John the Baptist, twice Precursor, the second time to the Psalm-praying righteous (and unrighteous?) dead in Hades

     "The prophets and all the righteous [dead] prayed (constantly) to God from [Hades] with unceasing prayers, asking for deliverance from that very dolorous (and) miserable domination of the enemy and from the deepening [(πανεσπέρου)] of th[at] very gloomy darkness.  And one of them said to God, 'Out of the belly of Hades my cry, thou didst hear my voice(; thou didst cast me back into the deep, into the heart of the sea)' [(Jon 2:2-3 =Cant. 6:3)].  And the other:  'Out of the depths I cried to thee, O Lord!  Lord, hear my voice!' [(Ps 130:1)].  And the other:  'Let thy face shine, and we shall be saved!' [(Ps 80:3, 7, & 19)].   And another:  '[Thou] who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth!' [(Ps 80:1)].  Another:  'Stir up thy might, and come to save us!' [(Ps 80:2)].  And another:  'Let thy compassion go speedily before us, O Lord' [(Ps 79:8)].  And the other:  'Deliver my soul from deepest Hades' [(Ps 86:13)].  And another:  'O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades' (Ps 80:3).  And the other:  'Thou dost not give me up to Hades' (Ps 16:10).  And another: 'Let my life rise from corruption towards thee, O Lord my God' [(Jon 2:6? =Cant. 6:7)].
     "Hearing them all, [our] very merciful [Lord] decided to proclaim his love of men not only to the dead of his time and after him, but also to those that hell possessed before his coming and who 'sat in darkness and (in) the shadow of death'.  This is why [our] God and Word on the one hand visited [on earth] the men who were in the flesh with an ensouled flesh, [and] on the other hand illuminated in hell the souls who were without flesh with his own divine and very pure soul, separated from [its] body, but not from [its] divinity," John the Baptist (who preached to the dead as well as to the living, and was thus twice precursor), having been "sent [before him] from the prison of Herod to the prison of the souls of the just and the unjust" to preach "Christ to all those of the tomb".

     Pseudo-Epiphanius, Homilia in diuini corporis sepulturam (In Sabbato magno, Homily for the Great and Holy Saturday, Ancient homily on Holy Saturday, The Lord's descent into Hades, On the burial of the divine body, Homily on the burial of Jesus, etc.) 9 & 8, as translated from the French of A. Vaillant, L’homélie d’Épiphane sur l’ensevelissement du Christ:  Texte vieux-slave, texte grec et traduction française (Zagreb:  1958), 93.  For the helpful footnotes associated with the Greek and Old Slavic (which I have not closely examined), see pp. 54-55.  Cf. Dindorf, p. 20 ll. 32 ff.  The quotations from the Psalms have been taken from (and cited in accordance with) the RSV, but modified in the direction of the French translation of Vaillant, not his Old Slavic and Greek originals.  For an online English translation of the Greek provided by Vaillant, go here.

"abundant sweetness"

"For all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal to those who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained the reality which even now we possess in hope."

"seruauit enim multam dulcedinem timentibus se, aperturus et perfecturus eam sperantibus in se, cum id quod nunc in spe accepimus etiam in re acceperimus."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 260A (393/405).1 =Sermon 8.1.4 on the octave of Easter =sermo a Denis editus 8.1 =Miscellanea Augostiniana 1 (1930), p. 36, ll. 1-2, as trans. Liturgy of the hours.  =WSA III/7, trans. Hill, p. 187:

You see, he has kept in store abundant sweetness for those who fear him, and he is going to open it up and complete it for those who hope in him, when we receive in actual substance what we have now received in hope.

"two turtledoves, our soul and our flesh"

Morgan Library M.385 (1440-1460), fol. 12v

     "At the time of [his] first birth, Christ entered after forty days into the earthly Jerusalem, into the Temple, and conveyed as first-born two turtledoves to God.  But at the time of his rebirth from among the dead, too, Christ, after forty days, was taken up into the Jerusalem on high—from which he was n[ever however] separated—into the true Holy of Holies, and, as incorruptible ‘firstborn from among the dead,’ conveyed to God and to the Father [as it were] two turtledoves [without blemish], our soul and our flesh [(ὡς δύο ἀμώμους τρυγόνας τὴν ψυχήν καὶ τὴν σάρκα τήν ἡμετέραν)]. . . ."

     Pseudo-Epiphanius, Homilia in diuini corporis sepulturam (In Sabbato magno, Homily for the Great and Holy Saturday, Ancient homily on Holy Saturday, The Lord's descent into Hades, On the burial of the divine body, Homily on the burial of Jesus, etc.) 3, as translated from the French of A. Vaillant, L’homélie d’Épiphane sur l’ensevelissement du Christ:  Texte vieux-slave, texte grec et traduction française (Zagreb:  1958), 87.  The Greek (presumably of Dindorf (p. 13, ll. 3 ff.) or PG 43 (Petau)) is given at p. 31 ll. 13 ff.  In the next line, Pseudo-Epiphanius distinguishes intriguingly between such claims considered as "[articles] of faith" (which, apparently, they aren't) on the one hand and "[figures] of rhetorique" on the other (μυθικῶς . . . οὐ πιστῶς).  "For just as Christ was born of a Virgin the bolts of [whose] virginity [were] marked with a[n unbroken] seal, so the rebirth of Christ took place with the seals of the tomb unbroken."  For an online English translation of the Greek provided by Vaillant, go here.

