(2) The Sunday Letter was a fiction which originated in the south of France or northern Spain towards the end of the sixth century. It purported to be a letter, which had fallen from heaven, written in Latin by Christ’s own hand, denouncing judgement on those who did not observe Sunday rightly. It had great vogue in England before the Conquest, and furnished material for the homilies printed in Wulfstan, ed. Napier, nos. 43, 44, 45, 47, in Otia Merseiana i. 129, and in An Eng. Miscellany, 357. Latin versions are printed in the two last-named. Our author makes only general reference to it in 78/75-85, but ll. 85-91 are taken directly from a Dignatio diei Dominicae which is sometimes associated with it, and is found separately in the Pseudo-Augustine Sermons clxvii, cclxxx, and Alcuin, ed. Froben, ii. 487. It is also added to one MS. of the Visio Pauli (Brandes, 102), and it precedes the German version which he prints at p. 83. It also forms the subject of the fourteenth homily in OEH i. 139.
[1]. Leofemen: like ‘Men þa leofestan’ of the Blickling Homilies: the writer also uses, ‘Gode men.’ But ‘Lordinges and leuedis,’ 215/31 is French = Seingnurs & dames. ȝe willeliche: Zupitza prints ȝewilleliche (adv., meaning gladly), and the separation of the words in the manuscript is of no weight against it. But the prefix ge is in this text commonly reduced to i, and ȝewilleliche occurs nowhere else and has nothing to correspond in OE., the forms in which are willīce, willendlīce, while willeliche is in AR 396/20. ȝe is probably a repetition of the preceding by mistake for ec, which very frequently goes with and in these homilies (comp. 76/4, 78/68).
[2]. hit belongs to lusten as well as to understonden; comp. ‘þe luste nulleð þesne red,’ OEH i. 63/161, and for the postponement of hit, ‘Al hit us mei rede ⁊ to lare ȝif we wulleð,’ id. i. 15/5, where to goes with rede.
[3]. fredome: the Latin version in Harley 2851 has for title Priuilegia diei dominice.
[4]. blisse &c.: see 78/77.
[6]. erming, only here and at 76/22, 31 as adjective, for the usual armliche. OE. earming, a miserable person. rest of: comp. 78/96; ‘þæt is sio an ræst eallra urra geswinca,’ Boethius, 144/27; ‘hwonne him lifes weard, | frea ælmihtig frecenra siða | reste aȝeafe,’ Genesis, 1426; ‘lagosiða rest,’ id. 1486. Rare in ME., but for the verb comp. ‘thei rest of her traueilis,’ Apoc. xiv. 13 (Purvey).
[7]. to soþe &c.: see [90/73 note].
[8]. þet wes: comp. 1/10, where the verb is plural.
[10]. hu—ferde, how things went on there: ‘quia deus voluit ut Paulus videret penas inferni,’ B iv. 75/5. Mihhal—wuniende, there is nothing corresponding in B iv, but James has, ‘dixit [angelus] mihi: Veni et sequere me, et ostendam tibi animas impiorum et peccatorum ut cognoscas qualis sit locus,’ 28/17, and Adam de Ros, ‘Seint michiel en ueit auant | Sein pol ses hores disant,’ Ward, ii. 410.
[15], 16. eȝen: probably a mistake for eren (= ‘auribus’ B iv), as Kölbing pointed out in ES xxii. 137. hefede, by the hair, ‘capillis.’ heorte: a strange substitution for ‘brachiis’ of B iv.