The Old Swedish Evangelium Nicodemi in the Library of Vadstena Abbey: Provenance and Fruition

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Evangelium Nicodemi enjoyed abundant circulation and benefited from an exceptionally positive reception in all centers of devotion and learning within Europe, a rare fortune for any religious text, and especially remarkable considering its extracanonical nature.² Accordingly, its text regularly figures among the very first translations in the vernaculars of Europe and was deservedly granted the illustrious appellative of “fifth gospel” (Healey 1985, 98).

Its core narrative is formed by two distinct Latin texts, the Acta Pilati (Acts of Pilate) and the Descensus Christi ad Inferos (Christ’s Descent into Hell). These two narratives first circulated separately and were only subsequently conflated, sometime between the fifth and the eighth centuries, to form a unique gospel depicting the trial, passion, and crucifixion of Christ, and his harrowing of Hell. The text, originally called Gesta Salvatoris (The Deeds of the Savior), was only entitled Evangelium Nicodemi (The Gospel of Nicodemus) in the Late Middle Ages after the disciple of Christ who, according to John 19:32–42, assisted Joseph of Arimathea in the atonement and entombment of the corpse of Christ, and to whom the composition of the original Hebrew gospel is allegedly ascribed in one of the concluding lines of the text.³

The Acta Pilati tell of Christ’s trial in Jerusalem, reporting a series of questions proposed to Christ by Pilate on behalf of the high priests, accusing him of violating different aspects of the Jewish law. The last chapters relate to the crucifixion, entombment, resurrection, and the apparition of Christ to his disciples, and end with the finding of the empty tomb, as related in the canonical gospels. The Descensus Christi ad inferos is the written report assertedly compiled by Carinus and Leucius, the two sons of Simeon the Elder, who had long been dead, and relates how they witnessed Christ’s descent and harrowing of Hell, his defeat of Satan, and the final deliverance of the souls of the righteous to Paradise. At Christ’s arrival in Hell, the patriarchs sing in chorus the words of some of the psalms celebrating the magnificence of the Lord; the prophets David, Isaiah, Micah, and Abakkuk, along with the Archangel Michael, recall their own words predicting the future coming of the Messiah as attested in their respective books of the Old Testament canon and apocrypha.⁴ Finally, Christ victoriously overcomes Satan and delivers the souls of the righteous, freeing them from the bondage of sin. This distinctively composite and recapitulative nature of the Evangelium Nicodemi, and possibly its predominantly orthodox character, might indeed have substantially contributed to its high appreciation and unchallenged popularity in the Middle Ages, as its text effectively collects and correlates some of the most momentous verses of the Old Testament and the New Testament, reproducing in small the biblical typology and continuity.

In Scandinavia, like in the rest of Europe, the Evangelium Nicodemi arrived at an early stage of the process of vulgarization of Latin devotional literature accomplished for the instruction and use of clerics illiterate in Latin. In Sweden in particular, the gospel makes its first appearance during the golden age of Vadstena Abbey, when along with other religious texts, it was skillfully translated in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. This essay examines the nature of the Old Swedish translation, establishing its textual relations to a more adequate Latin source-text, which is here reassessed, and outlines its significant connections to the newly founded University of Prague (1348), highlighting the editorial procedures of the Swedish compiler, and investigating its ample fruition in the nunnery of Vadstena Abbey for the following 150 years.

The Vadstena Library

Before its final dissolution and the forced exile of the last nuns to Poland, where they took refuge in the Brigittine sister house in Gdank (Danzig) in the year 1595, Vadstena Abbey represented the greatest center of transmission of culture and learning in Medieval Sweden.⁵

The construction of the Abbey, whose works started essentially in 1369, was tenaciously supported by Birgitta Birgersdotter (†1373), the eminent mystic...