Iacopone Da Todi: The Power of Mysticism and the Originality of Franciscan Poetry (Medieval Franciscans, 23) 9004512314, 9789004512313

Citation preview

31 mm

TMF 23

Matteo Leonardi, Ph.D, (2005), Università di Torino & Università di Trento, is a specialist of medieval literature. He published the ��rst complete edition of Iacopone’s Laude (2010), the Bibliogra��a iacoponica (2010), Bonvesin da la Riva’s Libro delle tre scritture (2014) and Storia della Lauda, secoli XIII-XVI (2021). Alessandro Vettori, Ph.D. (1995), Yale, is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. He specializes in medieval Franciscan writers (Poets of Divine Love, 2004), the rewriting of scripture (Giuseppe Berto, La passione della scrittura, 2013), and Dante (Dante’s Prayerful Pilgrimage, 2019).

THE MEDIEVAL FRANCISCANS 23 9 789004 512313

ISSN 1572-6991 brill.com/tmf

Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori (Eds.)

Contributors are Erminia Ardissino, Alvaro Cacciotti, Nicolò Crisa��, Anne-Gaëlle Cuif, Federica Franzè, Alexander J.B. Hampton, Magdalena Maria Kubas, Matteo Leonardi, Brian K. Reynolds, Oana Sălișteanu, Samia Tawwab, Alessandro Vettori, Carlo Zacchetti, and Estelle Zunino.

Iacopone da Todi

The ��rst ever collection of essays in English on Iacopone da Todi by a diverse group of international scholars, this book o�fers a contemporary critical assessment on this medieval Franciscan poet of the thirteenth century. Combining philological analyses with thematic studies and philosophical and theological interpretations of the original contents and style of Iacopone’s poetry, the collection considers a wide range of topics, from music to prayer and performance, mysticism, asceticism, ine�fability, Mariology, art, poverty, and the challenges of translation. It is a major contribution to the understanding of Iacopone’s laude in the 21st century.

The Medieval Franciscans • Volume 23

Iacopone da Todi The Power of Mysticism and the Originality of Franciscan Poetry

Edited by

Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori

Iacopone da Todi

The Medieval Franciscans General Editor Steven J. McMichael

volume 23

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tmf

Iacopone da Todi The Power of Mysticism and the Originality of Franciscan Poetry

Edited by

Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Iacopone da Todi. ©Cover art by Elena Molino. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Leonardi, Matteo, editor. | Vettori, Alessandro, editor. Title: Iacopone da Todi : the power of mysticism and the originality of Franciscan poetry / edited by Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2024. | Series: Medieval Franciscans, 1572-6991 ; volume 23 | Includes index. Identifiers: lccn 2023035648 (print) | LCCN 2023035649 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004512313 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004682986 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Jacopone, da Todi, 1230-1306–Criticism and interpretation.| LCGFT: Essays. | Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PQ4472.J3 I14 2024 (print) | LCC PQ4472.J3 (ebook) | DDC 851/.1–dc23/eng/20230810 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035648 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035649

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1572-6991 isbn 978-90-04-51231-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-68298-6 (e-book) Copyright 2024 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhofff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

This volume is dedicated to Father Paul Lachance, O.F.M., in memoriam, a great advocate for Iacopone da Todi and Iacoponian Studies

∵

Contents List of Figures and Tables IX Notes on Contributors x Introduction: Inside the Hood of the Mendicant: Iacopone’s Hidden Face 1 Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori

PART 1 Style, Rhetoric, Music, and the Construction of Poetic Identity 1 Poetry as Prayer in Iacopone’s Laude 11 Erminia Ardissino 2 Medieval Self-Fashioning: Performances of Personality and Authority in Iacopone and Dante 40 Nicolò Crisafi 3 “O novo canto, c’ài morto el planto de l’omo enfermato!” The Musical Spirit of Iacopone’s Laudario and the Development of a New Italian Melody 61 Federica Franzè 4 Educating, Enlightening, Edifying: Iacopone Da Todi’s Intellectual Journey 80 Estelle Zunino

PART 2 Translation, Transformation, Adaptation 5 Ineffability and the Urgent Need to Tell: Comparing Four Twentieth-Century Translations of Laudas 117 Magdalena Maria Kubas 6 Translating Iacopone da Todi in Romanian: A Noble Journey toward and inward amor d’esmesuranza 133 Oana Sălișteanu

viii

Contents

PART 3 The Language of Mysticism, Asceticism, and Marian Devotion 7 “Prindi da me dolcezza …”: Sweetness as a Principle of Asceticism and Salvation in the Laude of Iacopone Da Todi 147 Anne-Gaëlle Cuif 8 Rhythm and Poetic Mysticism in the Laude of Iacopone Da Todi 184 Alexander J. B. Hampton 9 “Sapor de Sapïenza”: Spiritual Senses and Body of the Spirit in Iacopone’s Laude 202 Matteo Leonardi 10 The Marian Laude of Iacopone da Todi: Tradition and Renewal 236 Brian K. Reynolds 11 Victorine Traces in Iacopone’s Laude 270 Carlo Zacchetti

PART 4 The Many Forms of Franciscanism 12 Francis of Assisi and Franciscanism in the Laudario of Iacopone da Todi 317 Alvaro Cacciotti 13 Image and Performance in Iacopone’s Laudario: the Case of Lauda 78, “Un arbore è da Deo plantato” 345 Samia Tawwab 14 In Sickness and in Health: Iacopone’s Mystical Marriage through Malady 369 Alessandro Vettori Index 389

Figures and Tables Figures 11.1 Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, ms. D 46 sup., f. 121r 273 11.2 Roma, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Frammenti I, busta 5, n. 6 (Caldelli 232) 277 11.3 Olomuc, Státní Vedecká Knihovna, olim Univerzitní Knihovna (Olmütz, Universitätsbibliothek), M I 305, f. 120r (Kamber 60) 289 11.4 Subiaco, Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale del Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 289 (CCLXXXIII), f. 72r 290 13.1 Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, cod. 2959, f. 100v, Iacopone da Todi, Un arbore è da Deo plantato 355 13.2 Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, ms. D 46 sup., f. 121r, Iacopone da Todi, Un arbore è da Deo plantato 356

Table 5.1

List of Iacopone texts translated by Father Salezy Kafel (published in Antologia mistyków franciszkańskich 120

Notes on Contributors Erminia Ardissino (Ph.D., Yale University; Dottorato di Ricerca, Università Cattolica, Milano) is associate professor at the University of Torino. Her research deals with Italian literature, with special attention to the relationship with history of ideas and religious experience. She has published several books on Dante, Renaissance, and Baroque Italian literature, and articles in the main journals of philology and literary studies. She has also edited critical editions of early Italian texts. Currently she is exploring reading and writing by women in Early Modern Italy (Donne interpreti della Bibbia nell’Italia della prima età moderna. Riscritture e comunità ermeneutiche, Brepols, 2020). She has received numerous awards, including the Renaissance Society of America Fellowship, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University Fellowship, and the Fulbright Distinguished Lectureship at the University of Chicago. Alvaro Cacciotti was awarded a doctorate in Dogmatic Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1988 and currently teaches Spiritual Dogmatic Theology at the Pontifical Antonianum University and the Pontifical Lateranensis University. He was Director of the School of Medieval and Franciscan Studies of the Pontifical Antonianum University (1993–2005) and Dean of the School of Theology at the same university (2014–2017). He taught in several institutions: The School of Theology in Naples, the Theological Institute in Assisi, and the Teresianum School of Theology in Rome. He is a member of the Executive Board of the International Society of Franciscan Studies, editor of the journal Frate Francesco, director of the Cultural Center Aracoeli of the Friars Minor, editor of the series Biblioteca di Frate Francesco, member of the editing board of the journal Studies in Spirituality in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His research interests are the relationships between Theology and Spirituality (XIII– XIV centuries), with particular emphasis on the production by Franciscan authors. His publications focus on mystical literature and Iacopone da Todi in particular. Nicolò Crisafi is Research and Teaching Fellow in Italian and Director of Studies of Modern Languages at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. He researches medieval Italian literature with a special focus on Dante and has published on narrative theory, the role of the reader(s), affect, and gender performance. He is the author of Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the ‘Commedia’

Notes on Contributors 

xi

(Oxford: OUP, 2022) and Reviews Editor for Pre-Modern Works at Italian Studies. Anne-Gaëlle Cuif Ph.D. in Medieval and Renaissance Literature and History (Italian Studies), She has worked on the notions of ‘dolcezza’ and ‘soavità’ as a therapeutic and soteriological emotion in the works of Dante Alighieri. Her thesis was defended at the University of Turin and University of Tours. Her current research focuses on the conception of aesthetic and spiritual emotions in religious and secular literature of the XIII–XVI centuries in France and Italy, in particular on the modes of expression and interpretation linked to poetic writing and musical performance, in their functions of “medicine of the soul”. As a musician, she plays the gothic and ancient harp with international performances and teaching activities. She actually teaches Latin and Medieval Art and Literature at the University of Lorraine. Federica Franzè received her Laurea in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Urbino. She has a Master’s degree in Italian literature and a Ph.D. in German literature from Rutgers University, where she has taught both languages. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Italian at Columbia University and one of the Directors of the language program. Her research interests include transnational literature, cinema and literature of migration, foreign language pedagogy, and teaching with technology. She has published extensively material for Italian language teachers. She is actively engaged in refugees and immigrant issues and in 2021 she earned a Master’s degree in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies from the University of London, and is volunteering for different integration projects for refugees in Italy and the US. Alexander J.B. Hampton is an Assistant Professor in the Religion Department at the University of Toronto, specializing in metaphysics, poetics, and nature. His publications include Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion (Cambridge 2019), Christian Platonism: A History (ed.) (Cambridge, 2021), and the Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment (Cambridge, 2022). He contributed the chapter on poetics and mysticism to The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology (2020). Magdalena Maria Kubas After obtaining a Master’s Degree in Italian Philology (Jagiellonian University in Cracow), She received her Ph.D. in Italian Literature, Philology and History

xii

Notes on Contributors

of Language at the University for Foreigners in Siena. She was subsequently appointed as a research assistant at the University of Warsaw and currently is a post-doctoral fellow at the university of Turin. Her research interests are: religious literature from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth century, mysticism in literature, representations of women in poetry and narrative, women’s writing, relationships between poetry and music, and translation. She is coeditor-in-chief of the academic journal “Quaderni del ʼ900”. She has published a monograph (Litanic Verse. Italia, Peter Lang, Berlin 2018) and, together with Witold Sadowski and Magdalena Kowalska, she co-edited two volumes dedicated to European poetry (Litanic Verse I : Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Media and Litanic Verse II. Britannia,Germania et Scandinavia, Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M. 2016) and several issues of academic journals dedicated to Dante, to both women’s writing (Amelia Rosselli, Dacia Maraini) and archives, and the spiritual autobiographies between the religious and the profane. Matteo Leonardi after having taught at the universities of Bern and Aosta, is now a contract professor of Italian literature at the University of Turin. His studies focused primarily on medieval literature: from laudes to the Franciscan tradition, from mystical literature to Dante Alighieri and Boccaccio. His monographs include the first complete and annotated edition of the Laude by Iacopone da Todi (Olschki, 2010), the Bibliografia iacoponica (Sismel, 2010), the Libro delle Tre Scritture by Bonvesin da la Riva (Longo, 2014) and the Storia della lauda. Secoli XIII–XVI (Brepols, 2021). In the field of modern literature he devoted himself to the study of the novella between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular attention to Giovanni Verga and Luigi Pirandello. Brian K. Reynolds teaches in the Italian Department and the Graduate Institute of Comparative Literature of Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, specialising in Medieval Italian Literature and in Mariology, and is also a member of the adjunct faculty at the Sophia University Institute, Florence. He received his primary degree from University College Dublin in Italian and history and went on to carry out his postgraduate studies at both UCD and Trinity College Dublin. He also lectured in both of these institutions and in the Università degli Studi, Bari prior to moving to Taiwan. Reynolds has written and spoken widely on Dante Alighieri and on Italian courtly and religious literature of the Middle Ages. At present he is mid-way through a project to produce a hypertext that illustrates the Marian and incarnational intra- and intertextuality of the Divine Comedy. Reynolds is also a recognised expert on Patristic and Medieval Mariology He is currently completing the second volume of his Gateway to Heaven series, on Marian

Notes on Contributors 

xiii

typological imagery, a previous volume being dedicated to having published a major study, Gateway to Heaven, on Patristic doctrine and devotion. Reynolds is on the board of several journals including Claritas: Journal of Dialogue and Culture and Maria: A Journal of Marian Studies. He is the founder and convenor of the Dante in East Asia Network and is a member, specialising in Mariology, of the International Interdisciplinary Abba School, based in Rome. Oana Sălișteanu is a professor of Italian Linguistics at Bucharest University where since 1990 she has been teaching Italian morphosyntax, dialectology, paremiology and phraseology and specialized terminology. Interests also in etymology and translation studies. Four volumes as a unique author, two Romanian Academy awards (1991, 2006) for her contributions in collective volumes about Italian dialects and Italian borrowings from Latin, tens of participations with scientific papers to international conferences. Member of Société de Linguistique Romane, Associazione di Fraseologia e Paremiologia Phrasis, Union of Romanians’ Writers (translators’ section). Translations into Romanian: fiction (Gabriele D’Annunzio, Giampaolo Rugarli, Luciano De Crescenzo, Fausto Brizzi, Luca D’Andrea), aesthetics and essays (five treaties by Umberto Eco) and 13th century Italian poetry in rhymed translations (Iacopone da Todi’s Laude and Guido Cavalcanti’s Rime). Samia Tawwab completed her M.A. & Ph.D. in Italian Studies, at the University of Toronto, with a doctorate dissertation on medieval religious drama, and particularly the performance of liturgical drama in Iacopone da Todi’s laude. Samia has taught undergraduate courses in Italian language, linguistics, and literature as a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto from 2006–2018. In 2018, Samia has completed MEd at York University, focusing her research on the teaching & learning of language and culture at the post-secondary level. Her research interests include internationalizing and adapting curricula to students with no background in Italian. Samia has been teaching at York University since 2016 and is currently a Sessional Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Italian Studies Program, at the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, at York University, in Toronto, Canada. Alessandro Vettori is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where he currently serves as Chair of the Department of Italian. His most recent monograph is Dante’s Prayerful Pilgrimage: Typologies of Prayer in Dante’s Comedy (Brill, 2019, Italian translation Edizioni Storia e Letteratura,

xiv

Notes on Contributors

2021). Other publications are: Poets of Divine Love (Fordham University Press, 2004), Giuseppe Berto, La passione della scrittura (Marsilio Editore, 2013), and articles on Dante, Boccaccio, Francis of Assisi, Iacopone da Todi, Giuseppe Berto, Diego Fabbri, and Luigi Pirandello. At the moment his research involves the use of money and poverty in Dante and Franciscan thinkers of the 13th and 14th centuries. He is the co-editor of a new translation series, “Other Voices of Italy,” with Rutgers University Press and he is the editor of the journal of Italian Studies Italian Quarterly. Carlo Zacchetti holds a Bachelor Degree in Lettere Moderne from the Università degli Studi di Milano (IT), with a thesis on Mario Luzi’s Nel magma, a Master of Arts in Lingua, Letteratura e Civiltà Italiana from the Istituto di Studi Italiani at Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano (CH), with a thesis on Petrarch’s Canzoniere. After several stays abroad (Paris and Geneva), where he worked in the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes in Paris with Prof. Dominque Poirel, he discussed a Ph.D thesis at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (IT), on January 2022. The thesis (La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura francescana dell’Italia medievale [XIII–XIV secolo]) was awarded the Premio Paul Sabatier. XI edizione from the Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani and is currently ahead of publication. In January 2019, he organized, in collaboration with Prof. Corrado Bologna, an International Conference at the SNS, whose Acts have been published in 2022 (La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura medievale). Estelle Zunino is associate professor at Lyon, University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, and member of the pluridisciplinary joint research unit IRHIM, Institut d’Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités. Her research focuses mainly on the Italian medieval literature. She has published papers on Iacopone da Todi, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca as well as a monograph about Iacopone da Todi, Conquêtes littéraires et quête spirituelle (PUPS, 2013). She has also codirected and introduced a volume of essays about Italian literature (of Middle Age and Renaissance) Herméneutique et commentaire (2019) and another about Nostalgia, Nostalgie, conceptualisation d’une émotion (PUN, 2021).

Introduction: Inside the Hood of the Mendicant: Iacopone’s Hidden Face Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori A Franciscan friar of the third generation of the Order, Iacopone da Todi (1230–1306) has been and continues to be a controversial figure among scholars of Franciscanism as well as literary critics. The originality of his religious poetic compositions in the style of laude in his native Umbrian dialect has inspired reactions varying from extremely unfavorable appraisals to enthusiastic acclaim. Although the attribution of some poems has been widely disputed, including the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, one of his most famous hymns, Iacopone has gone down in literary history for his genuine style, unembellished language, and the originality of his tones. His contribution to the Italian literary canon was generally antagonized because his production was considered esthetically unappealing. However, some of his most famous laude have been regarded as an original milestone in spiritual writing for their fiery language, their uncompromising mysticism, and their unbridled honesty in the pursuit of salvation as the sole Christian goal. They are now considered seminal for the subsequent development of religious poetry. The profound spiritual fervor of the 12th century, combined with unprecedented social changes, inspired large groups of lay people from the nascent middle class to reclaim political and cultural power. In the religious sphere this meant the beginning of sacred literature no longer in Latin but in the vernacular, with its most popular expression in paraliturgical contexts such as the laude, later collected in laudesi, or collections of religious poems. This new genre found its most exclusive representative in Iacopone, who made this type of poetry his own, left an indelible mark on it, and gave it a vital impulse for future developments. Iacopone’s very original poetic texts will influence the lauda for style, subject matter, vocabulary, and meter, but also for the integration of courtly rhetoric into its sacred semantics, which will have an impact for all future compositions of laude. It was only in very recent times, however, that Iacopone was finally canonized as one of the main poets of the 13th century. His texts surprise and astonish readers, they invariably cause passionate discussions, invite radical interpretations, and escape any attempt to be placed into well-defined categories. Despite the two critical editions, one by Franca Brambilla and one by Franco Mancini, numerous philological and interpretive controversies remain © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_002

2

INTRODUCTION. INSIDE THE HOOD OF THE MENDICANT

open, starting from the ecdotic question and the issue of textual reconstruction that Lino Leonardi has highlighted. Another controversial issue concerns the genre of the poems, which tradition has handed down to us as “laude,” but whose definition may be too restrictive, since the poet’s complex, ambiguous, and dialectic relation to the secular and sacred lyric of his times needs further clarification and more careful investigation. The poet’s unique spiritual sensitivity relates to European mysticism in the Franciscan novel variety and creates an unsolved tension between a popular, seemingly anti-intellectual vocation and the imprint of his profound theological meditation, which is rich in sophisticated allusions. For centuries Iacopone’s poems were never given consideration for their great literary importance. They were relegated to a lesser role as sheer testimonies of popular devotion destined to meditative purposes; they were appreciated only for their religious value within Franciscan circles, particularly in the Observant section of the Order or among preachers such as Bernardino da Siena and subsequently the Oratorians of Saint Phillip Neri. It is not surprising, therefore, that the myth of the poet as “jongleur of God” survived until recently and has not totally disappeared to this day. Iacopone was gradually rehabilitated and rescued from the Romantic label of buffoon during the first half of the 20th century thanks to the new interpretations of Francesco Novati, Ernesto Giacomo Parodi, Mario Casella, Evelyn Underhill, and Agide Gottardi, who reconstructed the dialogue between Iacopone’s laude and the literary, philosophical, and theological traditions of his time, delivering the poet from legend back to history. On the poetic side, the emphasis placed on Iacopone’s technical dexterity, although very different from the sublime accomplishments of Dante’s very controlled poetry, revisited and reversed the idea of Iacopone as a purely instinctive writer of interesting rhymes. On the theological side, the re-evaluation of Iacopone’s sophisticated knowledge of the Christian tradition transformed his image of a purely affective and pragmatic mystic into a writer who conveys important theological concepts in poetic form. The new assessment also dispelled the legend of Iacopone’s “proud and tragic isolation” and of his “individuality that is almost identical to his name,” if we use definitions and expressions by Natalino Sapegno and Ovidio Capitani, respectively. Recent analyses have painted a new picture of Iacopone as a profoundly engagé poet who deliberately takes a stand in the socio-political, spiritual, and cultural tensions of his time. His laude show a complex and dynamic personality, full of internal contradictions and in constant dialogue with the voices and echoes of the secular world, for the most part in order to gain distance from it. The last twenty years of critical work on Iacopone confirm the need to open his work wide to the world in order to appreciate the variety of its implications, such as its role in the history of Franciscanism, popular religiosity, and

INTRODUCTION. INSIDE THE HOOD OF THE MENDICANT

3

the nascent vernacular lauda. The seventh anniversary of Iacopone’s death inspired the organization of conferences, as for example those in Stroncone (2005) and Todi (2006), that enriched the interpretation of Iacopone’s life and work by addressing the most varied issues, from biographical reconstruction to the historical and political contextualization, formal analysis of the poet’s rhetoric and research on his sources. The collected essays edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò in 2020 summarize the latest critical contributions of almost exclusively Italian scholars. The amalgamation of the poet’s sacred and secular culture, his poetic technique, and his spiritual doctrine, which is often hidden and dissimulated in humble language, challenge contemporary readers to acknowledge the greatness of this author and not repress one aspect while concentrating on another. 1

Iacopone as Umbrian, Italian, and European Poet

As the critical opinion on Iacopone gradually gained complexity and became more objective, his highly cultural profile also started to emerge and the poet was inserted into the history of local, national, and international culture. The realization was that this was the identity of an exquisitely Umbrian, uniquely Italian, and profoundly European intellectual. Many have embraced the challenge of penetrating Iacopone’s mystery; they are Italian and non-Italian readers, a very diverse group of scholars coming from different countries but also approaching Iacopone’s work from different perspectives and analyzing his poetry with different critical skills, cultural background, and intellectual sensibility. A crucial contribution to the understanding of the laude was offered in the 20th century by some critical works in the English language. There are two very illuminating monographs, one by Evelyn Underhill (1919) and one by George Peck (1980), while other scholarly analyses have focused on specific aspects of Iacopone’s poetry, as for example the works of Vincent Moleta (in the 1970s and 1980s), Bradley B. Dick (1994), and Louise V. Katainen (1996). Other important critical works originated in French, such as André Pézard’s essays in the 1950s and 1960s, those by Marie-Hélène Battail in the 1990s, by Jean Lacroix and Veronique Abbruzzetti in the early 2000s, and Estelle ­Zunino’s critical ­production in the last fifteen years. The new interest in Iacopone outside of Italy has also produced translations of his complete poems in English by Elizabeth and Serge Hughes (1982), in Dutch in the journal Franciscus van Assisi (1986–1988), and more recently in French by Maxime Castro (2013) and in Rumanian by Oana Salisteanu (2018). Translations of selected poems also appeared in German by Herta Federmann (1924), in Catalan by Xavier d’Olot and Nolasc d’El Molar (1930), and in Polish by Salezy Kafel (1986). Translating

4

INTRODUCTION. INSIDE THE HOOD OF THE MENDICANT

Iacopone’s poems into a different language engages the translator in the very difficult task of transferring the fullness of meaning in the grammar of another language; switching both signifier and signified of the original text was an opportunity to highlight the density of thought and the force of expression of his poetry. 2

Infinite Exegesis

Iacopone’s poems have been explored and investigated by multiple perspectives and diverse sensibilities; those who studied his works are critics with a plurality of opinions that are sometimes very distant from one another. The various points of view integrate each other, contributing to the unveiling of Iacopone’s “mystery,” the hidden meaning of his sometimes obscure and ­puzzling texts. The multiplicity of opinions that is necessary to unfold the complexity of his thought and the intricate dynamic of his poetry generates the provocative hypothesis that perhaps it is exactly thanks to this plurality of exegetical analyses in disagreement with one another that criticism can do justice to the poet’s spirit which is—it too—in constant tension and conflict with itself. The discovery in the last century was that Iacopone’s poetry is much more refined and constructed than previously believed. Readers can appreciate all its various elements and allusive implications only when they are confronted with diverse analyses perceiving them from many different angles and when they are offered multidisciplinary and “global” readings. This collection of essays constitutes an additional step forward in the history of the polyphonic exegesis of Iacopone’s laude. Fourteen scholars from Canada, France, Italy, Rumania, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States have embraced the challenge of offering new and original interpretations of Iacopone’s poetic work from a wide variety of points of view. Some articles look at formal, rhetorical, and musical aspects of the poems as well as possible sources. Erminia Ardissino analyzes the many laude that can be considered rhyming prayers; she conceives of prayer as a dialogue with God as well as a dialogue with oneself about one’s relationship with God, while highlighting the formal richness of prayers and not just in the genre of tenzo. Nicolò Crisafi investigates the rhetorical strategies with which Iacopone constructs his powerful poetic personality in relation to the Franciscan project of theatrical preaching and in constant comparison with the similar and yet very different model that Dante designed. Federica Franzè focuses her attention on the complex relationship of Iacopone’s poetry with music; she supports the poet’s familiarity with musical language, while emphasizing a sharp

INTRODUCTION. INSIDE THE HOOD OF THE MENDICANT

5

detachment from the rigid setup and unchanging repetitiveness of religious hymns, which Iacopone eschews in favor of original and refreshing poetic solutions. Estelle Zunino identifies in Iacopone the profile of an intellectual who is perfectly aware of the challenges facing the author when he is attempting to blend together his literary vocation and his love for God, while formulating in his laude a spiritual pedagogy of action in the world. Two of the essays consider translations of the laude in other languages. ­Magdalena Maria Kubas looks at the Polish rendition of the laude by Salezy Kalef while also referring to French and English translations as she makes important reflections on a contemporary rereading of the medieval debate on ineffability. Oana Salisteanu offers a fascinating account of the challenges she faced while translating Iacopone’s poems into Rumanian and of the necessity to preserve the creative expressiveness of the Umbrian dialect in the very different sounds of another language. The language of mysticism and asceticism is the focus of the largest group of essays. Alexander Hampton recognizes the revelation of mystical experience in the tensions characterizing the language of ecstasy; it is this quality that shows closeness to a transcendental divinity. Ineffable language, according to Hampton, bears the quality of a binary rhythm oscillating between two opposite extremes (humanity and divinity, absence and presence, silence and speech) and shapes the poems in the form of tenzo. Anne-Gaëlle Cuif amalgamates mysticism and rhetoric in a study that promotes the centrality of dulcedo and suavitas. These are considered both as poetic categories and as spiritual motifs, overlapping not with superficial enjoyment but with the fullness of ecstasy that may even lead to the annihilation of the ego to become lost in the greatness of God. Matteo Leonardi explains how the senses are stigmatized in the conflict against material temptations and are transformed into spiritual senses that feed the relationship with God, reborn in the mystical perception of creation as image of God and love of Love. Brian K. Reynolds investigates the figure of Mary and links the Franciscan affective devotion for the Mother of God to the praise of Mary as mediator between God and mankind; he inserts his research in the tradition of Marian hymns while connecting it also to the debate between supporters and deniers of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Carlo Zacchetti’s essay deals with the adaptation of Victorine theology in the laude; it revisits and enriches the scholarship on the influence of the Victorines in Iacopone’s spirituality, identifying in Lauda 78 (89 in Ageno’s numbering) the link between Victorine theology and Iacopone’s own poetic itinerary toward God. Other articles turn their attention to the poet’s rendition of Franciscan spirituality. Alvaro Cacciotti analyzes the laude that are dedicated to Francis

6

INTRODUCTION. INSIDE THE HOOD OF THE MENDICANT

of Assisi and captures the heart itself of Iacopone’s mysticism in a celebration of a loving God that turns the impossible into a possibility, uniting God’s perfection with mankind’s imperfection. Samia Abdel Tawwab illustrates the ­dialogue between Iacopone’s laude and some images that may have portrayed the contents of his poems, in particular Lauda 78 (89 in Ageno); in this lauda the interaction between characters is particularly important because it highlights the performative value of Iacopone’s poetry that may also have served as a preaching tool. Alessandro Vettori analyzes the profound (but as yet unexplored) connections between Franciscan poverty and malady as privation of health, departing from Lauda 81 (48 in Ageno) and enlarging the scope to include suffering and physical death as synonyms for Christian salvation in Iacopone’s theology of the cross. We are writing this Introduction at a time when the world is at once much smaller but equally divided by war, disease, and inequality as the one Iacopone lived and wrote in, a world that needs to give more space to original and previously silenced voices from the margins. The present volume aims at re-­ evaluating an author who was much-neglected and marginalized because, in his own way, he was a voice of diversity that openly criticized and denounced injustices, abuses, and corruption—and was jailed and risked his life for his integrity and openness. As collaboration among scholars at different stages of their career, with diverse expertise, and originating from the most various ­ linguistic, geographic, and intellectual backgrounds, this collection of essays gives testimony to the poet’s wide-ranging attraction and offers a glimpse into the complexity of his creativity and originality. As for all great works of literature, Iacopone’s laude open up to the challenge of an endless exegesis, which finds new depths and explores new dimensions the more it deepens its research. This never-ending exposition reproduces the experience of sacredness as connected to poetry and love, which are two of the main ingredients of Iacopone’s texts—or in the poet’s own words, “Amore, Amore, tanto si prefondo, / chi plu t’abraccia, sempre plu t’abrama!,” “Love, Love, you are so deep,/ that whoever embraces you desires you all the more” (Lauda 89, 90 in Ageno, our translation).

∵ We asked all contributors to use the Mancini edition of the Laude, so the numbering throughout the volume follows the one adopted in his edition. The

INTRODUCTION. INSIDE THE HOOD OF THE MENDICANT

7

English translation of Iacopone’s laude is by Elizabeth and Serge Hughes, The Lauds (New York-Ramsey-Toronto: Paulist Press, 1982) and we point out all instances in which this particular translation is not used. We have preferred to adopt the spelling “Iacopone” for the poet’s name instead of the one used in Italian “Jacopone,” in order to make it phonetically closer to its Italian pronunciation, since the initial “J” is actually pronounced like an Italian “I” and not like an English “J.” Acknowledgements We would like to thank Maria Teresa De Luca, Paolo Scartoni, and Sandra Waters for their invaluable editing work on the volume.

Part 1 Style, Rhetoric, Music, and the Construction of Poetic Identity

∵

chapter 1

Poetry as Prayer in Iacopone’s Laude Erminia Ardissino There are many literary genres to which it is possible to ascribe Iacopone’s laude, but one of the most over-looked of those is prayer.1 Indeed the Italian lauda, as a musical, literary, or religious form is itself a prayer, a song in itself or created to be sung, recited, dramatized, for devotional purposes by an ecclesiastical or secular group in a liturgical or non-liturgical setting.2 Iacopone’s laude belong to this devotional genre: some of them were created within the Franciscan order to which the author belonged, for recitation or singing with the purpose of spiritual advancement.3 Not all his poems can correctly be described as laude, even if all were collected under this title: some are autobiographical texts, while the majority are some form of exhortation to moral and religious improvement, created as an aid to religious meditation, the medieval

1 In the introduction to his edition of Iacopone’s Laude Matteo Leonardi writes: “il testo del Tudertino sfugge a rigide interpretazioni e si pone al crocevia dei generi,” then indicates two dominant literary genres in the Laude: the homily form and the mystical form, the first which announces the divine, and the second which tells of the presence of the divine (­Matteo ­Leonardi, “Introduzione,” in Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. Matteo Leonardi [­Florence: Olschki, 2010], p. xi). 2 For the definition and history of the laude see the recent synthesis by Matteo Leonardi, Storia della lauda. Secoli xiii–xvi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021). The essays by Cattin, Ageno, Pasquini, Bruni, Baldassarri, Dessì, and Varanini’s edition of the Laude dugentesche are still useful. 3 On Iacopone’s life and writings see: Enrico Menestò, Le vite antiche di Iacopone da Todi (­Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977); George T. Peck, The Fool of God: Iacopone da Todi (­Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980); Marco Poli, Iacopone da Todi: un francescano scomodo ma attuale. Atti della XV edizione delle giornate dell’Osservanza. Bologna 13–14 maggio 1996 (­Bologna: Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e di Ravenna, 1997); Franco Suitner, Iacopone da Todi. Poesia, mistica, rivolta nell’Italia del Medioevo (Rome: Donzelli, 1999); Antonio Montefusco, Iacopone nell’Umbria del Due-Trecento. Un’alternativa francescana (Rome: Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, 2006); Enrico Menestò, ed., La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007). On the philological aspects of the editions of his works: Lino Leonardi, “La tradizione manoscritta e il problema testuale del laudario di Iacopone,” in Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno di studi Internazionale Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001), and Lino Leonardi, “Per l’edizione critica del laudario di Iacopone,” in Menestò, ed., La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, 83–111 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_003

12

ARDISSINO

ruminatio.4 Nonetheless, many of them are indeed prayers or take the form of prayer. Criticism has only recently considered them in this category, however. In her 1961 essay on Iacopone’s poetics, Lidia Menapace Brisca identified three poetic forms for his verse: the exposition form (“modo dell’esposizione”), for poems which have didactic content and demonstrate the poet’s learning; the dramatic form, in dialogues, tenzo, and small religious dramas; and pure eulogy in the form of prayer or confession. But the scholar did not develop her initial analysis, as she devoted her article solely to didactic or exposition poetry, looking for the poet’s lyric achievements.5 In his 2007 essay which seeks to assign a genre to Iacopone’s laude, Matteo Leonardi makes more interesting and advanced observations. He proposes first hymnology, which in fact appears as a crucial influence on the collection, not only in its forms, but above all in the influence which Latin hymnology had on Iacopone’s laude, as quotations and hidden allusions demonstrate.6 Leonardi, however, does not describe the laude as prayers exactly, but as hymns - and even then it is not an entirely tidy categorisation. Eventually, he identifies the sermon as the most fitting genre to which to ascribe Iacopone’s poetry, devoting his attention almost entirely to this (although he does consider briefly the important influence of mystical experience on Iacopone’s poetry).7 Finally, in a collection of essays on Franciscans at prayer, Alessandro Vettori in the same year devoted an entire essay to discussing the laude as prayers.8 Here, after a substantial ­introduction on the 4 For the autobiographical laude: Matteo Leonardi, “Tracce autobiografiche e riferimenti storici nelle laude di Iacopone da Todi,” Franciscana 9 (2007): 67–148. Natalino Sapegno, Frate Iacopone (Torino: Edizioni del Baretti, 1926; Torino: Aragno, 2008) is still useful. 5 See Lidia Menapace Brisca, “La poetica di Iacopone,” Contributi dell’Istituto di Filologia Moderna 1 (1961), pp. 1–43. Even Giovanni Pozzi writes: “Ci sono pure le forme varie della preghiera, dalla petizione alla lode che si concentra sull’interiezione, evitando le forme verbali performative, che sono così diffuse nella lode biblica e francescana” (Giovanni Pozzi, “­Jacopone poeta?” in Alternatim [Milan: Adelphi, 1996], p. 85). But the focus of his essay is not the literary genre, and the question remains unexplored. 6 Matteo Leonardi, “Frate Iacopone tra laus e predicazione,” Critica letteraria 34 (2007): 211–39. Among the works attributed to Iacopone there are in fact several hymns, such as the wellknown Stabat Mater. See the chapter on hymnology in Matteo Leonardi, Bibliografia iacoponica (Florence: SISMEL, 2010), pp. 134–40. On the Stabat mater see Emore Paoli, “­Iacopone e lo Stabat mater. A proposito di una vexata quaestio,” in “Fugo la croce che devura.” Studi c­ ritici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, eds. Bassetti and Menestò (Spoleto: Centro I­ taliano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020), pp. 331–80. 7 Leonardi, Frate Iacopone, 218–39. He also devotes almost the entire introduction to his ­edition of the Laude to sermons. See Leonardi, “Introduzione,” pp. xi–xxxix. 8 Alessandro Vettori, “Singing with Angels: Iacopone da Todi’s Prayerful Rhetoric,” in Franciscans at Prayer, ed. Timothy Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Vettori also published a book which

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

13

laude form and on Iacopone, the scholar presents the themes and forms in Iacopone’s work that can be considered prayer-like; that is, nudity and sexual union as metaphors for mystical union with God; the apophatic attitude of Iacopone’s mysticism, where “silence is a form of prayer leading to contemplation;”9 the use of harmonious musical sounds as “an audible perception of a transcendental order of nature,”10 which is at the foundation of Franciscan theology (and Iacopone’s work); “a metaphorical rendering of the mystery of Incarnation through the medium of music;”11 and finally litany-like prayers as an expression of God’s ineffability. Vettori’s essay goes to the heart of Iacopone’s poetry, focusing, as the beautiful title indicates, on the prayer-like rhetoric which is so close to song, where “sound surmounts the literal or even metaphorical significance of words,”12 in order to portray and translate the idea of transcendence and eventually mystical union. Other themes and forms of prayer found in the Laude, even if listed in Vettori’s essay, are left aside: “reflections on Christ mysteries,” “petitionary prayers,” “request to God to convey his love to the soul,” and commentary on The Lord’s Prayer, leaving space for more considerations on “Iacopone da Todi’s prayerful rhetoric.”13 Prayer is a very complex subject with religious, theological, historical, performative, and anthropological aspects, as every scholar on the topic has found.14 Here we will take a literary perspective, but this remains ­challenging,

9 10 11 12 13 14

deals with Iacopone a few years earlier: Alessandro Vettori, Poets of Divine Love. Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), where he discusses Iacopone’s Laude on pp. 112–92. Vettori identified the prayer form as one of the genres of the Laude in these pages: “Iacopone’s Laude display a wide range of topics and styles. His poems feature invocations, petitions, thankful songs to God, didactic, edifying poems, virulent and satirical attacks on the poets’ enemies, irreverent and pugnacious diatribes against the corrupt papacy and the clergy, and poetic renderings of theological and doctrinal issues, as well as prayerful addresses to God” (Vettori, Poets of Divine Love, pp. 112–13). Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 230. Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 237. Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 240. Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 248. Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 225. The bibliography on prayer is vast. For basic orientation I used: A. Fonck, “Prière,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey, 1936), XIII, cll, pp. 149–244; F. C. Lehener, Mental Prayer and Modern Life. A Symposium (New York: Kenedy & Sons: 1950); Robert Guelluy and Guy Lafon, eds., La prière du chrétien (Brussels: Facultés Universitaire Saint Louis, 1981); Ann Belford Ulanov and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech. A Psychology of Prayer (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982); Ermanno Ancilli, ed. La preghiera. Bibbia, teolo�gia, esperienze storiche (Rome: Città Nuova, 1990), Andreas Jungmann, Breve storia della preghiera cristiana (Brescia: Queriniana, 1991); Jean-Luc Solére, “De l’orateur à l’orant. La

14

ARDISSINO

as prayer has never yet been considered fully as a literary genre, and its literary aspects are neglected by scholarship. Although many masterpieces of all Western literary traditions are in the form of prayer (in Italian literature alone we have St Francis’ Cantico delle Creature, Dante’s prayers in the Comedy, Petrarch’s prayers in his Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, Tasso’s and Marino’s collections of sacred poems, Manzoni’s Inni, and recently poetry in form of prayer by Giuseppe Ungaretti, Giovanni Giudici and Mario Luzi. The same can be said for other European literature, as John of the Cross, Silesius, the metaphysical poets, and Peguy’s poems attest), examples of literary criticism on this specific form are rare. Even if prayer is not included among the literary genres, prayer is nevertheless a form of verbal communication, and at its best it is literature, even shaping the literary canon. Thus, it needs to be studied not only as a form of devotion, but also as a speech act, in its grammatical, syntactic, and rhetorical aspects, carefully constructed to specific rules (dispositio). In its essence prayer is an oris ratio, a linguistic activity, determined by language, as the word oratio, used in ecclesiastical Latin for prayer, indicates. This aspect had been well noted by medieval rhetoricians who devote special attention to prayer in their treatises, as Guillaume of Auvergne shows in his Rhetorica divina, and Gunther of Paris in his De oratione, jejunio et elemosyna.15 In the Middle Ages prayer was subject to rhetorical rules, according to which the beggar can become an

15

“rhétorique divine” dans la culture chrétienne occidentale,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 21 (1994), pp. 187–224; Manlio Simonetti and Salvatore Pricoco, eds. La preghiera dei cristiani (Milan: Mondadori – Fondazione Valla, 2000); Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, Prayer. A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company); B. Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba, The Phenomenology of Prayer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); JeanFrançois Cottier, La prière en latin. De l’Antiquité à la Renaissance: forms, évolutions, significations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006); Roy Hammerling, ed. A History of Prayer. The First to the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Jan Ramazani, Prayer and its Others (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014). On medieval artes orandi: Bertilo De Boer, “L’attention dans la prière chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 60 (1960), pp. 110–17; Barbara H. Jaye, “Artes orandi,” in Typologie des sources du Moyen Age 61 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), pp. 77–118; Nicole Bériou, Jacques Berlioz, and Jean Longères, eds., Prier au Moyen Âge. Pratiques et expériences (V–XV s.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991); Gérald Antoni, La prière chez Saint Augustin. D’une Philosophie du langage à la Théologie du Verbe (Paris: Vrin, 1997); Patrick Henriet, La parole et la prière au Moyen Âge. Le Verbe efficace dans l’hagiographie monastique des siècles XI et XII (Brussels: De Boeck, 2000); Giulio D’Onofrio, “Prière, philosophie et théologie durant l’antiquité chrétienne et le haut Moyen Age,” in Cottier, ed., La prière, pp. 317–35; Rachel Fulton Brown, “Oratio/Prayer,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, eds. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 167–77.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

15

o­ rator, an expert in the art of speaking to God, to persuade Him, to praise Him, or to show the believer’s affection, all in the space of a short speech. Prayer is a dialogue with God, which has as its object God Himself or a relationship with Him, and it is at the very heart of religious experience and faith. It expresses “a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence.”16 Prayer is then above all a communicative act, in which one of the interlocutors is silent but not absent, at least for the other interlocutor. Iacopone’s laudario was not ordered by the poet according to some meaningful principle – as in Petrarch’s canzoniere – but instead is arranged in an order to suit the manuscripts in which it is found. The first lauda which takes the form and the content of a prayer is the twelfth, Signor, dàme la morte, which is an invocation to God, who has increased the beggar’s suffering as he is an unfaithful servant of his Lord.17 The beggar shows his affection for God, but he also recognizes his own indignity: “questa drammatica confessione delle proprie colpe amplifica il tema mistico, caro a Iacopone, dell’incommensurabilità fra Dio e uomo.”18 The poem starts with the invocation to God, called “Signor” twice in anaphora in the first two strophes. These include also the petition which summarises the poem: Signor, dàme la morte ’nante ch’e’ plu t’afenda e lo cor me sse fenda ch’ en mal perseveranno. Signor, non t’è iovato mustrannome cortesia, tanto so’ stato engrato pleno de vellania. Pun fine a la vita mia, che gita t’è contrastanno. (30, 1–10) [Lord, let me die Before I offend You any further, Let my heart stop beating, Rather than persevere in evil. 16 Hammerling, A History of Prayer, p. 3. 17 I use the edition by Matteo Leonardi, then his numerology for each lauda. English translation is taken from that by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes, here indicated as Hughes-Hughes. 18 Matteo Leonardi’s introduction to the poem, in Iacopone da Todi, Laude, p. 29.

