single manuscript is from France.45
Latin C
A further subgroup directly derived from the Majority Text has been recently
identified by Zbigniew Izydorczyk and labelled as Latin C.46 This textual typol-
ogy seems to have originated in Spain during the ninth century, soon after a
text of the Majority type was exported from northern France and became avail-
able there. Its Spanish origins are suggested both by the provenance of its two
oldest manuscripts and by a certain textual detail ascribable exclusively to
Spain, first brought into attention by Izydorczyk, who highlights the unusual
anthroponym for the Good Thief, Lismas, clearly a misreading of Dismas. This
name is otherwise only documented in an illustration of a codex better known
as the Girona Beatus (Girona, Museu de la Catedral, Núm. Inv. 7 11), a finely
illustrated manuscript transmitting the Commentaria in Apocalypsin of the
theologian Beatus of Liébana (†ca. 800) produced around 975 in the monastery
of San Salvador de Tábara, in the province of León.47
The text of Latin C is further characterized by the presence of the prologue
of the second type, as that of the Majority Text, and by new fictional details,
such as the inclusion of the name of Pilate’s messenger, Romanus, and a sug-
gestive scene that shows Christ dining with Lazarus after resurrecting him.48
Nevertheless, its most significant innovation is the inclusion of an additional
and final chapter, here referred to as Tischendorf’s chapter XXVIII, to distin-
guish it from chapter XXVIII of the Majority Text, which transmits the regular
epilogue of the narrative, the so-called Epistola Pilati.49 This additional chapter
relates how the Jews were summoned and interrogated by Pilate in their own
synagogue after Christ’s Resurrection. Pilate asks the high priests to show him
their Bible and whether there was any particular passage in it, which could
have foreseen the coming of Christ among their people. They confess that in-
deed they had found a reference in the first book of the Septuagint and that they
14 Niðrstigningar saga
had understood that the sum of the measurements of Noah’s ark, five and a half
cubits (instructed to Noah directly from God), was a divine sign indicating that
5,500 years would have to pass from the construction of the Ark of the Covenant
to the coming of their Messiah, a computistical chronology derived from
Hippolytus of Rome’s Commentarii in Danielem 4:23–4.50
As already mentioned, the two oldest manuscripts transmitting a text of type
C are from the Iberian Peninsula. Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón,
Ripoll 106 (ff. 122r–136r) is a theological miscellany compiled at the Benedic-
tine monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll during the second half of the ninth
century, a time when tight relationships were kept with the late Carolingian
scriptoria of northern France, especially those of Fleury, Saint-Germain-des-
Prés, and Laon. This cultural ascendant is especially evident in the presence
among the Ripoll manuscript collections of codices transcribed in those abbeys
or in the transcription in Ripoll manuscripts of texts typical of those areas.51 A
second manuscript, Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional, Alcobaça CCLXXXV/419
(ff. 175vb–188ra) was produced in the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria of
Alcobaça in Portugal during the second half of the twelfth century. In the fol-
lowing centuries, the text reached northern France, Prague, and Italy, as indi-
cated by the other five surviving witnesses.52
Latin T
Leaving aside Latin B, whose traits are markedly different, by the beginning of
the twelfth century there must have been two similar versions of the Latin
Evangelium Nicodemi circulating in northern France: the Majority Text, which
by that time must have been present in the territory with a considerable number
of exemplars, and Latin C, imported from Spain, with its new appealing inclu-
sions. A scribe working at one of these scriptoria, allured by the details and an-
ecdotes of both texts and possibly unable to judge which of the two versions was
more authoritative, decided to assemble a third composite, or better, “hybrid”
text, which fuses together textual features of the Majority Text and Latin C.
This version was first identified by Zbigniew Izydorczyk, who named it
after its oldest and most representative witness: Troyes, Médiathèque du
Grand Troyes, 1636 (ff. 90r–104v). Troyes 1636 is a composite miscella-
neous manuscript written in the twelfth century in an elegant protogothic
script for the newly funded Abbey of Clairvaux, established around the year
1115. It contains thirteen lives and passions of various universal and local
saints and martyrs.53
The Latin Evangelium Nicodemi in Medieval Europe 15
Two of the most evident characteristics of Latin T are found in its prologue
of the second type inherited from the Majority Text, although its readings are
considerably more unstable. Indeed, the first is a scribal error, which transfig-
ures the year of the Passion of Christ from the regular anno nonodecimo (the
nineteenth year) of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius – that is, AD 33 – into the
ostensibly corrupted anno nonagesimo (ninetieth year) – that is, AD 104. Its
second feature is the inclusion of an additional sentence which allegedly as-
cribes the commission of the first translation of the original Hebrew gospel into
Latin to the Emperor Theodosius I, known as “the Great” (†395). This clause
is absent in the Majority Text, Latin B, and Latin C. It survives solely in manu-
scripts pertaining to Latin T and, consequently, in all the vernacular transla-
tions deriving from it.
