Bangor, Light of the World, 10:The Creed of Nicaea

Posted on May 4, 2014 by
There are many traces of an Eastern origin and connection in the Bangor Antiphonary, including, for example, the festal observance of Saturday as well as Sunday and the presence in the Divine Office of the ceremony of the Kiss of Peace. The philosophy of the Bangor Community, however, was the true vine brought out of Egypt and the single most important influence in this was St Anthony. Anthony is generally considered as having been the first to embrace the life of a monk among the early Christians. He was born in Egypt about the middle of the third century. His spiritual descendents are the Copts and there is a Coptic inscription in Clandeboye Chapel, linked to Bangor Abbey, placed there by the first Marquis of Dufferin and Ava.
 
While yet a young man, though possessed with a considerable fortune, Anthony distributed the whole among his neighbours and the poor and retired to a place of deep seclusion resolved to lead the life of a hermit. In 285 AD he took up his residence in a decayed castle among the mountains of eastern Egypt where he spent 20 years in solitude. He thus acquired the reputation of great sanctity. At length, however, yielding to the earnest solicitations of his friends, he returned to the world in 305 AD and attracted crowds of eager admirers by his preaching and miraculous cures. It was not long nevertheless before he returned to the monastic life and with his followers established two monasteries, one in the mountainous district of eastern Egypt and the other near the town of Arsinoe.
 
In the year 305 AD, with the resignation of the Diocletian and Maximian from the sovereignty of the Roman Empire, the two commanders, the Illyrian (Albanian) Constantius and Galvius, assumed control of the State. Constantius and his son Constantine crossed to Britain to assume the government but, following a notable expedition against the Caledonians and other Picts of the North, Constantius became ill and died at York on 25 July of the same year. Constantine was immediately proclaimed Emperor by the Army and when he married Fausta, the daughter of Maximian, in 306 he quickly consolidated his dominions.
 
Although one historian has calculated that the number of Christians in the Empire at this time was as low as one-fifth of the total population, the Church stood out so well against the backcloth of contemporary pagan society that Constantine reckoned it to be a force which he would have either to accept or destroy. Being a wise statesman he chose the former course since he knew that the faith would bring a renewal of moral values into the Roman Empire. This adoption of Christianity by the Emperor changed the whole course of world history and made the fourth century a time of development, reconstruction and expansion for the Church. By 314 AD the British Church had become well enough organised to be able to send three bishops from the Roman cities of York, London and perhaps Lincoln to the famous Council of Arles.
 

For the moment controversy was the main enemy of the Church and the foremost was that of Arius, who denied the divinity of Christ. In 325 AD, therefore, the doctrines of Christ’s divinity and that of the Trinity were defined at the Council of Nicaea. The resulting Nicene Creed was an enlarged and explanatory version of the Apostles’ Creed. The Creed found in the Bangor Antiphonary, shown below with the Lord’s Prayer, differs in wording from all others known and is in substance the original Creed of Nicaea. For this reason alone the Bangor Antiphonary may be considered one of the most precious relics of Western civilisation.

THE LORD’S PRAYER
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done
in earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil”

THE CREED
“I believe in one God the Father Almighty, Invisible, the Maker of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, Almighty God,
Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, and buried and descended into hell:
On the third day he rose again from the dead,
Ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
From where he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost, Almighty God, having one substance with the Father and Son.
I believe in the holy catholic church, the remission of sins, the communion of saints, the resurrection of the body.
I believe in life after death and life everlasting in the glory of Christ. All this I believe in the name of God. Amen”.

One of the reluctant soldiers of Constantine was a man names Martin, a native of Pannonia (modern Hungary) and an officer in the Imperial cavalry. Following his conversion to Christianity Martin became the Apostle of Gaul and upheld the rights of the apostolic authority of the Church. St Martin was familiar with monastic ideals of St Anthony and it was through him that these ideals reached the British Isles. Created Bishop of Tours in 371 AD, Martin appointed a monastery or “White House” at Marmoutiers and an early form of a new Laus Perennis was begun there. On his way home from Rome the Romano-Briton Ninian (Uinniau) of Galloway stayed with St Martin at Marmoutiers and studied the new way of life.

And so it was that in 398 AD St Ninian founded his own White House or “Candida Casa” at Whithorn in Wigtownshire, Galloway, which resembled, where possible, the parent house in Gaul. Here has been found the Latinus Stone, the earliest Christian monument in Scotland. It bears an inscription written in spoken Latin, rather than in a monastic form. Although little is known about St Ninian or the earliest history of his foundation, it is clear that in the fifth and sixth centuries Candida Casa was to become an important centre of evangelism to both Britain and the north of Ireland. On St Ninian’s Day, 16th September 2009, there was a debate in the Scottish parliament which recognised Whithorn as the Cradle of Christianity in Scotland. On the same day in 2010 the Queen welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland.

But to return to our story, soon the originally Egyptian pattern of monastic life was being practised all over the Western Atlantic seaboard. Mabillon has stated that St Martin’s Marmoutiers had early adopted the celebration of the Laus Perennis and among those who visited Marmoutiers to take part in it was a young man named Patrick.

To be continued

© Pretani Associates 2014

 

 
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