Epistola S. Mariae tributa ad Messanenses
Standard abbreviation:
Other titles:
Clavis numbers: ECCA 540
Category: Epistles
Related literature: Epistle of Mary to the Inhabitants of Florence, Epistles of Ignatius to Mary and John, Passion of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (Ps.-Marcellus)
Status: unassigned
Citing this resource (using Chicago Manual of Style):
1. SUMMARY
The letter is extant in two forms: a long version which terminates in a date and affirmation of authenticity (in Italian by Muzio and Latin by Reina), and a short version that lacks these two features (in Latin by Inchofer). The longer version is prefaced by an account of the letter’s origins.
The prologue states that Paul came to Messina and there gave two sermons: one on the Passion and one on the Incarnation. In the latter he mentioned that Mary still lived in Jerusalem. The people of the city sent ambassadors to Jerusalem (in Reina’s version, along with Paul) with a letter asking her to take their city under her protection. She wrote a letter in Hebrew and this was translated into Greek (in Reina’s version, by Paul) and then later into Latin, according to the prologue, “in our time” by Constantine Lascaris. The longer version of the letter (translated from Reina’s Latin text by Irena Backus) reads:
The Letter of the blessed Virgin Mary to the Inhabitants of Messina. Virgin Mary, daughter of Joachim, the most humble mother of the crucified Jesus Christ, of the tribe of Judah, of the stock of David, sends her greetings to all the Inhabitants of Messina and blessing of God the Father Almighty. It is established by official documents that in your great faith you have sent legates and ambassadors to us. You confess that our Son was begotten by God, that he is God and man and that he ascended to heaven after his resurrection and thus you recognise the path of truth through the preaching of the chosen Apostle Paul. Therefore we bless you and your city which we wish to take under our perpetual protection. The year of
our son 42, the first space of fifteen years, 2nd of June, 27th day after the new moon, fifth day of the week. From Jerusalem, Virgin Mary attests this to have been written in her own hand.
No manuscript copies of the letter are extant, neither in Latin nor Greek, though modern handwritten copies exist in Chinese and Garsuni. There has been speculation that the letter was the creation of Lascaris, a Greek grammarian from Constantinople who settled in Messina in 1467 and taught at the monastery of San Salvatore in Messina until his death in 1501. The first mention of the letter is by Franciscus Maurolycus in 1529.
Named Historical Figures and Characters: David, Joachim, Jesus Christ, Judah, Mary (Virgin), Paul (apostle).
Geographical Locations: Jerusalem, Messina.
earliest mention of the letter is by Franciscus Maurolycus in Sicanicarum rerum Compendium (1529)
Sicanicarum rerum Compendium [Francisco] Maurolyco abbate Siculo authore [1st edition, 1529] (Messanae, in Freto Siculo impressit Petrus Spira, mense octobri, 1562), 29r-v
first publication in 1555 by Mutius
Delia historia sacra del Mutio Justinopolitano libro primo. Nel quale si contengone le operationi e i martiri de bead Apostoli e di altri santi e sante di Dio; insieme con un summario
della doctrina Euangelica, di dottori antichi e di Romani pontefki dell’ascension del Signor in Cielo injino alia morte defesto successor di S. Pietro. Libro secondo. Nel quale dalla creation di Sisto primo injino alia morte del primo Urbano, che dopo S. Pietro fu il Papa decimo settimo si recitamo diuersi martiri de santi e di sante di Dio; dottrine di scrittori, chefurono in quella eta e decreti di died santi pontejici. In Venetia, appresso Giovanni Andrea Valvassori. I have used the second edition, printed in 1570.
– he published longer version with prologue and date
– same as the Latin text pub by Reina in 1668 (pp. 11-12); he said that it was in 1467 in the City Archives that the Greek MS of the leter was first discovered and that Constatine Lascaris translated it into Latin
Delle notizie istoriche delta citta di Messina seconda parte nella quale si narrano le cose piu memorabili, che le sono intervenute, tanto nello stato ecclesiastico, quanto nel politico, dal principio della nostra salute infino a gli anni 600 del Signore. Messina, ‘nella Stamperia dell’illustrissimo Senato, per Paolo Bonacota, 1668’.
– Inchofer published a shrter version in 1629
– Backus says Lascaris created it; from Consatniople and settled in Messina in 1467; teacher of Greekin the Basilian monastery of San Salvatore in Messina; famous for the publication of a Greek Grammar
Inchofer Austrian published teatise in 1629; put on Index of forbidden books; letter relegated among apocrypha by Roman INquisiion in 1598
Constantine Lascaris, Muzius Iustinopolitanus, and Peter Canisius defended authenticity; Caesar Baronius and Cristoforo da Castro challenged it
Greek version of Ps.-Marcellus has Paul go to Messina (7); Erbetta mentiuons an oral tradition that spins off this
long version:
2. RESOURCES
3. BIBLIOGRAPHY
3.1 Manuscripts and Editions
3.1.1 Arabic (Garšūnī script)
Mardin, Chaldean Cathedral 12, fol. 171r (18th cent.) ~ HMML
3.1.2 Chinese
Messina, Museo Regionale di Messina, inv. no. 1051 (17th cent.)
