Title Background

<i>Piers Plowman</i> and Local Iconography: The Font at Eardisley Herefordshire., Herefordshire.

Piers Plowman and Local Iconography: The Font at Eardisley Herefordshire., Herefordshire.

Finds on a Norman font in the church of St Mary Magdalene at Eardisley, Herefordshire (about thirty miles from the Malvern Hills) a representation of the Harrowing of Hell that places on Christ’s shoulder a dove, the traditional symbol of the Holy Ghost. Another figure in the scene, represented with a nimbus, a face identical to Christ’s, and with a book in hand, is probably that of God the Father. This incorporation of the Trinity into the Harrowing of Hell, apparently unique in medieval art, may well have influenced the composition of B.5.495-503, which, as noted by Hill, RES ns 24 (1973): 444-49, is unusual in stressing the activity of the entire Trinity in the scene.