Emanuela Timotin, La diffusion d’un livre de colportage aux XIXe–XXe siècles : La Lettre du Christ tombée du ciel

Emanuela Timotin - Institut de Linguistique « Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti », Bucarest
TOME LIII 2015
p. 249-261
Online publication date: 
02/05/2024
Keywords: 
Letter of Christ Fallen from the Sky, Romanian chapbook, apocryphal variation, religious authority
Abstract: 

The Letter of Christ Fallen from the Sky, the most popular Romanian apocryphal text, has been constantly published since the middle of the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century it enjoyed an important popularity mainly in Wallachia, but afterwards it appeared in chapbooks published in all the Romanian regions. The increasing transmission of the apocryphal writing goes together with the reshuffling of the apocryphal scenario: the date when the divine letter is supposed to have fallen from the sky is precisely indicated; a new sacred topography replaces the traditional topographic references to the city of Jerusalem or to the Mount of Olives; a monk or an ordinary pious man emerges as new recipients of the heavenly epistle.

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