An easier matter to understand is the question of the insertion into the Creed. Its history is this: The second general council (Constantinople I, 381) made very considerable additions to the Nicene Creed,[1] These additions, together with the original form, make up what we call the Nicene Creed, with one exception. The clause about the Holy Ghost was: "And in the Spirit, the Holy One, the Lord, the Lifegiver, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and Son is adored and glorified, who spoke through the prophets." So it has remained unchanged in the East. In the West, in the Latin version, one word has been added that has made all this trouble, and we say: "qui ex Patre Filioque procedit," "who proceeds from the Father and the Son." The change was not originally made at Rome. It is first seen in Spanish synods of the 5th and 6th centuries.[2] The Filioque was used by these Spanish bishops as a declaration against the Arians, whose heresy lasted longer in Spain than anywhere else.[3] The Arians denied that God the Son is equal to the Father in all things. The Filioque was meant as an assertion of that equality: "all things that the Father has are mine," said our Lord (John xvi. 15), and the Catholics understand that to include the procession of the Holy Ghost. This declaration in the Creed, then, was a further denial of Arian heresy. The bishops at Toledo who ordered it to be used certainly did not foresee that it would some day give so much annoyance to their distant brethren at Constantinople, nor that it would for ten centuries be the cause of so much
- ↑ The original Nicene text in Denzinger, p. 17. It ends simply: "and in the Holy Ghost."
- ↑ A synod in 447 uses the word; the third Council of Toledo (589) orders it to be sung aloud in the Creed at Mass.
- ↑ The original West-Gothic kingdom set up by Athaulf (Adolphus) between the Loire and the Garonne in the 5th century was entirely Arian. It spread over Spain, and for a time the Gothic kings violently persecuted Catholics. King Recared (586) became a Catholic through the influence of Leander, Bishop of Seville, whom Gregory the Great made his Legate for all Spain. It was in the reign of Recared and under Leander that the third Council of Toledo was held.
for instance, Hurter, ii. pp. 144-155. Chr. Pesch. ii. pp. 284-294, where also will be found the explanation of the only really difficult passage, in St. John Damascene.