16

ARDISSINO

Your indulgence, Lord, Has been no avail, So ungrateful have I been, So unpardonably churlish. End this life that continues To place obstacles in Your path. (Hughes-Hughes 87)] An apostrophe, an opening address to the Divine, is necessary for prayer to call for God’s attention, to put oneself before Him requesting His response. In this poem there is then an immediate demand: not praise, blessing, thanksgiving, nor repentance, just the request for the nullification of himself, and its motivation: his enduring evil. The opposition between the two entities, the speaker and the divine addressee, could not be more clear. “Cortesia” and “vellania,” words taken from love lyric, contrast the two characters, who have between them the “offesa,” the act deserving of judgement.19 The request is for death, the deletion of himself: “dàme la morte”, “Pun fine a la vita mia”, and further: “Megl’è che tu m’occide” (v. 11, “Better that you will kill me, Lord”). This is a common attitude in Iacopone’s poems: the desire for annihilation appears in much of his verse (and in his Tractatus utilissimus).20 Signor, dàme la morte also lists 19

20

The poem is full of words taken from the law, as Lucarelli has shown. For the influence of love poetry on Iacopone’s Laude see: Carlo Felice Tappa, “Contatti fra la poesia di Iacopone e la lirica siciliana e provenzale,” Testo 1 (1981), pp. 52–72; Elena Landoni, Il ‘libro’ e la ‘sententia’. Scrittura e significato nella poesia medievale: Iacopone, Dante, Cecco Angiolieri (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990), pp. 19–55; Maurizio Perugi, “Trovatori in lingua d’oc e poeti del Duecento italiano nel laudario di Iacopone,” in Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno, pp. 205–32; Antonio Montefusco “Iacopone tra estremismo e negazione,” Linguistica e letteratura 29 (2005), pp. 9–38; Aldo Menichetti, “Iacopone e la poesia profana,” in Suitner, ed., Iacopone, pp. 153–64; Matteo Leonardi, “Nec sine te nec tecum: la sofferta dialettica tra le laude iacoponiche e la tradizione lirica,” in Bassetti and Menestò, eds., “Fugo la croce,” pp. 89–102; Elena Landoni “Strategie linguistiche di un intellettuale sovversivo. La poesia di Iacopone da Todi dall’antiletterarietà all’ultraletterarietà,” in Bassetti and Menestò, eds., “Fugo la croce,” pp. 119–40. This attitude is also central to Franciscan spirituality: Robert Bultot, “La doctrine du mépris du monde, en Occident, de St. Ambroise à Innocent III,” in Christianisme et valeurs humaines. Tome IV (Paris: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1963); Czeslaw Gniecki, Visione dell’uomo negli scritti di Francesco d’Assisi (Roma: Edizioni Antonianum, 1987); Vito Fumagalli, Solitudo carnis. Vicende del corpo nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990); Roberto Zavalloni, “La ‘corporeità’ nel pensiero francescano. Da San Francesco a Duns Scoto,” Antonianum 66 (1991), pp. 532–62; G. Iammarrone, “Corpo-carne,” in Dizionario francescano (Padua: Edizioni Messaggero, 1995), col. 253–66; Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong, Il corpo nel Medioevo (Bari: Laterza, 2008); Alessandro Montani, “Oltraggio al corpo ed uso delle fonti bibliche: la lauda O Segnor, per cortesia di Iacopone da Todi,” Rassegna europea di letteratura italiana 14 (1999), pp. 107–22; Alfredo Troiano, “‘Sozzo, malvascio corpo, lussurioso e

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

17

that which God can take away, one by one: “santate”, “officio” (of the body), “libertate”, “affetto”, “pietanza”, and “baldanza” (“health”, “function”, “all freedom of action”, “affection”, “pity on me”, “self-confidence”) . Each privation corresponds to how the speaker has misused the gifts given to him: he misused his body and wealth, he had no pity for the sick, and he was even cruel to other creatures.21 In the conclusion, which also contains an anaphora in the last two strophes (“O cor, e co’ ’l pòi pensare / che ’n te non vai consumanno? // O cor, e co’ ’l pòi pensare / de lassar turbato l’Amore”, “How can you dwell on this, / O my heart, // How can you turn your back on Love, / Love that grieves for you?”), there is a shift from prayer to the speaker addressing himself: the interlocutor is now his own heart, to which he declares his total worthlessness. But according to Iacopone’s theology, it is exactly the humiliation of oneself that is the principle for salvation. Love (“Amore” = God-Christ) will be saddened by his disappearance, as he underwent great suffering for man’s salvation (“patéo tanto labore,” “Who suffered for you”). The incarnation and Christ’s passion would be useless, if the I-persona was nonetheless lost to damnation. Thus, (“or pensa lo so disonore,” “weep over the dishonour you have done”) the I-persona tells his own heart to separate itself from his body (“de te non gire curanno,” “Put aside all concern about yourself”) in order to better show his nullity. The prayer shows the immense distance between the human being and his addressee. The speaker addresses himself in refuting his body and pondering Christ’s passion (another essential theme of the Laude): “amar me malfattore” (“to love myself, the malefactor”), he will say in laud 51. In this poem this opposition between God and the speaker is the focus, played out through a direct comparison. In fact the poem O vita de Iesù Cristo, specchio de veretate is constructed, in the first half, on the basis of the poet’s own “deformetate” “deformity”): Parìame esser chevelle, chevelle me tinìa, l’oppinione c’avìa facìam’esser iocondo; quardanno en quello specchio la luce che n’oscìa, mustrò la vita mia che iacìa nel profondo; vìnneme planto abundo, vedenno esmesuranza,

21

‘ngordo’: la visione del corpo nel De contemptu mundi di Jacopone da Todi,” Italian Poetry Review 1 (2006), pp. 255–72. For the Tractatus utilissimus and the attribution to the poet see the recent edition Iacopone da Todi, Tractatus utilissimus. Verba, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2015). Matteo Leonardi synthesises the sins as “edonismo”, “indifferenza”, “cattivo uso delle creature”, in the introduction to the poem, in Iacopone da Todi, Laude, p. 29.

18

ARDISSINO

quant’era la distanza (107, 1–6)

‘nfra l’essere e ‘l vedere.

[Once I looked to myself as a person of some importance And my self-esteem helped to brighten my days. But as I peered into that mirror the reflected light Lit up my life, in mired depths. Looking into that mirror and then At the vile smelling pit into which I had sunk, I wept bitterly At the chasm between the two. (Hughes-Hughes 138)] The discovery of the speaker’s radical difference from God is enumerated in five strophes, whose incipit is always “Guardanno en quello specchio” (“Looking in that mirror,” but the translation does not transfer the anaphora), followed by the chosen difference. But it is precisely on the basis of this comparison that he realizes his own nullity. From the acceptance of his own ‘death’, he finds rebirth (he feels “rinato”), and then, in rebirth into nothingness, he eventually finds peace: “O glorïoso stare—en nihil quïetato, / lo ‘ntelletto pusato—e l’affetto dormire!” (107, 61–62, “O glorious state, in the quiet center of the void, / The intellect and the emotions at rest!” 139). This poem (O vita de Iesù Cristo, specchio de veretate) is not a prayer, but at its centre, as a turning point towards the new positive perspective, it has an interjection, an address to God: “Signore, àime mustrata,—ne la tua claritate, / la mea nichilitate—ch’è menor ca neiente” (lines 51–52, “In your light, O Lord, I have seen my nothingness, / My less than nothingness”), which reveals the lauda to be a prayer. These considerations are made in presence of God, as every moment of a believer’s life is lived in the presence of God. Even if it does not represent a substantial portion of text, the prayer in this last example is of great interest for our analysis, because it demonstrates that almost the entire collection of Iacopone’s laude constitutes an ensemble of prayers. Even when not addressed to the Divinity, they represent a way in which the speaker develops his knowledge of himself as a creature tied to God, living in His presence, dependent upon Him, and talking to Him. There are also many laude which do not meet the precise definition of prayer, but do contain a ‘praying’ interjection. In lauda 6, Or se parerà chi averà fidanza?, which is a prophecy expanding Jesus’ prophecies (see Mt 24), denouncing the decadence of the present time, there are two invocations calling for salvation at the moment of apocalypse: “O scire Deo, e chi porrà scampare” (20, line 24: “Lord God, who shall be saved?” Hughes-Hughes 166) and “Adiuta Deo, adiut’a lo notare” (v. 31, “Help us, O Lord, or we drown,” 166). In laud 17, Solo a Deo

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

19

ne pòzza placere, which laments the decadence of the Franciscan order after having detailed several mistakes by the Franciscan minoriti, compared to Pharisees, he invokes God’s help to defend Francis’ legacy: “O scire Deo, adiuta la sconfitta!” (39, line 62, “Help us in defeat, O Lord our God,” Hughes-Hughes 123).22 The interjection in lauda 28 is longer. Coll’occhi ch’aio nel capo, la luce del dì mediante is a celebration of the Eucharist: after having praised the sacrament, he addresses his own life and soul accusing them of being inadequate to Christ’s gift. A whole strophe is devoted to praising God for the changes enacted by the Eucharist: Signor, non te veio, ma veio che m’ài enn’alto mutato; amore de terra m’ài tolto, en celo sì ’l m’ài collocato! Te daietore non veio, ma veio e tocco el tuo dato, che m’ài lo corpo enfrenato, ch’en tante bruttur’ n’à sozzata. (58, 39–42) [The Lord I cannot see has transformed me into another, Rooted out the love of earth and given me the love of Heaven. You, the Giver, I do not see, but I see and touch Your gift: You have reined in my body, which once covered me with filth. (HughesHughes 159)] This attitude, seen in poems which are not prayers, shows clearly how Iacopone had a medieval attitude towards prayer, considering coexistence with God to be an inherent part of contemplation, from which the subject derives his sense of self and being.23 Prayer is a means to guide the soul towards unity with its creator, and its invisible spiritual truth. The aim of praying is to achieve consciousness of one’s aspirations, not to bend divine will to one’s own will, but to re-make oneself according to God’s will, as if it were one’s own desire. This condition of living in the presence of God and adjusting oneself to His 22

23

On Iacopone’s Franciscanism see: Franco Suitner, Iacopone da Todi. Poesia, mistica, rivolta nell’Italia del Medioevo (Rome: Donzelli, 1999); Stefano Brufani, “Iacopone da Todi, francescanesimo e minoritismo nella crisi di fine XIII,” in Iacopone da Todi, atti del XXVII convegno, 71–90; Franco Suitner, “La posizione di Iacopone nel movimento di contestazione Francescana,” in Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII convegno, pp. 91–108; Stefano Brufani, “Fonti e motivi francescani nelle laude di Iacopone da Todi,” in Menestò, ed., La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, pp. 253–74. I translate a statement from Nicole Bériou, “Introduction,” in Bériou, Berlioz, and Longères, eds., Prier au Moyen Âge. Pratiques et experiences (V–XV s.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), p. 10: “état de contemplation amoureuse et de connivence avec Dieu, où tout l’oeuvre prend sa source et son sens.”

20

ARDISSINO

will is the very aim of prayer. This means recognizing God as the beginning of everything, and surrendering entirely to Him, accepting the principles with which God governs the world, as Vettori underlined for Iacopone.24 The attitude of having God present through everlasting prayer is especially visible in those laude by Iacopone which translate a mystical experience into words.25 They do not take the form of prayer, but they are prayers in how they convey through language a state of union with God, being speech made in relation to Him, in His presence.26 These poems are mystical prayers, telling and taking the form of mystical experiences.27 The mystical laude lose the ­structure of speech, and instead give space to the affection and joy of union. This is the case with many of Iacopone’s laude, which come more in the form of verbal accumulations than well-articulated sentences. See for example O Amor, devino Amore, Amor, che non èi amato! Amor, devino Amore, Amor, che non èi amato! Amor la tua amicizia è plena de letizia; non cade mai en tristizia lo cor che tt’à assaiato. O Amor amativo, Amor consumativo, Amor conservativo 24 25

26

27

Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 237. On Iacopone’s mystical poetry see: Alvaro Cacciotti, Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi (Rome: Antonianum, 1989); Canettieri, “Introduzione,” in Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento, ed. Paolo Canettieri (Milan: Rizzoli, 2001), pp. 36–87; Francesco Santi, “La mistica di Iacopone da Todi,” in Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXVII convegno, pp. 47–70; Alvaro Cacciotti, “La mistica francescana del Laudario iacoponico,” in Menestò, ed., La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, pp. 275–88; Francesco Santi, “Avvicinandosi a Iacopone mistico,” in Bassetti and Menestò, eds., “Fugo la croce,” pp. 277–90. On Iacopone’s mystical language see Giovanni Pozzi, “Iacopone poeta?”; Maurizio Dar��dano “La lingua di Iacopone da Todi,” in Suitner, ed., Iacopone, pp. 173–206; Matteo Leonardi, “La retorica dell’amor divino (lauda 39),” in Suitner, ed., Iacopone, pp. 129–52; Elena Landoni “‘Senno me par e cortesia,’” in Suitner, ed., Iacopone, pp. 283–302; Lorenzo Tomasin, “Aspetti della sintassi iacoponica,” Italianistica 29 (2000), pp. 93–112; Maurizio Dardano, “Appunti su Iacopone,” in Studi in onore di Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, ed. Marco Praloran (Florence: SISMEL, 2007), pp. 195–219; Dardano, “Enunciazione e testualità.” On mystical prayer see: Antonio Furioli, Preghiera e contemplazione mistica: per una antropologia della preghiera (Turin: Marietti, 2001); David Torkington, Il mistico: dalla preghiera carismatica alla preghiera mistica (Padua: Messaggero, 2013); Fulton Brown, “Oratio/Prayer;” Bernard McGinn, “Unio mystica/Mystical union,” in Hollywood and Beckman, eds., The Cambridge Companion, pp. 200–10.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

21

del cor che tt’à albergato! O ferita ioiosa, ferita delettosa, ferita gaudiosa, chi de te è vulnerato. Amor, et und’entrasti, che ssì occulto passasti? Nullo signo mustrasti dònne tu fuss’intrato. O Amore amabele, Amore delettabele, Amore encogetable sopr’onne cogitato. Amor, devino foco, Amor de riso e ioco, Amor, non dài a ppoco, cà è’ ricco esmesurato. (79, 1–26) [O Love, divine Love, not loved in return, Your friendship is fullness of joy, To taste You is to forget all sadness. O loving Love, consuming Love, You fill with throbbing life The heart that shelters You. O happy wound, full of delight, He whom You wound Is joyous indeed. Love, where did you enter the heart unseen? Lovable Love, joyful Love, unthinkable Love, In Your plenitude You lie far beyond the reach of thought. Love, jocund and joyous, Divine fire, You do not stint Of Your endlessly bountiful riches. (Hughes-Hughes 235–6)] This poem is one of the longest laude, but this quotation is sufficient to show its particular texture, made up of very short sentences, most of them disarticulated, single names, maybe with an adjective, with frequent repetition of the word “Amore.” The poem is a kind of very simple supplicatio, which shows clearly the intensity of the supplicant’s affection, of his total loss of logic and of corresponding language, which is substituted by the abundance of the

22

ARDISSINO

same word, repeated and repeated again.28 The repetition of the same word, “Amore,” appears as a kind of celebration, a proclamation of spiritual joy and gratitude for the union achieved. Repetition and inarticulate words are the means to express the mystical overcoming, so the speech is made up mainly of names with or without adjectives, and lacks any logical structure, made up as it is of unnecessary interjections, revealing an inner impulse not controlled by reason.29 It is interesting that this poem contains in its last section a kind of poetic declaration, of later reflection, a literal afterword, on this kind of inarticulate language about God and addressed to God. Here the voice repents that what has come before is insufficient to express God’s majesty: ‘O lengua scottïante, come si stata usante de farte tanto ennante, parlar de tal estato? Or pensa que n’ài detto de l’Amor benedetto; onne lengua è ’n defetto, che de lui à parlato. S’è lengua angeloro, che sta en quel gran coro, parlanno de tal sciòro, parlara escialenguato. Ergo, co’ non vergogni nel tuo parlar lo ‘mpogni? Nel suo laudar non iogni, ’nanti l’ài biastimato. (80, 115–130) [“O proud tongue, how have you dared To speak of holy Love? Human speech cannot rise to such heights. In speaking of this Love 28 29

One of the main elements of Iacopone’s poetics is repetition, as noted in the essay on Iacopone’s poetics or language (see above note 26). This poetry has allowed talk of madness: Natalino Sapegno, “La ‘santa pazzia’ di frate Iacopone e le dottrine dei mistici medievali,” Archivium romanicum 7 (1823), pp. 349–72; Louise Katainen, “Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic: A Review of the History of the Criticism,” Mystics Quarterly 22, no. 2 (1996), pp. 46–57; Isabella Gagliardi, Pazzi per Cristo: santa follia e mistica della croce in Italia centrale (secc. XIII e XIV) (Siena: Protagon Editori Toscani, 1998); Canettieri “La poesia dell’estasi.”

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

23

The tongues of angels falter – And you feel no misgiving and shame? You reduce Love To the measure of your words; This is not praise, but blasphemy” (Hughes-Hughes 238)] The inadequacy of the speech of the previous verses is the reason for this repentance, which calls into question the very different language used by angels to praise God. It is not only to the poet, speaker of the preceding verses, to which the critical alter ego addresses his apostrophe, but to all those who praise God in any language, as all languages are insufficient. Only the angels can properly praise Him, but then their song will be “escelinguato”, free from any grammatical or linguistic rule, superhuman. The disarticulated language of angels therefore appears different from the disarticulated human speech. Human speech never reaches the point of saying the ineffable, so it turns in and echoes itself, revolving words in a de-semantized language, using empty sounds and phrases which indicate without having a full meaning. The poetic voice replies, however, that it will not choose silence, stating instead its inner duty to praise God, meaning being silent is an impossibility, and chooses instead to proclaim: E credo che crepasse lo cor che te assaiasse, s’Amore non cimasse, crepàrase affocato. (80, 143–145) [If his heart does not shout The praises of Love He will surely suffocate and die!] Even if this Love in not conceivable (“encogetabele, / sovr’one cogitato,” has been proclaimed above at lines 21–22, “unthinkable Love, / In Your plenitude You lie far beyond the reach of thought”), the emotion needs to be expressed, to be announced even without “rasone” (“reason”).30 In another lauda, it is “Affetto” (“Affection”, a character in the tenzo) who has learned a new language

30

On the rhetoric of silence in Iacopone see Paolo Valesio, “‘O entenebrata luce ch’en me luce’: la letteratura del silenzio,” in Del silenzio. Percorsi, suggestioni, interpretazioni, eds. Giovannella Fusco Girard and Anna Maria Tango (Rome: Ripostes, 1992), pp. 15–44; ­Leonardi “La retorica del silenzio.”

24

ARDISSINO

to speak of the grace which has been received (“grazia gratis data,” “grace gratis data”).31 All Iacopone’s poems addressed to “Amore” are mystical prayers, in which the poet not only feels ascension, but tells a state of one-ness with the Highest and attempts to express the soul’s perceptions in this state. There is no petition, not even praise or words of penitence; only the effort to tell of union with Divinity. The best known of Iacopone’s laude and those in which he achieves his highest lyrical goals are those in which he renders this condition, of feeling at one with Divinity, by reaching a point at which he loses speech, words are repeated, and communication turns towards silence. The subject himself is transcended by the experience of totality, and language reflects the loss of the poet’s identity, to the point that language fades, the grammatical congruence of the language is broken, and only repetition and silence remain. The best example of this mystical condition and poetic language is laud 89, Amor de caritate, perché m’ài sì feruto?.32 Here the ecstatic condition is framed as a step further in love for Christ, a step in which the violence of the union gives way to madness, even death, a death which is desirable as it means the transition to oneness with God. The condition of poetic distress, which is generated by being lost in God, is evident at the end, where the verses multiply with the frequent repetition of “Amore”: Amore, Amore, quanto tu me fai, Amore, Amore, no ’l pòzzo patere! Amore, Amore, tanto me tte dai, Amore, Amor, ben ne credo morire! Amore, Amore, tanto preso m’ài, Amore, Amore, famme en te transire! (199, 267–272) [Love, Love, You are so dear; Love, Love, no more! 31

32

Lauda 1 La Bontade se lamenta: “An ‘empreso novo lenguaio, / che non sa dire se none ‘Amore’. / Plagne, ride, dole e gaude, / securato con temore,” (7, 36–39) [“Affection has learned a new language, one word above all – ‘Love’ / Tranquil in fear, he weeps, laughs, laments, and shouts with joy” (Hughes-Hughes 221)]. On this poem see Paolo Canettieri “Amor de Caritate,” in Suitner, ed., Iacopone, pp. 93–112; Mocan, “Iacopone e la spiritualità vittorina: Amor de caritate e il De quatuor gradibus violentiae charitatis di Riccardo di San Vittore,” in Menestò, ed., La vita e l’opera, pp. 289–311. Another essay on a mystical poem, O iubelo del core (lauda 9), describing the exultant joy of being in the divine presence, is Hinrich Hudde, “Iacopone da Todi’s lauda O iubelo del core,” Italienisch 53 (2003), pp. 38–53.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

25

Love, Love, You give Yourself to me, Love, Love, I am close to dying. Love, Love, so tightly You clasp me; Love, Love, make me die in You! (Hughes-Hughes 264)] One of the laude on the mystical union even contains a response from God/ Love. Amor, diletto Amore, perché m’ài lassato, Amore? (lauda 18) opens with a lamentation at being abandoned by Love, in the form of a “perorazione giudiziaria, con l’accusatore (l’amante abbandonato) che […] cerca di dimostrare d’esser stato vittima di un’offesa ingiustificata.”33 After a series of reasons for which the speaker claims to be right, “Amore” intervenes, explaining his reasons for deserting. Eventually the subject acknowledges his wrongdoings and recognizes his own repentance in order to return to the union with God. The poem has been seen as modelled on the discussions of the ‘corti d’amore’ (‘courts of love’), or even of a judiciary court, and certainly the language and the style permit both the readings, but it is also possible to view it as an exchange based upon prayer, in which the addressee does not remain silent, but instead speaks out and reproaches the supplicant for his failings: “Omo che te laminti, breve mente responno; tollenno lo to abbergo, crìsice far soriorno; abbergastic’el mondo e me ’n cacciasti via; donqua fai villania, se tu murmuri de Amore.” (41, 66–69) [Hear Me, you who make such loud lament: I will answer in brief. I made My abode in you And I wanted to stay. But you cast Me out And welcomed the world You are less than honest, then In your complaints against Love. (Hughes-Hughes 206)] What is strange in this poem is that “Amore” itself talks about “Amore”: “ficel tutto divoto—per avetarce Amore. // Quanno eo me nne partîci—Amor me ‘n portai ’l mio / como lo pòi tu dire—ch’eo me ’n portasse el tio?” (lines 73–75, “And made it pure so that Love would dwell there. // When I left, the 33

Matteo Leonardi in the introduction to the poem, in Iacopone, Laude, p. 39.

26

ARDISSINO

Love I took with Me was Mine,” Hughes-Hughes 206). The excuses reveal that “Amore” is dual. Are God the Father and the Holy Spirit represented therein? Or God the Father and Christ? “Amore” is prayed to but is also the one that has been wronged. This splitting is confirmed by the subsequent verses, in which “Amore” continues his denunciation against the subject, who laments the abandonment. Thus, the I-persona is convinced and acknowledges the accusation, apologizing for his faults, so Amore claims the desire to return to the soul: “Rennendoten’ pentuta, sì cce voglio artornare” (v. 90, “Because of your repentance I shall return,” Hughes-Hughes 207). We have seen three kinds of poetic prayer: the poem that is in itself a prayer, with a specific petition;34 poems which are didactic or in another genre but contain a very brief apostrophe in form of supplication; and poems which reveal a mystical state, and are in themselves prayers, consisting of a dialogue. There are other prayer forms in the Laude, such as poems which clearly imply the involvement of a community of believers praying together, a congregation who can share and recite or sing the laud. O novo canto, c’ài morto el planto, a lauda for the Nativity, is a good example of this form as it expresses joy for salvation and invites the congregation to celebrate.35 Properly, this lauda does not take the form of a prayer, as it does not begin with an apostrophe, but it invites a community of believers to sing it: O peccaturi, c’a mali signuri avete servuto, venite a ccantare, ché Deo po’ om trovare, ch’en terra è apparuto en forma garzone, e tello en presone chi ll’à disiato. Omeni errati, che site vocati a ppenetenza, la quale onne errore vo tolle lo core e dà entelligenza de veretate per pïetate a chi è umiliato; omeni iusti, che site endusti, venite a ccantare, 34 35

To this category belongs one of the most quoted laud: O Segnor, per cortesia, which we have not discussed here. On this lauda see Concetto Del Popolo, “Iacopone LXIV, 39,” Italianistica 25 (1996), pp. 133–35.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

27

ché sit’envitati, da Deo vocati, a glorïare ad renno celesto, che comple onne festo ch’el core à bramato. (136, 57–74) [O sinners who have served an evil master, Come sing with us – now man can find God, Who has appeared on earth as a child, And all who seek Him can take and hold Him. Come sing, O ye who have strayed, Now you are called to penitence, Which cancels error and grants truth To those who humbly seek it. Just men who have labored hard and long, Come, you too, and sing! God invites you to glory in a kingdom And fulfills the longing of every heart. (Hughes-Hughes 195)] The repeated invitation to song (“venite a ccantare”, and before: “unde ­laudate—et benedicate,” line 20, “Come sing,” “Praise and bless”) indicates that this is a community worshipping God incarnate, become child, the beginning of redemption. In fact, with its reference to the angels’ song at the stable in Bethlehem, this is said to be the song that put an end to the lament of damned humankind: “O novo canto,—c’ài morto el planto / de l’omo enfermato” (lines 1–2, “A new canticle I hear, / To dry the tears of the afflicted,” Hughes-Hughes 194). The lauda is made up of two parts, the first devoted to the song of the angels (“Li cantaturi—iubilaturi / che tengo lo coro,” “The joyous chorus”), with many clear references to the Scriptures which tell of the happy event and the content of the song;36 the second is devoted to the other singers, already singing in heaven: martyrs, confessors, the innocents killed by Herod, and then to 36

The list of biblical references is very long, from the title itself which recalls Ps 95:1, to “Verbo” (“Word”) of lines 5 and 13 (Io 1:1), to “concordato” (not translated: ‘agreed’) a reference to the promise of Gn 3:15, to the song “Gloria enn alto / a l’altissimo Deo! (Lc 2:14) (“Glory to God in the Hishest”), to the indication of the stable as “diversoro” (“manger”), the word used in Latin “diversorio” by Lc 2:7. In fact the Bible is also described as God’s writing: “En carta ainina—la nota divina / veio c’è scripta, / là v’è el nostro canto—ritto e renfrento / a chi ben ci affitta; / e Deo è lo scrivano,—c’à aperta la mano, / ch’el canto è ensegnato!” (lines 21–26, “The sacred notes, I see, / are inscribed on parchment, skin of the Lamb; / In the Lamb – our penetrating eye discerns – is all song, wether solo or choral

28

ARDISSINO

all those invited, “peccaturi”, “omeni errati”, “omeni iusti” (“sinners”, “who have strayed”, “just men”). This part is equally rich in its references to the Scriptures, referring to the liturgical readings of the Christmas night and of the feasts following Christmas: the memory of St Stephen, the reading of John’s Gospel, and the massacre of the innocents by Herod.37 In the middle of the poem comes the turning point, in the form of a strophe that demonstrates the significance of the song for salvation: Canto d’amore ce trova a tuttore a chi ce sa entrare; con Deo se conforma e prende la norma de ben Lo disïare; co’ serafino deventa divino, d’amore enflammato. (136, 33–38) [Here they hear unceasing songs of love; That love conforms itself to God, And finding in Him the law of its being, Seraphim-like, darts flames. (Hughes-Hughes 195)] The strophe indicates the effect of singing, an act leading towards salvation, enflaming the speaker with love of God and showing the reader how to desire Him correctly. This lauda, as Matteo Leonardi wrote, conducts “il lettore pellegrino lungo un devoto percorso di ‘avvicinamento’ alla capanna, cui sono attratti tutti gli uomini […] l’uomo ripercorre in senso inverso il percorso discensivo dell’Incarnazione e risale in Dio fino all’indiamento: risale cioè dal fa grave a quello acuto.”38 A similar invitation to a community of believers to sing for their salvation is lauda 86, All’Amor ch’è vinuto, which starts with a ringing invitation to praise the Nativity:

37 38

// The hand that moves across the page / Is the hand of God, / And it is God in His mercy / Who teaches us to sing,” Hughes-Hughes 194). The biblical references in this second part are At 6:5–60 for saint Stephen’s martyrdom in line 41, then to the “vagnelista” of line 47 indicating John’s gospel, to the innocent martyrs, as in Mt 2:16–18, eventually to the content of the song: “Cristo oggi è nato!” (Lc 2, 11). Matteo Leonardi’s introduction to the poem, Iacopone da Todi, Laude, p. 135. The mention to the musical notes is a reference to verses 3–5: “sopr’al ‘fa’ acuto […] e nel ‘fa’ grave” (“a piercing tone / When it slowly descends several octaves,” Hughes-Hughes 194).

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

29

All’Amor ch’è vinuto en carne nnui sé dare, andemo laude fare e canto con onore. Onòral da che vene, alma, per te salvare, e ià plu non tardare a llui de pervenire. (186, 1–8) [Honor and praise to the Love made flesh, Who came to give Himself to us! Honor Him, O my soul, for He comes to save you. Come, hasten to greet Him! (Hughes-Hughes 196)] The celebration of Christ’s birth and incarnation is confirmed by many references to the child God, to the place he was born, the “presepe” of line 42 (“stable”), the “pancilli” (“Poor […] clothes”) in which He was wrapped in line 46, the “bov’et asen” (“an ox and an ass”) which warmed Him in line 47, and eventually the mention of the parents, “Iosèp e Maria” (“Mary and Joseph”) in line 50. But this lauda is much more complex than the former, as it implies a dialogue, a confrontation, a tenzo between the soul and God, inscribed within the more general dialogue to the soul (“alma,” line 6) in the first and last two strophes (these addressed to the “Amanti,” as well as the “Anema,” lines 449 and 457, “lovers” and “soul”). The central dialogue between the soul, which questions Christ about his descent to earth and renunciation of His position in heaven (for “tale abassamento,” line 103, “The depth of the descent”),39 and Christ, who answers revealing the great love which forced Him to rescue lost souls: “De te so’ ennamurato, / o sposa, cui tant’amo” (lines 233–234, “Yield to Me, My desire, My love”), “Per darte questo stato / descisi a ttal bassezza” (lines

39

Within this long speech, which takes up sixteen stanzas each of twelve verses, there is a very tender half stanza addressed to the “cenciarelli”: “En cusì vil pancilli /envolto te fe’ stare / e forte abesognare, / che reverissi adiuto. / O cari cenciarelli, / potendo sì fasciare / e l’alto Deo legare / co’ fusse distituto! / En que era envoluto / sì caro e fin tesauro / sopr’onne gemme et auro, / en vil prezzo e colore!” (Iacopone 187, 125–136) [“Wrapped in poor swaddling clothes, / You were utterly dependent. / Dear humble cloth in which the most high God / Was wound and bound, as is He had nothing - / Humble clothes which enfolded treasure / That puts to shame all gems and gold!” (Hughes-Hughes 196–7)]. Then, it returns to the addressee, to God-Amore.

30

ARDISSINO

341–342, “To raise you to this height / I descended to an ugly stable”). Eventually the soul replies with acceptance of the love and jubilation: Voglio oramai far canto ché l’amor meo è nato e àme recomperato, d’amor m’à messo anello; […] O dulce garzoncello, en cor t’ho conciputo et en braccia tenuto, però sì grido: ‘Amore!’ (190–191, 436–447) I sing for the birth of my Love; Has redeemed me and slipped on my finger his ring; […] O sweet child, I have conceived You in my heart And held You in my arms, crying out “O Love!” (Hughes-Hughes 202)] The lauda reveals itself as a prayer in many ways: by proclaiming the gift of Incarnation, calling people to sing of the event and praise God; because it involves a dialogue with the two interlocutors which are the subjects of any prayer, the soul as supplicant and the worshipped Christ granting salvation; because it ends with the mystical union. The prayer here takes exactly the role set out for it in lauda 3, L’omo fo creato vertüoso, a dialogic poem, in which the history of Salvation is dramatized in the form of a discussion between God, the personification of His qualities (Mercy, Justice, Virtue, etc.), and the characters of the redemption story, such as Jesus, Mary, and the Angel Gabriel. Oration, sent by Penance to God’s court, requests the need for Mercy: “La Penetenza manna l’Orazione / che dica a coorte quello ch’è scuntrato, / com’ella s’ène en gran confosïone, / ché de lo satisfar l’om n’è privato” (12, 65–68, “Penance sent Prayer to inform the Heavenly Court / Of man’s plight, and his despair, / And how he was barred from making satisfaction,” Hughes-Hughes, 147).40 This is the turning point for Heaven’s decision, 40

On Iacopone’s use of dialogic forms see: Enrico Menestò “Le laude drammatiche di ­Iacopone da Todi: fonti e struttura,” in Laudi drammatiche umbre delle origini. Atti del V convegno di studio. Viterbo 22–25 maggio 1980 (Viterbo: Amministrazione Provinciale, 1981), pp. 105–40; Carlo Delcorno, “Contrasti iacoponici,” in Marco Poli, Iacopone da Todi: un francescano scomodo ma attuale. Atti della XV edizione delle giornate dell’Osservanza.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

31

when Justice’s dominance gives way to Mercy. This laud ends, as others do, with an invitation to pray: “Pregimo la beata Trenetate / che ne perduni le nostre peccata” (16, 446–447, “Let us pray the Glorious Trinity / To forgive us all our sins,” 156), confirming the role of prayer as a way to salvation. Even considering here the many forms and attitudes of prayer which allow us to define Iacopone’s Laude as a collection of prayers, with a few exceptions such as the didactic poems and those poems on autobiographical or polemical topics, we are far from having explored all the sides of the question. For example, the poems devoted to the Virgin Mary have not been discussed here, as this is one of the most studied by critics of Iacopone’s poetry.41 If the well-known Donna de Paradiso is a kind of sacred drama, the other lauds to the Virgin are in truth prayers, such as lauda 13, O Regina cortese, co so’ a vvui venuto, in which the soul in despair begs to be healed, and the Virgin answers with advice on resisting the Enemy. The Virgin Mary is also the addressee of a long interjection in a lauda dedicated to repenting for the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment of the world’s goods. In Oi ne, lascio dolente (131–132) the I-persona is near death and realizes that his sins are such that he will not have enough time for adequate repentance, so the Virgin becomes the only possible source of help: La vita non me basta a ffarne penetenza, cà la morte m’adasta a ddarne la sentenza; se tu, Vergene casta, non n’acatte endulgenza, l’anema mea en perdenza girà senza tenore. (132, 53–60)

41

­ ologna 13–14 maggio 1996 (Bologna: Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e di Ravenna, 1997), B pp. 27–40; Franco Suitner, “Metamorfosi di motivi comico-giullareschi in Iacopone,” in Il genere “tenzone” nelle letterature romanze delle origini. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Losanna, 13–15 novembre 1997 (Ravenna: Longo, 1999), pp. 133–45; Mario Aversano, “Alle origini del teatro italiano: personaggi, luoghi e scene in Donna de Paradiso di Iacopone da Todi,” Critica letteraria 29 (2001), pp. 211–61. On the many possible sources of this contrast see Matteo Leonardi’s introduction to this poem, in Iacopone da Todi, Laude, pp. 10–11. On Iacopone’s Marian poems see: Carlo Calvillo, “Il ciclo mariale delle laudi popolari umbre del secolo xiii–xiv,” Marianum 8 (1946), pp. 68–84; Mario Aste, “Energy of Transport and Ecstasy in the Vernacular Characters of Mary’s Cult in Jacopone’s Poetry,” in Maria Vergine nella Letteratura Italiana, ed. Florinda Iannace (Stony Brook: Forum Ital� icum, 2000), pp. 27–37; Concetto Del Popolo, “Maria nelle laude di Iacopone,” in Suitner, ed., Iacopone, pp. 67–92. See also the essay by Brian Reynolds in this volume.

32

ARDISSINO

[There’s not enough time for penance For death, I feel, presses hard, Impatient to hand down the sentence. Chaste Virgin, help me; Succour me not, and I go to my doom. (Hughes-Hughes 102)] The following strophe continues with beautiful praise of Our Lady, “mamma de dolce figlio”, “nostra avvocata”, “Donna de gran valore” (lines 62, 63, 68, “mother of that sweetest of Sons,” “our advocate,” no translation for the laste verse: ‘Woman of great value’), to whom the I-persona asks “consiglio” (no translation: ‘advice’) to avoid damnation. But this invocation is expressed in the first-person plural, “che non iamo ‘n essiglio” (v. 66, “That exile […] be not our portion forever”): the I-persona is not alone, but speaks for all believers who place trust in Her. Another prayer comes with lauda 32, O Vergen plu ca femena, which is defined by Matteo Leonardi in his introduction as “il testo dove più estesamente si cantano le lodi di Maria.”42 In fact, the lauda is a comprehensive praise of Mary, first destined for human salvation, then rendered immaculate, becoming a mother while remaining a virgin, unifying God and humanity, living with God incarnate as her child, loving Him without being consumed by this love, bearer of all virtues. All these qualities are beautifully synthetized in a strophe quoting the beginning of John’s Gospel: Lo Verbo creans omnia vestito è ’n te, Virginea; non lassanno suo sòlia, devinità è ’ncarnata! (66, 75–78) [… in you the Word, creans omnia, Residing in majesty, becomes flesh, God Incarnate. (Hughes-Hughes 70)] This verse sits exactly in the middle of the lauda, between the section devoted to Mary before Christ’s birth, and that devoted to Mary as mother. In this poem the words of Gabriel (the salutation Hail, Mary, from which the most popular Marian prayer derives) are reworked,43 but in lauda 3, L’omo fo creato vertüoso, 42 43

Leonardi’s introduction to the poem, Iacopone da Todi, Laude, p. 64. “Conciperai tu figlio, / irà senza simiglio, / se tu assenti al consiglio / de questa me’ ambasciata” (Iacopone 66, lines43–6, “If you accept the counsel I bring, you will conceive a son without peer,” Hughes-Hughes 70).

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

33

devoted to the God’s decision to grant redemption, the evangelical narration of Luke 1, 26–38 is closely followed, using almost the same sentences, including the a partial translation of the angelic salutation “Ave, gratia plena en vertute, / enfra femene tu si’ benedetta!” (13, 145–6, “Ave, gratia plena, blessed are you among women,” Hughes-Hughes 149). Iacopone devotes an entire lauda to one other evangelical prayer, Our Father, in En sette mod, co’ a mme pare, a commentary of the text with a didactic aim. In fact, the seven petitions of Jesus’s prayer, called an “orazïone” by Iacopone, are seen as part of salvation. The poet indicates not only the meaning of Jesus’ prayer, but he also suggests how to achieve salvation. This is a commentary however, one of many paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer which were popular at the time, and not truly a prayer. Considering all the prayer forms in the Laude, it may be surprising that ­Iacopone’s poems have not been studied as prayers, even if most of them are indeed thought of as forms of devotion and even a form of worship. Their ­objective is to address God and question Him in poetry, the relationship taking the form of a dialogue, between body and spirit, soul and devil, the soul and the S­ aviour, the soul and the Virgin Mary. In the Italian literary tradition, the iacoponic lauds have constituted an important model for the development of the lauda, a form of popular devotion of very long duration, very abundant and literary very intriguing, which has also given voice to women, and to the laity in general. They have been employed and imitated as prayers, in monastic and popular practices of devotion, rewritten by female nuns for centuries. Works Cited Ageno, Franca. Storia della laude lirica. Parma: Studium Parmense, 1966. Ancilli, Ermanno, ed. La preghiera, Bibbia, teologia, esperienze storiche. Rome: Città Nuova, 1990. Antoni, Gérald. La prière chez Saint Augustin. D’une Philosophie du langage à la ­Théologie du Verbe. Paris: Vrin, 1997. Aste, Mario. “Energy of Transport and Ecstasy in the Vernacular Characters of Mary’s Cult in Jacopone’s Poetry.” In Maria Vergine nella Letteratura Italiana, ed. Florinda Iannace, 27–37. Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 2000. Aversano, Mario. “Alle origini del teatro italiano: personaggi, luoghi e scene in Donna de Paradiso di Iacopone da Todi.” Critica letteraria 29 (2001): 211–61. Baldassarri, Guido. “Le laude e le sacre rappresentazioni.” In Storia della letteratura ­italiana. II. Il Trecento, directed by Enrico Malato, 304–14. Roma: Salerno Editrice, 1995.

34

ARDISSINO

Bassetti, Massimiliano and Enrico Menestò, eds. “Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Benson, B. Ellis, and Norman Wirzba, eds. The Phenomenology of Prayer. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Bériou, Nicole, Jacques Berlioz, and Jean Longères, eds. Prier au Moyen Âge. Pratiques et expériences (V-XV s.). Turnhout: Brepols, 1991. Brufani, Stefano. “Fonti e motivi francescani nelle laude di Iacopone da Todi.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, edited by Enrico Menestò, 253–74. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medio�evo, 2007. Brufani, Stefano. “Iacopone da Todi, francescanesimo e minoritismo nella crisi di fine XIII.” In Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000, 71–90. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sul basso Medioevo, 2001. Bruni, Francesco. “Jacopone, la lauda e la letteratura religiosa.” In Storia della civiltà letteraria italiana. I. Dalle Origini al Trecento, directed by Vittore Branca, 121–53. Milano: UTET, 1990. Bultot, Robert. “La doctrine du mépris du monde, en Occident, de St. Ambroise à Innocent III.” In Christianisme et valeurs humaines. Tome IV. Paris: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1963. Cacciotti, Alvaro. “La mistica francescana del Laudario iacoponico.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, edited by Enrico Menestò, 275–88. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007. Cacciotti, Alvaro. Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi. Rome: Antonianum, 1989. Calvillo, Carlo. “Il ciclo mariale delle laudi popolari umbre del secolo xiii-xiv.” Marianum 8 (1946): 68–84. Canettieri, Paolo. “Introduzione.” In Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento, ed. Canettieri. Milan: Rizzoli, 2001. Canettieri, Paolo. “La poesia dell’estasi.” Cognitive Philology 3 (2010). https://rosa .uniroma1.it/rosa03/cognitive_philology/article/view/9344. Canettieri, Paolo. “Amor de Caritate.” In Iacopone da Todi poeta. Atti del Convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005, edited by Suitner, 93–112. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Cattin, Giulio. “Contributi alla storia della lauda spirituale. I. Sulla evoluzione musicale e letteraria della lauda nei secoli xiv e xv.” Quadrivium 2 (1958): 5–35. Cottier, Jean-François, ed. La prière en latin, de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance: formes, ­évolutions, significations. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Dardano, Maurizio. “Appunti su Iacopone.” In Studi in onore di Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo per i suoi settant’anni, ed. Marco Praloran, 195–219. Florence: SISMEL, 2007.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

35

Dardano, Maurizio. “Enunciazione e testualità nelle laude di Iacopone da Todi.” In “Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 141–84. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Dardano, Maurizio. “La lingua di Iacopone da Todi.” In Iacopone da Todi poeta. Atti del Convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005, edited by Franco Suitner, 173–206. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. De Boer, Bertilo. “L’attention dans la prière chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin.” Revue ­Thomiste 60 (1960): 110–17. Del Popolo, Concetto. “Iacopone LXIV, 39.” Italianistica 25 (1996): 133­–35. Del Popolo, Concetto. “Maria nelle laude di Iacopone.” In Iacopone da Todi poeta. Atti del Convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005, edited by Franco Suitner, 67–92. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Delcorno, Carlo. “Contrasti iacoponici.” In Iacopone da Todi: un francescano scomodo ma attuale. Atti della XV edizione delle giornate dell’Osservanza, Bologna 13–14 maggio 1996, edited by Marco Poli, 63–79. Bologna: Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e di Ravenna, 1997. Dessì, Rosa Maria. “Prière, chant et prédication. À propos de la lauda: de François ­d’Assise à Machiavel.” In La prière en latin, de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance: formes, évolutions, significations, edited by Jean-François Cottier, 246–72. Turnhout: ­Brepols, 2006. D’Onofrio, Giulio. “Prière, philosophie et théologie durant l’antiquité chrétienne et le haut Moyen Age.” In La prière en latin, de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance: formes, évolutions, significations, edited by Jean-François Cottier, 317–35. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Fonck, A. “Prière.” In Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, XIII1, cll, 169–244. Paris: Letouzey, 1936. Fulton Brown, Rachel. “Oratio/Prayer.” In The Cambridge Companion to Christian ­Mysticism, eds. Hollywood and Beckman, 167–77. Fulton Brown, Rachel. “Praying with Alselm at Admont. A Meditation on Practice.” Speculum 81 (2006): 700–33. Fumagalli, Vito. Solitudo carnis. Vicende del corpo nel Medioevo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990. Furioli, Antonio. Preghiera e contemplazione mistica: per una antropologia della ­preghiera. Turin: Marietti, 2001. Gagliardi, Isabella. Pazzi per Cristo: santa follia e mistica della croce in Italia centrale (secc. XIII e XIV). Siena: Protagon Editori Toscani, 1998. Gniecki, Czeslaw. Visione dell’uomo negli scritti di Francesco d’Assisi. Roma: Edizioni Antonianum, 1987. Guelluy, Robert and Guy Lafon, eds. La prière du chrétien. Brussels: Facultés Universitaires Saint Louis, 1981.

36

ARDISSINO

Hammerling, Roy, ed. A History of Prayer. The First to the Fifteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Henriet, Patrick. La parole et la prière au Moyen Âge. Le Verbe efficace dans l’hagio�graphie monastique des siècles XI et XII. Brussels: De Boeck, 2000. Hollywood, Amy, and Patricia Z. Beckman, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Hudde, Hinrich. “Iacopone da Todi’s lauda O iubelo del core.” Italienisch 53 (2003): 38–53. Hughes, Elizabeth, and Serge Hughes, trans. Iacopone da Todi: The Lauds. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno di studi Internazionale Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Olschki, 2010. Iacopone da Todi. Tractatus utilissimus. Verba. Edited by Enrico Menestò. Spoleto: ­Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2015. Iammarrone, G. “Corpo-carne.” In Dizionario francescano, col. 253–66. Padua: Messag�gero, 1995. Jaye, Barbara H. “Artes orandi.” In Typologie des sources du Moyen Age 61, 77–118. ­Turnhout: Brepols, 1991. Jungmann, Andreas. Breve storia della preghiera cristiana. Brescia: Queriniana, 1991. Katainen, Louise. “Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic: A Review of the History of the Criticism.” Mystics Quarterly 22, no. 2 (1996): 46–57. Landoni, Elena. Il ‘libro’ e la ‘sententia’. Scrittura e significato nella peosia medievale: Iacopone, Dante, Cecco Angiolieri. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990. Landoni, Elena. “‘Senno me par e cortesia.’” In Iacopone da Todi poeta. Atti del Convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005, edited by Franco Suitner, 283–302. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Landoni, Elena. “Strategie linguistiche di un intellettuale sovversivo. La poesia di Iacopone da Todi dall’antiletterarietà all’ultraletterarietà.” In“Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 119–40. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Laude dugentesche. Edited by Giorgio Varanini. Padua: Antenore, 1972. Le Goff, Jacques, and Nicolas Truong. Il corpo nel Medioevo. Bari: Laterza, 2008. Lehener, F.C. Mental Prayer and Modern Life. A Symposium. New York: Kenedy & Sons, 1950. Leonardi, Lino. “La tradizione manoscritta e il problema testuale del laudario di Iacopone.” In Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno Iacopone da Todi. Atti del X­ XXVII Convegno, 177–204. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sul basso Medioevo, 2001. Leonardi, Lino. “Per l’edizione critica del laudario di Iacopone.” La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, edited by Enrico Menestò, 135–48. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

37

Leonardi, Matteo. “Frate Iacopone tra laus e predicazione.” Critica letteraria 34 (2007): 211–39. Leonardi, Matteo. “Introduzione.” In Iacopone da Todi, Laude, v-lix. Leonardi, Matteo. “La retorica del silenzio nelle Laude di Jacopone da Todi.” Revue des Études Italiennes 48, nos. 3–4 (2002), 321–36. Leonardi, Matteo. “Nec sine te nec tecum: la sofferta dialettica tra le laude iacoponiche e la tradizione lirica.” In“Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 89–102. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Leonardi, Matteo. “Tracce autobiografiche e riferimenti storici nelle laude di Iacopone da Todi.” Franciscana 9 (2007): 67–148. Leonardi, Matteo. Bibliografia iacoponica. Firenze: SISMEL, 2010. Leonardi, Matteo. Storia della lauda (secoli XIII-XVI). Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Leonardi, Matteo. “La retorica dell’amor divino (lauda 39).” In Iacopone da Todi poeta. Atti del Convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005, edited by Franco ­Suitner, 129–52. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Lucarelli, Massimo. “Tracce di cultura giuridica nel laudario iacoponico.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, edited by Enrico Menestò, 135–48. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007. McGinn, Bernard. “Unio mystica/Mystical union.” In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, eds. Hollywood and Beckman, 200–10, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Menapace Brisca, Lidia. “La poetica di Iacopone.” Contributi dell’Istituto di Filologia Moderna 1 (1961): 1–43. Menestò, Enrico, ed. La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007. Menestò, Enrico. “Le laude drammatiche di Iacopone da Todi: fonti e struttura.” In Laudi drammatiche umbre delle origini. Atti del V convegno di studio. Viterbo 22–25 maggio 1980, 105–40. Viterbo: Amministrazione Provinciale, 1981. Menestò, Enrico. Le vite antiche di Iacopone da Todi. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977. Menichetti, Aldo. “Iacopone e la poesia profana.” In Iacopone da Todi poeta. Atti del Convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005, edited by Franco Suitner, 153–64. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Mocan, Mira. “Iacopone e la spiritualità vittorina: Amor de caritate e il De quatuor gradibus violentiae charitatis di Riccardo di San Vittore.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del Convegno di studio Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, edited by Enrico Menestò, 289–311. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007. Montani, Alessandro. “Oltraggio al corpo ed uso delle fonti bibliche: La Lauda O Segnor, per cortesia di Iacopone da Todi.” Rassegna europea di letteratura italiana 14 (1999): 107–122.

