Gaul · 5th–6th century

“Whosoever will.” Like most early Latin texts, the creed is named by its opening words. The name Athanasian comes from the Middle Ages, which ascribed it to Athanasius of Alexandria (died 373). He wrote in Greek, and this creed was composed in Latin, most likely in southern Gaul in the fifth or sixth century.

The Athanasian Creed, in the English of the 1662 Prayer Book and in Latin

Tap a word to light up its counterparts and open its dictionary entries, Scripture echoes and Reformed reception. Drag the column names to reorder the languages.

Reformed reception

Reformed reception

How the Reformation churches took up the Athanasian Creed. Tap an underlined phrase to see the words of the creed behind it; tap a word in the creed to find the confessions that echo it.

English: the Athanasian Creed in the Book of Common Prayer, 1662, as printed on the Church of England’s website (Cambridge University Press text). Latin: checked against the Latin Wikisource and Wikipedia texts and against an annotated edition with variant readings; where editions differ I followed the Roman breviary readings. The verse numbers are the Prayer Book’s, and the Latin is divided to match. Alignment was prepared for this page, by sense.

Dictionaries: each word links out to the Lewis & Short entry on Logeion (University of Chicago), to Whitaker’s Words for parsing, and to Wiktionary; English words link to Wiktionary and to Webster’s 1828 dictionary, which records the sense the Prayer Book words had when they were chosen. Bible links go to BibleGateway in the KJV and the Vulgate.

Confessions: Thirty-nine Articles (1571) and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647). The creed is anonymous; no Greek original is known.