The Middle-English Harrowing of Hell AND Gospel of Nicodemus. Early English Text Society. Extra Series, C. 1907. ? BERLIN: ASHER & CO., 13, UNTER DEN LINDEN. NEW YORK: C. SCRIBNER & CO.; LEYPOLDT & HOLT. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. Harrowing of Hell AND Gospel of Nicodemus. NOW FIRST EDITED FROM ALL THE KNOWN MANUSCRIPTS, WITH INTRODUCTION AND GLOSSARY, BY WILLIAM HENRY HULME, PH.D., PROFESSOR IN WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, U.S.A. LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY BY KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LIMITED PREFACE. AN attempt is made in the present volume (1) to make easily accessible to students of English literature all the known Middle-English versions of the Harrowing of Hell and the poetical Gospel of Nicodemus; (2) to give exact reproductions of the several manuscripts in parallel columns, so far as that is possible in print, as well as the variant readings of all previous reprints; (3) to give in the Introduction a succinct but comprehensive bibliographical account of the manuscripts in which the poems have been preserved and of all those manuscripts, so for as they are known, which contain prose versions of the Middle-English Gospel of Nicodemus; (4) to furnish a Glossary of obsolete and unfamiliar words. The historical account of the rise and growth of the "Harrowing of Hell" motive and of the Evangelium Nicodemi in mediaeval literature and art has been made brief, and all explanatory notes have been omitted, because they are to be published in a special edition of one of the Middle-English poetical versions of the Gospel of Nicodemus which the present editor has about ready for the press. I also hope to print in a future volume the most important of the ten (including the Black Letter reprint of Wynkyn de Worde) MiddleEnglish prose versions of the Gospel, which are likewise interesting and valuable in many respects to the student of English literature and language. The manuscript readings have been retained in the texts almost without exception, inasmuch as corrupt forms of one manuscript are generally explained by reference to the other manuscripts. If the original reading is ever changed, the manuscript form is given in the marginal notes. Few emendations have been suggested, and these are always enclosed in brackets. Resolutions of manuscript abbreviations are printed in italics. The capitals of the manuscripts have been retained, but the punctuation has been modernized. The crosses in final ll and the flourishes of final m and n have been ignored in the text. The manuscripts of the Harrowing of Hell differ so widely and in so many respects from one another, that it would be impossible so to |