Christianity in its Medieval form, like Notre Dame and the other cathedrals built about that time, is a colorful mix of daily human experience and vivid imagery imagined according to doctrine. I'd forgotten about the story for Holy Saturday until Stuart Somerville on Twitter posted a vivid rendition of naked people emerging from the gaping mouth of Hades, the entrance to Hell. Jesus is there to extend a hand to all who went to hell through no fault of their own --including Adam. This is a depiction of what is presumed to have happened on the Saturday between the crucifixion and the resurrection.
Of course it is about what any compassionate and thoughtful Son would do. Maybe you have a child with awakening moral sense who is asking (a lot of people have) "But if only people who know about and believe in Jesus can have eternal life, what about the people who lived before him, even LONG before him?" I asked my snobbish old Presbyterian minister my question: "What about people on other planets? Do they get their own version of Jesus or do they get a Martian who is the Son of God?" The minister walked off, looking grim.
This story is remembered by a website called "Churchpop" (great name!) which is Catholic, that tradition so big and baggy that it's possible to find all sorts of niches in it. The thread of forgiveness is also in the idea of limbo and in Universalism, which became a whole denomination based on the forgiveness of God through Jesus. These folk stories are sometimes ridiculous and sometimes fun. The Islamic tradition has one about the birth of Jesus. Mary is struggling with labor and Jesus speaks to her even as he is being born, saying, "Don't worry! I'm a Son of God and He'll take care of us!"
The folk theology of the Medieval times was perfect for enacting by traveling troupes who used their wagons for stages in villages across Europe and Britain. You might remember them from Ingmar Bergman's film, "The Seventh Seal", which mixes historical accounts with personal struggles and totally convincing images of Death playing chess with the Knight who struggles for our salvation in the abstract, while his squire more practically slips narcotics to a teenaged girl about to be burned alive as a witch. I've always loved the final depiction of the ordinary/holy family which is the secret core of Christianity. Deny the family trinity and the theology takes off into wild forays into particle physics or something. The family survives culture variations.
The title of this particular folk/family story is "The Harrowing of Hell," and it's an agricultural image since that was what most people did in those days. A harrow is a drawn-along piece of machinery with terrible sharp tines that rake the earth. A harrowing experience is one of pain, sorting, and destruction, and should leave the victim with a new understanding of life. In drama the human thirst for violence, sex, suffering and final redemption is given a kind of virtual reality.
This website is a nice discussion of the genre before theatre became some other kind of interpretation, maybe Shakespeare or Bergman.
https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/medieval-drama-and-the-mystery-plays Even now "television" provides many examples of folk drama that address suffering and retribution. The difference is that today in our stories we tend to celebrate violence and criminality. Hell has a swinging door.
But then, Christianity has lost its punch for many of us. The family is no longer fertility-based, occupations are no longer agricultural, and God is dead. Some will say this is a proper harrowing of religion. Others will say it's a "Saturday story," neither here nor there.
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