Young—The Harrowing of Hell. 
893 
episcopus, sive ille qui officio praeerat, portas percutiebat dicens: At- 
tollite portas, principes, vestras, et elevamini, portae aeternales , et 
introihit Rex gloriae; cui existentes in ecclesia reponebant: Quis est 
iste Rex gloriae? Ad quos cum ille tertio dixisset: Attollite portas, 
similemque illi dedissent responsionem, ipse tandem clamabat: Domi- 
nus virtutum, ipse est Rex gloriae. Tunc clausae aperiebantur valvae. 
Ita fere legitur in missali Arelatensi, in Bituricensi, in Catalaunensi, 
in Pictavensi, in missali canonicorum regularium monasterii de Aqua 
viva in dioecesi Turonensi, in ordinario Rotomagensi, in Cenomanensi, 
et Namnetensi, in Rituali S. Martini Turonensi et aliis quibusdam. 
Apertis januis, cantor imponebat antiphonam: Ingrediente Domino / 
So far as I know, it would be idle to try to establish a direct 
relation between any of these three liturgical elements,—from 
the Liber Bespomalis, the Graduate , and the Processionale, re¬ 
spectively,—and the Evangelium Nicodemi. Whatever echoes 
from the Evangelium may have sounded in the ears of the 
liturgists who first entered these formulas in the service-books 
of the Church, those pious men must have used the psalm as 
their direct model. The intention of each of these liturgical 
pieces is to celebrate the entry of Christ into the world or into 
Jerusalem, an intention entirely consonant to that of the psalm. 1 2 
1 E. Martene, Tractatus de antiqua Ecclesiae disCiplina, Lugduni, 1706, 
pp. 195-196. Cf. id., pp. 206, 212, and E. Wiepen, Palmsonntagsprozes- 
sion und Palmesel, Bonn, 1903. 
2 Verses 7-10 of Psalm xxiv constitute a triumphal procession quite 
separate in origin from the rest of the psalm. See B. Duhm, Die 
Psalmen, Freiburg, 1899, p. 76; G. H. and A. von Ewald, Commentary 
on the Psalms, Vol. I, London, 1880, pp. 79-80; C. A. Briggs, A Critical 
and Exegetical Commentary on The Book of Psalms, Vol. I, New York, 
1906, pp. 216-218. The question as to the ultimate relation of these 
verses of the psalm to the parallels in the Evangelium Nicodeni is of 
no great importance in the present'study. On this point my informa¬ 
tion is very inadequate. Hulme (op. cit., p. nxii) seems to imply that 
the psalmist had definitely in mind as his model some version of the 
Descent story, an implication not expressed by the commentators men¬ 
tioned above. The opinion of T. K. Cheyne (Origin and Religious 
Contents of the Psalter, London, 1891, p. 223) is that “the highly dra¬ 
matic use of v. 7 in the apocryphal Descensus Christi can scarcely be 
viewed as more than a poetical licence.” Chambers’s view is (Mediae¬ 
val Stage, Vol. II, p. 74) that “the narrative [i. e., of the Evangelium 