Giuliano, Agostino, and Maurizio Scarpari. “The Letter of the Madonna to the People of Messina in Chinese by the Jesuit Metello Saccano: An Unknown Seventeenth-Century Manuscript.” Journal of Jesuit Studies 5 (2018): 631–41 (text and English translation, pp. 639–40).
Giuliano, Agostino, and Maurizio Scarpari. “La Lettera della Madonna ai messinesi in lingua cinese di Metello Saccano: Un manoscritto inedito del xvii secolo.” Archivio storico messinese 98 (2017): 7–45 (includes detailed examination and translation).
3.1.2 Latin
Fabricius, Johann Albert. Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti. 3 vols. Hamburg: Schiller, 1703–1719 (discussion, vol. 1, pp. 844–48; edition of the Latin text, pp. 849–50).
1555 when it was printed in book one, chapter thirteen, of the Italian treatise Delia historia sacra by Mutius Iustinopolitanus (Girolamo Muzio). Italianb trans. publishe dboth longer and shorter texts (74-75). reprod. in Backus (76) and trans. in English p. 92
Francesco Maurolico (1494–1575), Vita Christi Salvatoris eiusque matris sanctissime: Senariis rhithmis correcta multisque additionibus necessariis illustrata; Gesta apostolorum et sancto–
rum nuper eodem rhytmorum genere composita (Venice: Agustino Bindoni, 1556), 52v. (reproduced and translated into English in Giuliano and Scarpari 2018, p. 641).
that
is found again with some variants both in the exemplar of 1599 discovered in the Messina ecclesiastical archives, extracted from the Libro privilegiorum nobilis urbis Messanae
Erbetta takes as his starting point the treatise of the Austrian Jesuit Melchior Inchofer, published in 1629 in Messina by Pietro Brea under the title Epistolae beatae virginis Mariae ad
Messanenses Veritas vindicata ac plurimis grauissimorum scriptorum testimoniis et rationibus erudite illustrata.
it is clear that the basic text is the same as the Latin printed in 1668 by Placido Reina, in his Delle notizie istoriche delta citta di Messina seconda parte nella quale si narrano le cose piu
memorabili, che le sono intervenute, tanto nello stato ecclesiastico, quanto nel politico, dal principio della nostra salute infino a gli anni 600 del Signore. Messina: nella Stamperia dell’illustrissimo Senato, per Paolo Bonacota, 1668 (pp. 11-12; reprod backus 77=78); trans. in English Backus p. 92-93
trans. of Inchofer’s text in English Backus p. 93
3.2 Modern Translations
3.2.1 English
3.2.2 Italian
Erbetta, Mario. Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento. 3 vols. in 4. Turin: Marietti, 1966–1981 (vol. 3, pp. 145–46).
3.3 General Works
Backus, Irena. “The Letter of the Virgin Mary to the Inhabitants of Messina: Construction of a Historical Event.” Reformation & Renaissance Review 2, no. 1 (1999): 72–93.
Rowland, Ingrid D. “Melchior Inchofer, S. J., and the Letter of the Virgin Mary to the Citizens of Messina.” Pages 227–40 in Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800. Edited by Walter Stephens, Earle A. Havens, and Janet E. Gomez. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.
Cinquini, A. In lode di Messana: Per la storia letteraria di Messina net quattrocento. Rome, 1910.
Giuliano, Agostino, and Maurizio Scarpari. “The Letter of the Madonna to the People of Messina in Chinese by the Jesuit Metello Saccano: An Unknown Seventeenth-Century Manuscript.” Journal of Jesuit Studies 5 (2018): 631–41.
Lipari, G. “Per una storia della cultura letteraria a Messina.” Archivio storico messinese 33 (1982): 131–35.
Giuseppe Lipari, “La Madonna della Lettera nella cultura messinese,” in Arte, storiae tradizione nella devozione alla Madonna, ed. Giovanni Molonia (Messina: Tipografia Spi–
gnolo, 1995), 69–79.
Giovan Giuseppe Mellusi, “Dalla Lettera della Madonna alla Madonna della Lettera,” Archivio storico messinese 93 (2012): 237–61
Pispisa, E., and C. Trasselli. Messina nei secoli d’oro: Storia di una città dal Trecento al Seicento. Messina, 1988.
Giuseppe Buonfiglio and Costanzo, Messina città nobilissima (Venice: Gio. Antonio e Giacomo de Franceschi, 1606), 56v,
Placido Samperi, Iconologia della gloriosa Vergine Madre di Dio Maria Protettrice di Messina (Messina: Giacomo Matthei Stampatore Camerale, 1644), 74–75.