March 2023 Print

By Romanus

The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Our Lord is the most important event in human history and the confirmation of our faith. As St. Paul says, “If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”¹ It has released us from the power of death and restored our relationship with God and with one another. In Greek the Resurrection is called the Anastasis, “raising,” because the victory of Christ is a re-creation, a new beginning.

In the art of the Latin Church, at least from the 11th century, the most common representation of the Resurrection is that of Our Lord emerging victorious from the shattered tomb, carrying the standard of the Cross, while the guards are fast asleep, fallen to the ground.

But the Eastern Church, considering the Resurrection as the mystery of mysteries, as an event far too great and incomprehensible for men, has chosen to represent it in two different ways.

One scene, the most ancient, which we may call “narrative,” closely follows the text of the Gospels, which do not talk about the exact moment of the Resurrection.² After Our Lord’s deposition from the Cross and His burial on Friday afternoon, the Gospels remain silent until Sunday at dawn, when the holy women—the Myrrophores, “myrrh-bearers”—come with oils and perfumes to anoint the body, only to find the tomb broken, the guards gone, the shroud empty and the angels announcing to them that the Lord has indeed risen: “Why seek you the living with the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Lk. 24:5-6).

The second scene is “dogmatic,” in the sense that it reveals to us the purpose of Christ’s death on the Cross and His Resurrection: the redemption of the human race, the possibility of salvation returned to men. It is the icon of the Descent of Christ into Hell, an illustration of the article of the Apostles’ Creed.

The Harrowing of Hell

Freely accepting death, Christ assumed the mortal condition of men. As in the death of every man, His body and soul were separated—“He rendered the spirit”—but the union of human and divine natures remained:

While corporally in the tomb, Thou were in hell, with Thy soul, as God; and in Paradise with the thief, and upon Thy throne, with the Father and the Spirit, filling all, being infinite.³

Jesus Christ was not content with lying in the tomb for three days after His crucifixion. Instead, while His body was entombed, Christ’s soul descended into Hades, or Hell. This descent of Christ into “hell” has been an article of the Apostles’ Creed from the time of the Council of Nicaea, and is taken from Scripture.⁴

Like many Fathers before him, St. John Damascene speaks explicitly of the descent into hell:

The deified soul descended into Hell, so that the Sun of righteousness that shone upon men lying on earth could also shine upon those who lie beneath the earth in the darkness and shadow of death. Just as he announced peace to those on earth, the release of prisoners, the recovery of sight to the blind and that he was the cause of eternal salvation for those who believed and accused of their unbelief those who did not believe, so he spoke to those who were in Hell, so that before him all knees would bend, in heaven, on earth and under earth. Having thus delivered those who had been chained for centuries, He returned from the dead by opening the way to our resurrection.⁵

The Council of Trent⁶ explains that the word “hell” signifies those hidden abodes in which the souls that have not attained heavenly beatitude are detained. However, those abodes are not of one and the same kind. One is that most loathsome and dark prison, the Gehenna, the “bottomless pit,” in which the souls of the damned, together with the unclean spirits, are tortured in everlasting fire. This place is, literally, Hell. Another abode is Purgatory, in which the souls of the pious are purified by a temporary punishment, that they may be admitted into Heaven. Lastly, there is a third abode—“Abraham’s bosom,” the “Limbo of the Fathers and Patriarchs”—which contained the souls of the just before the coming of Christ and where, without any sense of sin, sustained by the blessed hope of redemption, they enjoyed a tranquil dwelling. Adam and all the righteous of the Old Testament, who were expecting the Savior, were liberated by Christ descending into this abode, this “hell.”

In turn, the term “harrow” is derived from the Old English hergian, meaning “to ravage, seize, or plunder,” thus emphasizing Christ’s victory over the powers of sin and death, and his freeing of the saints.

For a long time, it was assumed that inspiration for the iconographic details had been taken from the apocryphal “Gospel of Nicodemus,” but recent scholarship shows that its main sources might have been the homilies and liturgical texts in use from the 4th century onwards.

Whatever the source, there were obvious difficulties in representing such a subject, but the fresco of the Chora Monastery in Constantinople (Istanbul) has become the standard representation.

An Orthodox author gives a beautiful description of this icon:

Christ descends into hell to destroy it. He is of a blazing whiteness, but now He is no longer on the mountain of the Transfiguration, but in the abyss of dark anguish and suffocation. One foot, with a gesture of incredible violence, breaks the chains of this underworld. The other leg, with a dance movement, begins to rise again, like the swimmer who has reached the bottom and gathers his strength to return to the air and light. But Christ Himself is the air and the light. Air and light radiate from His face, in the brilliance of the Holy Ghost. And here is His liberating gesture: with His hand, Christ grasps Man and Woman by their wrists—not by their hands, because salvation is not negotiated, it is given. Thus, He drags them out of their graves. There are no shadows: every face has the light of infinity. No reincarnation: every face is unique. No separation: all faces are flames of the same fire. And the purpose is not to achieve the immortality of the soul, because the souls in hell are already immortal. Every face is of this earth, but of this earth that has been grafted onto Heaven.⁷

The Underworld

Hell is symbolically represented by a black space, a dark cave under a steep mountain. That black cave reminds us of the caves in other icons—in the Nativity, in the Crucifixion, in Pentecost. This black hole symbolizes the “outer darkness,” a realm impervious to the divine Light—sometimes hell, or the grave, or the sinful world that has rejected Christ or that has not yet received Him.