Factum est in anno nonagesimo imperii Tyberii Cesaris imperatoris Romanorum
et Herodis filii Herodis regis Galilee anno nonagesimo principatus eius oc-
tauo Kalendas Aprilis quod est uicesima prima die mensis Martii consulatu filii
Vellionis anno quarto ducentesimo secundo Olimpiadis sub principatu sacerdotum
Iudaeorum Ioseph Anne et Cayphe post crucem et passionem Domini Nostri Ihesu
Christi hystoriatus est Nichodemus acta Saluatoris ad principes sacerdotum et
reliquos Iudeorum. Ipse Nichodemus scripsit litteris hebraicis. Theodosius autem
Magnus imperator fecit ea transferri de hebreo in latinum.54
(It happened in the ninetieth year of the Emperor Tiberius, ruler of the Romans,
and of Herod, son of Herod, king of Galilee, in the ninetieth year of his leadership,
on the eighth calends of April, which is the twenty-first day of March, during the
consulate of the son of Vellio, in the fourth year of the two hundred and second
Olympiad, under the leadership of the Jewish priests Joseph, Annas, and Caiphas,
that Nicodemus documented what happened after the Crucifixion and Passion of
the Lord, the Deed of the Saviour, of the high priests and of the rest of the Jews.
This same Nicodemus wrote it in Hebrew letters, then the Emperor Theodosius
the Great had it translated from Hebrew into Latin.)
In general terms, it may be asserted that whereas the redactor of Latin T
draws extensively on Latin C throughout the Acta Pilati, he restores the
Des
census Christi ad inferos from the Majority Text. This is possibly because
its narrative is more complete and exhaustive than that of Latin C, which to-
wards the end of the pseudo gospel becomes considerably abridged. The text
of Latin C is retained again in the epilogue of the apocryphon, as all the manu-
scripts of Latin T transmit Tischendorf’s chapter XXVIII.
16 Niðrstigningar saga
Latin T seems to have originated in northern France (possibly in an area
between Reims and Paris) in the first half of the twelfth century and to have
circulated there for almost two centuries before being disseminated and cop-
ied throughout northern Germany, as the provenance of its other sixteen cop-
ies indicate.55 Although it is a secondary, considerably smaller tradition, T has
left a remarkable vernacular legacy. Beside Niðrstigningar saga, whose text
was composed in the turn of the thirteenth century and therefore represents the
oldest (though not verbatim) surviving translation of T, its text underlies,
roughly in this chronological order, Old French, Old Catalan, Middle English,
Old Swedish, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, Early New High German,
and Welsh translations and adaptations of the pseudo gospel.56 Latin T was
translated into Old French in the thirteenth century, and its text survives in
three manuscripts from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.57 An Old Catalan
paraphrase of Latin T is embedded into a poem on the Passion of Christ enti-
tled E la mira car tot era ensems, transmitted in a manuscript from the second
half of the fourteenth century.58 The Old French translation was subsequently
employed for the composition of two Middle English prose translations: the
first is preserved in a manuscript written at the end of the fifteenth century and
the second in the editio princeps of the text dated 1507.59 Variant readings of
Latin T are also found in the so-called Middle English Stanzaic Gospel of
Nicodemus, preserved today in London in four manuscripts from the first half
of the fifteenth century.60 Indebted to Latin T is also the Old Swedish transla-
tion, which survives in three manuscripts from the end of the fourteenth to the
beginning of the sixteenth century.61 The considerable presence of manuscripts
transmitting Latin T in northern Germany gave birth to a Middle Low German
prose version, extant in four manuscripts from the middle of the fifteenth to
the first decade of the sixteenth century.62 One of the four Middle Dutch trans-
lations of the Evangelium Nicodemi is clearly derived from T. Its text, only
recently identified by Werner J. Hoffmann and designated as D, is transmitted
in two manuscripts from the end of the fifteenth to the beginning of the six-
teenth century.63 The text of Latin T also underlies a single Modern High
German undated translation, which survives in the first German printed edi-
tion of the text, which was published several times during the sixteenth cen-
tury.64 Finally, a Welsh translation of Latin T is extant in a manuscript copied
between the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the
nineteenth century.65
The cause of the remarkable fortune of Latin T may reasonably be its addi-
tional textual features and anecdotes, which mould the original plot making it all
the more exhaustive and therefore engaging to audiences. Consequently, in spite
of having circulated less widely, on account of these additions, its narrative
The Latin Evangelium Nicodemi in Medieval Europe 17
might have been considered more complete and even more authoritative than
that transmitted by the Majority Text.