38

ARDISSINO

Montefusco, Antonio. “Iacopone tra estremismo e negazione.” Linguistica e letteratura 29 (2005): 9–38. Montefusco, Antonio. “Il laudario e le sue fonti.” In“Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 59–88. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Montefusco, Antonio. “Iacopone nell’Umbria del Due-Trecento. Un’alternativa francescana. Rome: Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, 2006. Moretto, Giovanni, ed. Preghiera e filosofia. Brescia: Morcellania, 1991. Paoli, Emore. “Iacopone e lo Stabat mater. A proposito di una vexata quaestio In“Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 331–80. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Pasquini, Emilio. “La lauda.” In La letteratura italiana. Storia e testi. I. Il Duecento: dalle Origini a Dante, directed by Carlo Muscetta, 479–548. Bari: Laterza, 1970. Peck, George T. The Fool of God: Iacopone da Todi. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980. Perugi, Maurizio. “Trovatori in lingua d’oc e poeti del Duecento italiano nel laudario di Iacopone.” In Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000, edited by Franco Suitner, 205–32. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sul basso Medioevo, 2001. Poli, Marco, ed. Iacopone da Todi: un francescano scomodo ma attuale. Atti della XV edizione delle giornate dell’Osservanza, Bologna 13–14 maggio 1996, 27–40. Bologna: Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e di Ravenna, 1997. Pozzi, Giovanni. “Jacopone poeta?” In Alternatim, 73–92. Milan: Adelphi, 1996. Ramazani, Jan. Prayer and its Others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Santi, Francesco. “Avvicinandosi a Iacopone mistico.” In“Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 277–90. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Santi, Francesco. “La mistica di Iacopone da Todi.” In Iacopone da Todi. Atti del X­ XXVII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000, 47–70. Spoleto: Centro ­italiano di studi sul basso Medioevo, 2001. Sapegno, Natalino. “La ‘santa pazzia’ di frate Iacopone e le dottrine dei mistici ­medievali.” In Archivum romanicum 7 (1923): 349–72. Sapegno, Natalino. Frate Jacopone. Torino: Edizioni del Baretti, 1926 (re-published in 2008 by Aragno). Scaffai, Nicolò. “Elementi drammatici nelle Laude di Iacopone da Todi.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 4, s. IV (1999): 451–71. Simonetti, Manlio, and Salvatore Pricoco, eds. La preghiera dei cristiani. Milano: ­Mondadori-Fondazione Valla, 2000.

POETRY AS PRAYER IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

39

Solére, Jean-Luc. “De l’orateur à l’orant. La ‘rhétorique divine’ dans la culture chrétienne occidentale.” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 21 (1994): 187–224. Suitner, Franco, ed. Iacopone da Todi poeta. Atti del Convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Suitner, Franco. “La posizione di Iacopone nel movimento di contestazione francescana.” In Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000, 91–108. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sul basso Medioevo, 2001. Suitner, Franco. “Metamorfosi di motivi comico-giullareschi in Iacopone.” In Il genere “tenzone” nelle letterature romanze delle Origini. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Losanna, 13–15 novembre 1997, eds. Matteo Pedroni and Antonio Stäuble, 133–45. Ravenna: Longo, 1999. Suitner, Franco. Iacopone da Todi. Poesia, mistica, rivolta nell’Italia del Medioevo. Rome: Donzelli, 1999. Tappa, Carlo Felice. “Contatti fra la poesia di Iacopone e la lirica siciliana e provenzale.” Testo 1 (1981): 52–72. Tomasin, Lorenzo. “Aspetti della sintassi iacoponica.” Italianistica 29 (2000): 93–112. Torkington, David. Il mistico: dalla preghiera carismatica alla preghiera mistica. Padua: Messaggero, 2013. Troiano, Alfredo. “‘Sozzo, Malvascio corpo, lussurioso e ‘ngordo’: la visione del corpo nel De contemptu mundi di Jacopone da Todi.” Italian Poetry Review 1 (2006): 255–72. Ulanov, Ann Belford, and Barry Ulanov. Primary Speech. A Psychology of Prayer. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982. Valesio, Paolo. “’O entenebrata luce ch’en me luce’: la letteratura del silenzio.” In Del silenzio. Percorsi, suggestioni, interpretazioni, edited by Giovannella Fusco Girard and Anna Maria Tango, 15–44. Rome: Ripostes, 1992. Vettori, Alessandro. “Singing with Angels: Iacopone da Todi’s Prayerful Rhetoric.” In Franciscans at Prayer, ed. Timothy Johnson, 221–48. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Vettori, Alessandro. Poets of Divine Love. Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Winter, P. “Prière.” In Dictionnaire de spiritualité, XII2, cll, 1296–339. Paris: Beauchesne, 1986. Zaleski, Philip, and Carol Zaleski. Prayer. A History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin ­Company, 2005. Zavalloni, Roberto. “La ‘corporeità’ nel pensiero francescano. Da San Francesco a Duns Scoto.” Antonianum 66 (1991): 532–62.

chapter 2

Medieval Self-Fashioning: Performances of Personality and Authority in Iacopone and Dante Nicolò Crisafi 1

‘The Most Powerful Personality […] before Dante’

It is commonplace in the scholarship on Iacopone da Todi to compare his work and temperament to those of the most influential poet of medieval Italian literature, Dante Alighieri.1 Dante never mentions Iacopone directly, and intertextual references to the Laude in his corpus are few, debatable, and rarely investigated.2 Faced with Dante’s unexplained silence on Iacopone, most scholars have resorted to bringing the two poets together by analogy. At times, Dante’s name is mentioned in passing for the purpose of ranking the relative significance of Iacopone’s poetry in Italy’s literary history. According to Lino Leonardi, for instance, Iacopone is “second only to Dante”;3 for Franco Suitner, “after Dante, Iacopone is the greatest poet of early Italian literature”;4 in Natalino Sapegno’s view, he is “the most powerful personality in our literary history before Dante Alighieri.”5 More often, however, Dante is invoked to find fault with Iacopone and his poetry and thus to bring some relative lack more sharply into focus by means of the comparison. Different scholars will impute to Iacopone different failings. To substantiate his trenchant quip that 1 For a review of the bibliography on Iacopone and Dante, see Matteo Leonardi, Bibliografia Iacoponica (Florence: Galluzzo, 2010), pp. 115–16; as well as the studies referred to in the notes below. 2 The most comprehensive studies of intertextual references is Paolo Canettieri, “Intertesti ideologici e rimici. Tasselli per Iacopone e Dante,” in Prassi intertestuale, ed. Simonetta ­Bianchini (Rome: Bagatto, 1996), pp. 55–80. 3 “Secondo solo a Dante” (Lino Leonardi and Francesco Santi, ‘La letteratura religiosa,’ in Storia della letteratura italiana. Vol. 1: Dalle origini a Dante, ed. by Enrico Malato [Rome: Salerno, 1995], p. 369, trans. mine). 4 Franco Suitner, Iacopone da Todi: Poesia, mistica, rivolta nell’Italia del medioevo (Rome: ­Donzelli, 1999), p. 240: “dopo di lui, proprio Iacopone è il maggior poeta della letteratura italiana delle origini” (trans. mine). 5 Natalino Sapegno, Disegno storico della letteratura italiana (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1959), p. 28: “La più potente personalità della nostra storia letteraria prima dell’Alighieri” (­trans. mine). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_004

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

41

“Iacopone is the fool of the genre of which Dante is the poet,” Abel François Villemain focused on matters of style: in his view, Iacopone’s poetry was “idiosyncratic” and “rather heavy-handed” when compared to Dante’s, “with whose genius he had nothing in common.”6 Other scholars focused on matters of structure, pitting Dante’s “constructive capacity” in designing the Commedia against the more fragmentary state of the Laude as a poetic collection.7 Others still, concentrated on matters of feeling: the sentiment of “Donna de Paradiso” (Laude 70) has been criticised for its “almost infantile simplicity,” “strong emotional response,” and “affective pietism,” in contrast, according to some, with Dante’s “sophistication” and “intellectual detachment,”8 but also, according to others, with his “proto-humanist […] compassion.”9 Whatever one makes of each of these critiques, a constant in the language in which they are expressed is that it often targets not so much the work of the two poets, as rather what Sapegno calls their “personality.”10 An elusive entity, “personality” is encountered at the crossroads between the fictionalised autobiography that is narrated in their texts, and the legend about the authors perpetuated by their immediate contemporaries and accreting through the centuries. This essay investigates the question of “personality” by comparing Iacopone and Dante in light of their construction of a personal form of 6

7 8

9 10

Abel François Villemain, Cours de literature française: Tableau de la littérature du moyen âge (Paris: Didier, 1851), II, 3–4: “[L]e bouffon du genre dont Dante était le poète”; “Ce sont le bizzarreries d’une verve grossière”; “n’a rien de commun avec le génie de Dante” (trans. mine). Already the seventeenth-century Vita by Giovan Battista Guazzaroni described the “umiltà somma nello suo stile e nelle parole rozze” (Le vite antiche di Iacopone da Todi, ed. by Enrico Menestò [Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977], p. 117). On the comparison with Dante, see also Frederic Ozanam, Les Poëtes Franciscains en Italie au treizième siècle (Paris: J. Lecoffre, 1852), pp. 267–71. Suitner, Iacopone da Todi, p. 240: “Una grande distanza lo separa ovviamente dalla ­capacità costruttiva dell’Alighieri” (trans. mine). “la semplicità quasi infantile di Jacopone,” “risposta fortemente emotiva,” “pietismo affet��tivo”; “descrizione […] distaccata” (Brian Reynolds, “L’immagine della vergine nelle laude del XIII secolo, in relazione alla commedia di Dante,” Fu Jen Studies: Literature and Linguistics 34 [2010], p. 84, trans. mine). George Terhune Peck, The Fool of God: Jacopone da Todi (Tuscaloosa: University of ­Alabama Press, 1980), p. 104: “But Jacopone does not have the compassion of Dante, who was a proto-humanist.” Sapegno, Disegno storico della letteratura italiana, p. 28, quote above. Scholars who remark on the “personal” nature of Iacopone’s poetry are Franca Ageno Brambilla, “Iacopo ­Benedetti,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 100 vols. (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–), VIII [1966], pp. 267–76; Patrizia Palumbo, Gender Difference in Franciscan Spirituality (unpublished doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1996), p. 185; Leonardi and Santi, “La letteratura religiosa,” p. 372; Canettieri, Poesia religiosa del Duecento, p. 21; Iacopone da Todi: Laude, ed. Matteo Leonardi (Florence: Olschki 2010), p. vii.

42

CRISAFI

authorship in their work and the ways in which it was received by their early readers. The “personal” nature of the two poets’ self-representation is such an essential part of their text that their reception is virtually inextricable from it. Iacopone’s hagiographical lives, especially, have been as influential as his Laude. Non-specialists might not have read his Laude or Dante’s Commedia but they will likely still be able to sketch out their authors’ personalities or evoke an episode from their curated lives. In focusing on the making of the two authors’ self-portrayal and self-narrative, this essay investigates a paradoxical dialectic, first identified by Albert Russell Ascoli in relation to Dante: the two poets’ attempts to inscribe themselves in the depersonalised and suprahistorical discourses of medieval auctoritas go hand in hand with the c­ reation of a proto-modern form of authorship that is personal, embodied, and autobiographically inflected.11 In fact, “self-fashioning” of the kind Iacopone and Dante engage in is always, as Stephen Greenblatt writes, “not only complex but resolutely dialectical.”12 In this dialectic, Iacopone and Dante seek to achieve institutional and cultural acceptance despite, and because of, their precarious biographical circumstances as outsiders from those milieus. The personal nature of their voice and circumstances subverts a medieval conception of auctoritas and beckons toward a new form of authorship. It is not by chance that Iacopone has resolutely appeared to his readers as “a cluster of dichotomies: was he saintly or heretical? Cultured or uneducated? Masochist or male warrior? Poet or mystic? Sane or insane?”13 Responding to the tensions found in his reception, this essay asks a simple question: if Iacopone is indeed “a character of many faces,” could methodologically embracing “the oscillation between these different faces” show a dialectical way forward?14

11 12 13 14

Albert Russell Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 1. V. Louise Katainen, “Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic: A Review of the History of the Criticism,” Mystics Quarterly, 22.2 (1996), p. 54. “un personaggio dai tanti volti”, “l’oscillazione tra questi diversi volti” (Enrico Menestò, “‘Que farai, fra Iacovone?’: Conferme e novità nella biografia di Iacopone da Todi,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2007), p. 1). Gianfranco Contini appears to detect an instrinsic link between lauda and dialectics from Iacopone to Dante, when he writes that the “tema della lode […] da sé importa sottigliezze dialettiche e passaggi al limite, come proverà, alla fine del secolo, la parodia erotica di Dante nelle rime della lode” (“Un’ipotesi sulle ‘laudes creaturarum’,” repr. in Varianti e altra linguistica [Turin: Einaudi, 1970], p. 158).

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

2

43

Self-Naming Authors: Personality versus Authority

The success that Dante and Iacopone enjoyed among their immediate contemporaries was very much personal. First of all, “the name of Ser Iacopo de’ Benedetti, or rather fra Iacopone da Todi, is the only name we encounter in the universal anonymity of the dramatic Lauds of Umbria”;15 and second, “the name ‘Iacopone’” was apocryphally used as an “indication of authority” in manuscripts that included “texts that were definitely not by Iacopone.”16 Similarly, the name of Dante is associated with lyric poems of dubious attribution with a comparable effect; the question of the authorship of Il Fiore and Epistle XIII is hotly debated to this day with the same stakes.17 This kind of attention to the author’s personal identity was very much a product of the ways Iacopone and Dante constructed their texts. It is not by chance that, writing against the backdrop of a lyric tradition in which poems routinely circulated anonymously and as part of collective anthologies, the two poets take the remarkable step of naming themselves in their own text.18 Self-naming identifies the first-person voice of lyric poetry with a historical 15

Mario Apollonio, Storia del teatro italiano (Milan: BUR, 2003), p. 188: “Il nome di Ser Iacopo de’ Benedetti, anzi di fra Iacopone da Todi, è l’unico che incontriamo in questo universale anonimato delle Laudi drammatiche umbre” (trans. mine). 16 Angelo Eugenio Mecca, “Il canone allargato: Il nome “Iacopone” come indice d’autorità,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2007), pp. 516–17: “il ‘nome’ Iacopone quale indice di autorità […] [in] testi sicuramente non iacoponici” (trans. mine). See also Leonardi and Santi, “La letteratura religiosa,” p. 371: “nel panorama generalmente anonimo della tradizione laudistica il nome di Iacopone ha avuto a lungo una funzione nobilitante, e molti testi estravaganti si trovano a lui attribuiti”; and Paolo Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi, Francesco d’Assisi, et al.: La poesia religiosa del Duecento, ed. Paolo Canettieri (Milan: BUR, 2001), p. 41: “Ciò che si ricava dalle testimonianze esterne, nelle quali vengono citate le laude di Iacopone, è che egli, ben presto e poi in maniera sempre più incisiva, diviene, soprattutto nel Nord d’Italia un’auctoritas importante.” On this widespread phenomenon, see also Vanna Bigazzi, “I Proverbia pseudoiacoponici,” Studi di filologia italiana 21 (1963), pp. 5–124, and Michele Lodone, “Iacopone profeta,” Linguistica e Letteratura 45 (2020), pp. 227–79. 17 Opere di dubbia attribuzione e altri documenti danteschi, eds. Paolo Mastandrea, Michele Rinaldi, Federico Ruggiero, and Linda Spinazzè, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 2021). 18 In Laude 53 and Purgatorio 30, 55, respectively. On authorial self-naming, see Bruno Por�celli and Leonardo Terrusi, “Les Nom et ses fonctions dans les études onomastique en Italie,” Onoma 40 (2005), p. 241 on Iacopone, and Leonardo Terrusi, “Il nome del viator tra attesa ed elusion: Isotopie dell’autonominatio nella Commedia dantesca,” Il Nome nel testo 20 (2018), pp. 109–18 on Dante. On possible relations between Guittone d’Arezzo and Iacopone: Palumbo, Gender Difference in Franciscan Spirituality, p. 185, and Canettieri, Poesia religiosa del Duecento, p. 37.

44

CRISAFI

and embodied author as opposed to a more universal speaker. This practice had some precedent in Sicilian lyric poetry and its origin in the Troubadour tradition.19 And yet, when in a climactic passage of the Commedia, Beatrice addresses the protagonist as “Dante” (Purgatorio 30, 55), the narrator still feels compelled to justify this personal intrusion (“[i]l nome mio, | che di necessità qui si registra” [“my name, | which of necessity is here recorded”], 63).20 Dante’s ambivalence toward authorial intrusion can already be detected in a passage of Convivio where the authority of impersonal rhetoricians is brought against authors who might dare to write too personally: “rhetoricians grant no one the right to speak of himself, except in the case of necessity” (Convivio I.ii.3). According to Dante, two exceptional models can, in the right circumstances, justify this practice: Boethius and Augustine had good cause to write about themselves in that they were seeking, respectively, to defend their own reputation and to benefit others with the example of their life-story (13–14). The Convivio’s uneasiness with the personal life of its author becomes particularly clear in his post exilic works. Dante’s most painful autobiographical circumstances as an exile severely affect his ability to control his self-­representation in writing, and therefore he perceives them as impacting the reception of his works. In a famous passage, Dante describes his predicament when, as a consequence

19

20

Ernest Robert Curtius, “Mention of the author’s name in Medieval literature,” European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (London: Routledge and Paul, 1954), pp. 515–18. On self-naming in the Troubadours, see Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, “Retorica del nome proprio nella poesia lirica medievale: i trovatori,” in Actas del IX Congreso internacional da Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval, La Coruña, 18–21 septiembre 2001, eds. Carmen Parilla and Mercedes Pampín (Coruña: Toxosoutos, 2005), pp. 83–97; on Marcabru especially, see Stefano Asperti and Caterina Menichetti, “Voci autoriali e auto-denominazione in Marcabru,” Verbis 2 (2018), pp. 35–62. On self-naming in the Galician poetry of Alfonso X of Castille, see Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, “Interpretatio e auto-interpretatio del nome di un re: Alfonso el Sabio e il nome di Dio,” Il Nome nel testo 4 (2002), pp. 11–21. The Sicilians that self-name are Giacomino Pugliese, Ruggeri Apugliese, and possibly Rinaldo d’Aquino, while Giacomo da Lentini stops just short of self-naming in the closing lines of his “Meravigliosamente” (61–63); cf. Claudio Lagomarsini, “Paganino da Serzana: Un rimatore ‘siciliano’ nella Lunigiana del sec. XIII,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 190.4 (2013), pp. 548–49. I thank Prof. Leonardo Terrusi for pointing me toward these references in correspondence, with exemplary scholarly generosity. All quotations from the Commedia are from La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, 2nd ed., 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994); translations are taken from Inferno, trans. by Jean and Robert Hollander (New York: Anchor, 2000); Purgatorio, trans. Jean and Robert Hollander (New York: Anchor, 2003); Paradiso, trans. Jean and Robert Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

45

of his exile, those who had heard of his fame, are unexpectedly able to meet him in person: e sono apparito a li occhi a molti che forseché per alcuna fama in altra forma m’aveano imaginato, nel conspetto de’ quali non solamente mia persona invilio, ma di minor pregio si fece ogni opera, sì già fatta, come quella che fosse a fare. [And I have appeared before the eyes of many who perhaps because of some report had imagined me in another form. In their sight not only was my person held cheap, but each of my works was less valued, those already completed as much as those yet to come.] (Convivio 1, 3, 6)21 In this passage exile forces upon the author a new, uncomfortable closeness with his readers, which escapes the studied mediation of his text and diminishes their reputation. No longer in exclusive control of his “fama” [literally, “fame”] through his writing, the author’s public image begins to betray a number of maculae or blemishes, which are “immediately revealed to be a product of Dante’s personal historical circumstances, and, even more specifically, an effect of his personal presence on the way his writings are received.”22 Personal presence, especially in troubled times, is depicted as impacting not only (“non solamente”) his personal status but also (“ma”) the reception of his various works. In the syntax of the passage the two are inextricably intertwined. Despite discussing the consequences of unexpected personal presence, Dante stops short of depicting in concrete terms “the horror of exile, impoverishment and loss of status that can be found in other urban vernacular poets of his region and period.”23 He tells readers about his “povertade” [“poverty”] (3), which is subjectively perceived as “dolorosa” [“painful”] (5); but the only realistic details that get close to representing it slightly more concretely are the noun “peregrino” [literally, “one who roams”] and the verb “mendicando” [“like a beggar”], or rather, “quasi mendicando.” The modifier “quasi” [“almost”] softens the begging, distances the author from the poveri vergognosi that appeared 21

Dante Alighieri, Convivio, ed. Franco Brambilla Ageno, 3 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1995); available in English as Dante’s Convivio (The Banquet), trans. Richard H. Lansing (New York: Garland, 1990). 22 Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author, p. 90. The idea that “presence diminished fame” was commonplace (cf. Claudian, De bello Gildonico, I, 385). 23 Nick Havely, Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the “Commedia” (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 17.

46

CRISAFI

socio-economically defined by their destitution, and arguably prepares his poverty for new sublimated interpretations: poverty as the evangelical ideal; as Francis’s paradoxical “ignota ricchezza” [“unknown riches”] (Paradiso 11, 82);24 as proof of a newfound moral authority in the status of the righteous exile.25 This layering of the ideal of poverty over its handpicked concrete details continues to play an important role in Dante’s references to exile and its consequences in the Commedia. In perhaps the most celebrated of these—“tu saprai sì come sa di sale | lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle | lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale” [“You shall learn how salt is the taste | of another man’s bread and how hard is the way, | going down and then up another man’s stairs”] (Paradiso 17.58–60), bread can be just as salty metaphorically as it is materially; descending and climbing others’ stairs can be just as hard metaphorically as it is literally. Dante’s precarious circumstances are publicised only when they can be invested with a significance greater than their gritty reality. In this way, it is always possible to deny the gritty reality at a later stage, if necessary. In his discussion of Dante’s discourses of poverty, Nick Havely compares its mentions in Convivio and Paradiso to that of Iacopone’s poem “Que farai, fra Iacovone?” (Laude 53). This is arguably “the most significant autobiographical document of [Iacopone’s] collection of laude,”26 and the only one where he names himself, no less than three times. The poem is centred on the description of Iacopone’s imprisonment in Todi. Similarly to Dante, Iacopone appears conscious of the ways in which his personal circumstances negatively impact his “fama,” a word that occurs twice in the poem (Laude 53, 4 and 143); yet he is far less reticent than Dante in his description of his material circumstances. Franco Suitner notes Iacopone’s “exasperated realism” whose “humble vocabulary of everyday life […] can only be related to some exploits of the Dante of the Commedia”;27 yet Iacopone’s realism here outpaces Dante’s, as the poet from 24

25 26 27

On a discussion of Dante’s representation of poverty in its context, including Iacopone and the Franciscans, see Havely, Dante and the Franciscans (on Iacopone at pp. 29–31). “Dante’s passion for Franciscan themes, such as poverty as an essential component of church purification and the mystical union with divinity, creates interesting parallels in the works of the two poets” (Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori, “Iacopone da Todi,” Oxford Bibliographies Online [26 May 2021], available online at https://www.oxfordbibli�ographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0287.xml). On the narrative of the righteous exile, see Gennaro Sasso, Le autobiografie di Dante (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2008). Leonardi, Iacopone da Todi: Laude, p. 53: “il documento autobiografico più significativo del laudario” (trans. mine). Suitner, Iacopone da Todi, p. 181: “realismo esasperato che la caratterizza e che può essere messo in rapporto solamente con alcuni exploits del Dante della Commedia” and “umile lessico della vita quotidiana” (trans. mine). On Iacopone’s realism, see Giovanni Getto, “Il

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

47

Todi does not flinch from fleshing out the details of his poverty to the readers. In contrast with Dante’s leaving the door open to the metaphorical potential of his salty bread, Iacopone’s bread remains resolutely literal: it must be hung in a basket so that mice will not eat it (3–35), it must be consumed down to its crust (41), and it comes in an amount appropriate not to a person but to a piglet (48). Whereas Dante, in a longstanding literary tradition, dedicates to the Muses the “fami, | freddi e vigilie” [“fasting, cold, or sleepless nights”] he has had to endure to compose the Commedia (Purgatorio 29, 37–38), Iacopone’s main concern is with solving his circumstances materially: he must find a way to endure the immediate cold, by pacing his cell in a strange dance (Laude 53, 56–58). There are of course times when Iacopone will also endow his personal circumstances with a higher significance. His forced destitution is identified with the Franciscan virtue of Poverty, personified in turn as a bride (Laude 53, 71–74) following the tradition inaugurated by Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior and recalled by Dante in his own account of the life of Francis (Paradiso 11, 58–87).28 Neglect of the virtue of Poverty is denounced and the lauda turns to an invective against the power struggles within the Roman curia, “inscribing [the] p ­ olitical-military events” that led to Iacopone’s imprisonment “within the cosmic struggle between good and evil.”29 Even so, whereas Dante’s writings carefully concede only as much poverty as is necessary to suggest a spiritualised interpretation that does not contaminate the poet’s authority, Iacopone’s portrayal exceeds those requirements with no regard for the author’s reputation. Indeed, Laude 53 begins with a performance of undressing from the clearest marker of his social standing: the hood that signals his belonging to the Franciscan order is cut off (12) and Iacopone must return instead to the hood of a lay penitent that he had worn for ten years as bizzocone (127–130). It is a remarkable act as it both imitates and reverses Francis’s famous act of undressing popularised in the saint’s hagiographies. On the one hand, Iacopone draws from Francis the symbolic power of social clothing and embraces the “theatrics of nudity” as a critique of social distinctions and as a sign of conversion to the virtue of humility.30 His biographers were wise to the symbolism: “the realismo di Jacopone da Todi,” Lettere Italiane, 8.3 (1956), pp. 223–69; Italo Bertelli, Impeto mistico e rappresentazione realistica nella poesia di Iacopone: Appunti sulla ‘lauda’ Donna de Paradiso (Milan: Bignami, 1981); Emilio Pasquini, “Realismo e immaginario nel laudario,” in Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000), ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2001), pp. 233–42. 28 Canettieri, Poesia religiosa del Duecento, p. 197. 29 Leonardi, Iacopone da Todi: Laude, p. 110 30 Vettori, Poets of Divine Love, p. 16.

48

CRISAFI

Franceschina, Iacopone’s earliest biography, refers to the different stages of his conversion from lawyer to bizocone, and then to Franciscan friar, as subsequent changes of clothes.”31 On the other hand, however, Laude 53 interrupts the linear progression of the various investitures by divesting the poet of the very symbol of Franciscan authority and returning him instead to the lesser cape of the penitent layman. Stripped of his Franciscan clothing, “fra’ Iacovone” (1) becomes simply “Iacovon” (137, 148). Clothing plays an important role in the last representation of Dante’s exile in his works. In Paradiso 25, the narrator fantasizes about returning to Florence and being hailed as poet laureate: Se mai continga che ’l poema sacro al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro, vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra del bello ovile ov’io dormi’ agnello, nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; con altra voce omai, con altro vello ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte del mio battesmo prenderò ’l cappello. [Should it ever come to pass that this sacred poem to which both Heaven and earth have set their hand so that it has made me lean for many years, should overcome the cruelty that locks me out of the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb, for of the wolves at war with it, with another voice then, with another fleece, shall I return a poet and, at the font where I was baptized, take the laurel crown.] (Paradiso 25, 1–9) The passage is movingly poised between a bold prophecy of Dante’s triumphant return and a sombre reflection on the eventuality that this might never

31 Vettori, Poets of Divine Love, p. 13.

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

49

occur.32 The melancholy interpretation is expressed by references to the ­narrator’s already ageing and emaciated body (“sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro,” 3; “con altra voce omai, con altro vello,” 7) that bears the concrete signs of exile in the ambivalently proud yet reticent mode that I have been describing, invariably layered with the possibility of a spiritualised interpretation. The triumphant flipside, on the other hand, is signalled by the bold prophetic future tenses that conclude the nine-line sentence: “ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte | del mio battesmo, prenderò ’l cappello” (8–9). Here Dante’s writing (“poema sacro,” 1) performs a change of condition from exile to poet laureate.33 The language used in Paradiso 25 is performative in J. L. Austin’s technical sense: it does not merely describe a state of affairs but brings it into being.34 Thus “ritornerò poeta” and “prenderò ’l cappello” do not simply relate Dante’s return and laureation but seek to perform them. It is not by chance that Dante stages this scene over a baptismal font (“in sul fonte | del mio battesmo”, Paradiso 25, 8–9), the place identified with the archetypal performative act of naming. When reading this prophecy after Dante Alighieri’s death, it is impossible to suspend one’s knowledge of the fact that if these lines were intended to work performatively, they hit a hard limit—the fact that the author never returned from exile.35 Nevertheless their performative power did meet with some success, as it played a decisive role in influencing the iconographic tradition of the poet: to this day, Dante is regularly portrayed wearing the laurel that alludes to a poetic coronation that never took place.36 In this sense, the scene, designed 32

33 34

35

36

See Nicolò Crisafi, Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the “Commedia” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 163–67. Paolo Canettieri observes that Paradiso 25, 4–5 might contain echoes of Laude 67, 1–2: “Lo pastor per meo peccato posto m’à for de l’ovile; | no me iova alto balato, che m’armetta per lo ostile” (“Intertesti ideologici e rimici,” p. 59). This change of condition by means of a change of clothing was arguably prepared by Virgil’s investiture of Dante at the entrance of the garden of Eden (“te sovra te corono e mitrio,” Purg. 27, 145). For the theory of performative utterances, see J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). On performativity in Dante, see Manuele Gragnolati, “Authorship and Performance in Dante’s Vita nova,” in Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture, eds. Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 123–40. Robert Wilson writes how Dante prefers obscurity and ambiguity to the possibility of incorrect prophecy, especially when it comes to ante eventum prophecies such as this one. Another example of failed prophecy is found in Epistle VI and Purgatorio 13, 91–111 (­Robert Wilson, Prophecies and Prophecy in Dante’s “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 2008], pp. 96–97). Crisafi, Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives, 165–67.

50

CRISAFI

with the aim of investing Dante with authority, fulfilled its aim. The biblical imagery and references to his apostolic poverty and the prophetic tone go hand in hand in fashioning Dante as an authoritative figure. It is what Nick Havely calls, “Dante’s own authorization of poverty.”37 Iacopone, as well, is keenly aware of the performative power of language. Scholars generally focus on the theatrical aspects of his laude drammatiche, but performative utterances play as important a role throughout the Laude.38 “Que farai, fra Iacovone?” begins with another standard performative utterance: the “mmaledezzone” [“curse”] of Boniface’s excommunication obscuring Iacopone’s fame (Laude 53, 9–10). The motif haunts the follow-up poem “O papa Bonifazio, eo porto tuo prefazio,” which is entirely preoccupied with performative consequences of the “emmaledizïone | e scommunicazione” [“anathema and excommunication”] (Laude 55, 3–4). The Pope’s “lengua forcuta” [“forked tongue”]—at once tongue and language—has the double power to wound and to heal (5–12);39 Iacopone begs the Pope to utter the Latin counter-­formula that will absolve him (“Per grazie te peto | che me dichi: ‘Absolveto’” [“I beseech you, | say the words: ‘I absolve you,’” 13–14) and responds, in turn, with a performative blessing (“Vale, vale, vale” [“Farewell, farewell, farewell”], 49).40 A metaliterary reference to the performative power of Iacopone’s word also closes “Que farai, fra Iacovone?,” imagining the lauda as a letter (“Carta mea” [“letter of mine”], Laude 53, 147) that is sent out into the world where the poet’s “fama” [“my good name”] is at stake (9 and 143). In contrast with Dante’s self-­serving performative utterance in Paradiso 25, Iacopone’s final self-portrait in the lauda is not that of an authoritative figure but of a private individual in the direst of circumstances. From “fra’ Iacovone” (1), to “Iacovon” (137), he eventually renames himself, performatively, “Iacovon preson” [“the Prisoner Jacopone”] (148). There is no uplifting conclusion to his self-representation here. Far from a poet-prophet, Iacopone self-fashions as poet-prisoner. 37 Havely, Dante and the Franciscans, p. 180. 38 On Iacopone and theatre, see Luca Badini Confalonieri, “Iacopone da Todi fra poesia e teatro,” in Il magistero di Giovanni Getto: Lo statuto degli studi sul teatro. Dalla storia del testo alla storia dello spettacolo (Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1993), pp. 23–36; Niccolò Scaffai, “Elementi drammatici nelle Laude di Iacopone da Todi,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, s. 4, 4.2 (1999), pp. 451–71; Canettieri, Poesia religiosa del Duecento, 22–31; and Apollonio, Storia del teatro italiano, pp. 147–92. 39 References to the Pope’s “lengua” are also found in the fourth autobiographical poem addressed to the Pope “O papa Bonifazio, molt’ài iocato al mondo” (Laude 83, 52, 55, and 59). Iacopone’s impotent tongue is represented in the third poem of the series (“Lo pastor per meo peccato posto m’à for de l’ovile,” Laude 67, 30 and 46). (The other two laude to Boniface are Laude 53 and 55.) 40 See Leonardi, Iacopone da Todi: Laude, p. 140.

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

3

51

Narratives of Conversion: Normalising the Author

In Iacopone’s and Dante’s writings there is then a tension between recording their life’s personal and material circumstances and subordinating them to a spiritualised and authorising model. But while in Dante the personal is only allowed to the extent that it can strategically further his self-authorising project, Iacopone’s Franciscan performance of humility repeatedly tends to humiliation, thus exceeding its requirements as a tool for self-authorisation, and in some way subverting the very category of auctoritas. Performing the personal is a means to an end in Dante’s case; in Iacopone’s case it repeatedly becomes an end in itself. If the personal in Dante is strategic, in Iacopone it becomes subversive. Iacopone’s early biographers sense the challenges that his idiosyncrasies pose to his authority. They generally have two conflicting agendas. On the one hand, they play up Iacopone’s performance as a “fool of God,” as they intuit, correctly, that the theatrics of divinely inspired folly are exactly what makes his story exceptional and memorable.41 Compiled a century or more after Iacopone’s death, these narratives base the legend of Iacopone’s folly in part on the text of his Laude and in part on the model of Francis as ioculator Domini, popularised in the saint’s hagiography before being reinterpreted in a spiritualised sense, and thus normalised, by Bonaventure.42 A similar tendency toward normalisation can be found in Iacopone’s biographies. Even as they narrate Iacopone’s eccentricities, they contextualise, reframe, and tone them down out of concern for his authority. The Franceschina, for instance, is remarkably ambivalent about Iacopone’s time as bizzocone in its commentary to “Que farai, fra Iacovone?”: quisto homo de Dio cognobbe, operanti la divina gratia, che quillo stato era molto periculoso, advegna che fosse de grande perfettione, et per questo pensò de pigliare un’altra vita più sicura.

41 42

For a review of the theme of the “fool of God” in relation to Iacopone’s Laude and F­ ranciscan hagiography, see Nicolò Maldina, “Il tema del santo folle nelle vita antiche di Iacopone,” Lettere italiane, 60.3 (2008), pp. 383–93. See Maldina, “Il tema del santo folle.” Badini Confalonieri writes about Bonaventure’s normalisation: “Non è […] un caso che questa linea giullaresca non trovi infatti più spazio nella normalizzazione bonaventuriana. Bonaventura riparla del giullare […] solo più come di un simbolo, atto a illustrare la necessità di abbassarsi agli occhi del volgo per innalzarsi davanti a Dio” (“Iacopone da Todi fra poesia e teatro,” p. 31).

52

CRISAFI

[This man of God realised, thanks to the operations of divine grace, that that state was very dangerous, despite the fact that it was of great ­perfection, and for this reason decided to take a better way of life.]43 The passage seeks to normalise Iacopone’s most eccentric traits by bringing them back within the reassuring tropes of hagiography. On the one hand, the Franceschina acknowledges the “great danger” of Iacopone’s life as a layman and implies that it was not always “safe.” On the other hand, it elevates these concessions with the language of hagiography: Iacopone is depicted as a saint preserved by divine grace in his state of spiritual perfection (“questo homo de Dio,” “operanti la divina gratia,” “de grande perfettione”). Most strikingly, however, the Franceschina manipulates the timeline of Iacopone’s life to make it conform to the normative paradigm of the conversion narrative. The biography appears to pull forward the composition of “Que farai, fra’ Iacovone?” in the timeline of Iacopone’s life by placing it before Iacopone’s original entrance in the Franciscan order. According to this strategically falsified chronology, the lauda is uncoupled from the author’s excommunication and imprisonment (which historically occurred ten years later) so that Iacopone’s return to his status as bizzocone (Laude 53, 127–130) is not presented as a relapse; it is referred back instead to the original ten-year phase that the author eventually recognised as dangerous and disowned as unsafe. The verbs “cognobbe” and “pensò” attribute this subjective epiphany to Iacopone, despite the falsified chronology betraying them instead as the work of his biographers. The falsified chronology better fits Iacopone’s life within the expected arc of conversion, “accentuating the contrast between the period that precedes the conversion and the one that follows it.”44 According to this paradigm, the trajectory of the convert must move from a variously objectionable past to an unimpeachable new state. The theme of conversion supplies the writings of both Iacopone and Dante with fundamental material for the content, structure, and authority-claims of their writings. Narratives of conversion are ostensibly highly personal in nature yet their reinterpretation of the past from a changed perspective is also simultaneously aimed at inscribing the protagonist in a collective experience that transcends the personal. Conversion is both

43 44

Franceschina (XV century), in Menestò, Le vite antiche di Iacopone da Todi, p. 41, trans. mine. The readings of the other biographies, stemmed from the revised version of the so-called “Life of Montecristo,” now lost, largely coincide. Ageno Brambilla, “Iacopo Benedetti”, p. 267: “accentuare […] il contrasto fra il periodo che precede la conversione e quello che la segue.”

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

53

imitated from past models and ideally imitable by future converts.45 These characteristics are evident in Dante’s comparison of the personal and autobiographical nature of his Convivio to that of Augustine’s Confessions, arguably the most influential conversion narrative of Christianity. Two fundamental elements catch Dante’s eye: the narrative arc of Augustine’s autobiography as progress from a negative past to a new positive situation (“lo processo della sua vita, lo quale fu di [meno] buono in buono, e di buono in migliore, e di migliore in ottimo” [“the progress of his life, which proceeded from bad to good, good to better, and better to best”]); and its exemplary nature (“ne diede essemplo e dottrina, la quale per [altro] si vero testimonio ricevere non si potea” [“he gave us an example and instruction which could not be provided by any other testimony so true as this”], Convivio I.ii.14).46 Most importantly, the conversion narrative is also instrumental in the construction of the convert’s authority: at the price of denouncing his past mistakes, the convert purchases a new form of authority. Dante makes a career out of harnessing the authorising power of conversion narratives for the purposes of constructing his own credibility, to the extent that it may be considered his masterplot.47 This narrative trajectory has been described by Gianfranco Contini as “a constant in Dante’s personality,” consisting in “downgrading an earlier experience, removing from it its intrinsic goal, and repurposing it as part of a new experience.”48 The paradigm of conversion obviously predates Dante; indeed, it is plausible, although difficult to demonstrate, that, if Dante had direct knowledge of the Laude, he may have found in Iacopone’s text some of the raw materials that make up the building blocks of his narrative strategy. At the same time, however, it can be argued with a greater degree of certainty that the rearrangement of these building blocks in service of a coherent narrative strategy in Iacopone’s own biographies and editorial history, in contrast with the version of the more autobiographical poems, is Dantean in turn. I have already mentioned the Franceschina’s decision to 45 46

47 48

See Leonardi, Iacopone da Todi: Laude, pp. xv and xxxvi. On Augustine’s conversion narrative and Dante, see the collection of essays by John ­Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard ­University Press, 1986), and Albert Russell Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author, p. 179. I discuss the importance of conversion narratives to Dante in Crisafi, ­Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives, pp. 27–33. See Crisafi, Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives, pp. 1–42. Gianfranco Contini, “Introduzione alle Rime di Dante,” repr. in Un’idea di Dante: Studi danteschi (Turin: Einaudi, 1970), pp. 4–5: “una costante della personalità dantesca […] quel suo degradare un’esperienza precedente, toglierle la sua finalità intrinseca, usufruirla come elemento dell’esperienza nuova” (trans. mine).

54

CRISAFI

correct the chronology of the poet’s spiritual progress in order better to fit the bipartition of conversion. Similarly to the middle of the path of the protagonist’s life in the first line of Inferno, Iacopone’s life “is divided exactly in two halves. The year 1268 is the one that indicates before and after: that is, the year of conversion.”49 This “two-part structure between narration ‘in vita’ and ‘in morte’, a recurring convention among the founders of vernacular lyric” from Dante’s Vita nova to Petrarch’s Canzoniere, “is mirrored in the ancient biographies of Iacopone: for the religious poet as well, the death of the lady is the primary cause for the conversion, divine folly, and song.”50 Dante’s influence on Iacopone’s reception is not limited to the structure of his biographies but also involves its editorial history. The Florentine editor of the editio princeps of Iacopone’s Laude in 1490, Francesco Bonaccorsi, was also the editor of Dante’s Convivio. His project to publish one hundred laudi “echoed the number of cantos of the Commedia” and structured Iacopone’s story as a “path that leads from the abjection of the world to the mystical vision of God.”51 This was not an isolated coincidence: in the manuscript Conventi Soppressi C. 8. 957, assembled as early as the fifteenth-century, Iacopone’s Laude are collected alongside Dante’s Commedia.52 Editors and biographers thus played a fundamental role in organising ­Iacopone’s Laude with a narrative a posteriori derived from hagiography’s conversion narratives and, as I contend, from Dante’s masterplot.53 Conversely, individual laude expressly thematise, and to some extent anticipate, 49 50

51

52 53

Menestò, ‘“Que farai, fra Iacovone?”’ 3: “Una delle peculiarità di questa biografia è essere divisa esattamente a metà: è il 1268 l’anno che segna il prima e il dopo: l’anno cioè della conversione” (trans. mine). Canettieri, Poesia religiosa del Duecento, p. 38: “Non è un caso che la struttura “bipartita” fra narrazione “in vita” e “in morte”, vera convenzione ricorrente dei costruttori della lirica in volgare, abbia un rispecchiamento nelle antiche biografie di Iacopone: anche per il poeta religioso, la morte della donna amata è la ragione prima della conversione, della divina follia e quindi del canto” (trans. mine). See also Suitner, Iacopone da Todi, p. 9. Canettieri, Poesia religiosa del Duecento, 37–38: “attraverso il numero delle cento laude che la princeps avrebbe dovuto includere, ha probabilmente voluto echeggiare il numero dei canti della Commedia e ha anche ricostruito una storia, un percorso che porta dalle bassezze del mondo alla visione mistica di Dio.” See also Vettori, Poets of Divine Love, p. xvi. Mecca, “Il canone allargato,” p. 523. For the claim that “il laudario può essere considerato narrazione solo a posteriori (o a prezzo di sofismi),” see Canettieri, Poesia religiosa del Duecento, p. 39. Cf. also Edoardo Barbieri, “Le Laudi di Francesco Bonaccorsi (1490): profilo di un’edizione,” in Menestò, La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, pp. 639–82; Giacomo Jori, “Tradition des imprimés et lectures de Jacopone au XVIe et XVIIe siècle,” in Pour un vocabulaire mystique au XVIIe siècle, ed. François Trémolières (Turin: Nino Aragano Editore, 2004), pp. 97–152.