Not just the just?

British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius C VI (c. 1050), f.14

"in which [Spirit] he went and preached [(ἐκήρυξεν)] to the spirits in prison [(τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν)], who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark....

"this is why the gospel was preached [(εὐηγγελίσθη)] even to the dead [(νεκροῖς)], that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God."

     1 Pet 3:19-20, 4:6, RSV.

"our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality"

Morgan Library M.803, fol. 68v

"This is something amazing and unheard of! It was not we who actually died, were buried and rose again. We only did these things symbolically, but we have been saved in actual fact. It is Christ who was crucified, who was buried and who rose again, and all this has been attributed to us. We share in his sufferings symbolically and gain salvation in reality. What boundless love for men! Christ’s undefiled hands were pierced by the nails; he suffered the pain. I experience no pain, no anguish, yet by the share that I have in his sufferings he freely grants me salvation."

     St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 20.5 =Mystagogical catechesis 2.5, as trans. Liturgy of the hours for the Office of readings for Thursday within the octave of Easter.  =PG 33, col. 1081, SC .  The NPNF translation is a bit easier to map onto the Greek:

O strange and inconceivable thing! we did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again; but our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality [(ἀλλ' ἐν εἰπόνι ἡ μίμησις, ἐν ἀληθείᾳ δὲ ἡ σωτηρία)].  Christ was actually crucified, and actually buried, and truly rose again; and all these things He has freely bestowed upon us, that we, sharing His sufferings by imitation, might gain salvation in reality [(ἵνα τῇ μιμήσει τῶν παθημάτων αὐτοῦ κοινωνήσαντες, ἀληθείά τὴν σωτηρίαν κερδήσωμεν)].  O surpassing loving-kindness!  Christ received nails in His undefiled hands and feet, and suffered anguish; while on me without pain or toil by the fellowship of His suffering He freely bestows salvation.

Crux fidelis

Sankt-Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 391 (late 10th cent.), p. 62

". . . when Adam first offended, | Eating that forbidden fruit, | Not all hopes of glory ended | With the serpent at the root: | Broken nature would be mended | By a second tree and shoot."

     "Crux fidelis," current Roman missal, Friday of the Passion, as very loosely paraphrased by Michael Hodgetts and then appropriated by the ICEL (according to a number of pages on the Internet, most of whose commentators seem to be pretty unhappy with this "translation").  But "Crux fidelis" as reproduced in the Missale

• [Stanza 8:]  Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis, Nulla talem silva profert, flore, fronde, germine! Dulce lignum dulci clavo dulce pondus sustinens!
• [Stanza 1:]  Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis, Et super crucis tropaeo dic triumphum nobilem, Qualiter Redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.
• [Stanza 2:]  De parentis protoplasti fraude factor condolens, Quando pomi noxialis morte morsu corruit, Ipse lignum tunc notavit, damna ligni ut solveret.
• [Stanza 3:]  Hoc opus nostrae salutis ordo depoposcerat, Multiformis perditoris arte ut artem falleret, Et medelam ferret inde, hostis unde laeserat.
• [Stanza 4:]  Quando venit ergo sacri plenitudo temporis, Missus est ab arce Patris Natus, orbis conditor, Atque ventre virginali carne factus prodiit.
• [Stanza 5:]  Vagit infans inter arta conditus praesepia, Membra pannis involuta Virgo Mater alligat, Et manus pedesque et crura stricta cingit fascia.
• [Stanza 6:]  Lustra sex qui iam peracta tempus implens corporis, se volente, natus ad hoc, passioni deditus, agnus in crucis levatur immolandus stipite.
• [Stanza 7:]  En acetum, fel, arundo, sputa, clavi, lancea; Mite corpus perforatur, sanguis, unda profluit; Terra, pontus, astra, mundus quo lavantur flumine!
• [Stanza 9:]  Flecte ramos, arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera, Et rigor lentescat ille, quem dedit nativitas, Ut superni membra Regis miti tendas stipite.
• [Stanza 10:]  Sola digna tu fuisti ferre saecli pretium Atque portum praeparare nauta mundo naufrago, Quem sacer cruor perunxit fusus Agni corpore.

is basically Fortunatus' 6th-century "Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis" only very slightly rearranged.  Though the last stanza in the Missale,

• Aequa Patri Filioque, inclito Paraclito, Sempiterna sit beatae Trinitati gloria; cuius alma nos redemit atque servat gratia. Amen,

corresponds only very, very roughly to the various versions of Stanza 14 given at Analecta hymnica 50 (1907):  71-63 (no. 66).  The edition ed. F. Leo at MGH Auct. Ant. 4.1 (1881), pp. 27-28 (no. II.3) offers only the first ten above.  I have not compared the rest of the Latin of the current Missale Romanum, taken from here, with that in the two critical editions just named.

Also, why not simply forgive? Cur Deus homo?

"formerly, when nothing at all existed, only a nod and an act of will was needed for the creation of the universe.  But when the human being had once been made, and necessity required the healing, not for things that were not [(τὰ μὴ ὄντα, as in 1 Cor 1:28)], but for things that had come to be, it followed that the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created, to heal what existed. . . .  For it was not non-existent things [(τὰ οὐκ ὄντα)] that needed salvation, so that a command alone would have sufficed, but the human being, already in existence, who was corrupted and perishing."

     St. Athanasius, On the incarnation 44, trans. John Behr (Popular patristics series 44a (Yonkers, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 145, 147).