Scutum Fidei - Brief History

Brief History

The precise origin of this diagram is unknown, but it was evidently influenced by 12th-century experiments in symbolizing the Trinity in abstract visual form — mainly by Petrus Alfonsi's Tetragrammaton-Trinity diagram of c. 1109 (and possibly also by Joachim of Fiore's different Tetragrammaton-Trinity diagram of three circles, which in turn led to the Borromean rings being used as a symbol of the Trinity ), in combination with the Athanasian Creed. The Shield of the Trinity diagram is attested from as early as a c. 1208–1216 manuscript of Peter of Poitiers' Compendium Historiae in Genealogia Christi, but the period of its most widespread use was during the 15th and 16th centuries, when it is in found in a number of English and French manuscripts and books (such as the Sherborne Missal), and as part of stained-glass windows and ornamental carvings in a number of churches (many in East Anglia). The diagram was used heraldically from the mid-13th century, when a shield-shaped version of the diagram (not actually placed on a shield) was included among the c. 1250 heraldic shields in Matthew Paris' Chronica Majora, while the c. 1260 allegorical illustrations of a knight battling the seven deadly sins in a manuscript of William Peraldus' Summa Vitiorum, and of a woman penitent fending off diabolical attacks in the De Quincy Apocalypse, show the diagram placed on a shield. In the 15th century, one form of the Shield of the Trinity was considered to be the coat of arms of God (see discussion below). The use of the diagram declined in England with the rise of Protestantism, and from the 17th century to the early 19th century, it was mainly of interest to historians of heraldry; but beginning in the 19th century it underwent a limited revival as an actively used Christian symbol among English-speaking Christians, partly due to being included in books such as the Handbook of Christian Symbolism by W.J. and G.A. Audsley (1865).