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

55

metanarrative discourses on conversion even when they do not refer directly to Iacopone’s personal life. In fact, these reflections seem to precede his life’s narrativization qua personalised conversion narrative. The laude “Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo” (Laude 28), for example, ostensibly consists in a celebration of the eucharist yet also offers a reflection on the question of what to do about one’s past. The phrases “tempo passato” and “vita passata” appear four times in the poem (ll. 26; 35; 48; 56); and in yet another instance of how “the thematic trends of biography and poetry intersect and overlap at numerous points,”54 these phrases are echoed several times in Iacopone’s early biographies.55 In the lauda, the speaker’s soul erupts in a frenzy of love, “plagnenno la vita passata” [“weeping over its sinful past”]: O vita mea emmaledetta  mundana lussurïosa, vita de scrofa fetente,  sogliata en merda lutosa, sprezzanno la vita celesta  de l’odorifera rosa! Non passerà questa cosa  ch’ella non sia corrottata. O vita mea emmaledetta  villana engrata soperba … Anema mea, que farai  de lo tuo tempo passato? [Oh, the lustful, wordly, hateful life I led, The life of a sow, wallowing in its excrement, A life contemptuous of the fragrance of the rose of heaven! How can I remember without bitter tears? Oh churlish, ungrateful, arrogant life, … My soul, how will you make amends?] (28, 26–31 and 35, italics mine) The question that the first-person speaker addresses to his converted soul— “Anema mea, che farai de lo tuo tempo passato?” [literally, “My soul, what will you do about your past?”] (35)—is spiritual as much as metanarrative: how does one make narrative sense of one’s problematic path? The speaker tries

54 55

Vettori, Poets of Divine Love, p. xviii. The Franceschina relates the moment of Iacopone’s conversion (“tramutatione”) in those terms: “comenzò […] a considerare la passata sua vita tanto fuore de la via de Dio et de la salute; ante ciecha et paza et insensata et fuore d’ogne ragione, la quale lo precipitava senza lacuno freno alli orrendi baratri de lo eternale inferno” (Franceschina, 37).

56

CRISAFI

out different strategies from mourning the past (26), to cursing it (27 and 31), and eventually settles on embracing his shame of it (56–58): Venite a vedere maraviglia  ch’e’ pòzzo portare le vergogne c’a tutto lo tempo passato  sempre da me fòr de lugne; ora me dà un’alegrezza,  quando vergogna me iogne, però che con Deo me coniogne  ennela sua dolce abracciata. [Come, come see this wonder—I now endure shame, That shame I loathed and kept at a distance; In sweet embrace shame binds me to God, And in that embrace I find joy.] (28, 55–58) “Learning to withstand one’s shame constitutes a fundamental moment on the penitential path”:56 in the soul’s acknowledgement of his conversion the audience is called to bear witness to his shameful past. The feeling of shame provides an affective link between the past and the present, as it connects them narratively. In the affect of shame, the personal failures of the past are not depersonalised or normalised in the quest for auctoritas, but instead they are brought to light for everyone to see and embraced through a personal affect. The shameful behaviour of the past is not cut off or covered up from the public, but, through the affect of shame, it becomes the root of the soul’s newfound joy. In this way, the personal past becomes the foundation for a new form of authority, which remains unapologetically personal. Compare this shameless embrace of shame to Dante. In the second section of this essay, I mentioned that according to the Florentine poet the only two reasons why it might be acceptable for an author to write about their life are to defend their own reputation like Boethius or to benefit others with their personal example like Augustine (Convivio 1, 2, 13–14). Here is Dante’s reasoning in claiming that he writes to defend his personal reputation: Temo la infamia di tanta passione avere seguita, quanta concepe chi legge le sopra nominate canzoni in me avere segnoreggiata: la quale infamia si 56

Suitner, Iacopone da Todi, p. 27: “La sopportazione della vergogna costituisce un momento essenziale sulla strada del penitente.” (trans. mine). The word “vergogna” and its cognates appear forty-nine times in Iacopone’s Laude. See for instance, “O iubelo de core” (Laude 9).

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

57

cessa, per lo presente di me parlare, interamente, lo quale mostra che non passione ma vertù sia stata la movente cagione. [I fear the infamy of having yielded myself to the great passion that anyone who reads the canzoni mentioned above must realize once ruled me. This infamy will altogether cease as I speak now about myself and show that my motivation was not passion but virtue.] (Convivio 1, 2, 16) The passion that Dante claims to have followed exposes him to the risk of infamy; writing about himself, then, is conceived as the antidote. But this writing is not imagined as dwelling in the personal space of his passion, as ­Iacopone’s Laude do. Instead, the purpose of Dante’s writing is claimed to be to empty passion of its original meaning and to resignify it as virtue, e­ rasing the disruptive potential of its most personal aspects. In this sanitised form, the “true meaning” (which is actually painstakingly curated) is said to also benefit others in the Augustinian model (17). In normalising and resignifying the eccentricities and material conditions in Iacopone’s personal life, the poet’s early biographers and editors follow Dante’s strategy out of concern for the poet’s authority. In the meantime, Iacopone’s scattered laude reinvent authority in unabashedly getting up close and personal. Works Cited Ageno Brambilla, Franca. “Iacopo Benedetti.” In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 100 vols., 267–76. (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–), VIII (1966). Alighieri, Dante. Convivio. Edited by Franco Brambilla Ageno, 3 vols. Florence: Le ­Lettere, 1995. Alighieri, Dante. Dante’s Convivio (The Banquet). Translated by Richard H. Lansing. New York: Garland, 1990. Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Translated by Jean and Robert Hollander. New York: Anchor, 2000. Alighieri, Dante. La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata. Edited by Giorgio Petrocchi, 2nd ed., 4 vols. Florence: Le Lettere, 1994. Alighieri, Dante. Paradiso. Translated by Jean and Robert Hollander. New York: ­Doubleday, 2007. Alighieri, Dante. Purgatorio. Translated by Jean and Robert Hollander. New York: Anchor, 2003.

58

CRISAFI

Apollonio, Mario. Storia del teatro italiano. Milan: BUR, 2003. Ascoli, Albert Russell. Dante and the Making of a Modern Author. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2008. Asperti, Stefano and Caterina Menichetti. “Voci autoriali e auto-denominazione in Marcabru.” Verbis 2 (2018): 35–62. Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Badini Confalonieri, Luca. “Iacopone da Todi fra poesia e teatro.” In Il magistero di Giovanni Getto: Lo statuto degli studi sul teatro. Dalla storia del testo alla storia dello spettacolo, 23–36. Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1993. Barbieri, Edoardo. “Le Laudi di Franceso Bonaccorsi (1490): profilo di un’edizione.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò, 639–82. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2007. Bertelli, Italo. Impeto mistico e rappresentazione realistica nella poesia di Iacopone: Appunti sulla ‘lauda’ Donna de Paradiso. Milan: Bignami, 1981. Bertolucci Pizzorusso, Valeria. “Interpretatio e auto-interpretatio del nome di un re: Alfonso el Sabio e il nome di Dio.” Il Nome nel testo 4 (2002), 11–21. Bertolucci Pizzorusso, Valeria. “Retorica del nome proprio nella poesia lirica medievale: i trovatori.” In Actas del IX Congreso internacional da Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval, La Coruña, 18–21 septiembre 2001, eds. Carmen Parilla and ­Mercedes Pampín, 83–97. Coruña: Toxosoutos, 2005. Bigazzi, Vanna. “I Proverbia pseudoiacoponici.” Studi di filologia italiana 21 (1963), 5–124. Canettieri, Paolo. “Intertesti ideologici e rimici. Tasselli per Iacopone e Dante.” In Prassi intertestuale, ed. Simonetta Bianchini, 55–80. Rome: Bagatto, 1996. Canettieri, Paolo. Iacopone da Todi, Francesco d’Assisi, et al.: La poesia religiosa del ­Duecento. Edited by Paolo Canettieri. Milan: BUR, 2001. Contini, Gianfranco. “Introduzione alle Rime di Dante.” Reprinted in Un’idea di Dante: Studi danteschi 4–5. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. Contini, Gianfranco. “Un’ipotesi sulle ‘laudes creaturarum’.” Reprinted in Varianti e altra linguistica, 141–59. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. Crisafi, Nicolò. Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the “Commedia.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Curtius, Ernest Robert. “Mention of the author’s name in Medieval literature.” In European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, 515–18. London: Routledge and Paul, 1954. Freccero, John. Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. Edited by Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Getto, Giovanni. “Il realismo di Jacopone da Todi.” Lettere Italiane, 8.3 (1956), 223–69. Gragnolati, Manuele. “Authorship and Performance in Dante’s Vita nova.” In Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture, ed. Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, 123–40. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2010.

PERFORMANCES OF PERSONALITY AND AUTHORITY IN IACOPONE

59

Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Havely, Nick. Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the “Commedia.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Olschki 2010. Jori, Giacomo. “Tradition des imprimés et lectures de Jacopone au XVIe et XVIIe siècle.” In Pour un vocabulaire mystique au XVIIe siècle, ed. François Trémolières, 97–152. Turin: Nino Aragno Editore, 2004. Katainen, V. Louise. “Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic: A Review of the History of the Criticism.” Mystics Quarterly 22.2 (1996): 44–57. Lagomarsini, Claudio. “Paganino da Serzana: Un rimatore ‘siciliano’ nella Lunigiana del sec. XIII.” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 190.4 (2013): 538–51. Leonardi, Lino and Francesco Santi. “La letteratura religiosa.” In Storia della letteratura italiana. Vol. 1: Dalle origini a Dante, ed. Enrico Malato, 339–403. Rome: Salerno, 1995. Leonardi, Matteo, and Alessandro Vettori. “Iacopone da Todi.” In Oxford Bibliographies Online [26 May 2021], available online at https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com /view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0287.xml Leonardi, Matteo. Bibliografia Iacoponica. Florence: Galluzzo, 2010. Lodone, Michele. “Iacopone profeta.” Linguistica e Letteratura 45 (2020), 227–79. Maldina, Nicolò. “Il tema del santo folle nelle vita antiche di Iacopone.” Lettere italiane 60.3 (2008): 383–93. Mastandrea, Paolo, Michele Rinaldi, Federico Ruggiero, and Linda Spinazzè, eds. Opere di dubbia attribuzione e altri documenti danteschi, 2 vols. Rome: Salerno, 2021. Mecca, Angelo Eugenio. “Il canone allargato: Il nome “Iacopone” come indice d’autorità.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò, 515–33. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2007. Menestò, Enrico. “‘Que farai, fra Iacovone?’: Conferme e novità nella biografia di ­Iacopone da Todi.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò, 1–37. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2007. Menestò, Enrico, ed. Le vite antiche di Iacopone da Todi. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977. Ozanam, François. Les Poëtes Franciscaines en Italie au treizième siècle. Paris: J. Lecoffre, 1852. Palumbo, Patrizia. Gender Difference in Franciscan Spirituality. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1996. Pasquini, Emilio. “Realismo e immaginario nel laudario.” In Iacopone da Todi. Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000), ed. Enrico Menestò, 233–42. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2001. Peck, George Terhune. The Fool of God: Jacopone da Todi. Tuscaloosa: University of ­Alabama Press, 1980. Porcelli, Bruno and Leonardo Terrusi. “Les Nom et ses fonctions dans les études ­onomastique en Italie.” Onoma 40 (2005): 237–82.

60

CRISAFI

Reynolds, Brian. “L’immagine della vergine nelle laude del XIII secolo, in relazione alla commedia di Dante.” Fu Jen Studies: Literature and Linguistics 34 (2010): 69–93. Sapegno, Natalino. Disegno storico della letteratura italiana. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1959. Sasso, Gennaro. Le autobiografie di Dante. Naples: Bibliopolis, 2008. Scaffai, Niccolò. “Elementi drammatici nelle Laude di Iacopone da Todi.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, s. 4, 4.2 (1999): 451–71. Suitner, Franco. Iacopone da Todi: Poesia, mistica, rivolta nell’Italia del medioevo. Rome: Donzelli, 1999. Terrusi, Leonardo. “Il nome del viator tra attesa ed elusion: Isotopie dell’autonominatio nella Commedia dantesca.” Il Nome nel testo 20 (2018): 109–18. Villemain, Abel François. Cours de literature française: Tableau de la littérature du moyen âge, 3–4. Paris: Didier, 1851, II. Wilson, Robert. Prophecies and Prophecy in Dante’s “Commedia.” Florence: Olschki, 2008.

Chapter 3

“O novo canto, c’ài morto el planto de l’omo enfermato!”

The Musical Spirit of Iacopone’s Laudario and the Development of a New Italian Melody Federica Franzè 1 Introduction Qui iubilat, non verba dicit, sed sonus quidam est laetitiae sine verbis; vox est enim animi diffuse Laetitia, quantum potest, exprimentis affectum, non sensum comprehendis. S. Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 100.4 Medievalists have frequently acknowledged that the vast production of laude by Iacopone da Todi played a crucial role in the dissemination of the vernacular, making the lauda “into an art form.”1 Through the laude, Iacopone narrated his conversion and expressed his unique spiritual connection with God in a new language that was slowly penetrating all religious environments and was destined to replace Latin. Research has also established that Iacopone’s texts, like many other laudari, also possessed a strong musical component. While the musical scores of laude have not always been recovered, several elements demonstrate that these compositions were accompanied by music and instruments. They were also characterized by spontaneity and improvisation and originally conceived to be sung by worshipers inside or outside the church. Cyrilla Barr points out that: “[A]s the one was forced to record in writing the sounds of a spoken language not yet taught or codified, so also the amanuensis of the music was faced with the task of how to capture the aural impression of an essentially unwritten musical repertoire and to represent it to the eye.”2

1 George Peck, The Fool of God: Iacopone da Todi (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 69. 2 Cyrilla Barr, The Monophonic Lauda and the Lay Religious Confraternities of Tuscany and Umbria in the Late Middle Ages, Early Drama, Art and Music (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, 1988), p. 92. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_005

62

FRANZÈ

The origin of the laude as poetic texts in vernacular has been widely discussed. Instead, this article shifts its attention to Iacopone as a musician in the attempt to shed new light on the musical aspect of his compositions. Drawing from the history of the lauda-ballata, as well as from possible influences of the Arab-Andalusian zéjel form, the first part of the article examines how Iacopone’s texts departed from the symmetrical and structured patterns of popular religious compositions of the time, in particular Latin hymns or Gregorian chants. By alternating existing musical forms and repetitive intonations with novel, improvisatory schemes, Iacopone created an original laudario that is an important document of the dissemination of the vernacular as a poetic language and of the development of Italian monophonic melody. In the second part, the article will discuss direct references to the music in some of Iacopone’s texts, revealing his knowledge of the discipline and his awareness of the musical potential of vernacular words. Lauda 64 presents a remarkable example, as the poet reflects on how to choose the right notes to announce the arrival of God, suggesting in this way that his compositions were meant to be sung. In his texts, Iacopone carefully chooses words, plays with consonants and vowels, forges new terms and employs figures of speech such as anaphora, oxymoron, and iterations to construct strong and powerful images. A close reading of his compositions reveals an impressively original use of the vernacular and an unconventional and unique poetic voice. While it is not possible to determine whether Jacopone was also the author of the melody of his laude, frequent and direct references to the melody in his laude seemingly suggest that for Jacopone music could be the perfect means to restore a deep and spiritual relationship with God. 2

Iacopone’s Laudario: between the Lauda-Ballata and the Zéjel

With his Laudes Creaturarum (Canticle of the Creatures, ca. 1224), Saint Francis was among the first to compose religious poetry in vernacular explicitly to be sung. The recovered manuscript from Assisi (codice 338 di Assisi) in fact presented, next to the text, a blank space most probably designed to accommodate notation. Saint Francis’ followers, the Franciscans, gave life to movements of worshippers who, first in the streets of Perugia, then all around Italy, walked barefoot in public processions, singing laude and practicing self-flagellation to express repentance and faith in God. These people, known as flagellanti and laudesi, gathered in confraternities, each organized with specific rules and requiring their members not only to pray but also to sing.

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

63

Chronicles and anecdotes recount that these confraternities were specifically dedicated to educating young people to sing – “laudesi” literally means “singers of laude”3 – and contain references to compositions accompanied by melodies and instruments, thereby confirming the central role of music in these prayers. About 200 laudari from that period are preserved, however only two of them contain a good number of musical notations: the Laudario di Cortona (Ms. 91) includes 46 compositions4 with the melody in square notation on a four-line staff, and Laudario Magliabechiano from Florence, with 89 melodies.5 The laude used a variety of melodic schemes mostly deriving from the existing liturgical repertoire of hymns and litanies, as well as the secular compositions such as the ballata, closely related to French Virelai. As the Laudario di Cortona shows, the notation of the lauda resembles that of Gregorian chant with a square notation.6 Barr points out that, despite the absence of mensural indications, these compositions were given “rhythmic interpretation in performance, very likely determined by the meter of the texts.”7 The melodies were carried out in an alternation of voices between a soloist and a choir, thus, Franco Suitner is convinced that the religious songs that most closely resembles the laude are the halleluiatic psalms, where refrains included different phrasings of hallelujah and were sung by a choir. Moreover, very often, in these types of psalms, singers accompanied their joyful prayer with dance.8 In sacred texts, a reference to dance was not unusual, in fact, in the Medieval period dance could be part of the liturgical ceremony as a ritual element and the festive manifestation of worshippers’ fervent devotion. People would dance around the altar and along the streets, the event often transforming into uncontrolled performances. Dancing, like praying and singing, had a spiritual and metaphorical meaning intended to express the glorification of a life in God’s faith. Scholars have been reluctant to see the beginning of a new musical form in the laude and continued to consider Latin hymns or Provençal songs as the 3 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 67. 4 Liuzzi argues that there are only 45 compositions: one of them has been mistaken for two separate pieces by other scholars (Fernando Liuzzi, La Lauda e i primordi della melodia ­italiana [Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1934], p. 38). 5 Elvidio Surian, Manuale di storia della musica, vol 1 (Milan: Rugginenti, 1991), p. 99. 6 Surian, Manuale di storia della musica, pp. 99–100. 7 Barr, The Monophonic Lauda, p. 92. 8 Franco Suitner, “Alle origini della lauda,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 173 (1996): p. 341.

64

FRANZÈ

only official religious music. But if the early laude were just “repetitious and monotonous rhymes,”9 and a mere replication of Gregorian chants in vernacular, after the spread of confraternities of penitents in 1260 the later laude began to develop into something new. Fernando Liuzzi’s precious and monumental work on the Laudario di Cortona and the Laudario Magliabechiano in the early 1930s offers, for the first time, an innovative interpretation. Liuzzi observes that: “the penitents’ song was a youthful cry, barely articulated, but univocal, sincere, and new, through which emerged the pain and compassion of a people (…) [I]n this cry there is the seed of a future melody, blossoming in loud and clear chant.”10 Liuzzi is convinced that the laude fused poetic elements with musical ones in such a way as to invite people to start singing spontaneously and collectively. In particular, he points to the presence of a solid tonal structure and a clear articulation of feet and refrains. These provide a clear direction to the sound with insisting, powerful cadences.11 He argues that the sonix syntax moves continuously alongside the verbal one in a deeply coherent and organic way. Liuzzi finds in the lauda a spiritual and formal correspondence that reproduces an articulated harmony, even capable of hiding evident syntactic i­rregularities.12 According to him, such intimate connection between music and words also confirms that they both originate from the same author.13 Liuzzi recognizes that Italian melody was slowly moving away from the existing liturgical tradition, and that important changes were taking place.14 Along the same lines, a few years later, Franco Abbiati argues that the laudari from Cortona and Florence are the first testimony of a process of renovation and transformation of 9 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 67. 10 Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 16: “[I]l canto dei penitenti era un grido acerbo, appena articolato, ma univoco e sincero, nuovo, in cui si fondeva il dolore e la pietà di un popolo (…) [I]n codesto grido c’è un seme di melodia prossimo a sbocciare in forte e chiaro canto.” 11 Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 146. 12 Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 148. 13 Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 147. 14 Liuzzi writes: “Coming together from the old, withered trunk of ecclesiastical intonation, dragged from the chant of the last latinate rhythms, from the first uncertain inflections of the nascent language, and independently from the then triumphant troubador’s song, the laude create the vernacular melody with poetry.” (“[D]al vecchio inaridito tronco delle intonazioni ecclesiastiche, dalle cantilena trascinate sugli ultimi ritmi latini, dalle prime malcerte inflessioni associate al nascente linguaggio, si giunse, in pian indipendenza dal canto trovatorico allora trionfante, a creare con la poesia la melodia volgare” (Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 21). He continues elsewhere: “The music of the laude is therefore a new art: of an extraliturgical form and spirit, despite the inspiration or, sometimes, the religious transposition” (“Arte nuova, insomma, è la musica delle laude: di spirito e forma extraliturgica, nonostante l’ispirazione o, a volte, la trasposizione religiosa” (Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 38).

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

65

music and the first organic documents of Italian monophonic lyric of the thirteenth century.15 Like Liuzzi, Abbiati sees in these laudari the sign of a revitalized approach to both music and lyrics,16 thereby reinforcing the idea that the laude are an important document not only from a linguistic point of view for the dissemination of the vernacular, but also for their musical value. It is hard to establish if and to what extent the existing laudari influenced Iacopone and his laude. Undoubtedly the Latin hymns and liturgical sequences were among the first models for his poetic production.17 In particular, according to Vettori, the litany with its alternating scheme worked as a suitable poetic pattern for Iacopone “to express his vacillation between silence and singing.”18 A closer reading of his compositions, however, shows that these texts differ from those of the flagellanti or the laudesi in their original themes and new metrical structures, which combine words and music in unconventional ways. As mentioned before, research has widely discussed and demonstrated that beyond a connection to traditional religious texts, Iacopone’s laude were influenced, both in themes and strophic form by musical and poetic motifs from secular models, in particular the ballata. A vast number of laude by Iacopone in fact present the same metric scheme: a two-line refrain and four-line verses. While the scarce documentation does not allow us to define with certainty when the lauda assumed the structure of the ballata, it is realistic to assume that Iacopone was one of the principal disseminators of the lauda in this form.19 This metric form became so popular that the lauda has been defined as the “spiritual”20 or “natural”21 sister of the ballata.

15 Franco Abbiati, Storia della musica, vol. 1 (Milan: Treves, 1939), p. 198. 16 Abbiati, Storia della musica, p. 200. 17 Suitner, “Alle origini della lauda,” p. 339. 18 Alessandro Vettori, “Singing with Angels: Iacopone da Todi’s Prayerful Rhetoric,” in Franciscans at Prayer, ed. Timothy Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 244. 19 See Paolo Toschi, Il valore attuale ed eterno della poesia di Jacopone (Todi: Tipografia Tiberina, 1964), p. 12; Giorgio Varanini, ed., Laude dugentesche (Padua: Antenore, 1972), p. xxv. In 1959, Angelo Monteverdi writes: “Could it not have been [Iacopone], who at a certain moment had the idea of using the same meter to sing sacred love, which perhaps he had used to sing profane love? […] Of course, there is no way to resolve this doubt.” (“Non sarà dunque stato lui, che ad un certo momento avrà avuto l’idea di usare, per cantare l’amor sacro, quel medesimo metro, che forse, aveva usato per cantare l’amore profano? […] Naturalmente non c’è modo di risolvere questo dubbio.” Angelo Monteverdi, Iacopone Poeta, in Iacopone e il suo tempo. Convegno del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale I, Todi, 13–15 ottobre 1957 [Assisi: Accademia tudertina, 1959], p. 47). 20 Liuzzi, La lauda, p. 8. 21 Abbiati, Storia della musica, p. 199.

66

FRANZÈ

According to Varanini, among the metric schemes popular at the time (canzone, sonetto and madrigal) the ballata, “in its simple or complex ­structure, of longer or shorter length and above all its strict interdependence with the music” offered a variety of patterns that could also be used with religious themes, as needed by the confraternities.22 In particular, for Suitner, it is the dialogic nature of the ballata, that precipitated the alternation of voices between singers as expected in the laude.23 To reinforce a connection to the ballata, Toschi argues that not only the structure, but also the themes recall traditional popular songs. He points out that the topic of love, and a general amorous atmosphere at the center of many laude by Iacopone, recall that of traditional popular songs.24 The fervent passion for God that burns and drives men to insanity is strikingly similar to the sentiment that pervades secular love songs of the same period. Toschi, in particular, highlights how the incipit of Lauda 89, “Amor de caritate, perché m’ài ssì feruto?” which Iacopone dedicates to the love of Christ, echoes the initial repetitive invocation “amore amore” of many popular songs.25 Among the types of ballata, there is one with a particular structure that does not appear in the oldest laudari but is very common in Iacopone’s texts. Its metric form has a simple structure made of four-line verses with rhyme scheme aaax, usually preceded by a refrain of two rhymed lines. These refrains also rhyme with the last line of the following verses.26 This scheme replicates the Arab-Andalusian songs known as zéjel, a form of poetry rooted in Mediterranean culture and sung in Andalusian Arabic and colloquial dialects. The zéjel 22

Varanini, Laude dugentesche, p. xi. For a detailed discussion on the origin of the lauda and its different structures see Varanini, Laude dugentesche, p. xiv-xv. Varanini argues that the laudesi were likely responsible for the innovation in the lauda, since their confraternities, as the name suggests, were specialized in the singing of the laude and expressly expected in their statute to pray and sing. The disciplinati, on the other hand, had as a primary aim public penitential practices, which likely did not leave too much time for technical innovations. Other scholars instead prefer to date back the chronology of the lauda-ballata to a historical phase that precedes both the disciplinati and the laudesi. 23 Suitner, “Alle origini della lauda,” pp. 340–1. 24 Toschi, Il valore attuale, p. 18. 25 Toschi, Il valore attuale, p. 16. Toschi mentions in particular examples of popular songs from Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio, which begin with similar invocations to love (Toschi, Il valore attuale, pp. 16–17). He also delves into a more detailed analysis of a correspondence between Iacopone’s laude and the metric system of the “strambotto siciliano” (Toschi, Il valore attuale, pp. 19–20). 26 Aurelio Roncaglia, Nella preistoria della Lauda: ballata e strofa zagialesca, in Il movimento dei Disciplinati nel settimo Centenario dal suo inizio (Spoleto: Panetto & Petrelli, 1962), p. 467.

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

67

could be sung by a soloist or by a choir and was accompanied with instruments such as the lute, the flute, drums and castañetas.27 It is the philologist Ramón Menendez Pidal who first noted that more than half of the laude by Iacopone mirror the system of rhymes typical of the zéjel, in particular the aaax scheme, present in many of the Cantigas of Alfonso X, one of the major documented sources of the zéjel. Menendez-Pidal has no doubt that, after the Cantigas by Alfonso X, Iacopone’s laudario is “the most zéjel-esque of any romance language collection.”28 When looking for possible contacts between lauda and zéjel, Menendez Pidal does not exclude that some contacts beyond the Alps could have taken place, and that Iacopone may also have heard these compositions in the remote areas of Umbria where he lived.29 He is convinced that the distance between Spain and Italy was not an issue, and that the zéjel had been circulating in the Italian peninsula for some time. Yet only the Franciscans in their simplicity and poverty had been receptive and inspired to use it for religious purposes: The zéjel verse was alive without doubt in Italy as well, but we cannot know when it began. It was relegated to oral poetry and condemned to not leave a memory of itself since “art poetry” disparaged it as popular and jester-like. Only the Franciscans (…) stooped to collect the vernacular poetic forms, to turn them towards divine subjects and so attest to the widespread diffusion of the zéjel song form in secular, oral poetry.30

27

28 29

30

The structure of the zéjel has also been described as formed by a three-verse rhyme (“­tristico”) which is preceded by a two-verse refrain (“ripresa”) and closed by a fourth verse, the vuelta, with a rhyme that is similar to that of the refrain. Inside each strophe, the first three verses rhyme with each other, each time with different rhymes, while the fourth verse of each strophe rhymes with the refrain. Ramon Menendez Pidal, Poesia araba e poesia europea, ed altri saggi (Bari: Laterza, 1949), p. 31. Mendez Pidal, Poesia araba, p. 15. Menendez Pidal argues that a possible influence could have been the mistic Aben Arabí Mohidín who used the zéjel for many of his poems with a devotional intent and around the same years as Iacopone. Alternatively, Iacopone may have encountered the work of Guglielmo IX, the first one to write in a romance language following the Arabic-Andalusian structure. Mendez Pidal, Poesia araba, p. 32: “la strofa zegielesca viveva senza dubbio anche in Italia: ma relegata alla poesia orale, e non sapremmo dire da quando, e condannata a non lasciare memoria di sé, poiché la ‘poesia d’arte’ la dispregiava come cosa popolare e giullaresca. Soltanto i francescani (…) si chinano a raccogliere le forme poetiche volgari, per rivolgerle ad argomenti divini e ci attestano così la grande diffusione della canzone zagialesca nella poesia profana orale.”

68

FRANZÈ

Another reason to believe that lauda and zéjel were connected is the way in which they were performed. As mentioned earlier, the zéjel was meant to be sung by one singer accompanied by a choir for the repetition of the refrain after each verse. The choir began to sing as soon as the soloist started the last line. In this way, the same line would function as a call for the audience to join in the singing. The song was accompanied by similar instruments to the laude and occasionally by dance. This suggests, that, not only in their structure but also in performance, the zéjel and lauda shared similarities. In his detailed reconstruction of possible influences between the two song forms, Roncaglia argues that Iacopone could have come into contact with traditions from beyond the Alps. After all, these songs and poems were common at that time and could have easily entered commercial areas such as the cities of Genoa or Pisa – where another canzoniere with similar structures has been recovered – thereby encouraging circulation and experimentation.31 The attraction to use such a form could be due, Roncaglia still argues, also to a reaction to the ambitious emphasis on technique in the structure of the lauda-ballata.32 Despite recognizing the impressive coincidence between the two metric schemes, scholars are generally reluctant to establish an official connection. Some completely reject the idea, wondering why Iacopone was one of the few, if not the only one, to use the zéjel. Varanini, in particular, writes that the scarce documentation in support of these speculations makes the theory of a contact with the zéjel structure highly uncertain and just a “seductive hypothesis.”33

31 Roncaglia, Nella preistoria della Lauda, p. 472. 32 Roncaglia, Nella preistoria della lauda, p. 468. In this regard it is interesting to report other observations made by Toschi on the relation between lauda and zéjel: “Nevertheless, it is necessary to highlight some differences between the Latin structure and the metric system in Iacopone, a difference which, instead, does not exist with the zéjel verse. In fact, the lines in Latin all end with an antepenult accent, while the fourth line in the verses of Iacopone always have a penult accent with the same rhyme as the last line of the ‘refrain’ (a ‘refrain’ which, of course, does not exist in the Latin structure). Also, the use of internal rhyme which we find so frequently in the laude by Iacopone has a perfect correspondence in zéjel forms” [“Occorre tuttavia rilevare qualche differenza tra il modello mediolatino e la metrica jacoponica, differenza che invece non esiste con gli schemi dello zegel. Infatti le quartine della sequenza Latina terminano tutte con uno sdrucciolo, mentre il 4o verso delle quartine jacoponiche cioè la volta, è sempre piano e sempre con la stessa rima dell’ultimo verso della iniziale (, che, naturalmente, non esiste nella sequenza latina). Anche l’uso della rima interna, che troviamo così frequentemente nelle laude jacoponiche ha un perfetto riscontro in modelli zagialeschi”] (Toschi, Il valore attuale, p. 13). 33 Varanini, Laude dugentesche, p. xxxvi.

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

69

While it remains hard to confirm these influences, the introduction of different metric schemes reinforces the idea that music was undergoing a process of transformation and moving away from religious compositions in Latin. With his unique style and an exceptional sensitivity to vernacular language, Iacopone played a crucial role within the process of musical renovation initiated a few years earlier by the collections of laude from Cortona and Florence. 3

Iacopone’s Conversion and the Search for a New Canto

Iacopone’s conversion did not take place overnight, but matured over the course of several years as he progressively became aware of the evils and sins that seduce men on earth. After years living in luxury and comfort, he embraced poverty, devoting himself to a life of repentance and obedience to God. In his quest for the divine, music occupied a central role. Several references to melodies, dancing and singing are spread throughout his laudario helping us retrace the steps of his mystical journey. Following scholars’ reflections, in particular Liuzzi’s suggestions, this section highlights some of the most relevant references to music that occur in Iacopone’s laude in order to reveal how the poet comes gradually closer to God through the language of music. Music appears in Lauda 19 (line 8) when the poet mentions a sound that his ears refuse to hear, “de meo organo è fugato,” because it is produced by a human existence characterized by sin and material pleasures. Similarly, the musical atmosphere described in Lauda 63 lacks noble and authentic emotions because the creator of this song is a sinner who lives far from God’s grace. His melodies capture the attention of men and women gathered to listen, however such sensual melodies are just a momentary pleasure for the human ear. In these compositions, music is not yet a divine instrument, but only a tool to amuse the audience. Every attempt to sing translates into a desperate crying.34 Another reference to a life lived in worldly pleasures and far from God’s love appears in Lauda 58. Here, the absence of God produces a song that once again resembles a desperate crying. To reinforce the idea that this song-cry is far from a divine melody, Iacopone compares it to the crying of a child whose existence is still marked by original sin. Determined to stop the crying and start a journey of eternal life in God, the poet is encouraged to search for the notes of a new song, as it will be discussed later regarding Lauda 64. 34

“Se vedia assemblamento – de donne e de donzelli, / andava con estrumento / e con soi canti novelli;” (Lauda 63, 61–64) “Poi me rennìa a ccantare; or me retorna en planto!” (Lauda 62, 25–26).

70

FRANZÈ

As men become adults, the crying disappears. However, this does not mean that a relationship with God has been restored. On the contrary, Iacopone uses his composition to accuse powerful men who devoted their lives to material pleasures. Lauda 74 attacks Pope Celestine V, comparing his actions on earth to the singing of a “mala canzone” (line 58)35 that does not inspire profound feelings or divine love. In Lauda 83, in a similarly denunciatory tone, Iacopone accuses Boniface VIII of sins that offended the solemnity and the spirituality of the holy week. In Lauda 7 dance appears as a theme. At this point, however, dance is still the movement of a body corrupted by sin that becomes a cause of scandal.36 Similarly, in Lauda 61 dead people can dance, but their movements resemble a macabre and frightening performance.37 Lauda 53 uses a “sarcastic tone”38 to compare the poet’s time in prison to a sort of dance. Liuzzi suggests that this dance is recreated through words whose vowels have an intense musical effect: Porto iette de sparveri, – soneglianno nel meo gire; nova danza ce pò odire – chi sta apresso mea stazzone … (53, 23–26) The accumulation of “dark and acute sounds, the quick clash of ‘e’ and ‘i’” intensify the gloomy atmosphere inside the jail, while the words almost replicate the sound of his chains dragging across the prison cell. “It is a potent timbric effect (…) harsh and cold of the metallic clatter in the dense shadows of the prison.”39 In these laude Iacopone is still describing the dance of the sinner, very distant from the joyous dance that Saint Francis loved to perform in front of his worshipers and announcing God. Yet, the dance originating from the practice of flagellation possesses almost a regenerative power,40 and will soon become the experience of mystical excess as Iacopone writes in Lauda 87: “Chi vòle entrare en questa danza / trova amor d’esmesuranza.”41 35 36

Or a “mal canto” as in Lauda 62, 27. “Sozzo, malvascio corpo, lussurïoso e ‘ngordo, / sostene lo fragello d’esto nodoso cordo, / emprend’esto descordo, ca ‘nt’è ci òpo a danzare!” (lauda 7, 11; 13–14). See Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 142. 37 “Scrulla la danza e ffa portadura.” (Lauda 61, 58) “Cadut’è la carne” remase so’ l’ossa” (Lauda 61, 60). 38 Suitner, “Alle origini della lauda,” p. 356. 39 Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 142. 40 Suitner, “Alle origini della lauda,” p. 346. 41 Suitner, “Alle origini della lauda,” p. 347. Vettori observes that “esmesurato” and “esmesuranza” are terms frequently used by Iacopone describing “a sense of oversized measure and superabundance that attempts to hint at infinity” (Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 245).

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

71

While it is impossible to know whether Iacopone was aware of the role that his laude had in the musical panorama of that period, it is clear that he knew how to gather a crowd and how to convince people to participate in this new way of singing. Aware of the power of the vernacular, he uses it to announce the presence of God and to restore faith. By performing his laude, Iacopone establishes a meta-linguistic relationship with language and a deep connection between singing and praying. With Lauda 86 a more open and harmonious melody slowly takes the place of the dark, piercing sound of the previous compositions. Here, the sentiment that inspires the music is already different, giving space to delicate and soft images. Singing the laude finally becomes a sincere act that originates from the desire to express the encounter with God and to announce the presence of divine love: All’Amor, ch’è vinuto – en carne nnui sé dare, andemo laude fare – e canto con onore. (…) Voglio oramai far canto, – ché l’amor meo è nato (86, 1–4; 437–438) As Liuzzi points out, the desire of singing is clearly expressed by both the terms “andiamo” and “voglio,” which have open vowels and softer consonants. The timbre also becomes rich and the intonations more triumphant; “the music almost resonates in our ears.”42 Meanwhile, the sinners are invited to repent and those who have abandoned the pleasures of material life are encouraged to dedicate their existence to poverty in order to receive, in exchange, the possibility to live in harmony with nature and the universe. As the crying slowly disappears, men are progressively moved by an authentic love for God that testifies to a more intimate connection with him. The strident and discordant sound described previously disappears and is replaced by a joyous and soft song, directly inspired by God, like in Lauda 47: Acque, fiumi, lachi e mare, – pesciatelli en lor notare, aere, venti, ocel’ volare, – tutti me fo giollaria. Luna e sole, celo e stelle – ‘nfra me’ tesaur’ non so’ chevelle; de sopre celi se sto quelli – che tengo la mea melodia. (47, 39–46)

42 Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 143.

72

FRANZÈ

These “innocent and festive musical encounters”43 cannot but recall Saint Francis and the universal harmony he had embraced with his Cantico. 4

Iacopone’s Relationship with Singing: Lauda 64 and Lauda 9

Among all the compositions, Lauda 64 occupies a special place in Iacopone’s laudario. Here the poet forms a real and sincere relationship with the ­singing44 and also reveals his knowledge of the discipline. In this lauda, Iacopone uses the vernacular in an original way, establishing a meta-linguistic relation with the term “canto.” If Lauda 86 discussed inviting people to go and sing laude (“andemo a laude fare,” line 3), Lauda 64 enacts the very making of one, becoming simultaneously the means that announces God and the song that connects him with men. “O novo canto, c’ài morto el planto / de l’omo enfermato!” (Lauda 64, 1–2). The incipit of the lauda reveals that there is a new melody in the air, a joyful song that announces the descent of Christ on earth and whose powerful music will heal the sick man. According to Vettori, “Lauda 64 is a metaphorical rendering of the mystery of the Incarnation through the medium of music. Singing and melody restore the harmony that was lost because of sin.”45 The nativity becomes the inspiration for a song full of celestial love. Even though the score of the lauda is lost, it is Iacopone himself who indicates the notes that have to be played: Sopre’el ‘fa’ acuto me pare en paruto tal canto se pona e nel ‘fa’ grave descenda suave, ché el Verbo resòna. (64, 3–6) By describing a descending melody unheard before, the poet announces the creation of a harmonious music that, ultimately, will stop the crying of the sinner. Soon, we realize that what Iacopone is singing is the Gloria, the song that, par excellence, announces the arrival of God.46 What we are hearing are 43 Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 141. 44 Alvaro Cacciotti, Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi (Rome: Antonianum, 1989), p. 224. 45 Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 240. 46 Notably, Liuzzi observes a correspondence between this lauda and the Lauda 19 of the Laudario di Cortona, suggesting that they coincide not only in the text, but also in the

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

73

c­ elestial notes that are part of a song, “upright and refracted” (“ritto e renfranto,” Lauda 64, 23). A song, in other words, that is both pointing towards God, and, at the same time, reflected towards people. Franca Ageno informs us that the “canto ritto” in Latin was the “cantus directus or directaneus,” a liturgical song performed without the alternation of a soloist and the chorus. It was a canto either sung entirely by a soloist or by a chorus, as it was probably the case here. The “canto renfranto,” on the other hand, was a “cantus fractus,” which prompted a repeated variation and that took its name from a performance of two or three voices.47 The singers of this song stand in front of the child Jesus like angels rejoicing his birth. The darkness of the previous laude, which mirrored the suffering of the sinner, is substituted by the joy of a new sentiment that has invaded the reality of men. Soon, another element emerges to explain why these are celestial notes: God is the inspiration as well as the writer of this song. Unlike before, while the song resounds “a tuttore,” (line 31), it is a melody that no longer attracts and delights every ear. Rather, it is an extraordinary song that only those who live in a sincere unity with God and conform their life to him will have the p ­ rivilege to hear. The lauda ends with the poet addressing the sinners and inviting them to collectively sing this festive melody and celestial harmony along with the angels. Alvaro Cacciotti defines the lauda as the embodiment of God on earth, claiming that it is not simply a song about the birth of God and of his descent on earth, instead, it is a song that, in the very process of being written, becomes God himself. This identification takes place, according to him, through three separate movements that reveal a special meta-linguistic r­elationship at the basis of Iacopone’s message. This identification is possible because God is the one who teaches how to sing these melodies, as well as the “writer” of this heavenly music. It is in this unique musical score made of paper and lamb that the third movement takes place and we reach the final identification of Christ with the new song. Not only do we sing for Him, but we sing Him, because He is the content of our song.48 Like Liuzzi, George Peck believes that Iacopone’s compositions were meant to be sung and acknowledges that the poet frequently makes references to

melody. According to his analysis in fact, Lauda 19 extends between the “high ‘fa’” and the “low ‘fa,’” and a descending coda falling on the word “Christ” (Liuzzi, La Lauda, p. 149). 47 Franca Ageno, ed., Laudi, trattato e detti / Jacopone da Todi (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2015), p. 262, Laude 64, 21–24 n. 48 Cacciotti, Amor sacro, pp. 222–9.

74

FRANZÈ

songs and music.49 He argues however, that, while lauda 64 offers precious information about Iacopone’s knowledge of music, in this text “the musicologist wins out” and Iacopone is “writing about a song, rather than writing one.”50 In other words, for him, the presence of too many details about the notes and the music paradoxically make this lauda less melodic and natural than others. If Lauda 64 highlights Iacopone’s connection to music through specific references to the notes and the score, critics find that Lauda 9, “O iubelo de core,” confirms the strong musical nature of Iacopone’s compositions. Here, the words themselves almost resound into a joyful new song: O iubelo de core, – che fai cantar d’amore! Quanno iubel se scalda, – sì fa l’omo cantare; E la lengua barbaglia, – non sa che se parlare; drento no ‘l pò celare – (tant’è granne!) el dolzore. (9, 1–8) Ancient biographies depict Iacopone in the process of writing this lauda as “jubilant, singing loudly” (“tuto giubilando, cantando ad alta boce”).51 This image cannot but recall Saint Augustine’s words quoted at the beginning of this article: “A person who is shouting with gladness does not bother to articulate words. The shout is a wordless sound of joy [...].”52 The poet, captured in his highest fervent devotion, expresses in these lines his categorical renunciation of self and his decision to live in poverty and in total union with God. According to Peck, if a musician had to select one of Iacopone’s laude to put into music, this would be the one. Peck defines Lauda 9 as a “little masterpiece” and an “imposing monument of his pure joy.”53 Here, the melodic lines express the passion that only music can convey. Iacopone has reached the highest mystic fervor and a sense of fullness and joy that he now wants to sing out loud in “ecstatic euphoria.”54 This overwhelming spirit of joy is perfectly expressed by 49 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 127. Peck writes for example that: “the ‘Donna del paradiso’ itself was almost certainly recited by several speakers and would have made an excellent text for opera or oratorio – if opera or oratorio had existed in 1290” (Peck, The Fool of God, p. 137). 50 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 136. 51 Enrico Menestò, “Le laude drammatiche di Iacopone da Todi: fonti e struttura,” in Le laudi drammatiche umbre delle origini. Atti del 5o convegno di studio, Viterbo 22–25 maggio 1980 (Viterbo: Agnesotti, 1981), pp. 105–40, cited in Paolo Canettieri, ed., Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del duexcento (Milan: Bur, 2001), p. 20. 52 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms (Enarratione in Psalmos) 99–120, trans. Maria Boulding, ed. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, New City Press: 2003), p. 14. 53 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 160. 54 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 160.

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

75

both the sound and meaning of the words that the poet chooses inviting us to participate in this celebration with him. While the score of this lauda was not recovered, Lauda 9 is by far the composition that best expresses the connection between Iacopone and music. It is a sort of manifesto of his intimate relationship with musical language seen as a means to articulate his feelings. In these very few lines we share Iacopone’s joy for having found love in God, so intense that it provokes pain. Meanwhile the fear of pronouncing something unpronounceable becomes almost tangible, transforming the song into a “noise” that, for a moment, covers the melody of the music. The poet starts stuttering an endless flow of words (“parlanno esmesurato,” line 19) that have no apparent meaning, while he cannot contain the pain, “tant’è granne el dolzore.” Yet the experience is too overwhelming to be kept hidden, and carried away by divine ecstasy, the poet’s heart is captured by a soothing joy, a “iubel, dolce gaudio,” line 21, that makes him fall in love. Man forgets his fear and shame and starts singing again: lo cor d’amore è apreso, – che no ‘l pò comportare; stridenno el fa gridare – e non virgogna allore. (9, 11–14) Despite the pain, the proclamation of Christ explodes into a song which announces the redemptive power of music. 5

Between Singing and Silence: the Musical Power of the Vernacular

The need to express out loud the encounter with God provokes inside the poet a number of emotions and contrasting feelings in which joy and silence, fear and shame alternate. The experience is so intense and overwhelming that the poet does not know how to pronounce something that is too extraordinary and too noble to exist on the human level. These contradictory feelings are not surprising, rather, they belong to the excess that is typical of Iacopone’s work. In particular, in Lauda 39, language is personified and is first accused of being “presumptupus” for establishing a dialogue with God and attempting to express something that nobody can understand.55 Soon, however, the poet confesses that his heart cannot remain silent and is carried away by an overwhelming sense of joy: he announces this love until he has no breath left. The encounter with God is so powerful that it opens a joyous, pleasant and 55

“‘O lengua scottïante, / come si stata usante / de farte tanto ennante, / parlar de tal estato? (Lauda 39, 115–118).

