Three Middle English Poems on the Apostles' Creed
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.