The creed was a secret, revealed only to Catechumens shortly before their baptism. Evidently early Christians used it as a countersign to prove authenticity in the same way as the mystery religions did with their own “symbols.”

Pirmin’s Latin version, translated into European languages, will become the accepted version of the creed.

—Dan Graves