76

FRANZÈ

delightful wound (“O ferita ioiosa, / ferita delettosa, / ferita gaudïosa,” Lauda 39, 11–13), a wound, which instead of causing pain, provokes only ecstasy. Paradoxes and oxymorons like the ones just described are not unusual in Iacopone’s compositions and contribute to give a special poetic and musical value to his laude. Aware of the potential of the language, Iacopone establishes an original meta-linguistic play with the text inviting his worshippers to take part with him in this powerful experience. As critics have noted Iacopone uses a variety of rhetorical constructions to express such “unutterable experience,”56 choosing words and music over silence. This is exemplified in Lauda 89 where the poet realizes that the perfect expression of the divine can only take place through the coexistence of opposing experiences: «Sappi parlar e or so’ fatto muto; vedìa, e mo so’ ceco deventato. Sì granne abisso non fo mai veduto, tacendo parlo, fugio e so’ legato; scendenno saglio, tegno e so’ tenuto, de for so’ dentro, caccio e so’ cacciato. Amor esmesurato, perché, me fai empascire e ‘n fornace morire de sì forte calore?». (89, 139–146) In this endless sequence of oxymorons, we realize that even the choice of verbs reinforces the clash between the images he creates. While the present tense and the gerund describe the event in the moment in which it is enacted by the poet, the past participle expresses the action he endured. The divine ecstasy that has captured his heart allows him to experience inside and outside, darkness and light, word and silence in a constant polarity in which the joy in God coexists with what is obscure and shameful. While giving this experience a deeper meaning, the poet realizes that falling into a state of insanity can be, in yet another oxymoron, something entirely normal. Expressing a radicalism that we have rarely seen before in poetry, this battle of opposites becomes a central element in Iacopone’s laude and the distinguishing mark that defines his poetics.57 56 57

Vettori, “Singing with Angels,” p. 245. See Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi; Ageno, Laudi. While discussing the oxymoronic construction typical in Iacopone’s laude, Canettieri talks about “a series of ascents and falls, of departures and returns” (“serie di ascese e di cadute, di andate e di ritorni,” ­Canettieri, ­Iacopone da Todi, p. 42), “action and meditation, stasis and ecstasy are the

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

77

Similarly, in Lauda 81, Iacopone invokes God, “O Signor, per cortesia,” wishing to receive all the corporal pains that exist in the world. The “horrifying list of illnesses with the disgusting symptoms graphically drawn”58 that Iacopone composes clearly symbolizes the illnesses of the soul.59 Physical destruction, however, is the means that will ultimately allow him to reach spiritual reconstruction. As in the most authentic Franciscan life, Iacopone struggles with pain but celebrates the sublime joy with a stronger, more powerful and o­ riginal language whose musical potential is exploited by the poet at the maximum level. Thus, while the poet’s body descends in the abyss of suffering, his soul rises, entering a new, mystical dimension, characterized by the notes of a divine music. 6 Conclusion Iacopone’s special “dottrina della pazzia” expresses the restored union with Christ and establishes in him the realization of an elevated knowledge, superior to any other abstract doctrines and empty discussions taught in conventional institutions.60 Aware of the profound mystic experience that he has been part of, Iacopone is still searching for the best way to express his experience. It is his unconventional and unique way to write poetry that ultimately undermines traditional frameworks and well-known structures, subverts the symmetrical, repetitive and orderly system of Latin hymns and replaces it with a language that does not resemble anything we have seen before.61 His very personal style, at times merciless, rough and violent, allows him to describe his fervent devotion to God, as well as the abyss of sin and self-degradation man can reach. Such humiliation, however, is the point of departure for a new path ­ on-­contradictory poles on which the laudario is based” (“azione e meditazione, stasi ed n estasi sono i poli non antitetici su cui è posto in essere il laudario,” Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi, p. 36). His oxymorons “overcome the dichotomies between everything and nothing, life and death, fullness and emptiness, passivity and activity, between honor and shame, wisdom and folly” (“superano le dicotomie fra tutto e nulla, vita e morte, pieno e vuoto, passività e attività, fra onore e vergogna, sapienza e follie,” Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi, p. 77). 58 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 70. 59 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 71. 60 See in particular the laude in which Iacopone accuses the institutions, first of all the Church. 61 As Peck writes “Latin remained a foreign language […] It was the official language of the learned world against which he was later to revolt with deep revulsion” (Peck, The Fool of God, p. 3).

78

FRANZÈ

to salvation and towards a humble spirit in the total renunciation and union with God. Iacopone’s entire poetics revolve around joy and pain for the search, the discovery and the final spiritual union with God. After the divine revelation and in perfect harmony with the Franciscan doctrine, Iacopone embraces a life of poverty and suffering that brings him further away from human temptations and closer to God. The revelation of the divine is not immediately easy to comprehend, rather it is almost impossible to articulate it with words. The powerful and overwhelming ecstasy of this encounter, however, makes him almost lose his mind and he can only express it through a series of oxymorons and antithesis such as “esmesuranza,” a keyword to describes the excess of his laude.62 There is a famous saying, traditionally attributed to Saint Augustine, which states that the one who sings well prays twice. With his laude Iacopone internalized this teaching and created a new and harmonious melody to celebrate the joy of the mystical encounter with God, speaking to “the poor as well as the rich, the uneducated as well as the educated.”63 By playing with consonants and vowels, choosing expressive vernacular terms or creating strong and effective images through figures of speech such as anaphora, oxymoron, and iterations, the poet confirms his sensitivity to language and his ability to exploit the potential of the vernacular as a musical language. The novel melody he creates will reach the terrestrial souls, healing them from their sins and inviting them to experience this ecstatic moment made of a mixture of love and pain that will elevate them to the divine love. Iacopone’s message of love is part of a project of universal harmony, one that only a prayerful singing can express. Music becomes the best tool to recount the experience of God with a deeper and more meaningful message than the one articulated only by words. Moving away from religious songs in Latin and embracing new musical structures using a personal and unique language, Iacopone’s laudario marks an important moment for both the vernacular, as well as for the development of Italian melody. Works Cited Abbiati, Franco. Storia della musica. Vol. 1. Milan: Treves, 1939. Ageno, Franca, ed. Laudi, trattato e detti / Jacopone da Todi. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2015. 62 Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi, p. 65. 63 Peck, The Fool of God, p. 42.

THE MUSICAL SPIRIT OF IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

79

Augustine. Expositions of the Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos) 99–120. Translated by Maria Boulding. Edited by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park: New City Press, 2003. Barr, Cyrilla. The Monophonic Lauda and the Lay Religious Confraternities of Tuscany and Umbria in the Late Middle Ages, Early Drama, Art and Music. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, 1988. Cacciotti, Alvaro. Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi. Rome: Antonianum, 1989. Canettieri, Paolo, ed. Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del duecento. Milan: Bur, 2001. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Franco Mancini. Rome: Laterza, 1990. Liuzzi, Fernando. La Lauda e i primordi della melodia italiana. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1934. Menendez-Pidal, Ramon. Poesia araba e poesia europea, ed altri saggi. Bari: Laterza, 1949. Monteverdi, Angelo. Iacopone Poeta. In Iacopone e il suo tempo. Convegno del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale I. Todi, 13–15 ottobre 1957. Assisi: Accademia tudertina, 1959. Peck, George T. The Fool of God: Iacopone da Todi. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980. Roncaglia, Aurelio. Nella preistoria della Lauda: ballata e strofa zagialesca. In Il movimento dei Disciplinati nel settimo Centenario dal suo inizio (Perugia 1260), 460–75. Spoleto: Panetto & Petrelli, 1962. Suitner, Franco. “Alle origini della lauda.” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 173 (1996): 321–47. Surian, Elvidio. Manuale di storia della musica. Vol 1. Milan: Rugginenti, 1991. Toschi, Paolo. Il valore attuale ed eterno della poesia di Jacopone. Todi: Tipografia ­Tiberina, 1964. Varanini, Giorgio, ed. Laude dugentesche. Padua: Antenore, 1972. Vettori, Alessandro. “Singing with Angels: Iacopone da Todi’s Prayerful Rhetoric.” In Franciscans at Prayer. Edited by Timothy Johnson, 221–48. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Chapter 4

Educating, Enlightening, Edifying: Iacopone Da Todi’s Intellectual Journey Estelle Zunino The intellectual journey underpinning the laude is constantly poised between presence in and absence from the world, between involvement and ­detachment.1 That is why the exclusionary privacy of an intense mystical experience is inseparable from its transformation into shared public involvement. This unique relationship to the world, experienced either dialectically or conflictingly through both rejection and inevitability, imprints on the whole laudario an extremely pedagogic and didactic indexation, as well as a careful focus on its reception by a more diverse audience than initially thought. According to Iacopone, the perfection of the individual is achieved not only through the inner relationship of the self with the self, but also through the confrontation with earthly realities; it cannot originate in pure instinct, but rather in enlightening appropriation. The poet thus regards the Laude as the locus of the development of pedagogic action, or even of a pedagogic program, inscribing his work in the broader field of true spiritual orientation. 1

The Audience of the Laude

Some Umbrian or Venetian manuscripts include an explicit or an incipit ­referencing the didactic and spiritual function of the laudario, as well as its various possible addressees. These initial or conclusive remarks2 rely on the 1 I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Pierre-Yves Coudert for his invaluable contribution in translating this article and the quotations from Iacopone’s laude into English. 2 Trying to identify the possible addressees of the Laude, Francesco Novati pinpoints, without going into further detail, an explicit from the “vecchi codici”: “Expliciunt laudes sancti Fratris Jacobi de Tuderto ordinis fratrum minorum quas dictavit in vulgari pro consolatione et profectu novitiorum studentium ; que maxime prosunt in vita evangelica et dicuntur Vinea Crucis” (Francesco Novati, “L’amor mistico in S. Francesco d’Assisi ed in Iacopone da Todi,” in Freschi e Minii del Dugento [Milano: Cogliati, 1908], p. 250). Giuseppe Galli identifies the incipit found in all the manuscripts in the Venetian group, which takes a broader audience into account “Incipiunt laudes quas fecit sanctus frater Iacobus de Tuderto ordine fratrum © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_006

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

81

same styleme to highlight the practical, or even utilitarian, dimension of the Laude: “pro consolatione et profectu.” Solace (consolatio) and spiritual progress (profectu) – two technical terms borrowed from the part of spiritual literature referring to precise aspects of the science of saints.3 The former, solace, is to be pitted against desolatio and has described, since the oldest forms of monastic life, a moment in unitive life; the latter, spiritual progress, lies at the heart of William of St Thierry’s Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei (A Letter to the Brethren at Mont Dieu), which was largely circulated among the religious, clerical and scholarly circles of medieval Europe and had considerable influence on its readers. The allusions to the possible addressees of the Laude are less uniform and prove how varied this group of individuals was, even though they were united by their wish to emulate Christ and lead an ascetic life. Therefore, Iacopone’s audience – those who listened to or read the Laude – can either be composed merely of the monk novitiates present in the Franciscan studia or, by extension, of all the people, be they religious or lay, who frequented Franciscan convents or circles. The educational aim of the Laude is not incompatible with Iacopone’s fight against science since his poems do not deal with the human of science which inflates pride, but rather with the divine science which edifies and enlightens. These clarifications given by the copyists as incipits or explicits have left critics divided over whether the Laude were meant to have a pedagogic function, and over what Iacopone’s practical conception of his role as a poet was. Limiting the audience to the mere novitiates, some critics4 believe the Laude should be interpreted in reference to Iacopone’s status as a Franciscan friar, and understood as instruments of edification meant to complement preaching and even education.5 In keeping with the idea that reading the word of God constitutes a form of spiritual nourishment, such critics underline how personal those “utilitarian” laude were, as they became meditational texts – rather minorum ad utilitatem et consolationem omnium cupientum per viam crucis et virtutum dominum imitari,” as well as the explicit from manuscript Laur. 27: “Expliciunt laudes sancti fratris Iacobi de Tuderto ordinis fratrum minorum quas dictavit pro consolatione et profectu novitiorum et proficentium et perfectorum in vita angelica quae dicitur in terra via Crucis,” adding the clarification that the audience is composed of all those who chose ascetic life (Giuseppe Galli, “Appunti sui laudarii iacoponici,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 64 [1914]: 145–162). 3 Giovanni Pozzi, “Jacopone poeta,” in Alternatim (Milan: Adelphi, 1996), p. 86. 4 From Francesco Novati, via Franca Ageno to Mario Apollonio, or even Giovanni Pozzi. 5 Franca Ageno, “Benedetti, Iacopo,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 8 (Rome: 1966), p. 269.

82

ZUNINO

than instructional ones – likely to encourage the ruminatio of an overarching theme, as Saint Bernard would have put it. Reading one or multiple laude exploring a key spiritual theme daily thus helped the novitiates meditate.6 This reflection on the function and addressees of the laudario may lead to the notion that Iacopone might have been writing on commission – a thesis advanced somewhat exaggeratedly by Franco Mancini. Iacopone’s potential status as a patronized poet helps such critics to explain why different versions of the same laude were found in manuscripts coming from various geographical and spiritual sources. They imagine the poet, called upon by several studia or friaries so that he may write other copies of a well-liked lauda which he had already handed over to his initial mandator, and forced to rewrite the lauda from memory, adding more or less involuntary variations in the process.7 Other critics8 refute the idea that Iacopone may have personally contributed to the pedagogic aim of his writings. On the basis of the aforementioned incipits and explicits, critics ascribe the pedagogic intent to the copyists, ­publishers and friars who, for various reasons, required such an educational seal of a­ pproval.9 Basing their analysis on the undeniably personal dimension of the Iacoponean laudario, those very critics consider that some laude, deemed too “autobiographical” – like, for instance, the lauda of imprisonment (53) or the epistles to Boniface VIII (mainly 55 and 67) –, can only be intended for the ruminatio of novitiates. Consequently, on account of the specific way the laude were circulated, sometimes in books of prayers or sermones, it may be considered that the first recipients of Iacopone’s Laude were likely to be the Franciscan preachers who read them publicly after their sermons. Although it cannot be denied that Iacopone wrote to be read or listened to, it is harder to determine the precise identity of the audience of the poet’s work. To the explicit, flesh-and-blood addressees – Giovanni della Verna (68), Pietro da Morrone, also known as Celestine V (74), Boniface VIII (55, 67, 83), Brother Ranaldo, the lector-turned-rector of the hospital of the Todi Charity (88) – and to the more indefinite, more impersonal ones – he who can be saved (6), the falsely religious (17), the people of God (29), those Iacopone calls “Omo” 6 See Saint Bernard, In festo SS. Petri et Pauli sermo II, I : “quae est orationum devotio, jucunda ruminatio psalmodiae, dulcis meditatio, consolatio Scripturarum” (PL, t. 183, col. 409 AB). Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Un traité de vie solitaire. Espistola ad fratres de Monte Dei, ed. M. M. Davy (Paris: Vrin, 1940), p. 105: “De cotidiana lectione aliquid cotidie in ventrem memoriæ demittendum est, quod fidelius digeratur et sursum revocatum crebius ruminetur.” 7 See Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. Franco Mancini (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1974), pp. 393–94. 8 Paolo Canettieri and Lino Leonardi alike. 9 See Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento, ed. Paolo Canettieri (Milan: Rizzoli, 2001), p. 39.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

83

(54, 61, 76) or “Frate” and who epitomize the universality of faith –, another implicit recipient, whom Iacopone seems to have been aware of as an indistinct whole, should be added (77, 15–16): Pregovo tutti che vo sia en placere de volere lo meo ditto ascoltare; [I pray all of you will listen to what I say, Hoping that it will be pleasant;] He also refers to this implicit recipient using captatio benevolentiae (84, 5–8): Ad onn’om cheio perdune, s’eo n’ho ‘n fallo notasone, cà lo dico per alcuni e non per me de poco affare.10 [To each man I ask forgiveness If my observations should be wrong, Because I speak for some of them, And not for myself, a person of little account] True, as Iacopone left no trace of an overarching organic project for the laudario, it is difficult to identify in his work a deliberate attempt to write pedagogic laude. A number of elements, however, give credence to the idea that Iacopone was well aware of the heuristic function of literature and knows how to make use of it, including the poet’s renown within the Order – owing both to his intellectual work and to the forceful determination of his struggle –, the authenticity of his involvement in the world in favour of the respect of the evangelic message, but also the reality of his status as a writer who was fully aware of the existence of an audience as well as of how significant the relationship between writers and their readers is, and finally his extensive knowledge of rhetoric and stylistics.

10

Such addresses to the audience are reminiscent of the very frequent apostrophes found in comico-giullaresca poetry, and constitute solid proof of the link between this body of poetry and Iacopone’s laudario.

84 2

ZUNINO

“Conveniens, brevitas, dispositio”

While Iacopone never clearly defines or recognizes the identity of his ­audience, he never denies its existence. Iacopone often seems attentive to the effect his writings produce, as well as to the quality of their reception: “e siràve utilitate, s’ascoltate quel ch’e’ dico” [“it will be of great use to you if you listen to what I say”] (56, 2). Steeped in the principles of classical rhetoric, which he had already applied as a lawyer, the Umbrian poet was convinced that the best style was that which fitted both the subject and a receptive, active audience. Hence, he claimed, the need for propriety, or classical convenientia (25, 55–56): e loco sì figam la dicirìa che sse convene. (our emphasis) [And here let us stop our discourse, As is convenient.] Just as important is the freedom which the writer can exercise to make his language conveniens: as the brother who puts on a front of humility and devotion confesses, “Aconciando ce vo el ditto meo” [“I will adapt what I say / my discourse to you”] (80, 40). Adapting his style to his audience is another requirement which Iacopone meets when he underlines how crucial brevity is. To be listened to and to be useful, the writer must be brief (7, 89; 40, 9–12; 65, 5–811): ché non faccia fastidio, àiol abrivïato. (our emphasis) [And so that it does not bore you / become tedious, I have abbreviated it] (‘Àiole abrevïate, (our emphasis) per poterle contare ; encresce l’ascoltare de lo longo trattato !)

11

Lauda 65, in which the experience of the mystical, transformative union is related, opens on a programmatic metaliterary introduction praising brevity. See Estelle Zunino, Conquêtes littéraires et Quête spirituelle. Jacopone da Todi (1230 [?]-1306), (Paris: PUPS, 2013), pp. 289–300.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

85

[(I have abbreviated them In order that I may relate them – How tedious it is to listen To a long treatise!)] ché la longa materia sòl generare fastidia, el longo abrivïare (our emphasis) sòle l’om delettare. [For the long material Ordinarily breeds boredom, The long abbreviation Ordinarily delights man.] Such remarks – a leitmotiv centered on the three terms “longo,” “fastidio,” and “abrevïare” in several laude – outline a poetic manifesto based on the necessary link between utilitas and brevitas. The foremost reason for this emphatic claim to brevity is Iacopone’s wish to conform to the evangelic norm of the essentiality of speech, taken over and glossed by Francis of Assisi:12 “Sit autem sermo vester: Est, est; Non, non” (Mt 5:37). Another, more militant, more radical reason lies in Iacopone’s disdain for high-society eloquence, rife as it was with deceitful images and fallacious fictions. The model of narratio brevis helps preclude sophisms, syllogisms, and, more generally, other artifices liable to jeopardize communication and the truth of reception. The clarity extolled by classical rhetoricians can be found in Iacopone’s attention to dispositio. The didactic laude are structured by the numbering of the arguments, often in threes (11, 23, 27, 31): En tre modi pareme devisa penetenza: (our emphasis) … Tre modi fa a l’anema peccato percussure, (our emphasis) … 12

Cf. Francis of Assisi, Regula bullata, IX, 4–6: “Moneo quoque et exhortor eosdem fratres, ut in predicatione, quam faciunt, sint examinata et casta eorum eloquia, ad utilitatem et aedificationem populi, annuntiando eis vitia et virtutes, poenam et gloriam cum brevitate sermoni ; quia verbum abbreviatum fecit Dominus super terram” (our emphasis). Francesco d’Assisi, Regula bullata, in Fontes Franciscani, eds. Enrico Menestò and Stefano Brufani (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1995), p. 178.

86

ZUNINO

Contrizïone adornase de tre medecaminti : (our emphasis) [It seems to me that penitence is divided in three: … Sin deals blows to the soul in three ways, … Contrition is adorned with three remedies:] Strong in his adherence to dispositio, Iacopone applies the organizational principle of scholastic reasoning – dividing into parts before explaining – to his laude, and borrows its vocabulary: “distinguere, distinzione.” Hence his structuring the commentaries on the Pater around division and distinction (22, 1–2), the various manifestations of God to the soul (23, 1), the various states of Love (25, 37–38, 53–54) or the exposition of the various Christian virtues13 En sette modi, co’ a mme pare, destent’è orazïone; (our emphasis) [In seven ways, it appears to me, Prayer is divided.] En cinque modi apareme lo Signor ‘nn esta vita; (my emphasis) [The Lord appears to me in this life in five ways] Desténguese l’Amore en terzo stato: bono, meglio, summo sullimato; (our emphasis) … [There can be distinguished three states of Love: The good, the better, the most sublime]

13

See A4 [a], 5–8, 17–20: “volendo encomenzare / parlar de le vertute, / secondo c a me pare, / farò destinzïone. / […] e de l’altre vertute, / secondo ‘l meo savere, / sì voglio definire / per ordenazïone.” [“Wishing to start / Talking about the virtues, / in accordance with how it appears to me, / I will make distinctions. / […] And about the other virtues, / in accordance with what I know, / I want to define them / in an ordered way.”] (my emphasis)

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

87

This didactic indexation can be found in poetic compositions where certain passages, through the arguments put forward and the message delivered or suggested, aim to instruct, as well as in the entirely “didactic” laude, akin to theological discourses in verse. Those laude are concerned with Christian ­doctrine – Sin and Redemption (3), Redemption (15, 27, 50), the Mystery of the Eucharist (28), the Nativity (64), cardinal (10) and theological (65) virtues, the quintessential Christian prayer: the Pater (22) – the nature and forms of Divine Love (14, 16, 25, 46, 66, 82), the foundations and the founder of ­Franciscanism – Poverty, the mainstay virtue (36, 47), Francis of Assisi (40, 71) – or mystical experiences – the ascent of the soul towards the knowledge of God (65, 78, 84), the correspondence between the three orders of Angels and the three stages of Christian perfection (77), the transformative union and the annihilation of the soul in God (89, 90, 92). The rhetorical apparatus underpinning such “didactic” laude rests on the principles of classical eloquence – movere, docere and, possibly, delectare – and relies on the figures and tropes of exsuscitatio. 3

Mnemonic Devices

As the organization of Iacopone’s discourse relies mainly on succession and numbering rather than deduction, thus aiming to help the reader-listener14 appropriate the text, Iacopone often resorts to iteration and anaphora. From a technical standpoint, such devices help to structure discursive succession and sustain memory; poetically, on the other hand, they give rhythm to the text and contribute to dramatization (28, 1, 3, 27, 31, 43, 47, 51, 55): Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo, la luce del dì medïante, [With the eyes I have in my head, by way of the light of day,] 14

Mary Carruther’s critical studies – especially The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 1990 – shed light on the fundamental role of memory in medieval culture, as it favored education through the acquisition of mnemonic systems, in keeping with the practices of the classical age. In order to reach the various rooms in the Augustinian palace of memory where references are stored and where thought happens, information had to be divided into sequences and small fragments (informational segmentation), only then to be organized into units supported by rhetorical markers (the substantial elements of the organizing frame). This mnemonic architecture was made all the more relevant by the renewal of oratory rhetoric made possible by the extensive promotion of preaching during the pastoral turn of the 13th century.

88

ZUNINO

… Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo veio ‘l divin sacramento; [With the eyes I have in my head, I see the Divine Sacrament,] … O vita mea emmaledetta mundana lussurïosa, [O my hateful life, wordly and lustful,] … O vita mea emmaledetta villana engrata soperba! [O my hateful life, uncouth/churlish, ungrateful and prideful] … O castetate, que è questo che t’aio mo ‘n tanta placenza? [O chastity, why is it that I now find you so pleasant?] … O povertate, que è questo che t’aio mo ‘n tanto placere, [O poverty, why is it that you now bring me pleasure] … Venite a veder maraviglia ch’e’ pòzzo mo el prossimo amare [Come see this wonder – I can now love my Neighbor] … Venite a veder maraviglia ch’e’ pòzzo portar le vergogne, [Come see this wonder – I can now endure shame.] Here, repetition energizes the discourse, playing on parallelism to create groups and allow for lexical variations and amplifications that enable transerversal readings that supplement the linear understanding of the discourse. Elsewhere, iteration is complemented by anaphora and becomes the main device of the lauda, which tends to resemble a litany. Borrowing the stylemes

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

89

of courtly eroticism, lauda 39 suggests, after Saint Bernard or the Victorines, that Divine Love may be defined in all its diversity so that it may be praised. Implicitly didactic, since it amounts to an attempt at circumscribing Divine Love so that it may be more easily identified through the re-semanticizing process made possible by the mutiple terms used to describe this Love, the lauda is almost entirely structured by the repetition and anaphora of a single term, Amore,15 before denouncing it as ineffectual, de-semanticizing exhilaration.16 Such devices, or at least most of them, play all at once on the supporting function of memory, on immoderate dramatization and on the emotional involvement of the target audience of the lauda-litany (39, 43, 47, 51–53): Amor, tuo maiesterio … Amor, chi sempre arde … Amor, la tua largezza, Amor, la gentelezza, Amor, la tua recchezza [Love, your mastery, … Love, who burns always, … Love, your generosity, Love, your loftiness, Love, your wealth,] As a matter of fact, more than a mere mode of expression, repetition is an “expressive tic,”17 an essential feature of Iacoponean expression that goes beyond the field of microtextual analysis. Numerous stylemes and images are 15

16

17

Twenty-two out of thirty-seven stanzas open on the word Amore, which is also anaphorically repeated in eight stanzas. In the lauda, there is an alternation between groups of stanzas opening on this lexeme and a group of two stanzas structured around the anaphoric repetition of Amore. In addition to the properly didactic function of the iterative anaphora in question, it should be noted that this repetition can be eclipsed in the semantic dissolution which is put into sharp relief by the metatextual reflections found in the second part of the lauda (l. 115 ff.). Rosanna Bettarini, Jacopone e il laudario Urbinate (Florence: Sansoni, 1969), p. 228. Later, the critic speaks of “tic ripetitorio” and of “tenue follia ripetitoria.”

90

ZUNINO

found in several thematically distinct laude18 and form a dense intertextual network (50, 107–109; 70, 76–78): Et eo commenzo el corrotto (our emphasis) de uno acuto dolore : Amor, chi mme t’à morto ? (our emphasis) [And I begin to sing my dirge Full of deep sorrow: Love, who killed you?] Et eo commenzo el corrotto ; (our emphasis) figlio, lo meo deporto, figlio, chi me tt’à morto, (our emphasis) [And I begin to sing my dirge; Son, my joy, Son, who killed you,] In the first case (50), the soul answers the angels who urge it to return to God after abandoning Him; in the second (70), the Virgin Mary is weeping at the Cross: a messenger informed her that her son was arrested and that the crowd demanded that he be crucified. Far from being mere poetic hinges, such stylemes and images partake of the structuring function of repetition in the laudario. They can be likened to a form of rhythmic memory in Iacopone’s works, allowing for a transversal reading of the laude in question while removing any constraint of meaning thanks to this rich metatextual network. Sustaining the memory of the addressee so that he may appropriate the message and the text alike is also made possible by Iacopone’s use of formulaic phrases, of maxims framed by repetitions or chiastic structures (46, 39, 42; 60, 8–9): Chi vive senza lege, senza lege peresce ; … chi ensemora fallesce, ensemor à a penare.

18

Rosanna Bettarini makes a rather exhaustive list of such stylemes and images, pp. 212–28.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

91

[Those who live a lawless life, die a lawless death, … Those who together live a sinful life, together must live a sorrowful life;] … la fede sì fa a l’anema la faccia dilicata ; la fede senza l’opera è morta reputata ; [… Faith gives the soul a delicate countenance Faith without action is reputed to be dead] This search for synoptic concision to guide the process of memorization is wholly consistent with the programmatic emphasis on brevitas. It is also through the apothegmatic mode found throughout the laudario that Iacopone’s poetry comes to resemble, at times, preaching or books of sermones which, because of the particular significance they were given by the Mendicant Orders, left a lasting mark on religious practices in the late 13th century. 4

“Movere et docere”

In classical rhetoric, emotion – movere – was traditionally contrasted with explanation – docere. Iacopone combines the two. In addition to the mnemonic devices (iteration, anaphora) meant to help the addressees appropriate the text, the partly or entirely didactic laude aim to “move” the heart and mind of the addressees, and to include them by awakening deep sympathy and keen interest in them. Hence Iacopone’s extensive use of structuring themes and stylistic devices likely to arouse the interest of the reader-listener of the laude. An acutely realistic detail emerging suddenly in a narrative lauda about the trial of Affection before Justice following a complaint by Goodness (1) encapsulates Iacopone’s wish to adapt to his addressees, to include them by awakening their mind through the sudden irruption of daily life. Affection feeds on the grace granted spontaneously by God (1, 29–30): L’Affetto, po’ gusta el cibo de la grazia gratis data, [Affection then tastes the food of grace gratis data]

92

ZUNINO

Affection is endowed with human characteristics, be it the vital function of appetite or human organs like the stomach, which perishes when there is no spiritual nourishment to be digested – paidire (1. 71–74): Cà ‘l so stomaco se more, se no i porge che paidire; vòle a le prese venire, sì à fervido appitito; [For his stomach dies, If it isn’t given anything to digest; Its appetite is so fervent That it wants to chase the prey;] All such allegories are personified – Goodness, Affection, the Good, ­Intelligence – and display all too human emotions – irritation, wrath, agony. Affection and Intelligence have a spirited debate and find themselves at cross purposes because the former wishes to feel love and the latter, to understand. Both end up coming to an agreement when they are given a taste of the divine. Intelligence savours Him delicately while Affection indulges in violently physical, all-consuming appreciation (I. 135–140): l’Affetto trita co li denti et egnotte con fervore; po’ lo coce con l’amore, trann’el frutto del paidato: a le membra à despensato dònne vita pozzan trare. [Affection grinds with its teeth And swallows with fervor; And then cooks it with love, Extracts / Draws out / Squeezes out the fruit of digestion; To the limbs it has bestowed What they can draw life from.] The discourse on Mystical Love, thus expressed in concrete, acutely realistic terms, is made accessible and much more representative. In Iacopone’s search for the highest possible form of expressivity, in order to reach the widest audience possible, contrasts and other dialogic laude have

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

93

a specific place. Through the sense of immediacy and dramatic hypotyposes such laude hinge on, they become a suitable form to capture and hold the addressees’ attention. Dialogue- and contrast-based forms, inherited from courtly poetry and built upon by all subsequent bodies of poetry, including, more specifically, comico-guillaresca poetry, before Iacopone himself drew extensively on them, are characterized by considerable literary and enunciative richness. Relying on the stylistic resources of linguistic contamination, such dialogues, which provide form and structure to the poet’s didactic aim, are fraught with one of the most common rhetorical devices in the laudario: apostrophe. 5 Apostrophe The use of apostrophe helps actualize the poet’s discourse by ­eclipsing the ­theoretical and didactic presentation in order to arouse strong ­feelings in the audience and engage them in the discourse. There are many, varied, functionally distinct apostrophes in the Laude. As they help energize and dramatize the text itself, they have obvious ­intratextual value. Within the enunciative framework of direct speech, apostrophes foreground the speaker and the one whom he has identified as his interlocutor. In addition to this conative, referential function, apostrophes carry out a connectional, phatic function, akin to a mere address to the reader-listener, thus acquiring performative, persuasive force: creating the impression that the author is present and addresses the recipient directly, such apostrophes establish a link not only between the imagined audience and the actual audience, but also – and above all – between the actual audience and the writer through the mediation of the imagined audience. Apostrophes thus act as rhetorical devices of communion, or even amplification,19 which, beyond the distinction between the imagined audience and the actual audience, “transcend the actual addressees to reach a (more) universal audience.”20 The apostrophes found in the Laude fulfill these stylistic and rhetorical functions completely, but they also reflect an oral and literary tradition which they are intimately related to. Iacopone uses them as a personal and poetic extension of the biblical apostrophes found very frequently not only in the Old and the New Testaments or in the numerous direct addresses to the audience 19 20

Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, Traité de l’argumentation. La nouvelle rhétorique (Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles et Vrin, 1976), p. 240. Olivier Reboul, Introduction à la rhétorique (Paris: PUF, 1998), p. 139.

94

ZUNINO

in comico-giullaresca poetry, but also in the apostrophes which the preachers who spoke in public from the mid 13th century onward used extensively in their sermons. Trying to develop a typology of the apostrophes used in the Laude, it soon appears that, however similar the devices and their aim may be, the context in which they appear and their effects are extremely varied. Apostrophes to abstract entities and to a number of Christian virtues spotlighted by Franciscan writers help fulfill Iacopone’s didactic aims without referring to a more personal dimension that would involve the poet himself. For the most part, they help energize the narrative and foreground the educational function of the virtues which the sinful man must adhere to so that he may pursue a life of virtue. It may concern, for instance, poverty, the renouncement of the self which is a condition for great mastery: “Povertat’ennamorata, / grann’è la tua signoria!” [“Beloved Poverty / Vast is your dominion”] (47, 1–2); the freedom to choose Goodness: “O libertà suietta ad onne creatura, / per demustrar l’altura che regna en Bonitate!” [“O Liberty, subjected to all creatures / to demonstrate the loftiness which reigns in Goodness”] (66, 1–2); Chastity: “O castetate, flore / che te sostene Amore” [“O Chastity, the flower / Which Love sustains”] (72, 1–2). Likewise, through an instance of distancing meant to provide a realistic dramatization of the world, the poet apostrophizes parts of his being: his soul – “O anema mia, creata gentile” [“O my soul, loftily born”] (44) –, his conscience – “O coscïenza mia, / granne me dài mo reposo” [“O my conscience, / You now grant much rest”] (85) –, or has different parts of his being apostrophizing one another: the soul, addressing the body which is responsible for its sadness – “O corpo enfracedato / eo so’ l’alma dolente” [“O corrupted corpse / I am the doleful soul”] (31). Lauda 64 suggests another form of dramatized distantiation, magnified by vocative invocation: Iacopone apostrophizes the very materiality of the song: “O novo canto, c’ai morto el planto / de l’omo enfermato!” [“O new song, who has quelled the tears / of the fallen Man”] (64, 1–2). The Virgin Mary or God are often addressed through semantically diverse apostrophes (13, 1; 63, 1–2; 41, 1; 89, 1): O Regina cortese, eo so’ a vvui venuto, [O courtly Queen, I have come to you] O Iesù Cristo pietoso, perdonam’el meo peccato, [O pitiful Jesus Christ Forgive me my sins]

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

95

O Amor, devino Amor, perché m’ai assidiato? [O Love, divine Love, why have you besieged me?] Amor de caritate, perché m’ai ssì feruto? [Charitable Love, why have you hurt me so?] In this case, the first person singular, often associated with the apostrophes, adds a much more intimate, much more harrowing dimension than the previous personifying addresses. Personalizing the experience with the grammatical and lyrical I paradoxically guarantees a wider reception of the poem since it becomes a source of emotion. Such seemingly intense personal addresses aim to reach a universal addressee, thus illustrating the amplifying function identified earlier in apostrophic enunciation. Another series of apostrophes is related to addresses to contemporary individuals belonging to the writer’s relational or ideological sphere. Among them, one first finds the vituperative addresses to Boniface VIII, conveying exceptional vigor and laying the foundations for a dialogue, or even a soliloquy, which precludes any form of active participation on the reader-listener’s part. The strength of such spirited addresses lies in the fact that they bring Iacopone and Boniface closer together, all the while revealing the latter’s crimes to the world (83, 1; 55, 1): O papa Bonifazio, molt’ài iocato al mondo ; [O Pope Boniface, how you have toyed with the world] O papa Bonifazio, eo porto tuo prefazio [O Pope Boniface, I bear your sentence] Elsewhere, Iacopone addresses Brother Giovanni della Verna21 – “Vale, fra Ioanne, vale!” [“Vale, Brother Ioanne / John, vale!”] (68, 5) –, the less famous

21

Giovanni da Fermo (1259–1322) seems to have aided Iacopone at the very end of his life. He settled at La Verna, taking on the name for himself, where he lived in prayer and contemplation and was buried. He wrote the Verba de quinque gradibus animae. See I gradi

96

ZUNINO

Brother Ranaldo22 – “Frate Ranaldo, do’ si andato?” [“Brother Ranaldo / Reginald, where have you gone?”] (88, 1) –, Saint Francis of Assisi – “O Francesco povero” [“O impoverished Francis”] (40, 1) ; “O Francesco, da Deo amato” [“O Francis, beloved of God”] (71, 1) –, Pietro da Morrone – “Que farai, Pier da Morrone? / Ei venuto al paragone” [“What will you do, Pier da Morrone? / You are now faced with the test”] (74) –, or even himself, in a self-referential apostrophe arguably couched in irony – “Que farai, fra’ Iacovone? / Ei venuto al paragone” [“What will you do, Brother Iacopone, / You are now faced with the test”] (53). Other apostrophes aim directly for universality as they have to do with sinful humanity, embodied by a fellow man, a brother (76, 1–2): Omo, mittite a ppensare unde te vene el gloriare. [Man, start pondering Where your glory comes from] Apostrophes to the audience can also be found, albeit infrequently. They testify to Iacopone’s acute awareness of the audience of the laude: although he refers to the recipients of his poems as an indeterminate group, he still requests their attentive participation. Such requests appear, for the most part, in contrasts, copying the same introductory remarks every time and echoing those on which comico-guillareschi contrasts open (7, 1; 57, 1–2): Audite una ‘ntenzone, ch’è ‘nfra l’anema e ‘l corpo ; [Listen to a debate taking place between the body and the soul] Audite una entenzone, ch’era ‘nfra dui persone, [Listen to a debate That took place between two people]

dell’anima, in Mistici del Duecento e del Trecento, ed. Arrigo Levasti (Milan-Rome: Rizzoli, 1935). 22 According to research by Franco Mancini (“Due postille iacoponiche,” Convivium no. [1952], pp. 456–60), the friar in question is Brother Ranaldo Massei da Todi, the ­lector-turned-rector (1287) of the hospital of the Todi Charity.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

97

Such apostrophes fulfill an extratextual function: they convey the need to speak to an interlocutor and establish a meaningful rapport with the readers-­ listeners, whether they be fictional or real, by including them in an active, participatory reflection. Being associated with the dialogic form of a good many laude, such apostrophes are also marked by their intratextual function, as they are likely to endow didactic arguments with intensity and rhythm. This enunciative choice partakes of Iacopone’s stated wish to dramatize his discourse, with an aim to adapting more fully to the possible addressees of the Laude. 6

Making Visible, or the Figurativity of the Laude

Once the attention of the audience of readers-listeners has been captured through direct or indirect addresses, the poet is left with the task of holding it. That is why the laudario includes a vast array of images and situations accessible even to an uneducated audience: the Iacoponean lauda favours and pursues visualization, fraught as it is with instances of visual materiality. Images are ubiquitous; they sometimes become distorted or distorting23 to be all the more suggestive, and thus develop into intricate hypotyposes. Such visual representations are made so exaggeratedly striking that they encourage reflection. Old men with bodies and faces distorted by old age and disease (57), the dialogues inspired by asceticism featuring a living man and a dead man (61) to remind the living man that he is dust and will return to dust – such descriptions make lessons visible so that they may be learned. For instance, the dead man whose body is now beyond recognition suggests that he should become a sight to be contemplated, which in turn fulfills a pedagogic function (61, 75–78): “No i pòzzo clamare, cà sso’ encamato, ma fàime venire a veder meo mercato; che me veia iacere cului ch’è adasciato a comparar terra e far gran clusura.” [I cannot call them, because my voice is hoarse, But have them come and see the profit I have accrued; Let him see me lying here, he who is well-to-do, As he buys land to make large enclosures.] 23

See Giorgio Petrocchi, “La letteratura religiosa,” in Storia della letteratura italiana, I (Milan: Garzanti, 1965), p. 674; Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico. Dissemblance et figuration (Paris: Flammarion, 1995), pp. 21–22.

98

ZUNINO

At this stage, it is essential to reconsider how central lauda 70 is to Iacopone’s need for visual representation to fulfill his pedagogic aims. Because of the emotion elicited by the dramatic presentation of the Passion of Christ through the emotional lexis of mother-son relationships, by how close this sense of pain becomes as a result of the overlapping of humilitas and sublimitas, by the situational realism and the multiple voices heard in this dialogue turned lament, this extremely rich lauda becomes the paradigm of signifying representation, overreaching the very form of the lay lauda to provide the first hints of 14th-century sacra rappresentazione. Encouraging the audience to observe and listen, to imagine thanks to images and words directed not only “at the body’s eye but also at the mind’s eye” by referring to common codes24 – that is how Iacopone’s poetry highlights the same links between images and words as in the sermons of 13th- and 14th-­century preachers: creating operative mental images through references to very different rhetorical categories (imagery, allegory, exemplum …) so as to influence various faculties such as the intellect, memory, the will25 and to imprint the models of good behavior and the culture of penitence on the audience’s memory. Such images as the trees of life and of contemplation or the ladder of virtue become tools to achieve visual representation in the more doctrinal laude, just as the use of exempla close to preaching practices provide real/actual, realistic illustrations for the didactically inclined laude.26 All those devices are the unmistakable signs of Iacopone’s “visibile parlare” – this poetry which shows through “texts with images.”27

24

Lina Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini. Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin: Einaudi, 2002). 25 Bolzoni, La rete, p. XX. 26 Most pusblished articles dealing with mystical trees underline their primarily doctrinal function. See Agide Gottardi, “L’albero spirituale in Iacopone da Todi,” Rassegna Critica della Letteratura Italiana 20 (1915), pp. 1–28; Alvaro Cacciotti, Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi (Rome: Antonianum, 1989), pp. 170–78 and 313–24; Manuela ­Boccignone, “Un albero piantato nel cuore (Iacopone e Petrarca),” Lettere Italiane 52, no. 2 (2000), pp. 245–54. Only Lina Bolzoni explores the pedagogically inclined relationship between words and images at length (La rete, pp. 121–38). 27 Claudio Ciociola, “‘Visibile parlare:’” agenda,” Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 7 (1989), pp. 9–77, especially 26–34.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

7

99

Mystical Trees

In the laudario, there are three mystical trees (77, 78, 84)28 – the trees of contemplation and the tree of virtue. They build on the tradition of the arbor ­virtutum, a figurative extension of the trees present in the Garden of Eden – the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life – and of the Cross – the Throne of the Savior, showcased in Christian art as the Tree of Redemption.29 ­Structurally, these trees (or ladders or beds), acting as visual diagrams, provide the text with the frame within which it is written,30 and represent, symbolically, the steps through which man reaches the contemplation of and mystical union with God. The ascent of the soul is made possible by means of the three trees, c­ orresponding with the various angelic hierarchies, which go through three heavens – the sidereal heaven, the crystalline heaven and the empyrean heaven. The first tree is that of Faith (84, 17–18):31 Lo primo arbor ch’è fundato, ne la fede è radicato ; [The first tree to be planted Is rooted in Faith]

28

29

30 31

To these can be added a group of three laude, Iacopone’s authorship of which is in doubt but likely [A4a, 4b, 4c], structured around the image of a ladder of virtues representing the path to love. Lastly, we consider that lauda 65 – evoking the image of the Cross as a bed which becomes the locus of the mystical union with God – belongs to this series of “texts with images.” As early as the 4th and 5th centuries, religious iconography builds upon patristic ­exegesis and identifies the Tree of Life with the Cross, adorning the cross with floral and ­vegetal elements. The opposition between the Tree of Temptation and the Cross of ­Salvation leads to other similarities. Augustine had written: “In arbore perivimus, in arbore redempti sumus; in lingo mors, in ligno vitam pependit” (Sermones, Suppl. IV, Sec. II, XXXIV sermo, In nativitate Salvatori, XIV), thus forming a continuum between the Tree of Knowledge and the wood in which the Cross of Golgotha was carved: the Tree because of which Adam had sinned becomes that which saves his descendants. See Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, L’ombre des ancêtres. Essai sur l’imaginaire médiéval de la parenté (Paris: Fayard, 2000), p. 221. See Bolzoni, La rete, 122. See Franca Ageno’s detailed description in her edition of the Laude (Iacopone da Todi, Laudi, Trattato e Detti, ed. Franca Ageno [Florence: Le Monnier, 1953], p. 283).

100

ZUNINO

It corresponds to the three levels of Angels, Archangels, and Thrones,32 and represents victory over the world through purgation, which begins with penitence, continues with the acceptance of the three vows of the Order of Friars Minor (poverty, obedience and chastity) and the practice of penitence and prayer (as well as patience and devotion, from which they result, as it were), and concludes with meditation. The second tree is that of Hope (84. 77–78): Poi guarda’ l’arbor vermiglio, cà speranza l’arsemiglio. [Then I looked at the vermillion tree Which I compare to Hope.] The Tree of Hope is related to the three levels of Dominions, Principalities and Powers; it is characteristic of illuminatio, through self-knowledge leading to self-hatred and the love of God, as well as through victory over the devil. The Tree of Charity is the third tree (84, 169–170): Per un arbore s’aplana, caritate sì se clama ; [One climbs a tree – Charity is its name.] The Tree of Charity corresponds to the Virtues, the Cherubim and the Seraphim; it represents perfectio or the unitive way. Man must defeat the third enemy – the flesh, symbolized by the seven deadly sins. The journey unfolds according to divine will through the righteous use of power, wisdom and will, as well as through the contemplation of the Creation, of the Angels and of God himself.

