Carta dominica

The Carta dominica (Latin for Lord's letter, letter of Jesus Christ on Sunday) is a Christian apocrypha, many variants of which were widespread both in the Greek Church and in the Latin Church. These variants have in common the reminder of Sunday duty, divine threats (particularly agricultural calamities) in case of persistence in neglecting this duty, and the order to propagate the message. The letter is supposed to have been written by Jesus Christ, or by God the Father, Christ then being only the bearer, or by the Father and the Son. The earliest known mention of such a letter dates from around 584. All variants are thought to date back to a single original which has not been preserved.[1]

Various forms of the “Letter of Jesus Christ” circulated in modern times. Voltaire has reproduced a booklet, printed in Bourges in 1771, giving a version of the Letter which, in this same year 1771, would have miraculously descended from the sky at Paimpol.[2] The distribution of variants of the Letter persisted in France until around 1852, when book peddling disappeared.[3]

Father Hippolyte Delehaye, president of the Bollandist Society, saw in the words attributed to Our Lady of La Salette an avatar of the Letter of Jesus Christ on Sunday.[4]

Bibliography
  • A. Vassiliev, Anecdota graeco-byzantina, 1, Moscou, 1893, p. XIV-XX and 23–32.
  • H. Delehaye, « Note sur la légende de la lettre du Christ tombée du ciel », Bulletin de l'Académie royale de Belgique, Classe de lettres, 1899, pp. 171–213. Reprinted in H. Delehaye, Mélanges d'hagiographie grecque et latine, Brussels, 1966, p. 150-178.
  • M. Bittner, "Der vom Himmel gefallen Brief in seinen morgenländischen Versionen und Rezensionen", Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften : philosophisch-historische Klasse, 51, 1, Vienna, 1906, p. 1-240.
  • R. Stübe, Der Himmelsbrief. Ein Beitrag zur allgemeinen Religionsgeschichte, Tübingen, 1918.
  • H. Delehaye, « Un exemplaire de la lettre tombée du ciel », dans Recherches de Science Religieuse, 18 (1928), p. 164-169 (Mélanges Grandmaison).
  • Robert E. McNally, "Dies Dominica : Two Hiberno-Latin Texts", in Mediaevalia, vol. 22, 1960, p. 355-361. (First page online.)
  • A. de Santos Otero, Los Evangelios apócrifos, Madrid, 1963, p. 670-682.
  • M. Erbetta, Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, 3, Turin, 1969, p. 113-118.
  • Jean Stern, La Salette, Documents authentiques, t. 1, Desclée De Brouwer, 1980, p. 375-392. (Discusses the opinion of Delehaye 1928 on the relationship between the Letter of Jesus Christ and the La Salette apparition. Provides bibliographical additions to Delehaye 1899.)
  • Clare A. Lees, "The 'Sunday Letter' and the 'Sunday Lists' ", in Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 14, 1985, p. 129-151. (Preview online.)
  • M. van Esbroeck, "La Lettre sur le dimanche descendue du ciel", Analecta Bollandiana, 107, 1989, pp. 267–284.
  • Irena Backus, Introduction to the French translation of a Greek and a Latin version of the Letter, in Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, t. 2, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2006, p. 1101-1106.

Notes and references
  1. Irena Backus, introduction to two variants (Greek and Latin) of the Lettre de Jésus-Christ sur le dimanche, in Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, t. 2, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2006, pp. 1101-1106.
  2. Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, article Superstition, second Section, in Œuvres de Mr. de Voltaire, t. 6, 1775, p. 388-392, online. Incorporated in some editions of the Dictionnaire philosophique, for example the Garnier 1954 edition, pp. 620-623.
  3. Jean Stern, La Salette, Documents authentiques, t. 1, Desclee De Brouwer, 1980, p. 379, footnote 13.
  4. H. Delehaye, "Un exemplaire de la lettre tombée du ciel", in Recherches de Science Religieuse, 18 (1928), pp. 164-169 (Mélanges Grandmaison).
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