The ''Harrowing of Hell'' is an eighth-century

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

work in fifty-five lines found in the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

Book of Cerne The Book of Cerne (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ll. 1. 10) is an early ninth-century Insular or Anglo-Saxon Latin personal prayer book with Old English components. It belongs to a group of four such early prayer books, the other ...

'' (folios 98v–99v). It is probably a

Northumbria la, Regnum Northanhymbrorum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Northumbria , common_name = Northumbria , status = State , status_text = Unified Anglian kingdom (before 876)North: Anglian kingdom (af ...

n work, written in

prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the fo ...

and verse, where the former serves either as a set of

stage direction In theatre, blocking is the precise staging of actors to facilitate the performance of a play, ballet, film or opera. Historically, the expectations of staging/blocking have changed substantially over time in Western theater. Prior to the moveme ...

s for a

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

tic portrayal or as a series of narrations for explaining the poetry. Three voices appear in the work: those of

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

, Eve, and a narrator. The prose of the "narrator" appears in the ''Book of Cerne'' in red ink setting it off from the rest of the text. The prose portions are rhythmic and may therefore have been sung, even if they were primarily directorial. Besides the three main soloists, the work was designed for a full choir (''antiqui iusti''). The work may be either an early

oratorio An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is ...

or the earliest surviving work of Christian drama intended to be performed. The ''Harrowing of Hell'' has two sources: a lost Latin

homily A homily (from Greek ὁμιλία, ''homilía'') is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the "public explanation of a sacred doctrine" or text. The works of Origen and John Chrysostom (known as Paschal Homily) are considered ex ...

, which survives in translation as the seventh of the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

Blickling Homilies The Blickling Homilies is the name given to a collection of anonymous homilies from Anglo-Saxon England. They are written in Old English, and were written down at some point before the end of the tenth century, making them one of the oldest colle ...

'',This itself draws on homily 160 of

Pseudo-Augustine Pseudo-Augustine is the name given by scholars to the authors, collectively, of works falsely attributed to Augustine of Hippo. Augustine himself in his ''Retractiones'' lists many of his works, while his disciple Possidius tried to provide a comple ...

. and a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

psalter A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of hours in the Late Middle Ages, psalters w ...

also in the ''Book of Cerne''. David Dumville (1972) provides a critical edition of the Latin text and Dronke (1994) provides some English translation. The fifty-five lines recount how

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and relig ...

descended into hell to release the "prisoners", the just who were held by

Satan Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehoo ...

. In typical medieval representations of this event, Adam and Eve are released immediately, but in the ''Harrowing of Hell'' they must wait and beg before they too are finally saved. The plea of Eve goes as follows: The work ends abruptly here, the rest apparently being lost, but if a comparable Old English work is any indication, Eve's plea is successful.

References

*Dronke, Peter (1994). ''Nine Medieval Latin Plays''. Cambridge Medieval Classics, I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . *Dumville, David N. (1972). "Liturgical Drama and Panegyric Responsory from the Eighth Century? A Re-examination of the Origin and Contents of the Ninth-Century Section of the Book of Cerne." ''Journal of Theological Studies'', 23:2, pp. 374–406.

Notes

{{Adam and Eve 8th-century plays Medieval drama Early medieval Latin literature 8th-century Christian texts Cultural depictions of Adam and Eve Harrowing of Hell