32

The hierarchy of the nine levels of angels had been determined by a treatise long thought to have been written by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. In lauda 84, Iacopone conforms to the hierarchy presented by Joachim of Fiore in Psalterium decem chordarum (Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Cherubim, Seraphim). However, in lauda 77, Iacopone borrows the hierarchy established by Saint Bonaventure who, compared with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, inverts Virtues and Principalities. See Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento, p. 43.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

101

Lauda 78 includes a reference to a similar tree of contemplation. From the very start of the poem, the incipit informs the reader about the nature of the tree – it is the arbor amoris, the Tree of Love planted by God (78, 1–2): Un arbore è da Deo plantato, lo quale Amore è nomenato. [A tree is planted by God, Which is named Love.] At the very bottom of the tree lies the branch of humility. The other branches are grouped in pairs, and each pair symbolizes a stage of the ascent. The first stage consists of the light and the love of justice; the second, sighs and laughter; the third, perseverance and continuous love; the fourth, tears and fervor; the fifth, charity and contemplation; the sixth, languor and affliction. There is but one branch at the seventh stage, that of ecstatic rapture. The didactically allegoric mode in which this lauda is cast is energized by the introductory dialogue between two characters, a mystic who has experienced the mystical union with God, and a possible disciple who wishes to experience it too, and asks the mystic to relate his experience. Even though the lauda then becomes a descriptive soliloquy, the opening dialogue helps introduce the idea that such figurative representations may prove useful (78, 3–6): «Oi tu, omo, che cc’èi salito, dimme en que forma c’è tu gito, perché lo viaio a mme sia aprito, cà eo sto en terra ottenebrato». [O Man, you who have climbed it, Tell me how you managed to do so So that the way may be opened to me Because I am endarkened on earth.] The request of the “ottenebrato” sinful man is somewhat unbecoming, since the grace of the Mystical Union cannot be forcefully obtained, but proves didactically justified through the echo found in lauda 84 – Fede, spen e caritate / li tre cel’ vòl figurare [“Faith, Hope and Charity / the three heavens are intended to represent”] – despite the slightly different context in which it appears, since the speaker claims he wants to teach the ways of ascetism so that they may be followed even more widely (84, 9–12):

102

ZUNINO

O tu, om, che stai en terra (e si creato a vita etterna), vide ll’arbor che t’ensegna ; (our emphasis) or non dormir, briga d’andare. [O Man, you who are on Earth (and was created for eternal life) See what the tree teaches you; Now do no sleep, make haste and go.] This figurative function is unmistakably highlighted by Iacopone, who does not hesitate to use the lexicon of drawing – “pento / segnare” [“painted / to mark”] – (84, 21; A4a, 1–4): El primo ramoscel ch’è pénto, (our emphasis) [The first branch to be painted] Volendo encomenzare, a lauda del Signore, una scala segnare, ornata de vertute, [Wishing to begin, So that I may praise the Lord, To draw a ladder Arrayed with virtues.] Such lexical choices invite comparison with the drawings found on the page opposite the figurative laude, and thus act as a referential signal pointing to an image. An object of immediate visualization which Iacopone refers to pedagogically is thus added to the very discourse which generates representation through highly structured steps hinging on iteration and gradation. The tree that is described, and a fortiori drawn, provides food for thought: introducing visual language, the poet creates hierarchies which structure thought and demonstration alike. In the early 12th century, arbores had become means of acquiring knowledge, both didactically (by establishing a clear hierarchy) and hermeneutically (through “the synthesis of complex connections, the perception of moral harmony”), before they came to be used even more

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

103

often by 13th- and 14th-century scholastic thinkers, including Bonaventure.33 More than a mere pedagogic tool structuring the text it complements, the tree is “an instrument of autonomous exegesis” which may be read independently from the text – so much so, in fact, that the text, following the opposite path, might start from the images and translate them into words. Beyond the classifying hierarchy which may help and sustain critical thinking, the image of a tree symbolically implies “organic coherence and vitality, which contributes to its popularity by the end of the Middle Ages.” Through its didactic and pedagogic function, the tree offered both a general theme and a symbolic backdrop to the meditation of Franciscan friars; with its divisions and its structure, it became a model around which the writer could organize his body of work. Franciscan thought was enriched by the writers who had dealt with the symbolism of trees – the influence of the monk Joachim of Fiore or of Hugh of Saint Victor is not in dispute,34 especially when it comes to Iacopone – and appropriated the image of the tree and its related metaphors to foster the forms of meditation and preaching it favored. Beyond the unmistakable intellectual links between Iacopone’s auctores (the Victorines, Joachim of Fiore), Franciscan thinkers and masters (Saint Bonaventure, Ubertino da Casale) and the Laude, the use Iacopone makes of

33 Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi, p. 50. 34 For further and more detailed information on the spread of Joachism and its influence on the Franciscan Order, see Stanislao da Campagnola, “Dai ‘viri spirituales’ di Gioacchino da Fiore ai ‘fratres spirituales di Francesco d’Assisi. Una tipologia religiosa,” Picenum Seraphicum, 11 (1974), pp. 24–52; Francesco Russo, “Gioachimismo e Francescanesimo,” in Joachim of Fiore in Christian Thought; Essays on the Influence of the Calabrian Prophet, 2 vols., ed. Delno C. West, (New York: Burt Franklin, 1975), pp. 129–41; Raoul Manselli, Joachim de Flore dans la théologie du XIII siècle, in Septième centenaire de la mort de Saint Louis, Actes des Colloques de Royaumont et de Paris (Paris: Les belles Lettres, 1976), pp. 291–301; Henri de Lubac, “Joachim de Flore jugé Par Saint Bonaventure et Saint Thomas,” in Pluralisme et Œcuménisme en Recherches Théologiques: Mélanges Offerts Au R.P. Dockx, O.P., ed. Yves Congar, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 43 (­Leuven: Peeters, 1976), pp. 39­–47; De Lubac, La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. I. De Joachim à Schelling (Paris: Lethielleux, 1979); De Lubac, La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. II. De Saint Simon à nos jours (Paris: Lethielleux, 1981); Marjorie Reeves, “The Originality and Influence of Joachim of Fiore,” Traditio 36 (1980), pp. 269–316; Robert E. Lerner, Scrutare il futuro. L’eredità di Gioacchino da Fiore alla fine del Medioevo, ed. Roberto Rusconi, trans. Valentina Rusconi (Roma: Viella, 2008); and Pensare per figure. Diagrammi e simboli in Gioacchino da Fiore. Atti del 7° Congresso internazionale di studi gioachimiti, San Giovanni in Fiore, 24–26 settembre 2009, ed. Alessandro Ghisalberti (Viella, Roma 2010).

104

ZUNINO

the symbol of the tree lies somewhere between poetry and preaching.35 The didactic function of the laude structured around the symbol of the tree (or ladder) of virtue leading to the Mystical Union is so ubiquitous that it endows his poetic composition with a preach-like tone – so much so, in fact, that, contrary to what the reader might first think, it is possible to believe that the text acts as a verbal illustration of the drawing on the page opposite. Such laude are also rife with poetic moments that go beyond a series of mere descriptive indications, creating a particularly meaningful, dynamic and open interplay between the text and the image. Thus, far from being “unpoetic moments,”36 the laude dedicated to the tree of contemplation partake of the fine balance between poetry and preaching mentioned above. Such laude try to introduce another form of enunciation: relying on the image of the tree to sustain reflection and help memorization, they do not preclude poetic expression since they explore the metaphorical potential of the image fully. What is more, these “texts with images” form a mnemonic network based on echoes, correspondences and associations which end up transcending the microtext to open up another level of reading and of understanding in the minds of the readers-listeners trained in the techniques of meditatio and ruminatio. 8

Exempla, or Slices of Life

The line between poetry and preaching also disappears in certain series of laude exploring the lives of poetic characters created to illustrate the moral theme developed in the lauda. Just as the preacher could use fictional narratives to highlight the moral theme of his sermon, Iacopone, with such slices of life, makes reality visible and opens the literary space of the lauda to exempla. The audience of the Iacoponean laudario being possibly composed of the novitiates or initiates of the Franciscan studia, it is possible to imagine that Iacopone’s laude-exempla were read where friars received their religious and

35

36

The Dominican friar Jacobus of Fusignano (? – † 1333) was the first to link the tree and the sermon, developed according to the rules of sermo modernus: “Prædicare est arborisare” … “Prædicatio assimilator arbor reali. Sicut enim arbor realis procedit ad truncum et truncus in principales ramos pullulat et rami principales in alios multiplicantur sic et prædicatio primo ex themate tanquam ex radice in truncum, id est prælocutionem vel prothema, procedit”. Jacobus da Fusignano, “Libellus Artis Praedicatorie” in Siefried Wenzel, The Art of Preaching: Five Medieval Texts and Translations, (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), pp. 9–96. See Iacopone da Todi, Laudi, Tratatto e Detti, p. XIX.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

105

intellectual education.37 In that case, they would not count as sermons delivered by a Franciscan preacher in public, but rather as sermons meant to help novitiates to meditate, or even ruminate. It is about offering narratives likely to affect the audience and “offering a religious truth useful to their salvation to their memories.”38 Showing to bolster faith. Depicting to persuade. Three laude (35, 75, 80) make up a series of exempla based on false virtue. However consistent the theme and message may be (one must be wary of the false virtue hidden even in those whom society recognizes as saints because of their actions), the enunciative forms and modes of presentation vary. Such enunciative diversity is another form of variatio – not lexical, but rather thematic and tonal in nature – which enables the poet to present a situation from different angles in order to move and edify. The principle of variatio, which Iacopone valued very highly, is one of the elements of the persuasive rhetoric on which the use of exampla is based; they follow a set of mandatory rules, which the laude-exempla on false virtue also adhere to despite their literary dimension and their versified form: authenticity, verisimilitude, brevity, pleasure, the reliance on memory and metaphor.39 Lauda 37 – Que fai, anema predata ? [What are you doing, possessed Soul] – features a dialogue between a living man and a nun who died having a reputation for leading a saintly life, but who was sent to Hell because her life was in fact all too prideful. The character in the monologue of lauda 75 – Assai m’esforzo a guadagnare / s’eo ‘l sappesse conservare! [I strive to earn a lot – / if only I knew how to preserve it!] – is a “relïoso” Franciscan friar who mentions the efforts he made throughout his life to attain spiritual perfection; however, because he was censured, he lost his patience, failed in his charitable duties, thus ruining in an instant what he had spent a life of dedication building. Beginning with the incipit, the friar featured in lauda 80 – Molto me so adelongato / de la via che lli santi ò calcato [How far I have strayed / from the path the saints have trod] – engages in a self-critical assessment of his life based on the 37

38

39

Prof. Jacques Guy Bougerol O. F. M. makes a distinction between “the sermons intended for the religious training of the friars, the sermons intended for their intellectual training and the sermons intended for providing them with rules and exemples for their sermons.” (Jacques Guy Bougerol O. F. M. Bougerol, “Les sermons dans les Studia des Mendiants.”. Le scuole degli Ordini mendicanti (secoli XIII–XIV). 11–14 ottobre 1976 [Todi, Centro di Studi sulla Spiritualità Medievale: Accademia Tudertina, 1978], pp. 252–54). Jacques Berlioz, “‘Quand dire c’est faire dire’. Exempla et confession chez Étienne de ­Bourbon († v. 1261),” in Faire croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XII e au XV e siècle. 22–23 juin 1979 (Collection de l’École française de Rome, 1981), p. 299. Berlioz, “Quand dire,” p. 305.

106

ZUNINO

image of the false prophet. The friar constantly oscillates between outer virtue and inner corruption, between the lamb and the wolf. The dialogic form of lauda 37 introduces an immediately didactic dimension: the living man, who fails to understand why the “saintly woman” is in Hell, questions her (37, 15–18): « Qual è stata la casone de la tua dannazïone? Ché speravan le persone che fusci canonizzata». [What is the cause Of your damnation? For some hoped That you would be canonized.] The “saintly woman” educates him by answering his apprehensive questions (37, 87–90): «Frate, non te desperare, ché ‘l paradiso pòi lucrare, se tte guardi de furare l’onor suo, cà t’à vetata». [Brother, do not despair, For Heaven you can gain, If you refrain from robbing God Of the honor He is due, for it is forbidden to you.] The exceptionally elaborate structure of lauda 80 provides it with an altogether different didactic indexation. The same distribution of lines within each stanza, providing a clear structure to the monologue, is complemented by the coblas capfinidas which provide rhythm to the lauda and sustain the reader-listener’s memory. As this configuration is meant to highlight the discrepancy between inner essence and outer appearance of the false prophets one will possibly encounter even within the Franciscan Order, each stanza – except for the first one – contains two lines referring to outer appearances, and two to what lies beneath. In this group of three laude, Iacopone managed to utilize the poetic form of the lauda to explore the narrative mode of exempla-based sermons. The

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

107

descriptions are so lifelike that they become actual hypotyposes, allowing the reader to hear and see the daily life and everyday activities of the friars. The false “saintly woman” sent to Hell after she dies lists, in mundane yet realistic detail, the vows she took and kept – chastity, silence and penitence. Likewise, the Franciscan friar of lauda 75 spent his life keeping his vows of obedience, poverty and chastity (75, 11–14): Stato so’ en obedenza, povertat’e sofferenza ; castetate abi en placenza, secundo el pover meo affare. [I have been obedient, Poor and long-suffering, Gladly I have practiced charity, As well as I could given my poor condition.] The minute description provided by the friar helps the reader follow the different stages of his life – reading in the studium, praying, fasting, suffering – and, almost hourly, his daily activities – waking up, attending the various religious services, keeping prayer vigils. Just as the narrative is integrated fruitfully in the poetic form of the laude through realistic references, another element structures the three laude-exempla: declaring that the life of those religious characters changed in an instant. Halfway through her narrative, the false “saintly woman” declares: “Non ce abi omeletate” [“I had no humility”]. The Franciscan friar’s narrative opens on an observation in which the ­optative turn of phrase is already suggestive of failure (75, 1–2): Assai m’esforzo a guadagnare, s’eo ‘l sappesse conservare ! [I strive to earn a lot – if only I knew how to preserve it!] The friar reveals the actual cause of his punishment in the final two stanzas (75, 23–30): E vil cosa me sia ditta, al cor passa la saietta ;

108

ZUNINO

e la lengua mea sta ritta a voler foco iettare. Or vedete el guadagnato, Como sso’ ricco e adasciato, Che un parlar m’à sì turbato C’a pena i pòzzo perdonare. [Should harsh words be said to me, My heart is pierced by the arrow; And my tongue sticks out, Wishing to spit out fire. Now see my gain, How rich and well-to-do I am. I who was so troubled by one word Which I can barely forgive.] Such unforeseen turns of events underline how fragile what the characters thought they had acquired is, but they also help denounce the prideful impasse in which those who pursue a life of virtue, so that they or others may profit from it, find themselves. On the one hand, in these laude, Iacopone precludes any sense of certainty, illustrating the idea that “Onne luc’è ‘n tenebria” [“All light shines in the darkness”] (36, 103); on the other, he reminds the reader of the Franciscan message he keeps distilling throughout the laudario: one must endeavor to practice humility above all else, and to recognize one’s crooked branch to pick it up and climb the mystical trees that can progressively lead to the knowledge of God (78, 31–38). 9

Universal I and Intimate I: beyond Exemplary Autobiography

The persuasive force of those laude-exempla also stems from the first-person narrative, which endows them with the verisimilitude of true testimonies. Iacopone understood how valuable such enunciative choices may be, as they facilitate the assimilation of the underlying moral message by the reader-­listener. The Laude provide a space for the expression of the first person singular: the pronoun I supports not only painful statements and vehement accusations, but also the series of exempla meant to illustrate moral and ascetic themes derived from Franciscan heritage or the tradition of contemptus mundi. In this case, the pronoun I does not amount to the expression of a specific, exclusionary instance of lyrical subjectivity, and it can at most signify the

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

109

disappearance of the distance between the author, the narrator and the character. However, as the laudario does not refer to an ascetic and mystical journey based on personal experience or on the memory of real life, it is difficult to identify a personal voice in this use of the first person singular. Rather than an intimate confession, the laudario reveals a type of confession animated by the need to say and show in order to denounce – a type of confession where the first person singular can never be attributed to Iacopone because it conveys an experience aimed to be exemplary rather than personal.40 As a didactic tool, the pronoun I tends to become more universal – a locus where any audience of the Laude can recognize themselves. Hence the statement of the corpse distorted by death – a pure poetic creation tasked with reminding man of how fragile the human condition is – to the living man who questions him (61, 11–12): O frate meo, non me rampugnare, cà ‘l fatto meo te pòte iovare ! [O my brother, do not chastise me, For what happens to me can be of use to you.] Nevertheless, a few laude stand out in this unequivocally didactic series of poems, and call for more detailed investigation. The poetic compositions which reveal identifiable details from Iacopone’s life – like the three laude addressed to Boniface VIII (83, 55, 67) and the lauda of imprisonment (53) – partake of the poet’s search for exemplarity, but are also indissociably related to the autobiographical context in which they were written. The lauda ­vituperatively addressed to Boniface (83) is poised between an ad hominem attack – Iacopone being closely associated with rigoristic Franciscan circles as well as the Colonnas’ war on the Pope – and a public, didactic exposition of the sins committed by the Pope, whom Iacopone sees as the Antichrist. Although the lauda of imprisonment oscillates between the terrifyingly realistic description of his condition as a “political” prisoner and the ascetic dramatization of a man who tests his soul through self-hatred, the other two laude addressed to Boniface (55, 67) attempt to present an inner experience of pain rather than an exemplary situation. Denying this difference would amount to refuting the possibility of intimate sincerity in Iacopone’s works, and to regard him as but a learned combatant driven by his didactic project alone. 40

See Giovanni Getto, “Il realismo di Jacopone da Todi,” in Letteratura reli­giosa dal Due al Novecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), pp. 119–20.

110

ZUNINO

One final lauda sheds new light on the question of the identity of the first person singular: lauda 58 – O vita penosa, continua bataglia ! [O painful life, unremitting battle!]. In some ways, this poem may appear as an autobiographical text relating Iacopone’s existence from intra-uterine life to maturity, or even old age. However, the argument becomes more and more general, and explores the misfortunes and the pains of every stage of human life, developing ascetic themes along generic narrative lines. The lauda oscillates purposefully between intimate biography and a much broader presentation of the vicissitudes of human life, patterned after the Five Ages of Man (childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity and old age). In the first part of the lauda (from line 3 to line 102), Iacopone willingly leaves open the possibility that the poem may have been cast in the autobiographical mode. The poem is rife with sensible, moving details highlighted by constant references to the speaker’s mother and her solicitude, expressed in exceptionally affectionate terms. At the same time, however, a broader approach can already be identified in this intimate world. Intra-uterine life, birth, nursing, care, school, ­childish fights, high-society life – gambling, spending, debt, theft, envy, revenge, brawls –, the desire to have a beautiful, gentle, kind, rich wife, everyday ­troubles, ­disease and acquisitive doctors, winter and its cold weather, ­summer with its flies and its fleas, the exhaustion and agitation which impede sleep, the work which cannot be done well because of fatigue, old age and death – as he describes all these stages, Iacopone narrates the archetypal human journey in condensed form. Hyperbole and exaggeration gradually become the defining features of this apparently autobiographical description. The writer-actor is caught in a downward spiral where his strict father becomes violent and where he himself, a young man, becomes a gambler and a thief, patronizes public houses and finds himself in bad company, drinks and fights. Such excessive descriptions can but remove the lauda from the intimate, biographical sphere to make it into an exemplary, didactic allegory. With this hyperbolic sum of negative examples, Iacopone attempts to remind the reader-listener of the ascetic message delivered in the Gospels – militia est vita ­hominis super terram: life on earth is a constant war against evil and temptation. The final two lines justify a didactic reading of this very long, very descriptive lauda (Id., 187–188), as borne out by the use of the first person ­plural “facciàn”: ergo, presente facciàn correttura, che en afrantura non sia nostra andata.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

111

[Ergo, now, let us rectify our ways So that we shall not fall into the abyss.] This series of short exempla aims to lead the addressee to change his ways for the better by showing the need to renounce sin during his time on earth. Yet, it does not lessen the sense of intimacy and affectivity distilled in the first part of the lauda. The constant back and forth between those two poles structures the lauda, proving how unique and rich/complex it is. In the laudario, Iacopone explores a new relationship between the ­narrating I and the narrated I. Moving away from the stated or relative ­autobiographical tendency of 13th-century lyrical poetry and putting forward an exemplary I which crystallizes all enunciative instances, Iacopone blurs the traditional lines between the author, the narrator and the character, between impersonal forms and lyricism – both in fact overlap to create a sense of universality since the impersonal form always encompasses the first person singular. The I which includes sinful humanity and faithful believers alike already seems to foreshadow the transcendental, existential I of the pilgrim in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Works Cited Ageno, Franca. “Benedetti, Iacopo.” In Dizionario biografico degli italiani 8. Rome: ­Istituto Della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1966. Berlioz, Jacques. “‘Quand dire c’est faire dire’. Exempla et confession chez Étienne de Bourbon († v. 1261).” In Faire croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XII e au XV e siècle. 22–23 juin 1979, 299–335. Collection de l’École française de Rome, 1981. Bettarini, Rosanna. Jacopone e il laudario Urbinate. Florence: Sansoni, 1969. Boccignone, Manuela. “Un albero piantato nel cuore (Iacopone e Petrarca).” Lettere Italiane 52, no. 2 (2000): 225–64. Bolzoni, Lina. La rete delle immagini. Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena. Turin: Einaudi, 2002. Bougerol, Jacques Guy, O.F.M. “Les sermons dans les Studia des Mendiants.” Le scuole degli Ordini mendicanti (secoli XIII–XIV). 11–14 ottobre 1976. Todi, Centro di Studi sulla Spiritualità Medievale: Accademia Tudertina, 1978. Cacciotti, Alvaro. Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi. Rome: ­Antonianum, 1989.

112

ZUNINO

da Campagnola, Stanislao. “Dai ‘viri spirituales’ di Gioacchino da Fiore ai ‘fratres ­spirituales di Francesco d’Assisi. Una tipologia religiosa.” Picenum Seraphicum, 11 (1974): 24–52. Canettieri, Paolo, ed. Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento. Milan: Rizzoli, 2001. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Ciociola, Claudio. “‘Visibile parlare:’” agenda.” Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 7 (1989): 9–77. Didi-Huberman, Georges. Fra Angelico. Dissemblance et figuration. Paris: Flammarion, 1995. Galli, Giuseppe. “Appunti sui laudarii iacoponici.” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 64 (1914): 145–62. Getto, Giovanni. “Il realismo di Jacopone da Todi.” In Letteratura reli­giosa dal Due al Novecento, 84–142. Florence: Sansoni, 1967. Gottardi, Agide. “L’albero spirituale in Iacopone da Todi.” Rassegna Critica della Letteratura Italiana 20 (1915): 1–28. Grzybowska, Lidia. “Arbor Praedicandi. Some Remarks on Dispositio in Mediaeval Sermons (on the Example of Sermo 39 “Semen Est Verbum Dei” by Mikołaj of Błonie).” Terminus 21, special issue no. 2 (2019): 169–95. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4782 -8457; doi:10.4467/20843844TE.19.007.11115. Guillaume de Saint-Thierry. Un traité de vie solitaire. Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei, chap. 56, ed. M. M. Davy. Paris: Vrin, 1940. Iacopone da Todi. Laudi, Trattato e Detti, ed. Franca Ageno. Florence: Le Monnier, 1953. Iacopone da Todi. Laude, edited by Franco Mancini. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1974 (reprint 2006). Iacopone da Todi. Laude, edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Olschki, 2010. Jacobus de Fusignano, “Libellus Artis Praedicatorie.” The Art of Preaching: Five Medieval Texts and Translation, ed. Siefried Wenzel, 9–96. Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. L’ombre des ancêtres. Essai sur l’imaginaire médiéval de la parenté. Paris: Fayard, 2000. Lerner, Robert E. Scrutare il futuro. L’eredità di Gioacchino da Fiore alla fine del Medioevo. Edited by Roberto Rusconi. Translated by Valentina Rusconi (Roma: Viella, 2008. Lerner, Robert E. Pensare per figure. Diagrammi e simboli in Gioacchino da Fiore. Atti del 7° Congresso internazionale di studi gioachimiti, San Giovanni in Fiore, 24–26 settembre 2009, ed. Alessandro Ghisalberti. Viella, Roma 2010. Levasti, Arrigo. Mistici del Duecento e del Trecento. Milan: Rizzoli, 1960.

EDUCATING, ENLIGHTENING, EDIFYING: IACOPONE DA TODI’S JOURNEY

113

de Lubac, Henri. “Joachim de Flore jugé Par Saint Bonaventure et Saint Thomas.” In Pluralisme et Œcuménisme en Recherches Théologiques: Mélanges Offerts Au R.P. Dockx, O.P., ed. Yves Congar, 39­–47, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 43 Leuven: Peeters, 1976. de Lubac, Henri. La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. I. De Joachim à Schelling. Paris: Lethielleux, 1979. de Lubac, Henri. La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. II. De Saint Simon à nos jours. Paris: Lethielleux, 1981. Mancini, Franco. “Due postille iacoponiche.” Convivium, no. (1952): 456–60. Manselli, Raoul. “Joachim de Flore dans la théologie du XIII siècle.” In Septième centenaire de la mort de Saint Louis, Actes des Colloques de Royaumont et de Paris, 291–301. Paris: Les belles Lettres, 1976. Novati, Francesco. “L’amor mistico in S. Francesco d’Assisi ed in Iacopone da Todi.” In Freschi e Minii del Dugento, 229–51. Milan: Cogliati, 1908. Panzieri, Ugo. “I gradi dell’anima.” In Mistici del Duecento e del Trecento, ed. Arrigo ­Levasti, pp. Milan-Rome: Rizzoli, 1935. Perelman, Chaïm and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. Traité de l’argumentation. La nouvelle rhétorique. Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles et Vrin, 1976. Petrocchi, Giorgio. “La letteratura religiosa.” In Storia della letteratura italiana I, 627–85. Milan: Garzanti, 1965. Pozzi, Giovanni. “Jacopone poeta.” In Alternatim. Milan: Adelphi, 1996. Reboul, Olivier. Introduction à la rhétorique. Paris: PUF, 1998. Reeves, Marjorie. “The Originality and Influence of Joachim of Fiore.” Traditio 36 (1980): 269–316. Russo, Francesco. “Gioachimismo e Francescanesimo.” In Joachim of Fiore in Christian Thought; Essays on the Influence of the Calabrian Prophet, 2 vols., ed. Delno C. West, 129–41. New York: Burt Franklin, 1975. Saint Bernard. In festo SS. Petri et Pauli sermo II, I. Zunino, Estelle. Conquêtes littéraires et Quête spirituelle. Jacopone da Todi (1230 [?]– 1306). Paris: PUPS, 2013.

Part 2 Translation, Transformation, Adaptation

∵

Chapter 5

Ineffability and the Urgent Need to Tell: Comparing Four Twentieth-Century Translations of Laudas Magdalena Maria Kubas 1

Preliminary Remarks

Polish culture1 has long included spiritual songs.2 There is a rich body of liturgical and para-liturgical sources in relation to the British Islands as well.3 Studies in the medieval history of literature show that the laudas coming from Italian Peninsula spread across the countries of Europe, including Poland, together with the widespread phenomenon of confraternities of penitence.4 During the thirteenth century, Franciscan movements popularized a certain kind of spiritual discourse that also included poems of praise. At this stage of work I am not able to say whether Iacopone’s laudas had appeared in Polish culture before

1 This paper is part of the project NeMoSanctI, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 757314). 2 Original praising songs written in Latin or Polish do appear in liturgical books beginning in the twelfth century, as it is commonly acknowledged. For their cultural placement, the use and the spreading see for example Boleslaw Bratkowski, “Związki chorału gregoriańskiego z ludową muzyką i pieśnią religijną w Polsce,” in Dziedzictwo europejskie a polska kultura muzyczna w dobie przemian, ed. Anna Czekanowska (Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 1995), pp. 115–30. What would be interesting for my research is the possibility that laudas from Italy, especially Iacoponic or ­pseudo-Iacoponic laudas, might have been present as well. 3 See for example William Smith, The Use of Hereford. The Sources of a Medieval English Diocesan Rite (Routledge, 2017), especially chapter 10 “The Sequences.” 4 “Da Perugia cortei di flagellanti si spandono […] e dall’Italia in Provenza, in Francia, in Germania, fino in Polonia. […] Nelle continue processioni, svolgentisi non solo di giorno, ma anche di notte […] il canto era sollievo dalle fatiche della via e del dolore delle battiture: «cantio poenitentium lugubris» […]. Erano litanie modulate, canti rozzi, improvvisati, del genere di quello antichissimo appartenente a quell’ordine dei Servi di Maria o Serviti, che nacque nel 1233 dalla trasformazione della confraternita dei «Laudesi della B. Vergine Maria», canto che incomincia così: “Rajna potentissima […].” See Siro Chimenz, “La poesia religiosa umbra del Duecento,” in L’Umbria nella storia, nella letteratura, nell’arte (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1954), pp. 181–82. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_007

118

KUBAS

the nineteenth century,5 similarly in English-language literature Iacopone can be found with certainty starting in the nineteenth century.6 It is highly important to underline the fact that, until a few decades ago, the idea – and the corpus – of Iacoponic lauda was quite broad, including spiritual songs by Iacopone da Todi and epigones7 in both vernacular and Latin.8 Twentieth-­century research in the field of Italian philology helped to distinguish Iacopone’s authored corpus from the texts of other poets, authors who either belonged to the so-called Iacoponic school or were more distant epigones and whose names may or may not be known to us. This research, the results of which were published mainly in the second half of the last century, did not circulate much outside of Italy and this fact is highly relevant for the entire culture of translation of Iacopone’s poetry. In many cases, these translations are not addressed to readers of mystics or poetry in general, but rather to a public of the faithful.9 5 The most authoritative studies of the history of Polish translations of Italian literature focus on the period from the sixteenth century to the present day. Cf. for example Jadwiga ­Miszalska, et al., Od Dantego do Fo. Włoska poezja i dramat w Polsce (Krakow: Collegium Colombianum, 2007). 6 Excluding of course the Latin hymn Stabat mater, a liturgical sequence until the Council of Trent. Many English translations and studies of this lauda were published during the nineteenth century (see for example Stabat Mater. Hymn of the Sorrows of Mary, transl. Abraham Coles (New York: Appleton & Co, 1866). Dies Irae is published and translated together. The same for The “Stabat Mater” and Other Hymns transl. John D. van Buren (Albany: Joel Munsel, 1872). As far as the vernacular laudas are concerned, our research is at an early stage. Among the translations we remember for example Anne Macdonnell, Sons of Francis (London: J. M. Dent, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), with a chapter including analysis and translations of few laudas by Iacopone da Todi. 7 The problem of the authenticity of laudas is an issue of interest only in Modern times. As I mentioned in a previous study, between the early printed editions and the most recent philological recovery of authored laudas – especially in the field of translations – there is no distinction between Iacopone and the so-called school, as it was defined by Rosanna Bettarini, Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate (Florence: Sansoni, 1969). In Italy, since the studies of Franca Ageno philology has focused on distinguishing between authored laudas and all the others. It is only very recently that translations in various languages, often destinated for devotional use, have begun to take on the findings of philological research. See also my Litanic Verse. Italy (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018), pp. 55–76. 8 As two very popular sequences Stabat Mater or Dies Irae. 9 “Cristiani colti”, or cultured Christians are declared as the privileged public of Papini’s edition (Jacopone da Todi, Le laude, ed. Giovanni Papini [Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1923], XXVI). In his review of the book The Fool of God: Jacopone da Todi by Gregory Peck (Medium Aevum 51, 1982, 269–272), Mark Davie discusses a similar problem, or a missing reception of the newest editions of the laudas also contextualizing Underhill’s and Beck’s work (Evelyn Underhill, and Theodore Beck, Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic, 1228–1306: A Spiritual Biography, London, Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1919.) in her time. In the end, after a few years the reception of Mancini’s critical edition would be late

COMPARING FOUR TWENIETH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF LAUDAS

119

As scholars have noted, a livelier interest in translations of Iacopone’s laudas developed in Poland during the nineteenth century thanks to the work of poet and literary critic Lucjan Siemieński, specifically the publication of four laudas together with a short introduction in an anthology of mystical poetry.10 Almost a century later, a Capuchin friar and intellectual, Father Salezy Kafel did likewise, offering Polish readers a new, bigger group of laudas included in a volume of selected works by mystical poets, Antologia mistyków franciszkańskich (Akademia Teologii Katolickiej, 1985/1987). In English, the situation seems to have been much better: during the last century, a rich selection of laudas translated by Mrs Theodore Beck was included in a study of Iacopone’s life and work published by Evelyn Underhill (J. M. Dent & Sons/ E.P. Dutton, 1919) and in the 1980s a new selection of works and new translations was printed by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes in the USA. A common feature of these publications is that all the translated texts are considered to have been authored by Iacopone da Todi. Referring to the anthology by Salezy Kafel, in those years philological research in Italy no longer recognized certain laudas selected for his anthology as having been written by Iacopone himself. 2

Translated Laudas

Father Kafel used four sources, three of which were not Italian and all of which were not recent at the time of his work. He also had access to the volume Le Laude, edited in 1923 in Florence – this work is quoted in the introduction, but it is not the source text of the translations – the reprint of the earliest edition of laudas by Iacopone with a preface by Giovanni Papini. As declared by Father Kafel himself, two non-Italian editions served as the basis for his translations: T. Beck, Jacopone da Todi, London-Toronto 1919 (5 translated laudas),11 and I. Gobry, Mystiques franciscains, Paris 1959 (2 translated laudas). The source for two Latin hymns, Stabat Mater and Dies Irae, was the Roman missal published in Poland (Poznan, 1983). In the chapter dedicated to Iacopone in his anthology

10 11

(not missing), as one can conclude after the last English volume of the laudas by Iacopone translated by Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 63. L. Siemieński, Święci poeci. Pieśni mistycznej miłości (Wydawnictwo: Księgarnia Wł. Bełzy, 1876). Giovanni Papini quotes Beck’s work in the introduction to his edition of Iacoponic laudas. As he himself says, the community has been waiting for a critical edition for a long time and will have to wait for it for a long time, see Jacopone da Todi, Le laude, ed. G. Papini, pp. XXVI.

120

KUBAS

of Franciscan writings, Father Kafel published nine translated poems, two of which were Latin. See table 5.1 for a list of the translated texts: Table 5.1    List of Iacopone texts translated by Father Salezy Kafel (published in Antologia mistyków franciszkańskich)

Incipit of Polish version

O Miłości, Boża Miłości

Incipit from the English/ French edition as identified in the footnotes by Father Kafel O Love Divine and Great

Italian or Latin incipit as it appears in the 1923 Florentine edition

O amor, divino amore, – perché m’ai assediato Miłości, któraś najczystszą Love that art Charity Amor de caritate, przyjaźnią – perché m’hai sí ferito Uciekam od Krzyża, który I flee the Cross that doth Fuggo la croce che me mnie trawi my heart devour devora O Królowo najłaskawsza O Queen of all courtesy – O Regina cortese, – io so a voi venuto O Ubóstwa miłowanie O Love of Holy Poverty O amor de povertate, – regno de tranquillitate Każdy zakochany, który kocha Que tout amant qui aime le — Pana Seigneur O Chryste! Mój ukochany! O Christ, mon Bien-aimé — Bolejąca Matka Stabat Mater — W gniewu dzień Dies Irae —

Two laudas are in Latin – Stabat Mater, traditionally considered an authored text, while Dies Irae is thought to have been written in the Franciscan milieu, perhaps by Tommaso da Celano12 and this hymn was not included among works by Iacopone during the twentieth century. The situation is the same in the Italian edition of the laudas that the translator used for his selection: none of the Latin poems is included in Papini’s reprint of the editio princeps.13 12

13

Among others, Benedetto Croce in Poesia antica e moderna (Bari: Laterza, 1941), and Natalino Sapegno in Compendio di storia della letteratura italiana per le scuole medie superiori (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1950) have argued that the hymn was authored by Tommaso da Celano. The edition of Ser Francesco Bonaccorsi printed in 1490 in Florence. This volume contained 102 laudas, all in vernacular. The Bonaccorsi edition was highly popular beginning in the nineteenth century and, in Italy, this success continued for much of the t­ wentieth

COMPARING FOUR TWENIETH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF LAUDAS

121

As this table clearly shows, the group includes both laudas that are still considered to have been written by Iacopone and other ones whose authorial status has been changed to “anonymous”. Father Kafel did not have access to Italian philological research on Iacopone’s work, and perhaps he would not have been interested in it:14 his goal was to offer an overview of the traditional writings linked with Franciscan culture. Of course, the English texts mentioned by Kafel are found in the 1923 Papini edition as well, and this fact authorized the friar to include them among the texts chosen for the Polish anthology. 3

The Urgent Need to Tell in “Love that art Charity”

The idea of inexpressibility, that is, the difficulty of recounting this kind of experience, has been a part of Christian mysticism since the time of Pseudo-­ Dionysius the Areopagite – a balance between via negations and via affirmationis that allows us to contemplate how both the limits of the human capacity to recount and the necessity of expressing exceptional experiences constitute principal issues distinguishing mystical writing from all other religious scriptures. Massimo Baldini presents a well-considered review of classical studies of this aspect of mysticism in different fields, from James, Yandell, and Stace to Moore and Hatab etc.15 Steven Katz notes the paradoxical character of the problem itself16 as well as the opposite issue of “language as power” (19). As Father Bocheński wrote, “value can be attributed to an object only under the

14 15

16

century even though as early as 1884 Alessandro d’Ancona suggested that a modern critical edition was needed, see Edoardo Barbieri, “L’editio princeps di Jacopone da Todi (Firenze: Bonaccorsi, 1490): note bibliologiche,” La Bibliofilia 109, no. 2 (2007): pp. 105–10. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this great interest in the study of mysticism dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century, cf. Steven T. Katz, introduction to Comparative Mysticism. An Anthology of Original Sources, ed. Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 4. Evelyn Underhill’s selection is based on her study, which is presented in the first part of her book. She chose the laudas that are the object of her critical investigation from a group of text translated by Mrs Theodore Beck. Massimo Baldini, Il linguaggio dei mistici (Brescia: Queriniana, 1986) summarizes and discusses works such as William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, Joseph M. Bocheński’s The Logic of Religion, Lawrence J. Hatab’s Mysticism and language, and Peter Moore’s Mystical Experience mystical Doctrine, mystical Technique (in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis), and other works (Baldini). See Steven Katz, introduction to Comparative Mysticism, p. 17: “What we refer to as the great historical mystical traditions of the world are in fact a series of documents of differing sorts. No one has any privileged access to the original mystics’ experience outside its textual incorporation.”

122

KUBAS

condition that at least one factual object-linguistic property has been assumed as belonging to it.”17 As scholars have acknowledged, this difficulty is also found in Iacopone’s poetry. In fact, the other, inseparable, side of the coin, namely the urgency of expressing one’s own mystical experience, also appears to the same extent and in a complementary way in the group of laudas I analyze below. An urgent need to tell, to shout appears each time Iacopone’s subject undergoes difficulties in communicating his perception of God – including when his attempts to recount the mystical experience are misunderstood by his interlocutors. The following poems have been chosen for closer examination from those listed above: – Miłości, któraś najczystszą przyjaźnią (it. Amor de caritate), hereafter indicated with the English title Love that art Charity – Uciekam od Krzyża (it. Fugio la croce) hereafter I flee the Cross Attempting to communicate with the Divine, called also Love, each of the selected poems speaks to a different aspect and situation of the difficulty of telling. The lack of words is one of the topics addressed by the first of the two laudas. In “Love that art Charity” the author not only explores the necessity of speaking, but also asserts the emptiness of the words belonging to the lyrical subject. Let us read a few lines translated together with their source, composed of the English version accompanied by the Italian text (ll. 21–22): Gdy chcę to wszystko wyrazić, (PL) Puste są wszystkie me słowa Of these strange things to treat (EN) All words are vain non posso dar figura (IT) de que veggio sembianza These statements are accompanied by an antithesis juxtaposing life and death, delight and heartlessness. This fragment allows us to observe how the original thought undergoes conceptual transformation: in the Italian fragment, it is the visual aspect that is emphasized. Beck’s interpretation at the beginning of the twentieth century directed the lines of the lauda towards the sphere of speech (in the source text, the verb is “I see” and it is related to the difficulty of using figures to represent). Following this figurative path and adding a possessive pronoun, Salezy Kafel attributes this ineffability ­exclusively 17

Joseph M. Bocheński, The Logic of Religion (New York: New York University Press, 1965), p. 36.

COMPARING FOUR TWENIETH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF LAUDAS

123

to the subject who speaks in the poem so that the Polish ­translation reads “empty are all MY18 words”. In the wake of the modern imaginary proposed by Beck, ­Kafel’s ­translation opts for a more personal expression, typical of the thirteenth-­century original. The mystical “I” returns after several stanzas. As the ­mystical subject is uncapable of recounting, at this point the surrounding elements cry out: Bo niebo wraz z ziemią krzyczą i wołają ciągle I krzyczą wszystkie rzeczy, które ukochałem, A każda mówi mi z całego serca: kochaj, Gdyż Miłość, która cię stworzyła, martwi się, jak Cię ogarnąć?! (PL; 83–86) For heaven and earth and all things else do cry, That Love is all my task, my life, my place; Their heartfelt voices cry aloud – “Draw nigh! The Love that made thee, hasten to embrace! (EN; 85–88) Ché cielo e terra grida e sempre chiama, e tutte cose ch’io sí deggia amare; ciascuna dice con tutto cor: – Ama l’amor c’ha fatto briga d’abbracciare; (IT; 85–88) Apart from the Polish translator’s general tendency to generalize and in some way summarize what is articulated in the two source texts, an interior lack of words on the part of the subject, representing interiority, is opposed to the entire world. This larger world encourages mystical union and is able to speak about it: this larger world represents exteriority, and the subject remains ­outside of it. Then the subject is reborn in Christ (ll. 133 and following). The new man finds the resources to verbalize Love, to directly speak to the Divine, to confess his physical desire and desire to die in Him. The expressions previously attributed to the exterior elements now fall from the lips of the subject. Z miłowania tak wołam: Tak cię pożądam, Miłości, 18

Capitalized in the Polish translation.

124

KUBAS

O spraw bym umarł z miłości! Dla Ciebie, o Miłości, niszczeję wiednąc, Płaczę, krzyczę i pieszczot Twych pragnę Żyjąc ginę gdy Ciebie nie staje (PL; 140–145) I cry and call, – “O Thou my All, O let me die in Love!” For Thee, O Love, my heart consumes away, I cry, I call, I yearn for Thy caress; Living, I perish when Thou dost not stay (EN; 141–146) e per amor sí chiamo: – Amor cui tanto bramo, famme morir d’amore! Per te, amor, consumome languendo, e vo stridendo per te abbracciare; quando te parti, sí moio vivendo (IT; 142–147) The topic and antithetical elements are present once again: both life and dying in Love, both desire and languishing. Together with a description of the subject crying, we can see that the medieval love lexicon19 was updated beginning with Beck’s translation and Salezy Kafel’s translation follows this path, expressing the yearning for caresses in a very explicit manner. Continuing to read the versions of the lauda, we follow the subject through moments of complete aphasia. Indeed, the freedom to cry out one’s love and desire does not last. Suffering, the mystical “I” ceases to hear and then finds itself speechless once again. This situation continues for almost half of this quite long lauda. Finally, starting with l.300 (and the following lines), the subject once again finds words and begins to call to the object of mystical love. The name of God, the Love so 19

Accordingto TheConciseOxfordDictionaryof EnglishEtymology,theterm“caress”canbefound in English beginning in the seventeenth century. Accessed October 15, 2021, https://www .oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192830982.001.0001/acref-9780192830982 -e-2304?rskey=HjSpSo&result=2301. Regarding the early Italian love lexicon, see http:// tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO/. For the situation in Poland see Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa, Madrygały staropolskie. Z dziejów liryki miłosnej w epoce renesansu i baroku (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1978).

COMPARING FOUR TWENIETH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF LAUDAS

125

desired by the speaker, is expressed in a sequence of specific, anaphoric-litanic repetitions occupying almost 50 of the poem’s final lines. Let us return to the previous moment of difficulty, however. In stanza XVI, the subject complains to Love, bemoaning his lost capacity for speech and the fact that this loss has also affected other senses, such as hearing; the suffering also leads to both anguish and a sense of cognitive degeneration. In the English version hearing is not directly involved, while in the Italian source text the reference to hearing represents a link with the doctrine of the spiritual senses. This is the direction that the second part of the following stanza takes: once again, this part of the Polish version recovers and moves to the foreground the references that had remained in the background of Beck’s translation, losing their explicit character and thus their importance. As we will see in the analysis of the following lauda, there is a before and after and this temporal distinction is linked to both the senses and the ability to express oneself. Rozum mój bezsilny przy takim bezkresie! Ogarniająca mnie Miłość Odbiera mi mowę, Wolę i działanie, Tracę wszelkie czucie. Kiedyś mogłem mówić, teraz wargi me nieme I oczy oślepłe, choć miałem wzrok kiedyś. (PL; 168–174) My mind, entangled, loseth all it won, Yea, Love hath left me none Of all my skill, My speed, my will; He taketh all for Love. I once could speak, but now my lips are dumb; My eyes are blind, although I once could see: (EN; 170–176) de tal mesuna la mente s’alaccia l’amor che sí m’abraccia, tolleme lo parlare, volere ed operare, perdo tutto sentore.

