The Devil’s Parliament Edition FROM BL Addit. MS 37492 and Lambeth Palace MS 853, and The Harrowing of Hell and Destruction of Jerusalem Edition from St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS B.6
C William Marx (ed.) (1993)
Central to both these poems is Christ’s harrowing of Hell. Together they illustrate the different approaches to this subject that were at work in English vernacular writing in the Middle Ages. The Harrowing of Hell and Destruction of Jerusalem demonstrates a conservative, almost slavish adherence to The Gospel of Nicodemus and its treatment of the redemption, whereas The Devils’ Parliament reflects how the new theology of the redemption of the later Middle Ages could be incorporated into popular religious literature. This volume makes available for the first time the text of The Devils’ Parliament in MS Addit 37492 (here printed in parallel with that in Lambeth 853) and argues for its priority in a full account of the textual history of the poem. The Harrowing of Hell and Destruction of Jerusalem has not been published before.