Beneath Christ’s feet lay the gates of Hades, which were hitherto locked and are now smashed and wide open. It is the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy:

Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in. Who is this King of Glory? the Lord who is strong and mighty: the Lord mighty in battle.⁸

Those gates are often shown lying crossed at the feet of Christ: they are useless now, incapable of being closed and holding humanity captive. But they are also a reminder that through the Cross, Hell is defeated. Christ has trampled death by His death on the Cross.

Within that dark underworld are scattered broken chains and locks. Christ has opened the gates of Hades to bring out those who were locked within them, and freed from their chains those who were held captive there. On some icons, at the very bottom, we see a man, hands and feet tied, who represents the Devil now reduced to powerlessness.

The dividing of the rocks in the background recalls the parting of the Red Sea, when God delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt into the freedom of the Promised Land. Those broken rocks are also a reminder of the quake that shook the earth after the Crucifixion.

The Victorious Christ

In the icon, Christ stands victoriously in the center. It is a very dynamic image. Christ’s knees are bent but He is not walking in either direction. Rather, the sense of movement is upwards. The Christ Who stoops down to the underworld does not appear there as a prisoner, but as a conqueror, as a deliverer of the captives.

Robed in dazzling white garments, the glorious Christ is represented surrounded by the mandorla, an almond-shaped halo of star-studded light, the symbol of Heaven, of the divine glory and the Uncreated Light.

The three concentric, sparkling circles of the mandorla certainly have a Trinitarian connotation, but they also point out the three stages of the soul’s journey to God. It may appear surprising that the lighter circle is the most external and as we proceed deeper into the mandorla, it becomes darker. According to Denys the Areopagite, the movement of the soul towards God is like the movement of light through a cloud into darkness. As holiness increases, as we come closer to God, we realize that He is incomprehensible, that the essence of God is beyond human comprehension and understanding.

Adam and Eve

The central event of the icon is the meeting of the two Adams, between the Creator and His first-created, between the one in whom we have all sinned and the One through Whom we are all saved.

The creative hand of God catches Adam, in earthy-colored mantle, in his fall to his death. Next to Adam, Eve is wearing a red mantle, symbol of flesh and humanity, as she is the mother of the living. One of her hands is covered as a sign of a respectful offering.

Christ is shown vigorously tearing Adam and Eve from their tombs, pulling them by the wrist, and not the hand, and into His mandorla. It is not Adam and Eve who cling to Christ; it is He who takes them with Him, to make them live with Him, in His glory.

The strong sense of upward motion indicates that Adam and Eve are not just being saved from enslavement to sin but are being called, indeed pulled, to something higher, into the divine life of the Trinity; they are divinized by the action of Christ.

The icon of the Harrowing of Hell becomes the icon of the restoration of the relationship between God and men. The first Adam and the New Adam are face to face for the first time. The bond is recreated between Adam and the source of his life.

The Just of the Old Testament

Those who died before Christ’s crucifixion descended to Hades, where they patiently awaited the coming of their Messiah. In the precise moment when the soul of Adam was finally liberated, all the righteous of the Old Testament and the whole human race were also liberated.

They are represented by the other characters, symmetrically arranged in relation to the central element of the image. Surrounding the victorious Christ are usually David and Solomon, easily recognizable by their royal clothing; Abel as a young shepherd-boy; Moses holding the tables of the Law; John the Baptist and the other prophets pointing out the One they have announced and whom they recognized as soon as He entered Hell.

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The icon gives us hope by showing us Christ, Who draws us out of death to bring us into His own light. Christ goes deep within us, to release us from the chains of our refusal of love and our anguish, our alienating passions and our fears, to restore in us His Resemblance, to awaken us and to lead us to the True Life, which is eternal—Christ is truly the primitiae dormientium.

Endnotes

1 I Cor. 15:14.

2 Mt. 28, Mk. 16, Lk. 24, Jn. 20.

3 Paschal antiphon of the Byzantine liturgy.

4 I Pet 3:19, 4:6; Ps. 107:6; Heb. 2:14, Eph. 4:8-9; Apoc. 1:18.

5 Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, 29.

6 Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part I, ch. VI.

7 Clément, Oliver. Dialogue avec le Patriarche Athënagoras. Paris: Fayard, 1969.

8 Psalm 23:7-8.