Iceland
The earliest evidence of the dissemination and knowledge of the Evangelium
Nicodemi in medieval Scandinavia is represented by an Old Norse translation
and adaptation of the Latin text that came to be known as Niðrstigningar saga,
or “The Story of the Descent.”66 As promptly clarified by its title, the Old Norse
text includes only the second section of the apocryphon, the Descensus Christi
ad inferos, and begins with Carinus and Leucius’s narration (chapter XVIII.1)
three paragraphs after the actual beginning of the Descensus (chapters XVII.1,
XVII.2, and XVII.3). Consequently, the text of the Acta Pilati is entirely omit-
ted. Nevertheless, the Norse compiler seems to have had access to a manuscript
transmitting the entire text of the Latin Evangelium Nicodemi, proven by the
presence of readings typical of a prologue of the second type, which in
Niðrstigningar saga is anaphorically appended to the narrative of the Harrowing
of Hell.67
Niðrstigningar saga survives in five Icelandic manuscripts. The four medi-
eval codices – AM 645 4to (ff. 51v–55v) from the years 1220–50, AM 623 4to
(ff. 1r–5v) from around 1325, AM 233 a fol. (28ra–28vb) from 1350 to 1360,
and AM 238 V fol. written between 1400 and 1500 – are all housed in
Copenhagen at Den Arnamagnæanske Samling. Reykjavík, Landsbókasafn
Íslands, JS 405 8vo (ff. 2r–10r) written between 1780 and 1791, is the sole mod-
ern copy to transmit the medieval text. The place of origin and possible date of
composition of Niðrstigningar saga have been subject to controversial debate in
previous scholarship. On account of some alleged “Norwegianisms” of the text,
Eugen Mogk, Didrik Arup Seip, and Hans Bekker-Nielsen have sought to prove
that the text of Niðrstigningar saga was compiled in twelfth-century Norway.68
Nevertheless, this theory has been subsequently disregarded, as the words in
questions were either misreadings present in Unger’s transcription of the oldest
surviving witness of the text, AM 645 4to, in Niðrstigningar saga I69 or were
archaic scribal practices, dating to the beginning of the thirteenth century, still in
use in Icelandic manuscripts.70
On the other hand, Magnús Már Lárusson pointed out that the surviving
manuscripts of Niðrstigningar saga are exclusively Icelandic and that this
may be taken as evidence for the possible place of origin of the text. Without
giving reasonable evidence for his suggestion, he further maintained that Jón
Ögmundarson of Hólar (†1122), the first bishop of the northern diocese, may
18 Niðrstigningar saga
have been the compiler of the text; in this connection, he recalled Jón’s fa-
mous erudition and his reputation as one of the first translators of hagio-
graphical literature into Icelandic.71 Otto Gschwantler and Ian J. Kirby have
also relied on Magnús Már Lárusson’s unfounded hypothesis for the dating of
the Old Norse text to the first two decades of the twelfth century.72 However,
as shall be seen, evidence of the composition, dissemination, and fruition of
Niðrstigningar saga are all unambiguously Icelandic.
The text of Niðrstigningar saga has been hitherto related and compared to
the Majority Text of the Latin tradition.73 Nevertheless, despite the overall
agreement of readings, lexicon, and style, the Majority Text does not fully
represent the Old Norse rendition, which instead seems to share important
readings with the text of Latin T. As mentioned above, Latin T was in all prob-
ability not available in Europe b
efore the twelfth century, as indicated by the
complete absence of surviving copies – both in its direct Latin tradition and in
its indirect vernacular transmission. Niðrstigningar saga consequently stands
today as the oldest vernacular translation of T and may owe its existence to
one of the Icelandic clerics studying or travelling through France in the sec-
ond half of the twelfth century.74
During the time of composition of Niðrstigningar saga, apart from a copy of
Latin T, from which the Niðrstigningar saga is derived, Iceland also owned an
exemplar of the Majority Text. This is today transmitted only fragmentarily in
Reykjavík, Þjóðminjasafn Íslands, 921, a single double-column leaf written in
Iceland during the thirteenth century, which was only recently fortuitously
gathered from a book binding.75 This was not the text employed by the Icelandic
compiler, but it is plausible that he – much like other European scribes engag-
ing in the translation of the apocryphon – was acquainted with the Majority
Text and nevertheless preferred T on account of its textual features and thor-
oughness in the description of events.
The second section of this book offers a semidiplomatic edition of the two
redactions of Niðrstigningar saga. An older version represented by AM 645 4to,
which, despite a considerable degree of textual corruption, was chosen as codex
optimus on account of its remarkable early age and, more importantly, because
it is the sole surviving medieval manuscript transmitting the text in its entirety.
The apparatus of the edited text includes all the variant readings of three manu-
scripts pertaining to the older redaction, namely, AM 623 4to, AM 233 a fol., and
JS 405 8vo. The second, considerably younger redaction of Niðrstigningar saga
is edited on the basis of AM 238 V fol. alone, whose text underwent a second
meticulous revision based on another Latin exemplar of the Evangelium
Nicodemi transmitting a text of the Majority type. Latin and Icelandic variant
texts have been assigned the chapters and paragraphs numbers given by Hack C.
The Latin Evangelium Nicodemi in Medieval Europe 19
Kim to the Codex Einsidlensis in order to facilitate immediate confrontations of
the texts.76
A second independent Old Norse translation of the Latin Evangelium
Niorstigningar Saga Page 4