126

KUBAS

Sappi parlare, ora so fatto muto; vedea, mò so cieco diventato; (IT; 170–176) It is always others – people, Jesus, or God – who are granted ease of speech while the mystic finds it difficult to express himself: this explains the sense of necessity and thus the act of shouting. In the final part of the lauda, this act of crying out involves both the mystical subject – with a purely eulogistic purpose – and the entire rest of the world, generating a dynamic potential that empowers the text.20 According to this perspective, a contemporary reader might view the closing part of the lauda composed of repetitive invocations of Love as meta-linguistic. This section presents a culmination before falling or drowning21 in Love, as we read in the closing line of the poem. To conclude, attention to the topic of the speechlessness entails attention to language as a theme. This aspect appears clearly in both of the two translations of Love that art Charity analyzed here and, as we have observed, it goes beyond a simple interest in medieval mysticism. Indeed, this issue is arguably one of the paradigms of modernity and it is proposed and emphasized by Beck in the English version. The version by Salezy Kafel is a reception of and mediation between the Italian and English texts. The question of language does not come through clearly to the final reader of Kafel’s version, and perhaps this inclination on the part of the translator was not entirely conscious. The fact remains that, while moving away from the original, Kafel’s version draws closer to the expectations of modern readers.

20

21

I draw on Katz, Introduction, p. 19, for the idea of the dynamic potential that enables the personality of the mystical subject to be empowered. In my studies, empowerment concerns the tool, what can be synthetized as text + form (e.g. litanic prayer when transformed by a mystic, see my “Formule iterative in una traduzione polacca di ‘Amor de caritate, perché m’ai ssì feruto?’ di Jacopone da Todi,” in Italien-Polen Kulturtransfer im europäischen Kontext, eds. Christoph O. Mayer, Martin Henzelmann, and Gianluca Olcese, 57–65 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020). The subsequent textual rendering transforms the tool being used into a further source from which new power will be drawn. On the other side, Michel de Certeau, Fabula mistica I: XVI–XVII secolo (Milan: Jaca Book, 2017), 172–73 discusses mystics’ ability to formulate language from scratch again and again, as if there was a disorder that shakes both language and words – and suggests that this is a practice, a “manner” of speaking. In the recent collection of laudas translated by Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes (265) one remains within the framework of maritime terminology. Beck preferred the verb “shatter.”

COMPARING FOUR TWENIETH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF LAUDAS

4

127

To Speak or Not in I Flee the Cross

The second lauda analyzed here is a dialogue between two friars.22 In both the Polish version and the English one the parts are distinguished by ­headings (“First/Second Brother speaks” or “Pierwszy/Drugi Brat”) even though the source text published in Beck’s edition does not contain such indications. The added metalinguistic marker frames the text according to a certain discursive order. Although this order derives from the structure of the poem,23 the Italian edition edited by Giovanni Papini in 1923 does not include these headings. This lauda also touches on the senses and the idea of perception, but the most relevant semantic opposition it sets up is between speaking/explaining and understanding. The positive and negative aspects of communing with the Cross are described using the vocabulary – and imaginary – typical of ­thirteenth-century love poetry,24 as clearly illustrated for instance by stanzas IV–V. The lauda overemphasizes the terms that are used, a tendency that is a feature of mystical discourse as well. The most significant themes of I flee the Cross are the capacity to speak or state of being mute, the effectiveness of communication and not-understanding, the ability to realize things to say about mystical Love and the fear of speaking (or hearing). These elements are focused between stanzas VIII–IX and shortly before the end, in stanza XIV. Let us read these selected fragments closely (leaving out the headings): A ja, którym był niemy, mogę mówić, I stało się to dzięki Krzyżowi! 22

23

24

The theatrical character of this and other laudas by Iacopone is discussed for instance in Enrico Menestò, “Le laude drammatiche di Iacopone da Todi: fonti e struttura,” in Le laudi drammatiche umbre delle origini. Atti del V Convegno del Centro di Studi sul Teatro Medievale e Rinascimentale (Viterbo 22–25 maggio 1980) (Viterbo: Agnesotti, 1981), 140: it is necessary to “riconoscere a Jacopone non intenzioni teatrali, ma qualità teatrali [...] Dunque non teatralità quella di Jacopone, ma drammaticità spirituale.” The problem of the strongly theatrical character of the Franciscan lauda was discussed for instance by Erich Auerbach: Mimesis, 173: Iacopone, “a great poet, an instinctive master of the art of acting out his own being, he was the first to awaken the dramatic powers of Italian feeling and of the Italian language.” Shortly before we read: “[the medieval drama] opens its arms invitingly to receive the simple and untutored and to lead them from the concrete, the everyday, to the hidden and the true” (155). A large depate on this subject is summarized by Leonardi in his introduction to Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. Matteo Leonardi (Florence: Olschki, 2010), pp. xxxvii–xxxix. See also Elena Landoni, “Iacopone da Todi e la trasgressione del linguaggio cortese” in Il ‘libro’ e la ‘sententia’. Scrittura e significato della poesia medievale: Iacopone da Todi, Dante, Cecco Angiolieri (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990).

128

KUBAS

Tak mnie wzmocnił, Że mogę lud nauczać wielki! A mnie, którym był wymowny, uczynił niemym, A serce me w taką odchłań rzucone, Że nie znajduję już żadnego słuchacza, Z którym mógłbym się porozumieć... [...] Bracie, mówisz że cię nie rozumiem —A jak można szukać Miłości uciekając przed nią? Być może stan Twój zrozumiem, Jeżeli sercem mi go wyjaśnisz! (31–38 and 55–58) Now I can speak, I that was once so dumb; ‘Tis from the Cross that all my powers come; Yea, by that Cross of Thought and Love the Sum, Now can I preach to men potently. —The Cross hath made me dumb, who spoke so well; In such a deep abyss my heart doth dwell, I cannot speak, and nothing can I tell; And none can understand not talk with me. […] Brother, thy words I cannot understand: Why dost thou flee from gentle Love’s demand? Tell me thy state, and let me take thy hand, The while I listen to this mystery! —Io posso parlar, ché stato so muto, e questo della croce sí m’è apparuto; tanto de lei sí aggio sentuto, ch’a molta gente ne pos predicare. —E me fatt’ha muto che fui parlatore, en sí grande abisso entrat’è el mio core, ch’io non trovo quasi auditore con chi ne possa di ciò ragionare. […] —Frate, tu parli che io non l’entendo

COMPARING FOUR TWENIETH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF LAUDAS

129

como l’amore gir vòi fuggendo, questo tuo stato verría conoscendo se tu el me potessi en cuore splanare. The Second Brother who was mute in the past can now speak and even teach – an activity that presupposes the efficient use of language – while the First Brother lost eloquence and the gift of speech all together, so now he cannot communicate or, in other words, interact with his interlocutor(s). In the final lines quoted above, the Second Brother asks for an explanation using not words but the heart. Beck’s version “enriches” the semantics of the first quoted stanza by empowering the subject through added words (the mention of “powers”, the capacity to preach “potently”) not present in the lauda by Iacopone. In the Polish lauda, this aspect is taken up and interpreted as a reinforcing (“wzmocnił”) or empowering of the subject, highlighting the component that links the health of the body to that of the spirit. In contrast, the Italian original involves a reference to perception (“aggio sentuto”) that is left out of both the English and the Polish translations. Stanza IX presents an interesting difference of perspective. While communication always has a direction, in the case of the three versions analyzed here the direction of communication represents a source of confusion. Two final lines of the second quoted stanza focus on this issue. In l. 38, the English translation reverses the perspective of the original text: it is no longer the point of view of the subject looking for someone with whom to reason together about the mystical experience but rather empathizing with the other who cannot understand and so does not speak with the subject. Given that the ineffability of or difficulty in communicating mystical experience is the topic of the lauda, the English translator feels free to add elements on which the Iacoponic “I” does not meditate in the original text. Although this issue is understated in some ways, it is clear that the contrast between “me” and “others” is quite typical of a modern mentality, especially in poetry. The last stanza quoted above (the penultimate one of the entire lauda) raises the problem of transmitting-understanding. The relationship involved in communicating mystical experience is a relationship between “me” and “you”, and the transmission of knowledge cannot be taken for granted. The Second Friar accuses the first of being incomprehensible (l. 55), and this accusation represents a point of convergence between the Polish and Italian lauda while the English text replaces the speech act (“tu parli”; “mówisz”) with “thy words”. This decision on the part of the translator leads to serious consequences: in Italian, the two closing lines of this stanza move to the cognitive level, the plane of knowing – form of knowledge gained not through language but through the

130

KUBAS

heart, as noted at the beginning of the examination of this text. Beck’s version continues along the path of metaphors linked to language, introducing a quest for telling and invoking a relationship of hearing/listening to and speaking of a mystery which does not appear in Iacopone’s ­original at all. We can conclude that, when understanding proves impossible, any communication of the mystical experience must bypass linguistic meaning. Communicating mystical experience is thus posed as a cognitive problem of knowing or a problem which cannot be resolved, but this inference is left out of the English translation. 5 Conclusion The analysis proposed here is made possible and methodologically ­justified by the close link among the texts I have taken into consideration. As ­mentioned in the preliminary remarks, Salezy Kafel used the Italian-English e­ dition of Iacopone’s laudas, as is as declared the footnotes of his anthology.25 He of course knew Italian, but he surely read attentively the English versions by Beck. This fact left its mark in the translations into Polish. Today it gives an opportunity to compare two insights in conceptual world and language of Iacopone’s work. We might conclude that the versions analyzed here display a common, ­modern mark even though they were authored at least sixty years apart. Both attention to language and a belief in the power of language shine through in the translations of the two Iacoponic laudas we have examined in this paper. The urgent need to express mystical experience, overcoming the ­difficulties caused by a disruptive force, is satisfied by using words and speaking about ­language. These features are typical of a Weltanschauung that we ­contemporary readers share, and a modern approach to medieval mysticism certainly does not dispense with it. As noted above, the earlier (English) version by Beck is more radical in manifesting this worldview while, in certain passages at least, the later Polish text listens somewhat more closely to the voice of the Iacoponic source or what is considered as such at the beginning of the twentieth century.

25

For each translation Salezy Kafel gives a reference to the source edition.

COMPARING FOUR TWENIETH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF LAUDAS

131

Works Cited Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton ­University Press, 2003. Baldini, Massimo. Il linguaggio dei mistici. Brescia: Queriniana, 1986. Barbieri, Edoardo. “L’editio princeps di Jacopone da Todi (Firenze, Bonaccorsi, 1490): note bibliologiche.” La Bibliofilia 109, no. 2 (2007): 105–42. Bettarini, Rosanna. Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate. Florence: Sansoni, 1969. Bocheński, Joseph M. The Logic of Religion. New York: New York University Press, 1965. Bratkowski, Boleslaw. “Związki chorału gregoriańskiego z ludową muzyką i pieśnią religijną w Polsce.” In Dziedzictwo europejskie a polska kultura muzyczna w dobie przemian, edited by Anna Czekanowska, 115–30. Krakow: Musica Iagellonica, 1995. Chimenz, Siro. “La poesia religiosa umbra del Duecento.” In L’Umbria nella storia, nella letteratura, nell’arte, 165–91. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1954. Croce, Benedetto. Poesia antica e moderna. Bari: Laterza, 1941. Davie, Mark. Review of The Fool of God: Jacopone da Todi, by George T. Peck. Medium Aevum 51, no. 2 (1982): 269–72. De Certeau, Michel. Fabula mistica I: XVI–XVII secolo. Milan: Jaca Book, 2017. Hughes, Serge, and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. The Lauds. By Jacopone da Todi. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Olschki, 2010. Iacopone da Todi. Le laude. Edited by Giovanni Papini. Florence: Libreria Editrice ­Fiorentina, 1923. Iacopone da Todi. Stabat Mater. Hymn of the Sorrows of Mary. Translated by Abraham Coles. New York: Appleton, 1866. Iacopone da Todi. The “Stabat Mater” and Other Hymns. Translated by John D. van Buren. Albany: Joel Munsel, 1872. Landoni, Elena. “Iacopone da Todi e la trasgressione del linguaggio cortese,” in Il ‘libro’ e la ‘sententia’. Scrittura e significato della poesia medievale: Iacopone da Todi, Dante, Cecco Angiolieri. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990. “Lauda spirituale.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Macmillan, 1980. Kafel, Salezy. Antologia mistyków franciszkańskich. Warsaw: Akademia Teologii Kato�lickiej, 1985/1987. Katz, Steven T. Introduction to Comparative Mysticism. An Anthology of Original Sources, iii-xxii. Edited by Steven T. Katz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Kubas, Magdalena Maria. Litanic Verse. Italia. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018. Kubas, Magdalena Maria. “Formule iterative in una traduzione polacca di ‘Amor de caritate, perché m’ai ssì feruto?’ di Jacopone da Todi.” In Italien-Polen Kulturtransfer im europäischen Kontext, edited by Christoph O. Mayer, Martin Henzelmann, and Gianluca Olcese, 57–65. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020.

132

KUBAS

Kubas, Magdalena Maria. “Osservazioni su alcune laude (pseudo-)iacoponiche.” In Rivolta: miti e pratiche dell’essere contro, edited by Sonia Maura Barillari and ­Martina di Febo, 317–29. Verona: Virtuosa-Mente, 2021. Macdonnell, Anne. Sons of Francis. London, Toronto: J. M. Dent, New York: G. P. ­Putnam’s Sons, 1902. Menestò, Enrico. “Le laude drammatiche di Iacopone da Todi: fonti e struttura.” In Le laudi drammatiche umbre delle origini. Atti del V Convegno del Centro di Studi sul Teatro Medievale e Rinascimentale (Viterbo 22–25 maggio 1980), 105–40. Viterbo: Agnesotti, 1981. Miszalska, Jadwiga, Monika Gurgul, Monika Surma-Gawłowska, and Monika Woźniak. Od Dantego do Fo. Włoska poezja i dramat w Polsce (od XVI do XXI wieku). Cracow: Collegium Colombianum, 2007. Nowicka-Jeżowa, Alina. Madrygały staropolskie. Z dziejów liryki miłosnej w epoce renesansu i baroku. Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1978. Sapegno, Natalino. Compendio di storia della letteratura italiana per le scuole medie superiori. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1950. Siemieński, Lucjan. Święci poeci. Pieśni mistycznej miłości. Wydawnictwo: Księgarnia Wł. Bełzy, 1876. Smith, William. The Use of Hereford. The Sources of a Medieval English Diocesan Rite. Routledge, 2017. Kindle. Underhill, Evelyn, and Theodore Beck, Mrs. Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic, 1228– 1306: A Spiritual Biography. London, Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, New York: E.P. ­Dutton, 1919.

Chapter 6

Translating Iacopone da Todi in Romanian: A Noble Journey toward and inward amor d’esmesuranza Oana Sălișteanu 1

My First Encounter with Iacopone

With Iacopone da Todi I experienced one of the noblest encounters of my life. And I feel flattered to realize that in our powerful relationship the Umbrian Beatus is the one who took the first step toward me and gave me a helping hand to discover the high peaks of mystic revelation that he reached and the righteous dignity of his verse. My first encounter with the moving poetry of Iacopone took place forty-five years ago. I was preparing to graduate from Dante Alighieri High School in an isolated country in Eastern Europe, subject to a totalitarian regime, where contacts with foreign books were most unlikely and where the old churches were razed to the ground by order of the Communist dictator. I had therefore good reasons to feel fortunate when I found a rare anthology of Early Italian Literature in an antique bookshop, and now I am sure that was not by pure chance. The first words I read when I opened my new book at random were “O figlio, figlio, figlio, / figlio, amoroso giglio, / figlio, chi dà consiglio/ al cor mio angustiato?” (My Son, my Son, my Son, my loving lily, / Who can console me in my anguish?).1 And the rhythm, the musicality and the tragic image of these lines kept haunting me for decades. Until one day, a couple of years ago, when Iacopone himself simply came to me for a second time, as I received an invitation to translate for the first time in Romania a selection of the most beautiful Lauds for a prestigious publishing house.2 That was not my first challenge in translating rhymed old Italian poetry, as Umberto Eco, in his Storia della Bellezza3 (On Beauty),

1 This and all subsequent English translations of Iacopone’s lauds are from Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes, trans., The Lauds, by Iacopone da Todi (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). 2 Iacopone da Todi, Le più belle Laude. Cele mai frumoase Laude, traducere din italiană, cronologie și note de Oana Sălișteanu, prefață de Matteo Leonardi (București: Humanitas, 2018). 3 Umberto Eco, ed. Storia della Bellezza (Milano: Bompiani, 2004). Romanian translation: Umberto Eco (ed.), Istoria Frumuseții, trans. Oana Sălișteanu (București: Enciclopedia Rao, 2005). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_008

134

SĂLIȘTEANU

S­ toria della Bruttezza (History of Ugliness),4 La vertigine della lista (Infinity of Lists)5 quotes tens of sonnets and stanzas written by Iacopo da Lentini, Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti, Giovanni Boccaccio, Giambattista Marino, Federigo della Valle, Ugo Foscolo etc., which would have lost all their splendor if I had only paraphrased them in a simple and banal prose form translation, because poetry should remain poetry even in its translated version. My relationship with Iacopone has never limited itself to a mere linguistic one; it has also meant for me a bond of faith, truth and confidence, a tender protectiveness, even some inspiring prosodic solutions that his great spirit repeatedly whispered in my ear. On one hand I felt shy and cautious not to disturb him from his ascetic meditations and confessions about his sins, his visions, and his unbelievable ecstasies (Lauds 2, 9, 12, 13, 36, 62, 87); on the other hand I witnessed in awe his practical sense of civic duty and his intransigent attitude to any manifestation of decadence of the corrupted Catholic Church during Pope Boniface VIII (Lauds 8, 29, 35), and any deviation from moral and religious dogma as clearly formulated by St. Francis in his strict Regula (Lauds 55, 67, 72, 75, 83, 91). Loving this huge poet means first not betraying him: neither in his profound message, nor in the form he chose to transmit it (the original order of the Lauds, without added titles, observing line length, poem length, rhyme frame). I also believe that to be understood by modern readers his verse should by any means be accompanied by the translator’s explanatory notes. 2

First Level of Difficulty: Iacopone’s mixtum linguisticum

We must admit that the Laudario is difficult to understand even for native speaker specialists in Old Italian philology in the absence of detailed glossaries and good editions providing footnotes and extensive paraphrases and comments. This is why for the Romanian translation of the forty selected poems I used not only the latest edition of the Laude published by Matteo Leonardi,6 but

4 Umberto Eco, ed. Storia della Bruttezza (Milano: Bompiani, 2007). Romanian translation: Umberto Eco (ed.), Istoria Urâtului, traducere din limba italiană Oana Sălișteanu, Anamaria Gebăilă (București: Enciclopedia RAO, 2007). 5 Umberto Eco, Vertigine della lista (Milano: Bompiani, 2009). Romanian translation: Umberto Eco, Vertigo. Lista infinită, traducere din limba italiană Oana Sălișteanu, documentare și ­traducere Georgiana-Monica Iorga (București: Grupul Editorial RAO, 2009). 6 Matteo Leonardi, ed. Laude, by Iacopone da Todi, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 2010).

TRANSLATING IACOPONE DA TODI IN ROMANIAN

135

also the previous ones, edited by Franca Ageno,7 Franco Mancini,8 Gianfranco Contini,9 Liliana Scrittore,10 Luigi Reale11 etc. The headwords of a glossary containing the friar’s language, if read ­separately, look like variegated mosaic tiles whose origins are undoubtedly Romance, but still not certainly Italic. The first reason why the editor’s gloss on our poet’s texts is indispensable is the superabundance of parallel graphic variants and misleading homonyms, due mainly to the non-standardized thirteenth-century language, and to the tradition of different transcriptions made by ­different copyists. For instance, the contrastive analysis of three glossaries selected12 point out formal and phonetic variants, some of them ephemeral, such as: arsumigliare and arsemigliare ‘to compare,’13 Parisci, Parese, Parisi for ‘Paris,’14 pregion, prescione, pescione for ‘prison,’15 etropesia, ydropesia for ‘dropsy,’16 etc. Therefore, the first obstacle a translator from old Italian should overcome consists in the inherent ambiguity of the original text itself. It may derive from the multitude of variants displayed by the different editions according to separate old manuscripts which may lead to totally distinct semantic interpretations of the same line. I remember for instance the seventh line of Laud 7 read and spelt as ‘lo qual m’è venino’ (which is like venom for me) by Ferri, Ageno and Scrittore, and interpreted instead as ‘lo qual me ven meno’ (which is ­fading out) by Mancini, Leonardi and Reale. Translator’s notes at the end of the ­volume are necessary to comment such situations and provide explanations also about the events and characters the author refers to whenever his writing is too ‘deictic.’ Confusions may also appear even among the Italian comments whenever the author uses no syntactic connectors or too many ambiguous infinitive verbs. The main difficulty I had to cope with was the linguistic level of the text. Born in Umbria somewhere between 1230 and 1236, Iacopone is one generation 7 Franca Ageno, ed. Laudi, trattato e detti, by Iacopone da Todi (Florence, Le Monnier, 1953). 8 Franco Mancini, ed. Laude, by Iacopone da Todi (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2006). 9 Gianfranco Contini, ed. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1960). 10 Liliana Scrittore, ed. Laudi. By Iacopone da Todi (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1991). 11 Luigi Reale, ed. Laude. By Iacopone da Todi (Perugia: EFFE Fabrizio Fabbri 2006). 12 Leonardi, Laude; Mancini, Laude; Giovanni Ferri, Prospetto grammaticale e lessico delle poesie di Iacopone da Todi secondo l’edizione fiorentina del 1490 (Perugia: Unione ­Tipografica Cooperativa, 1910). 13 Leonardi, Laude, p. 390. 14 Ferri, Prospetto grammaticale, p. 10. 15 Ferri, Prospetto grammaticale, p. 10. 16 Leonardi, Laude, p. 392.

136

SĂLIȘTEANU

younger than the Florentine Dante Alighieri, il padre della lingua italiana by excellence. Before him there was no tradition of written texts in volgare, i.e., not in Latin, but in the local neo-Latin language, and there were no high models of literary language to follow, excepting the one elaborated by the poets of the Sicilian School. The language of the Franciscan friar is indeed a pioneering mixtum linguisticum made up of words which were not yet firmly stable in the early language of the Peninsula, neither from a formal, nor from a semantic point of view, and which cannot be found anymore in contemporary dictionaries. Among those one can detect Latin-like forms (allittare for approdare ‘to reach the coast’, latitire for nascondere ‘to hide’, sensora for percezioni ‘perceptions’, ludo for gara ‘competition’, nihil for niente ‘nothing’), Provençal Gallic borrowings (bollon for chiodo ‘nail’, ciambra for camera ‘room’, dottare for dubitare ‘to doubt’, plorare for piangere ‘to cry’, argento for soldi ‘money’), vernacular phonetic evolutions (cagnare for cambiare ‘to change’, arliquie for reliquie ‘relics’, fenno for fendono ‘they cleave’, corpo for colpo ‘hit’), confusing dialectal variants as far as noun gender, verb infinitive or past participle forms are concerned (il discipline vs. the standard form la disciplina ‘discipline’, la fastidia vs. il fastidio ‘bother’, detorpire vs. deturpare ‘to disfigure’, finare vs. finire ‘to finish’, traduto vs. tradito ‘betrayed’, entenduto vs. inteso ‘understood’), archaisms (some of them surprisingly similar to the Romanian inherited words which continued the same archaic Latin etymon, such as ponga for bursa ‘bag’ or furare for rubare ‘to steal’), as well as strange, unrecognizable distortions of terms borrowed from Latin (bisinteria for dissenteria ‘dysentery’, diota” for “ignorante” ‘ignorant’, ­fernosia for delirio mentale ‘delirium’) etc. We may say that Iacopone is a word adventurer, experimenting not only bold neologisms from the culture languages of the thirteenth century, but also new lexical creations of his own, only few of them being still registered in today’s Italian dictionaries: nouns like figuramento ‘symbol’ (Mancini, 353), finitura ‘death’, esmesuranza ‘exaggeration’, ‘excess’, magenatura ‘imagination’ (Ferri, 93), vanura ‘vanity’ (Mancini, 367), adjectives like salamandrato ‘living in the fire like salamander’ (Ferri, 117), medecaroso ‘capable to heal’ (Mancini, 357), or abundant derivatives with suffixes of Gallic or Occitan origins such as -anza, -enza, -ore: perdonanza ‘forgiveness’, dilicanza ‘delicate beauty’, sutiglianza ‘subtlety’, mesuranza ‘moderation’, temenza ‘fear’, fallenza ‘error’, lustrore ‘splendour’, dolzore ‘sweetness’ etc. He is also the creator of spectacular series of synonymous derivatives, like consolanza, consolamento, consolo ‘consolation.’17 Moreover, the poet’s cryptic 17 Ferri, Prospetto grammaticale, p. 71.

TRANSLATING IACOPONE DA TODI IN ROMANIAN

137

idiolect may be the source of much perplexity for modern readers, as augurio is used for ‘pratiche magiche’ (magic rituals),18 potare is the borrowed Latin word for ‘to drink,’19 il sedile is ‘the apostolic see,’20 la salute is not the word for ‘health,’ but for salite,21 lanciato means not ‘cast’, but ferito di lancia ‘wounded by a spear,’22 and cornuto means … insignito della mitra vescovile ‘wearing the bishop mitre.’23 3

Text Difficulties and Translating Strategies

As far as my translating strategies are concerned, I think I could identify at least four major difficulties in providing a Romanian version of the Laudario: the differences between the intrinsic structures of the two languages, the ­diachronic peculiarities, the diaphasic aspects, the limitations imposed by prosody and rhyme schemes. 3.1 Inherent Incongruities between the Two Languages Unlike the language of the Italic Peninsula, which, geographically speaking, is even now extremely fragmented, Romanian has always been, during the centuries, unbelievably homogeneous within its borders. Hence all diatopic marks of the old Umbrian dialect that can be tracked in Iacopone’s poems could never be reflected in a Romanian translation, as well as all texts written by Italian poets or novelists such as Carlo Porta, Salvatore Di Giacomo, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Andrea Camilleri etc. could never preserve their original dialectal fragrance in any translated version. The Romanian verbal structures represent another major inherent difference as far as accents in a line are concerned: while Italian words are mostly paroxytone and proparoxytone, there are a greater number of Romanian words which have the accent on the last syllable and therefore, when such an element is placed at the end, the line translated from Italian to Romanian cannot be but shorter than in the original meter, and hendecasyllables and decasyllables or septenaries and six feet lines may alternate. In the Romanian 18 Mancini, Laude, p. 347 19 Leonardi, Laude, p. 394. 20 Ferri, Laude, p. 120. 21 ‘climbs,’ Mancini, Laude, p. 363. 22 Ferri, Laude, p. 91. 23 Mancini, Laude, p. 349. See also Oana Sălișteanu, “Alcune considerazioni sulla lingua di Iacopone da Todi e sulle strategie traduttive nella versione rumena delle ‘Laude’,” in ­Volgarizzamenti: il futuro nel passato, eds. Roman Sosnowski and Giulio Vaccaro (­Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2018), pp. 123–34.

138

SĂLIȘTEANU

translation of Laud 72, for instance, a ballad built on double septenaries with internal rhymes, the presence of masculine gender adjectives and past participles limits inevitably the second meter to a shorter one: O fior de castitate odorifero giglio, con molta soavitate sei del color vermiglio ed a la Trenetate tu representi odore.24 (72, 2–4) Floare de curăție, ești crin înmiresmat în haină rubinie; Treimea te-a-mbrăcat cu-atâta gingășie în boarea-ți parfumată. [Chastity, fair flower of love-stemmed Love Scented lily of soft vermilion, Your fragrance rises to the Trinity.] Translating lines even shorter becomes more difficult to manage, as six ­syllables instead of seven must condense the whole original message, like in Laud 36: Povertate muore en pace nullo testamento face lassa el mondo como iace e le gente concordate. Non ha iudece né notaro a corte non porta salaro ridese de l’uomo avaro che sta en tanta ansietate. (36, 7–14) Sărăcia moare-n pace nici un testament nu face lasă lumea cum îi place în concordie și-armonie. N-are jude, nici notar, nu cheltuie vreun salar, 24

All Italian quotations are from Iacopone da Todi, Le Laude: secondo la stampa fiorentina del 1490, ed. Giovanni Ferri (Bari: Laterza, 1915), in their electronic edition at www .liberliber.it.

TRANSLATING IACOPONE DA TODI IN ROMANIAN

139

ci-și râde de cel avar că se teme pe vecie. [Having made no testament You die in peace You leave the world as it lies And your passing sparks no discord. You need not pay Either judge or notary, And smile at the avaricious man Fretting over his money.] The non-coincidence of noun gender between the equivalent words in Italian and Romanian may trigger a semantic incongruity difficult to avoid. In Laud 72 for instance, in which the poet speaks about the mystical wedding between a pure alma (‘soul’, feminine gender) and her sacred marito (‘bridegroom’, ­masculine gender), one could have chosen, for a perfect Romanian grammar gender match, its similar feminine noun inimă (< Lat. anima ‘heart’). But I avoid such an easy lexical substitution which would have betrayed the essence of this message, because for any mystic poet the human soul (made of divine spirit and immortal) could never be accepted as a synonym of heart (made of flesh and subject to decay). Each language, during its history, has developed differently its own national poetic vocabulary, and this may be another inherent disadvantage in the act of translation. A good translator should always find in their mother tongue a ­certain strategy of camouflage for any possible lexical gap or imperfection. Nevertheless, in Romanian one will never find so many ways to express the notion of “pain” as the thirteenth century friar did with his impressively long series of synonyms: dolor, doglia, desplacenza, dolentia, dolorato, dolure, penalitate, penura, pesanza, affecto, afranto, afrantura etc. 3.2 Adapting the Translation to the Diaphasic Peculiarities of the Source Text If these are the inevitable intrinsic linguistic limitations a translator must deal with, which would be then his strategies when approaching devotional ballads written seven centuries ago? Adapting the target text to the diaphasic characteristics of the source text would be the first stylistic choice to make, that is observing its registers (which may be solemn, ironic, colloquial, dramatic etc.) and its specialized terminology (mostly belonging to the vocabulary of the Scriptures and of Catholic Church, but also to the medieval medical field, like

140

SĂLIȘTEANU

in Laud 81 and Laud 13). The main lexical choice I struggled for was clothing the poet’s words in the robes of the Orthodox liturgical and biblical terminology, in order to find the most appropriate and persuasive vehicle to reach the Romanian readers’ hearts. The Franciscan friar’s message was thus naturally adapted to the very same language in which our Orthodox people pray. An example could be the three appellatives of Virgin Mary Iacopone uses in Laud 13: (Regina ‘Queen’, Madonna ‘Madonna’ and the repeated Donna ‘Woman’) which would surely sound strange and even inappropriate in an Orthodox invocation and which I choose to substitute by the old-established religious terms of Împărăteasă ‘Empress [of Heaven]’, Maică ‘Mother of God’ and Fecioară ‘Virgin’. For every allusion the Beatus of Todi made to a specific pericope in the Gospel, to the Book of Psalms or to the Epistles of St. Paul, I thoroughly verified the Romanian text of Sacred Scriptures. As in Catholic countries the Bible had circulated in its Latin version, its Italian translation preserves plenty of borrowings from Late and Medieval Latin. But words like servo (di Dio) ‘­servant (of God)’, crocifisso ‘crucified’, spirito ‘spirit’, passioni (di Cristo) ‘Passion (of Christ)’, misteri ‘mysteries’, umiliato ‘humble’, centurione ‘centurion’, piscina (di Betesda) ‘pool (of Bethesda)’, regnare ‘to reign’, salvare ‘to save’, gloriare ‘to glorify’, although they all exist in Romanian too as recent Latinisms, could by no means fit the context, so I preferred their Slavic old synonyms used in the Orthodox tradition: rob (al lui Dumnezeu), răstignit, duh, patimi, taine, smerit, sutaș, scăldătoare (de la Vitezda), a împărăți, a izbăvi and a slăvi respectively. 3.3 Diachronic Characteristics A good compatibility between a translation and its thirteenth century source text can be reached only if the diachronic linguistic variations will not be neglected. The dictionaries of archaisms, of rare synonyms, of old ­regionalisms may be excellent tools in finding the most appropriate equivalent terms for a plausible recreation of a remote medieval atmosphere. More than poets, narrators, or lexicographers, I am truly convinced that passionate translators are perhaps the real defenders and promoters of national language treasures. Whenever the prosodic restrictions allowed me to, I preferred all possible archaic or rarely used synonyms in order to suggest an expressive and plausible old Romanian language in which Iacopone would have put his verse down. In Laud 81 for instance, a most surprising enumeration of all horrible illnesses the remorseful friar humbly invokes upon himself as a deserved penitence, I searched for the ancient Romanian equivalent of each and every denomination, because otherwise the poem would sound like a contemporary glossary of pathologies made of unsuitable recent terms which would unfairly abolish the seven centuries gap between this poem and our time: dropică instead of

TRANSLATING IACOPONE DA TODI IN ROMANIAN

141

hidropizie (dropsy), oftică instead of tuberculoză (tuberculosis), trânji instead of hemoroizi (hemorroids), stropșeală instead of epilepsie (epilepsy), boală cu sufocare instead of astm (asthm), podalghie instead of podagră (gout), bolfe instead of fistule (fistulas), pântecărie instead of dizenterie (dysentery) etc. Old fashioned syntax with postponed pronouns or auxiliaries can be another stylistic artifice able to imitate the patina of the ancient Romanian religious texts, so I preferred topi-m-aș insted of m-aș topi (I would feel totally consumed, Laud 13), răul prins-a putere instead of răul a prins putere (evil strengthened in me, Laud 13), rogu-te instead of te rog (please, Laud 81), datuL-au lui Pilat instead of L-au dat lui Pilat (they gave Him to Pilate in Donna de Paradiso), etc.25 3.4 Translating Poetry in Meter and Rhymes But the most powerful challenge for a verse translator consists in preserving not only the accurate expression of the poet’s message, but also the prosodic and metrical patterns and the rhyme schemes of the original texts. Although in the laboratories of the Sicilian School Giacomo da Lentini had already launched a historic European metric invention for all centuries to come, i.e., the sonnet, Iacopone choose the frame of Occitan troubadours’ balada as his favorite metric scheme for his Laude, but he completely changed their message from secular courteous love to mystic love. As this kind of fix form poem was not a very strict one, the poet had the freedom to make the verse vary in length (from the 32 lines of Laud 9 to the 188 lines of Laud 40, for instance), and also in verse meter (from six, seven, eight feet lines, alexandrines, double septenaries, double octonaries, up to the new born hendecasyllables, which since late thirteenth century would become the classical meter in Italian poetry). It is translator’s duty to endeavor to follow the sound expressivity of the source text. First, they must adapt their meter to the original one. It may be a rapid, dramatic one, like in the seven feet line stanzas of Donna de Paradiso: «Mamma, o’ sei venuta? Mortal me dài feruta, ché ’l tuo pianger me stuta, ché ’l veggio sì afferrato.» (70, 84–87) 25

See also Oana Sălișteanu, “L’anti-canone del ‘parlar esmesurato.’ Appunti sui percorsi traduttivi di quattro Laude di Iacopone da Todi,” in Qvaestiones Romanicae: canon cultural, canon lingvstic: Lucrările Colocviului Internațional Comunicare și Cultură în Romània europeană VI/2 (Szeged: JATEPress, 2018), pp. 208–17.

142

SĂLIȘTEANU

“Mamă, aici ești oare? Rana ce-mi faci mă doare, vrei plânsu-ți să mă-omoare atât de neîmpăcat?” [“Mother, why have you come? Your agony and tears crush Me; To see you suffer so will be My death”] ... or the verse may be much longer, for instance a split double octonary, like in the second epistle the friar sends to Pope Boniface VIII, asking him to change his mind about the unjust excommunication he was a victim of (Laud 67): Lo pastor per mio peccato posto m’ha fuor de l’ovile, Non me giova alto belato che m’armetta per l’ostile. O pastor, co non te sveghi a questo alto mio belato? Che me tragi de sentenza de lo tuo scomunicato... (67, 51–53) Pentru-al meu păcat, păstorul din sălaș rău mă gonește; Iată, eu tot behăi tare și-napoi nu mă primește. Tu, păstorule, te scoală la-a mea lungă tânguire Și mă scapă de osânda de-a fi sub afurisire... [Because of my sin the shepherd cast me out of the sheepfold. For all my bleating he will not let me come back in. O shepherd let this bleating cry awaken you to pity. Rescind, I beg of you, the excommunication.] As far as rhymes scheme is concerned, Iacopone prefers an ancient kind of rhyme called rima zagialesca (yx aaax), but he also experiments with other patterns such as yx ababccx and abcbbddx, or even with internal rhymes. Deciding upon the suitable rhyme frame of the whole poem, with enough ­lexical Romanian occurrences for each type o rhyming sound, is always the first thing I do before beginning the translation itself. Moreover, the Romance inner structure of Romanian, very similar to the Italian one, encouraged me to preserve the same inherited Latin words in final rhyme position, like in Laud 2:

TRANSLATING IACOPONE DA TODI IN ROMANIAN

143

“Tu stai al caldo, ma io sto nel fuoco; a te è diletto, ma io tutto cuoco; con la fornace trovar non pò loco” (2, 51–53) “Tu stai la cald, eu însă stau în foc, tu simți plăcere, însă eu mă coc, și-ntr-un cuptor cum pot să-mi găsesc loc.” [The cross warms you but sets me on fire; For you it is joy, for me searing pain. How can I stay In this blazing furnace? Not to have experienced it (…)] The huge surprise about translating old Italian mystical poetry in an atheist century like ours was the enthusiastic reception from critics and public: a lot of interesting literary reviews, Radio long interviews, the presentation of the Romanian version of the Laude in Italy (Todi and University of Perugia) and the Romanian Union of Professional Writers’ 2019 award for the best Literary Translation. I am firmly convinced that the great Beatus made this all happen, because he could recognize in our people’s plain and constant faith the powerful simplicity of the Franciscan spirit. I believe with all my heart that he wanted his verse to be heard also in our Orthodox country, where his holy poverty and authentic devotion can only feel at ease. It was Iacopone himself who chose this new land, which is now happy and honored to finally welcome, after seven centuries, the truthful and uncompromising voice of a rare believer who, by his own example, is teaching us that the spiritual way to salvation means amor d’esmesuranza. Works Cited Ageno, Franca, ed. Laudi, trattato e detti. By Iacopone da Todi. Florence: Le Monnier, 1953. Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento. 2 vols. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1960. Eco, Umberto, ed. Storia della Bellezza. Milan: Bompiani, 2004. Eco, Umberto, ed. Istoria Frumuseții. Translated by Oana Sălișteanu. București: ­Enciclopedia Rao, 2005. Eco, Umberto, ed. Storia della Bruttezza. Milan: Bompiani, 2007.

144

SĂLIȘTEANU

Eco, Umberto, ed. Istoria Urâtului. Traducere din limba italiană Oana Sălișteanu and Anamaria Gebăilă. București: Enciclopedia RAO, 2007. Eco, Umberto. Vertigine della lista. Milan: Bompiani, 2009. Eco, Umberto. Vertigo. Lista infinită. Traducere din limba italiană Oana Sălișteanu. Documentare și traducere Georgiana-Monica Iorga. București: Grupul Editorial Rao, 2009. Ferri, Giovanni. Prospetto grammaticale e lessico delle poesie di Iacopone da Todi ­secondo l’edizione fiorentina del 1490. Perugia: Unione Tipografica Cooperativa, 1910. Hughes, Serge, and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. The Lauds. By Jacopone da Todi. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Iacopone da Todi, Le più belle Laude. Cele mai frumoase Laude. Traducere din italiană, cronologie și note de Oana Sălișteanu. Prefață de Matteo Leonardi. București: Humanitas, 2018. Leonardi, Matteo, ed. Laude. By Iacopone da Todi. Florence: Olschki, 2010. Mancini, Franco, ed. Laude. By Iacopone da Todi. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2006. Reale, Luigi, ed. Laude. By Iacopone da Todi. Perugia: EFFE Fabrizio Fabbri 2006. Sălișteanu, Oana. “Alcune considerazioni sulla lingua di Iacopone da Todi e sulle strategie traduttive nella versione rumena delle ‘Laude’.” In Volgarizzamenti: il futuro nel passato, edited by Roman Sosnowski and Giulio Vaccaro, 123–34. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2018. Sălișteanu, Oana. “L’anti-canone del ‘parlar esmesurato’. Appunti sui percorsi traduttivi di quattro Laude di Iacopone da Todi.” In Qvaestiones Romanicae: canon cultural, canon lingvstic: Lucrările Colocviului Internațional Comunicare și Cultură în Romània europeană VI/2 208–217. Szeged: JATEPress, 2018. Scrittore, Liliana, ed. Laudi. By Iacopone da Todi. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1991.

Part 3 The Language of Mysticism, Asceticism, and Marian Devotion

∵

Chapter 7

“Prindi da me dolcezza …”: Sweetness as a Principle of Asceticism and Salvation in the Laude of Iacopone Da Todi Anne-Gaëlle Cuif In the Christian literary tradition, the concepts of dulcedo and suavitas go beyond their classical aesthetic and rhetorical meaning – mainly Ciceronian – to become essential attributes of divine Love.1 Within the Laude, Iacopone da Todi re-appropriates the theological and poetic use of the two terms to elaborate his path of asceticism.2 Through new ways of expression and with a unique sensibility, he examines the semantic universe of pleasure and pain that overwhelms the soul in its encounter with God. The special pleasure that spiritual life arouses through immaterial and ineffable feelings characterizes the experience of the excessus mentis and derives from the one divine Will.3 However, the experience of beatitude and the release from the condition of earthly “bitterness” also depends on an individual will and on a process of conversion of perceptive and interpretative skills for which man assumes full responsibility. The exercise of penance – more likely to express acute 1 About suavitas in Cicero, see Abdul H. Mamoojee, “‘Suavis’ and ‘Dulcis’: a Study of Ciceronian Usage,” Phoenix 35.3 (1981), pp. 220–36. For a definition of christian dulcedo and suavitas, I refer to the last chapter of Jacqueline De Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979). On the concept of “sweetness” in Christian literary tradition see also Mary Carruthers, “Sweetness,” Speculum 81.4 (2006), pp. 999–1013; Hélène Baby and Josiane Rieu, La Douceur en littérature de l’Antiquité au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Garnier, 2012), pp. 139–265. 2 As Matteo Leonardi says: “per Iacopone ‘tradire’ ostentatamente i modelli che ostentatamente evoca è un’urgenza intima, e mistica” (Matteo Leonardi, “Nec sine te nec tecum”: la sofferta dialettica tra le laude iacoponiche e la tradizione lirica, “Fugo la croce che me devura”: studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, eds. Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020), p. 100. 3 Châtillon defines the Dulcedo Dei as a “saisie ineffable de Dieu” (“ineffable grasp of God,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: doctrine et histoire, ed. Marcel Viller [Paris: Beauchesne, 1937–1995], III, 1778). Bonaventure of Bagnoregio qualifies the perceptions experienced by excessus mentis as “suavissimas” (“sweetest”) (Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Itinerario della mente verso Dio, ed. Massimo Parodi and Marco Rossini [Milano: BUR Rizzoli, 2009], IV, 3; 6).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_009

148

CUIF

pain – does not exclude a certain type of pleasure: the condition of poverty and mystical ­suffering allows the soul to fulfill its duty of growth of its divine part, “sown” in the heart of every man.4 Pain is the first symptom of the necessity to transform the physical senses into a spiritual perceptual modality, whence we can observe the “dual nature of sweetness”.5 In this context, the meaning of “sweetness” outstrips the exclusive identity of the dulcedo Dei and of heavenly life; as a sensation and a feeling, as an impression and an action, as an effect and a principle, the mental delight of Iacopone da Todi depends on a complex process of internal, ­intellectual-affective transformation. My analysis intends to distinguish the different meanings of the adjectives “dolce” and “soave” with their derivatives, highlighting different levels of “sweetness” – following the gradual conception of mystical love and writing – and their function in the path of asceticism. “Soave” is not a simple synonym of “dolce,” but refers to a specific meaning that connotes a complete embodiment of pleasure and a full ecstatic experience of bliss. For more than half of the Laude the adjective “dolce” is attributed to the quality of divine Love, or relates to the character of Christ, who represents the embodied and active state of this Love.6 I find rarer occurrences to qualify God or Mary. Incarnating these figures, the dulcedo carries out different functions: in God and in Love it is universal power; in Mary, it is the substance of Grace that humbly descends to earth to be transmitted to humanity; in Christ, the conversion of all ‘bitterness’ is incarnated and realized; in men, it becomes an act of love that, in the poetic and musical deed, completes and increases the mystical union. Finally, Ican distinguish “sweetness” as a state of extreme enjoyment and perpetual implementation of His harmony. The peculiarity of the Laude is that it also describes the movements of the human soul in the act of receiving and returning the loving gift of Heaven: man, like a plant, remains “in bitterness” if

4 In the song Le dolci rime d’amor ch’i’ solia, vv. 119–120, Dante Alighieri describes the “seme di felicità,” “seed of happiness” (Dante Alighieri, Convivio, eds. Gianfranco Fioravanti and Claudio Giunta [Milano: Mondadori, 2019], IV, xx, 9–10). Francesco Santi writes: “Il cristianesimo non è una religione del libro, ma è una spiritualità dell’esperienza” (“Avvicinandosi a Iacopone mistico,” in “Fugo la croce,” eds. Bassetti and Menestò, p. 285). 5 James R. Goldstein, “Dolcezza: Dante and the Cultural Phenomenology of Sweetness,” Dante Studies 132 (2014), p. 126. 6 Antonio Montefusco notices the “cristocentrismo” of Iacopone (“Il laudario e le sue fonti,” “Fugo la croce,” p. 69). We can also take into account the difference with the Laude di Cortona that focus on the figure of Mary (Il Laudario di Cortona. Cortona, Biblioteca del Comune e dell’Accademia etrusca, ms. 91, ed. Marco Gozzi and Francesco Zimei [Lucca: Libreria Musica 2015]).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

149

he does not cultivate his inner virtues, unable to bear his own “fruits.”7 “Sweetness” is always the result of an internal transformation, which accounts for a virtue in posse in the heart. It designates a system of thought and action that generates a plurality of spiritual “sweet” feelings that we intend to study here. 1

The Delighting Violence of Love

The terms “dolcezza” and “soavità” designate forms of pleasure and desire that constitute the founding principles of the passion in all the courtly lyric poetry: from Onesto da Bologna to Guido Cavalcanti, and then in Dante and Cino da Pistoia, the “spirito soave” (“sweet spirit”) moves the soul in love and governs the lover’s thoughts with an invincible power that annihilates all his physical and intellectual senses.8 Iacopone borrows this principle and elaborates, explaining that it is a quality relating to an entire conceptual system which describes the transforming and indivisible relationship that binds man and God between subjugation and pleasure, through “unmeasured” Love.9 Instead of being noxious, as the sickly voluptuousness evoked in the courteous lyric, the pleasure that divine Love causes produces an everlasting and strong internal delight, that redeems the dangerous sensuality of the Augustinian suavitas voluptatis (“pleasure of sensuousness”).10 Lauda 86, based on the model of nuptial mysticism inspired by the Song of Songs, represents one of the main 7

See Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermones de tempore et de sanctis, XIX (PL 195 0321 A); Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis, I, VIII, 13 (PL 176 0315C). 8 See Onesto da Bologna, “L’anima è crëatura virtüata”, v. 6 (Ed. S. Orlando 1974); Guido Cavalcanti, Rime, ed. Roberto Rea and Giorgio Inglese (Roma: Carocci editore, 2016), “Se non ti caggia la tua santalena”, v. 13 (p. 239), Pegli occhi fere un spirito sottile, vv. 1–4 (p. 162); Cino da Pistoia, “Onde vieni, Amor, così soave”, v. 3, in Poeti del Dolce stil nuovo, a cura di Mario Marti (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1969) n. 42; Dante Alighieri, Vita Nova, ed. Luca Carlo Rossi (Milan: Mondadori, 2016), XXVI, “Tanto gentile”, line 13 (p. 136). 9 Elena Landoni writes: “Il lessema ‘esmesuranza’ … è la definizione della sproporzione tra l’offerta d’amore di Dio e la capacità percettiva della creatura” (Elena Landoni, “­Strategie linguistiche di un intellettuale sovversivo,” in“Fugo la croce,” eds. Bassetti e Menestò, p. 125). 10 About suavitas voluptatis, see Augustine of Hippo, La città di dio, XXI, 11 (Augustine of Hippo, La città di Dio, ed. Luigi Alici [Milano: Bompiani, 2019]); Richard of Saint Victor, Beniamin minor, XLI (PL 196, 0031B). According to Augustine, sensitive pleasure must be supplanted by “delectatio intelligibilis” (‘intelligible pleasure’) (Contra Iulianum, IV, ii, 11, PL 44, 0741). See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, LXXII, 5 (Thomas Aquinas, Somma contro i gentili, ed. Tito S. Centi [Torino: Utet, 1992]); In Psalmos Davidis expositio, XX, 3–9 (Thomas Aquinas, Commentaire sur les Psaumes, ed. Jean Eric Stroobant de Saint Eloy [Paris: Cerf, 1996]); Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Itinerarium, II, 8.

