Before declaming the Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov, Ivan refers to a poem with the virgin Marie visiting Hell and begging God for mercy for its inhabitants.
Is this a real poem? If so, what is it?
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Sign up to join this communityIt is a XIIth century Slavic apocrypha «Хождение Богородицы по мукам».
In English: “The journey of the Mother of God through hell”.
Aleksey Tolstoy’s novel Хождение по мукам (The Road to Calvary refers to it too.