150

CUIF

expressions of the force by which Love attracts the mind, separating radically from the physical senses: Co’ sse dé’ nomenare Amor sì esmesurato, lo quale sì à legato a sé l’Onipotente? Ià non pò sì montare a grado de tal stato amor che fòsse nato de figlio o de parente, che prenda sì la mente, legando onne fortezza, traiendo con dolcezza for d’onne suo sentore. (Lauda 86, 137–48)11 [The disproportionate love of the Omnipotent God, how could one ever describe it? No love of son or father rises to such heights. Love never so bound a human heart that it stripped itself of strength and let itself be sweetly drawn beyond all awareness of self.] The power of the sovereign bond that this sublime and superhuman ardor imposes is analogous to the “sweet” force with which Wisdom has linked every element of the universe and tightly tied the heart of the spiritual lover.12 But the condition of this union is the eradication of all sensitive pleasures to 11 12

For the quotations of the Laude I use Franco Mancini’s edition: Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. Franco Mancini (Rome: Laterza, 1974) and the translation by Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. Iacopone da Todi: The Lauds (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). Ws 8:1–2: “Attingit ergo a fine usque ad finem fortiter, et disponit omnia suaviter. Hanc amavi, et exquisivi a juventute mea, et quaesivi sponsam mihi eam assumere, et amator factus sum formae illius” (“She reacheth, therefore, from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly. Her have I loved, and have sought her out from my youth, and have desired to take for my spouse, and I became a lover of her beauty”). On the sweet power of Wisdom, Love and Charity see Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, XII, 25; Il libero arbitrio, II, 11, 30 (Augustine of Hippo, Il libero arbitrio, ed. R. Melillo [Roma: Città Nuova, 2011]); Albert the Great, Summa Theologiae, I, VIII, q.36, m-3, 381b (Albert the Great, Opera Omnia, ed. Dionysius Siedler, Geyer Benhard [Monasterii Westfalorum: ­Aschendorff, 1978], 34.1); Aelred of Rievaulx, De speculo caritatis, I, VIII (Francesco ­Zambon, ed., Trattati d’amore Cristiani del XII secolo [Milano: Mondadori, 2007], pp. 46–47); Hugh of Saint Victor, Homiliae in Ecclesiasten, XI (PL 175 01289 A–B).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

151

restore, in a paradoxical way, the supreme delight that Charity confers to the heart.13 At a level higher than the strongest human love, the exercise of charity designates an experience of transformation through which the soul abandons itself totally to Love and to consent to an exclusive enjoyment. This perfect assent constitutes the driving force of the entire ascetic path.14 On the other hand, the attraction exercised by love is manifested in the irresistible amenity of its language as The Flesh says in the Lauda 16: Enganname co la sua arte, sì me fa dolce predecare; ché parla sí dolce mente, che me suttrâ de tutta gente; poi se piglia sì la mente che no la larga suspirare. (Lauda 16, 61–66) [He knows the art of deception, and with honeyed tongue, speaks to me so gently that he draws me away from others and holds me so tightly that I cannot breathe.] “Sweetness” is also a property of the art of persuading, as we can see in the ­etymological root of Latin suavitas.15 In this case, however, the persuasive force of Love surpasses that of the senses and of human language: this is not of the order of rhetoric but of a supernatural force which has no other remedy than its own triumph over the soul. In this way, persuasion contributes to the full assent that enables the soul to feel the real power of Love. Thanks to the combination of an irresistible attraction and of a consenting soul, the feeling of Love brings to Heaven. In Lauda 39, the ecstatic state 13 14

15

See Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo, XIV (Bernard of Clairvaux, Il dovere di amare Dio. De diligendo Deo, ed. Ambrogio M. Piazzoni [Rome: Paoline, 2014]). For Aelred of Rievaulx, the fourth grade of Love is “summa consensio,” “highest assent” (De amicitia, XII, PL 40 0837); See also De spirituali amicitia, I, 2 (Aelred of Rievaulx, L’amicizia spirituale, ed. Giovanni Zuanazzi [Roma: Città Nuova, 2015]): “suavis et pretiosa debet esse consensio: benevola etiam iucunda” (“sweet and precious must be consent: benevolent and joyful”). For Hugh of Saint Victor, “consensio” means “plena felicitate” (Adnotatiunculae in Ioelem, PL 175 0370b). Dante defines the “sweet thought” of love as a form of consent (Convivio, II, vi, 7; II, x, 4). Carruthers, “Sweetness,” p. 1005. See also Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina christiana, IV, 12, 27; Dante Alighieri, Convivio, II, vii, 5.

152

CUIF

reduces the expression to the name of Love described in adjectives that qualifies the experience of an ineffable pleasure: Amore grazïoso, Amore delettoso, Amor suavetoso, ch’el core ài sazïato! ... Amor dolce e suave, de celo, Amor, è’ clave; a pporto mini nave e campa ’l tempestato. (Lauda 39, 55–58; 67–70) [Freely given Love, full of delights, gentle Love that satisfies the heart! … Sweet and gentle Love, key to Heaven, you lead the ship to a haven, safe from the storm.] Here we find the only occurrence of the adjective “suavetoso” which concentrates the whole theme of the lauda, that is, the ineffability of the pleasure that comes from divine Love.16 This adjective qualifies the fundamentally ­beneficial character of the divine presence and justice in the universe and within man.17 As we can notice in the Vulgate, suavis almost always translates the Hebrew adjective tob, which means “good.”18 Furthermore, “dolce” and “soave,” here used as equivalents, constitute the traditional properties of courtly love according to the definition of Andreas Capellanus: Love is “dulcis ac suavis doctrina” (a “sweet and gentle doctrine”) that defines the mode of action of Fin’amor but also of God.19 In Lauda 39, the adjective “soave” rhymes with “clave” (“key,” v. 68) following the courteous 16 17

18 19

Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cantica Canticorum, LXXXIII (PL 183, 0869A; 1184C): “Amor sanctus et castus, suavis ei dulcis” (“Holy love and chaste, gentle and sweet”). Ws 12:1: “O quam bonus et suavis est, Domine, Spiritus tuus in nobis!” (“O how good and sweet is thy spirit, O Lord, in all things!”); Ex 15:25: “Deus noster, suauitas et origo iustitiae” (“Our God is the source of sweetness and Justice”). Also, in Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, IV, 3, 4 (Augustine of Hippo, Le confessioni, eds. Maria Bettetini and Carlo Carrena [Turin: Einaudi, 2015]). Carruthers, “Sweetness,” p. 1005. Andreas Capellanus, De Amore, I, 74; I, 18; III, 43 (in Anna Maria Finoli, ed., Artes amandi. Da Maître Élie ad Andrea Cappellano [Milano: Cisalpino, 1969]). See also L’Intelligenza, CCC, 1–9 (in Poemetti del Duecento: Il Tesoretto, Il Fiore, L’Intelligenza, ed. Giuseppe Petronio [Turin: UTET, 1976]); Cino da Pistoia, Lo fino Amor cortese, ch’ammaestra, lines 1–3 (in Poeti del Duecento, Vol. II); Il Laudario di Cortona, Lauda XLV, lines 75–76.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

153

principle that the act of loving open the soul to the celestial world;20 it also rhymes with “nave” (“boat,” v. 69) that leads to salvation.21 In this case, “soave”, unlike “dolce”, does not have a paradoxical character but designates an absolute delight, a pure effect of Love and a total experience of bliss.22 As a hapax, the adjective “suavetoso” qualifies a feeling that acts in a perennial way in the soul, carried by “Amor amativo” (“loving love,” v. 7) which implies a virtuous circle between receiver and giver, between passive and active affection, between human feeling and Grace. This permanence of pleasure is maintained by the constant activity of prayer in celebrating Love. The inner joy is aroused with singing, with the ceaseless invocation of the experience of divine delight: Clama lengua e core: Amore, Amore, Amore! Chi tace el to dolzore lo cor li sia crepato E credo che crepasse lo cor che te assaiasse; s’Amore non clamasse, crepàrase affocato. (Lauda 39, 139–46) [My heart and tongue call out, “Love, Love, Love!” Should a man taste of Your sweetness and say nothing, may his heart burst! If his heart does not shout the praises of Love he will surely suffocate and die!]

20

21

22

See Guido Cavalcanti, Pegli occhi fere un spirito sottile, line 13 (in Cavalcanti, Rime); Dino Frescobaldi, Poscia ch’io veggio l’anima partita, lines 9–14 (in Matteo di Dino Frescobaldi, Rime, ed. Giuseppe Renzo Ambrogio [Florence: Le Lettere, 1996]); Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, X, 42 (in Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, ed. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi [Milano: Mondadori, 2016], vol. 2). Gn 28:17; Ps 78:23; Apoc. 4:9. See also Bonagiunta Orbicciani, Discordo Oi amadori, intendete l’affanno, vv. 40–42 (in Poeti del Duecento I). Rinaldo d’Aquino, Già mai non mi conforto, v. 3 (in I poeti della scuola siciliana. Vol. II. Poeti della corte di Federico II, ed. Costanzo di Girolamo [Milan: Mondadori, 2009]); Guido Guinizelli, Donna, l’Amor mi sforza, v. 13 (in Guido Guinizelli, Poesie, ed. Edoardo Sanguinetti [Milan: Mondadori, 2005]); Anonimo Genovese, Rime e ritmi latini, ed. Jean Nicolas (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1994), XVII, vv. 1–4; Alighieri, Convivio, IV, xxviii, 3. This absolute sweetness of divine Love is nominated in Laudario di Cortona, Lauda XXX, vv. 87–90; We can notice the adjective “strasüavissimo” (“extremly sweet”) in Bonvesin da la Riva, Libro delle Tre Scritture, Scriptura Aurea, ed. Matteo Leonardi (Ravenna: Longo, 2014), vv. 190 and 522.

154

CUIF

The complete and permanent experience of the dulcedo therefore depends on the verbal expression without which the soul would be consumed with too much ardor. In this way the lauda is a therapeutic space for the soul, venting its excess of pleasure.23 The poetic form, with the inherent musicality, with the rhythmic litany that characterizes it, accomplishes the conversion of the heart to heavenly bliss: eternal happiness depends on a certain level of writing, especially in a musical way.24 However, the sublime pleasure that Love procures implies a paradoxical phenomenon of exquisite suffering and unbearable delight.25 The wound inflicted by Love gives pleasure, but it also brings the whole being to death. Unlike the dynamics present in courtly lyric,26 we are dealing here with a feeling of transfiguration by annihilation.27 Death is only a feeling of deprivation of oneself in order to access a higher identity.28 In Lauda 18, Love that gives sweetness also inflicts the deprivation of pleasure: Amor, perché me déste - nel cor tanta dolcezza, da po’ che l’ài privato - de tanta alegrezza? 23

24

25

26

27

28

Claude Perrus writes: “Les laudes deviennent ainsi le lieu de médiation et de réconciliation entre le ‘je’ et Dieu … Le désir des Lettres détermine l’énonciation de l’amour de Dieu, lequel imprègne totalement la création et l’expérimentation poétiques” (Iacopone da Todi, Laudes, ed. Claude Perrus [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013], p. xxix). For Augustine, the laude is a space for the meditation of the joyful glory of God who gives “lumen in corde, verbum in ore” (“light in the heart, word in the mouth,” Augustine of Hippo, Meditationes, XXXII [PL 40 0926]). Bernardus describes the transforming powers of “laudare” (“singing hymns”) in the mind (Bernard of Clairvaux, In festo omnium sanctorum, V, 4 [PL 183 0476B]). Augustine writes: “Gratia violentia suavis … Ista violentia cordi fit, non carni. … Dulcis est, suavis est; ipsa suavitas te trahit” (“Grace is a sweet violence … This violence acts on heart, not flesh … It’s sweet, it’s smooth; this sweetness attracts you,” Sermones de Scripturis, CXXXI, II, PL 38 0730). Especially in Guittone d’Arezzo, Ahi, Deo, che dolorosa ragione, lines 21–24 (in Guittone d’Arezzo, Canzoniere: i sonetti d’amore del codice laurenziano, ed. Lino Leonardi [Turin: Einaudi, 1994]). See also Alighieri, Convivio, II, vii, 7; Matteo Leonardi, “Nec sine te, nec tecum”, “Fugo la croce” 93. “Tractus iste etsi suavem quamdam habeat violentiam magis tamen mortalitatis impotentiam notat” (‘this attraction, while involving a gentle violence, rather reveals the powerlessness of the mortal condition,’ Lettera a Severino sulla carità, X, in Zambon, Trattati d’amore, vol. II 433–434). In his introduction of Lauda LXVI, Matteo Leonardi writes: “Le laude mistiche celebrano infatti un’identità dell’uomo non statica ma ‘estatica’: la creatura non è autosignificativa (è “nulla di sé”, pp. 92 and 338) ma significa altro da sé, l’uomo è forma Dei. Se l’uomo resta, tuttavia, un esser distinto da Dio (51,58) deve dunque continuamente superarsi e diventare perenne estasi (41, 22), relazione con il proprio significato fuori di sé” (Iacopone da Todi, Laude, 139).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

155

… la mente mea esmarruta - va chidenno ’l dolzore, ché li è furato ad ore - che non se nn’è adato, Amore. (Lauda 18, 6–7, 12–3) [Love, why did You give my heart such sweetness, only to strip it then of joy?... Look for the sweetness that all unawares, little by little was taken from me.] In this case, deprivation is not caused by Love itself but by a lack the human soul of perceiving the true substance of divine delight. The whole conquest of the penitent lies in the abandonment of any earthly feeling, to be able to enjoy an unfailing sweetness. Pain coexists with pleasure in a phenomenon of estrangement experienced as a deep ontological wound.29 In Lauda 16, sweetness becomes the lashing arrow with which Love purifies the heart: L’Amor à presa la fortezza, la Voluntá de granne altezza, Saietta êl Cor lancia i dolcezza; dasc’à ’l firito, ’l fa empazzare. (Lauda 16, 3–6) [Storming the ramparts of the Will, Love wounds the Heart with sweetness and leaves it in frenzy mad with love of God.] Here “sweetness” acts as the weapon against false earthly pleasure.30 The wound and madness that Love inflicts is considered sweet because it intervenes as a remedy for the human soul: it is no longer a poisonous dart as in 29

30

Matteo Leonardi explains: “Il vulnus, ad esempio, può essere la ferita putrescente del peccato o il segno potente dell’amore divino, che guarisce proprio del peccato” (“Nec sine te, nec tecum”, “Fugo la croce,” p. 93). Bernard says that Virgin Mary is hurt by the “suave amoris vulnus” (“sweet wound of love,” Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cantica Canticorum, XXIX (PL 183, 933B). See also Augustine of Hippo, La Catechesi, ed. Ulisse Marinucci (Rome: Città Nuova, 2005), pp. X and 14. Richard of Saint Victor writes: “Vulnerata charitate ego sum … Charitas vulnerat, charitas ligat, charitas languidum facit, charitas defectum adducit” (“I’m wounded by charity … charity hurts, charity binds, charity makes you languish, charity leads to failure” (De quatuor gradibus violentae charitatis, I, PL 196 1207C–D); Bernard of Clairvaux says: “est et sagitta sermo Dei vivus et efficax” (“the discourse of God is also an arrow strong and effective,” Sermones in Cantica canticorum, XXIX, 8, PL 183 933A).

156

CUIF

courteous lyrics,31 but an antidote against ephemeral and corrupted goods to reach a steady delight.32 Lauda 69 describes the phenomenon of “good” death, whose “sweetness” is the active principle. Iacopone invokes the “Morte melata” (“honeyed death,” v. 35), that is not to be understood as a pleasant consumption, but as a vital regeneration: the soul is dead to its earthly senses and reason in order to taste the supreme good and eternal life (v. 33). The “morte dolze” (“sweet death,” v. 40) is also related to Christ’s death that ensures the redemption of humanity and “mena / a ffar dolce la pena” (“leads to sweeten the pain,” vv. 43–44).33 This “Morte-Vita” (“Death-Life,” v. 61) transforms man for the better, according to Bernard of Clairvaux.34 The delights of death and deprivation, above any physical pleasure, reveals a healing principle which allows the soul to be reborn in the eyes of God.35 The death of the carnal voluptuousness restores the spiritual sensoriality of the soul and brings it to secure bliss.36 This sensitive-intellectual death that man experiences takes the form of a transfiguring annihilation in which – paradoxically – we can observe the extreme joy in the contemplation of Christ’s acts, as seen in Lauda 89:

31

32

33 34 35

36

For Guittone, love is “venen dolce e malatia piagente” (“sweet poison and pleasant disease,” Gloria vana, tu furtivamente, v. 3; Pietà di me, per Diom vi prenda, Amore, vv. 6–7). According to Ambrose of Milan sweetness is a contradictory feeling: “in malo vulnus est, sed tamen suave est” (“in evil it’s a wound, but yet it’s sweet,” Expositio in psalmum David, CXVIII, V, 16, PL 15 1256 B). Richard of Saint Victor says that the wound of love should be curated from the inside (De gradibus charitatis, II, PL 196, 1199). For Augustine, divine sweetness is “sicura” (“secure,” De diversis Quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, II, 1.5; Soliloquiorum, I, 14, 25; Confessiones, IX, 1). Bonvesin evokes a “segura consolanza / e sanitá con gaudio” (“sure consolation and health with joy,” De Scriptura Aurea, vv. 122–3). It’s also a “dolzor verax” (“real sweetness,” De Scriptura Aurea, v. 652). It recalls the liturgy of Good Friday: “dulce lignum, dulces clavos, dulce pondus sustinet” (“Oh sweet wood, sweet nails that held so sweet weight!” Versus in coena Domini et Parasceve et Sabbato Sancto, Versus in Parasceve, PL 138 1078B). “Bona mors, quae vita non aufert, sed transferit in melius” (“Good death that doesn’t take the life away, but turns it better,” Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones, LII, 4). In his introduction to Lauda 69, Matteo Leonardi explains: “non (è) una sostituzione sostanziale dell’uomo con Dio ma una mistica ‘risignificazione’ dell’uomo in Dio, dove riscopre la propria identità. Morire a sé in Dio significa rinunciare ad ogni significato proprio e farsi forma informis (90, 131–133) per ‘informarsi’ in Dio” (Iacopone da Todi, Laude, p. 145). Bernard of Clairvaux writes: “Sit suavis et dulcis affectui tuo Dominus Jesus, contra male utique dulces vitae carnalis illecebras; et vincat dulcedo dulcedinem, quemadmodum clavum clavus expellit” (“Sweet and pleasant be the feeling in your Lord, at any rate against the evil of sweet allurements of life; and overcomes the sweetness of the sweetness, as it drives out a nail of the nail,” Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones, XX, 4).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

157

lo cor sì trasformato - Amor grida che sente, anegace la mente,- tanto sente dolzore! Legata sì è la mente con dolcezze che tutta se destende ad abracciare,… (Lauda 89, 89–92) [Crying out its love, the soul drowns in ecstasy! Surrendering all her ­powers and riches, bound ever so gently, she stretches out her arms to Christ – embraces Him.] The beauty of caritas, incarnated in Christ, is the object of supreme contemplation that confuses the human senses; the soul loses “de sé onne sentore” (“her needs and desires,” v. 98) and, as in the Lauda 86, he painfully dispossesses himself of a system of perception and of misguided interpretations based on the physical senses.37 The mystic regards this sensitive death as a benefit and the resulting “sweet” feeling is linked to the operation of purifying suffering.38 Thus, Love withdraws from the soul, giving the impression of a temporary death. This lack is only momentary as it will soon be filled with the ineffable delights of Love and perfect sight.39 Nevertheless, the true lack of man resides in the coldness of the heart that leaves the absence of true love, as the penitent says in Lauda 4: “non ci ho suavetate, – ché ll’amor è erfredato” (‘There is no joy in the quest, for love had gone cold’) (line 32).40 In this case, the term “suavetate” designates a state of immeasurable happiness that only knows the worshiper who experiences the ardor of eternal Love. The other cause of the world’s “bitterness” consists of

37

Augustine says: “Dulce est peccatum sed amara est mors” (“sweet is sin but death is b­ itter,” Augustine of Hippo, Sermones de Scripturis, LVIII, viii, 9, PL 38 0397). About earthly ­pleasure and wrong wealth that leads the soul to misery, see also Augustine of Hippo, Sermones de Scripturis, XLVIII, V, 8 (PL 38 0318) and Prv 27:7. 38 See Lauda XXV, vv. 1–4: “Sapete viu novelle de l’Amore, / che m’à rapito et absurbito el core, / e temme empresonato en suo dolzore, / e famme morir enn amor penato?” (“Do you know of the Love that has swept me up / And continues to hold my heart, / That keeps me imprisoned in its sweetness / The Love that would have me die in pain?”). 39 “Poi che l’omo è annichilato, / nascei occhio da vedere; / questo prezzo esmesurato / poi lo comenza sentire, / nulla lengua no ’l sa dire / quel che sente en quello stare” (“Then man acquires eyes with which to see / And begins to understand the price that was paid; / And what he feels then no tongue can descrive,” Lauda XLVIII, vv. 89–94). 40 See Mt 23:12.

158

CUIF

man’s attraction to the wrong pleasures – ephemeral and noxious – while continence, apparently harsh, restores delight:41 Tésto all’amo s’arsemiglia, che de fore à lo dolzore, e llo pesce, poi che ’l piglia, sentene poco sapore; drento trova un amarore, che li è multo entossecato. (Lauda 24, 39–44) [A baited fishhook looks good to a fish, but once he has swallowed it, it gives him little pleasure.] Against all material aspects, the real dulcedo is tasted only in the experience of caritas.42 Penitence, in its apparent suffering, redeems another form of sensoriality that allows one to feel the divine delight regardless of a painful reality.43 After this perceptive ablation, Love fills the man with a new vitality as we can observe in Lauda 89: “pasce cun dolzore” (“nourrish him with sweetness,” v. 210). “Sweetness” therefore represents a form of pharmacological pleasure, which administers its antidote: the “dolce languire, - morir plu delettoso” (“sweet languor, sweetest of deaths,” v. 273) is also “amor medecaroso” (“­healing love,” v. 274), and satisfies the prayer’s demand asking for medicine (v. 104).44 What form does this invisible remedy takes? Iacopone employs a similitude with a dress, functioning as a poultice, or rebirth stole, as seen in the following verses: Amor, Amor tu si cerchio retundo, con tutto cor, chi c’entra sempre t’ama; ché tu si stam’e trama - chi t’ama per vistire, cun sì dolce sentire, - che sempre grida ‘Amore’! (Lauda 89, 263–6)

41

On love “bitter-sweet,” see Guittone d’Arezzo, Lettere, ed. Claude Margueron (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1990), lettera XVI. For Guido delle Colonne, Love is a “dolce pena,” “sweet pain” (I poeti della scuola siciliana, 10). 42 “O caritate, è’vita, - c’onne altro amor è morto! … non po’ gustare tuo frutto – chi fugg’el tuo guidare” (“O charity, true life – for every other love is dead … He who flees from you cannot know the sweetness of your fruit,” Lauda 46, 27–30). See Job 28:13. 43 See Lauda 86, 97–100. 44 According to Augustine, Christ’s Love and contemplation has healing powers on the soul (Sermones de Scripturis, CXXVI, V, 6).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

159

[Love, Love, perfect circle, he who enters into You with his whole heart loves You forever. For You are warp and woof of the robe of him who loves You, filling him with such delight that he calls out again and again, ‘Love’!] In the last degree of mystical ascesis, the soul draws on a state of sublime ecstasy in which it is “actively” confused in divine Love, becoming the incarnation of caritas itself.45 In this alliance, the imago Dei reaches the height of its similitudo, but only thanks to a radical relinquishment of all earthly t­ emptations.46 This is the only garment that wears one who has reached this inner state of purity. It is neither tangible nor verbal, yet a mantle woven with ineffable delight.47 “Sweetness” becomes the new flesh of the soul which reveals the absolute need to abandon all resistance of the mind; thus, the “dolzore santo (…) sì incarato” (“precious, inaccessible sweetness”) (Lauda 4, 38) is in this way “embodied,” deified in the double action of being exhausted of oneself and of enjoying the excessive sweetness of Love.48 This “nichilità enformata” (“shaped nothingness”) (Lauda 92, 339) creates a new, not physical, body of joy.49 Only the experience of those who consent to sink their will in God’s Will does matter, because dulcedo is God Himself: “a sì dolce tenere, / nulla c’è sua fortezza” (“it lacks the strenght to possess such sweetness”) (Lauda 92, 335–6). The soul must not possess but dispossess in order to merge completely with God.50 45 46 47

48

49

50

Bonvesin da la Riva writes: “Dolzor sover dolzor - e dolcisma dolceza” (“sweetness over sweetness and sweetest sweetness,” De Scriptura Aurea, v. 686). According to Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (Itinerarium, II, 7). The idea of a “dress of glory,” made of light is referred by Bernard of Clairvaux (Sermones, LXXII, 10; LXXV, 8). It’s a characteristic of the joy of Heaven as Matteo Leonardi explains in n. 41–44 (Laude, p. 199). Bonvesin da la Riva uses the expression “Glorïa dolcissima dolceza glorïosa,” “sweetest glory, glorious sweetness” (De Scriptura Aurea, vv. 41–42; 70). See Dante Alighieri, Paradiso 10, 70–2: “Ne la corte del cielo, ond’io rivegno, / si trovan molte goie care e belle / tanto che non si posson trar del regno” (“In Heaven’s court, from which I have returned, / one finds so many fair and precious gems / that are not to be taken from that kingdom”). In Dante’s Paradiso 14, 37–51, the body of blessed soul is made of light and joy: “Quanto fia lunga la festa / di paradiso, tanto il nostro amore / si raggerà dintorno cotal vesta. / … / come la carne glorïosa e santa / fia rivestita, la nostra persona / più grata fia per esser tutta quanta; / … / onde la vision crescer convene, / crescer lo raggio che da esso vene.” (“As long as the festivity / of Paradise shall be, so long shall our love radiate around us such a garment … When, glorified and sanctified, the flesh is once again our dress, our person shall, in being all complete, please all the more; … the light will cause our vision to increase, the brightness born of ardor to increase”). Dante feels the lack of his perception and intellection as a sweet thing. “ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo, / perché il ben nostro in questo ben s’affina, / che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo” (“the incompleteness of our knowledge is a sweetness, for our good is then refined in this good, since what God wills, we too will”). (Paradiso 20, 136–138).

160 2

CUIF

Dulcedo Dei: the Graceful Strength of God

God is fundamentally suavis51 and his active principle, the dulcedo Dei, is manifested through the figures of the Father, the Son, the Spirit and even Mary, with different modalities of action. In the Laude, the reference to the “dolcezza” of the Father is very rare, but significant occurrences are evident, relating to the generative and filial relationship between God and Christ. In Lauda 3 for example, we can read: “Lo Patre onnipotente, en chi è ’l potere, / al so figliol fa dolce parlamento” (“the Father Omnipotent, in whom all power rests, softly deliberated with His Son,” vv. 105–106). The smoothness of expression and relationship is due to the person who speaks, the “Patre onnipotente en caritate” (“Father all-powerfull moved by Charity,” v. 97), who is “dolc’e pïetoso” (“full of gentleness and mercy,” v. 141). Pleasant is the gift but so is the way in which God gives Himself and imprints His caritas into the heart of His son. His omnipotence is not violent but familial, the loving care for His creation is intimate. Moreover, the way he expresses Himself is a persuasive call, full of pure affection. Otherwise, this amenity is not one-way, but it is understood in the context of a communication, of a tender conversation.52 To the high affection of his divine Father, the Son answers gently: “O dolce Patre meo” (“My gentle Father,” v. 113). Sweetness qualifies the name of God but also activates a close bond between God and Christ, which is transferable in the filial relationship between God and man. The dulcedo designates God’s action in the soul.53 Love is first of all a relationship, that the soul reaches when it fully allows itself to be confused in God’s Will. In Lauda 28, Iacopone represents this state in the act of “sweet” embracing: ora me dà un’alegrezza, - quando vergogna me iogne però che con Deo me coniogne - ennela sua dolce abracciata. (Lauda 28, 57–8) [In sweet embrace shame binds me to God, and in that embrace, I find my joy.]

51 52 53

See Ps 24:8; 85:5; 99:5; 109:21; 144:9. According to Richard of Saint Victor, the speech of God “liquefies” the soul and is sweet like a silent spring from Heaven (De gradibus charitatis, IV, PL 196 1207A). See also Ps 118:103. The speech of Christ has the same characteristic in Rom 16:18. According to Baby and Rieu, La douceur, pp. 142–43.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

161

God is perceived only through the feeling of a loving union, and not through the intellect.54 This embrace involves the deepest senses of intuition and affection and is improved by singing.55 Affective ecstasy produces music that invites the soul to move away from the earthly stench to rediscover “la vita celesta - de l’odorifera rosa” (“the fragrance of the rose of heaven,” Lauda 28, 29).56 The mystical union is manifestly synesthetic, but this lauda demonstrates the essential and critical role of the song in the phenomenon of ecstatic attraction. As we have seen, the soul embodies divine Love in a kind of “dress” made of enjoyment, a garment also woven with the lyrical “body” of the lauda. It is only by virtue of this perfect union with God that man can overcome any burning sensation and just feel pleasure: “sweetness” designates the ­experience of the conversion of the physical senses into spiritual senses, from the sterile passion to the exclusive desire of God, from the painful pleasure to the pure joy of love, as totally accepted by the mind. This notion guides the whole mystical path of the “love ladder”; it is the witness of affection’s sublimation into God. Thereby, the plenitude of God’s dulcedo is fully experienced only in the total drowning of oneself, as we can read in the Lauda 92: né non pò’ possedere quel c’ài, per tuo esforzare, se no ’l vòl conservare sua dolce cortisia. (Lauda 92, n 177–80) [What He withholds you cannot acquire; Nor can you hold onto what you have unless He grants you that grace.] The perfect consciousness of Love and the experience of its immeasurable goodness57 requires a complete transformation of the human senses and

54 Cf Lauda 15, 52–53; 16, 55; 22, 37–8. 55 See Lauda 28, 22–3. 56 See Laudario di Cortona, Lauda 6, 5; 11, 7; Bonvesin da la Riva, De Scriptura Aurea, v. 364; Dante Alighieri, Paradiso 30, 124–6. 57 See Ps. 30:20; Augustine, Il libero arbitrio, X, 3. Jacqueline de Romilly explains: “L’Incarnation donnait à la bonté de Dieu et à son indulgence une dimension entièrement neuve. C’est en effet par un acte d’amour que s’explique l’incarnation du Christ. Dieu aurait pu agir violemment: il a envoyé son fils pour les convaincre. (…) Dès lors la bonté divine prenait un caractère extrême, ainsi que directement sensible. Cette bonté n’est plus bonté mais amour” (De Romilly, La douceur, p. 312).

162

CUIF

affect.58 If man believes that he has “gustato per affetto” (“sensed through feeling,” v. 7) the pleasure of love without measure, however, “gusta senza sapore” (“he savors that which has no taste,” v. 76) a beauty without color (vv. 63–64), that is, without earthly or sensitive qualities.59 The absence of taste and color of the dulcedo seems to contradict the verse of Ps 33:9: “gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus” (“taste and see how sweet is God”). However, it is not a matter of renouncing sensation but the representation of sensation, and is therefore an intellectual process with its categories, which cannot contain divine infinity within their limits, as William of Saint Thierry writes.60 In order to know this sensation in an eternal way, “per certo possedere” (“to possess utterly,” Lauda 92, 93), it is necessary to renounce the representation and the sensitive projection of invisible goods, to avoid the attempt “per sapor sapere / que è lo esmesurato” (“to know with taste the immeasurable,” vv. 139–140). In that way, the experience of the dulcedo paradoxically means the absence of an object of pleasure, to welcome only the desire of God. The divine “nihil” (“nothing”), if it seems an ontological absence, reveals an absolute and fundamental presence that needs to be spiritually “tasted”: de nihil glorïoso - null’om ne gusta el frutto, se Deo no i fa el condutto, - cà om non ci à que, fare .… somers’e ’narrenato - ’n onor d’esmesuranza, vénto de l’abundanza - de lo dolce meo Scire! (Lauda 51, 59–60; 67–68)

58

The spiritual flavor of things is given by true love. See Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermones de oneribus, XXIV (PL 195 0455 C). 59 See Bernard of Clairvaux, Of conversion: a sermon to the Clergy, ed. Watkin Williams (­London: London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1938), p. XIII. Francesco Santi says: “Il mistico attraversa e dunque supera la negatività come se la negatività avesse sviluppato in lui un senso ulteriore a tutti i sensi conosciuti, come se avesse aperto nel suo cervello un’altra finestra.” (“Avvicinandosi a Iacopone mistico,” p. 289). 60 In De contemplando Deo, William of Saint Thierry writes: “Saporem quidem sentio dulcem adeo, suavem adeo, adeo confortantem, ut si perficeretur in me, nichil ultra quaererem. Sed eum accipiens, nullo corporis visu, nullo animae sensu, nullo spiritus intellectu advertere me permittas quid sit” (“I certainly feel a taste so sweet, so flavoured, so refreshing, that if it were completely fulfilled in me I would look for nothing more. But when I receive it, you allow me to discern what it is neither with the look nor with the body, nor with the sense of the soul, nor with the intelligence of the spirit,” Zambon, Trattati d’amore, I, 51). See also Laudario di Cortona, Lauda 45, 75–6; Prv 24:13.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

163

[No man can taste the fruit of this glorious nihil if not led by the hand of God; of himself he can do nothing .… Overwhelmed by the infinite glory of my sweet Lord, I settle into the sands at the bottom of the sea.] The fruit designates the delightful result of a total annihilation of the Self, pure of every sensation, every sentiment and human reason. Paradoxically, this absence creates an infinite abundance of divine pleasure with a virtuous action.61 Yet it is manifested only by virtue of a renunciation of any other delight, as Christ, fructus of the Tree of Life.62 Therefore, the great paradox of bliss does not consist only in a phenomenon of limitation of the sensitive, affective and intellectual abilities but lies in this fact that the elusiveness and the ineffability of these acts is in accordance with the acquisition of the divine delight.63 The unbearable passio that overwhelms the soul in front of the impossible experimentation of immeasurable love causes the exhaustion necessary for the perception of an authentic dulcedo, beyond any human category. In fact, the effect of pure joy is comparable to a state of perfect inner stillness: Dolce tranquillitate de tanta maiuria, cosa nulla che sia pò varïar tuo stato, per ciò chell’è locato en luce de fermezza; passando per ladezza, non perde suo candore. (Lauda 92, 237–44) [A sweet tranquility superior to all other states, not susceptible to change, You are a light that is steady and strong, that does not lose its radiance, even when it shines through that which is base.] 61 62 63

About the abundance of divine dulcedo, see Ps 30:20; Bernard of Clarivaux, Sermones, XXXI, 7. See Matteo Leonardi, n. 59–60 (Laude, p. 302). See also Bonagiunta Orbicciani, De dentro da la nieve esce lo foco, vv. 9–10 (in Poeti del Duecento, vol. I). Francesco Santi writes: “con l’espressione mistica apofatica non si vuole dire semplicemente che chi vive l’esperienza di Dio non ne può parlare (…); si vuole dire piuttosto che in questa esperienza di Dio si scopre che la storia e la natura sono niente, sono niente di fronte alla totalità di Dio, che non ha dunque niente di paragonabile nel creato” (“Fugo la Croce,” 288).

164

CUIF

To accomplish the perfect adhaesio that grants the total experience of bliss, one must abandon oneself to the pure sensation of God.64 This annihilating feeling takes the place of every physical thought, with the only order to “embrace” and to “embody” His Will with joy.65 3

Mary, Healing Tenderness

Mary represents another modality of intervention of the divine dulcedo, as it is “infused” into the body of humanity. The Virgin represents the soul giving birth to a new life, having been impregnated by an exclusively spiritual love. Unlike the Laude of Cortona, in which the gentleness of Mary is a leitmotiv, the sweetness attributed to Virgin appears here very few times, and elsewhere it is only suggested through the metaphor of the fruit. In Lauda 86, the “dulzura” designates the way in which each mother loves her child, in the gift of the whole heart.66 Mary is the crucible of transforming affect: her strength consists in bearing divine Love in her and chasing away all love of one’s own. Otherwise, this strength fights the fire of ardour and makes sweetness possible: O cor salamandrato De viver sì enfocato, co’ non t’à consumato la piena ennamorata? Lo don de la fortezza t’à data estabelezza portar tanta dolcezza en l’anema enfocata. (Lauda 32, 119–26) [O salamander-heart, living in flame, how is it that love did not consume you utterly Fortitude sustained you, and steadied the burning heart.] 64 See Lauda 92, 157–8. See also William of Saint Thierry, De contemplando Deo, VII (PL 184 0374C). 65 “AbracciaL se t’abbraccia,” ‘embrace Him if he embraces you’ (Lauda 92, 164); Lauda 92, 201–4: “en tutto suo placere / sempre te trova innesso, / vistito sempre d’Isso, / de te tutto private” (“Do His bidding. Shed your self / and put on the Lord”). See also Lauda 72, 57–8; 63–4; Lauda 86, 325–6. 66 Lauda 86, 149–52: “Ben veio c’ama figlio / lo pate per natura / e mate con dulzura / tutto so cor li dona” (“Nature compels a father to love his son, and a mother to give him her heart”).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

165

Mary’s property is to retain in herself a sweetness that remains unbearable for the human senses, as the salamander resists to fire.67 Without this strength, the soul would be consumed. The dulcedo cannot be possessed but it can be retained in the soul, creating the place for a possible relationship, beyond the resistance of reason. Mary, enduring the most inhuman condition of her Son, is a link between pain and bliss, between man and God, between death and eternal life. The secret of this strength is her humility as she retains her original purity and doesn’t need to purify herself: like a ground without harshness, she has kept her original beauty within herself and is the proof that divine virtue remains as a seed in every human being.68 Otherwise, Mary acts as the helper of the suffering soul: she is designated as “mamma del dolce figlio” (“mother of that sweetest of Sons,” Lauda 62, 62) and identifies a particular relationship, of sweet intimacy which is the precondition for the experience of divine delight, despite the difficulty for the human senses of reaching it.69 The opposition between pain and sweetness exacerbates the contrast of the human condition with the sublime bliss granted by the soul. In Lauda 70, Christ is named “Figlio, dolc’e placente” (“Gentle and sweet Son”) which contrasts with the expression “figlio de la dolente” (“Son of a sorrowful mother,” vv. 124–5). Mary is the hope of a possible experience of salvation, but the soul must enhance itself with a superior strength and carry out its conversion that embodies the figure of Christ.70 4

Christ, Redeeming Sweetness

In most cases in the Laude, the term ‘dolce’ qualifies the figure of Christ, both as Lord,71 as a son,72 and as a bridegroom.73 He intervenes on earth for the rebirth of true Love in the hearts of men: “Lo dulcissimo nostro Redentore / a 67

See Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, XXI, iv, 2. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, VII (Ed. Rébecca Dautremer 2020); Chiaro Davanzati, La salamandra vive ne lo foco, v. 3 (in Davanzati, Canzoni). 68 Lauda III, vv. 129–131: “O terra senza tribulo né spina, / germenata de onne bono frutto, / de vertute e de grazie sì t’è’ plena” (“O soil without tangle of thorns and travail, bearer of every good fruit, laden with grace and virtue, you put an end to our suffering”). 69 See Laudario di Cortona, Lauda I, vv. 48–51. 70 About the helping function of Mary, see Cécile Le Lay, Marie dans la “Comédie” de Dante. Fonctions d’un “personnage” féminin (Rome: Aracne, 2016), pp. 29–108. 71 See Lauda 45, 5; 51, 68; 49, 9; 52, 4; 25, 102. 72 See Lauda 62, 62; 23, 24; 79, 124. 73 See Lauda 86, 365; 89, 285.

166

CUIF

la Iustizia per l’omo à parlato” (‘in the name of man, our most gentle Redeemer addressed Justice’) (Lauda 3, 233–4).74 This sweetness qualifies a special, transforming relationship that converts the soul into Love.75 Moreover, Christ represents the incarnation of Love through a kind of delighted suffering that attracts and transfigures the soul with its irresistible power. The annihilation does not work in Mary nor in God, but through Christ, precisely thanks to this sublimating property of Love. The dulcedo is a collective operation, introduced by God, received by Mary, incarnated in Christ and finally cultivated by the human soul. But man must overcome his own inability to generate love, that is, the highest form of affection and the goal of schola caritatis.76 The “sweetness” of Christ consists of the virtue of fully giving himself to God who, in turn and through Christ, fully donates himself to humankind. Christ’s loving relationship creates a dynamic of reversal of the “­bitter-sweet” loving phenomenon: the redeemer converts all “bitterness,” catalyzes it into pleasure, helping man to enjoy his pure virtue.77 As Redeemer, the “dolce scire” (“sweet lord”) fights any carnal temptation: in Lauda 45 the “dolce Amore” (“sweet Love,” v. 16) of Christ is radically opposed to the fictitious sensuality of women.78 But the relationship of sweet seduction is then transferred to the order of divine dulcedo. In this way, Christ announces the possibility of transforming his affection through the passio: “il dolore” (“pain”) is “esmesurato” (“oversized,” Lauda 4, 2) as much as the “dolzore” (“sweetness”) of Love (Lauda 89, 90).79 The love for Christ, between redemptive suffering and eternal peace, replaces courtly love that provides illusory pleasure and irremediable pain. Here, the “sweet thought” of love takes on a new function: it is no longer an illusory impression produced by the dynamics of desire, but the true substance of divine Love when it is infused into the penitent soul.80 Then the penitent deludes himself into thinking that love in Christ could be immediately delightful. In the Lauda 89, while he feels a “forte languire” (“blazing furnace,” v. 128), Iacopone writes:

74

The justice of Christ is sweet: see Ambrose of Milan, Expositio in psalmum David, CXVIII, V, 16 (PL 15 1266 C–D). 75 The sweetness of Christ is “sweetness of the sweetness.” See Bernard of Clairvaux, ­Sermones, IX, 5; Aelred of Rievaulx, De spirituali amicitia, II. 76 See Lauda 27, 36. 77 See Apoc. 10:9–10. 78 See Lauda, 45, 2–6; 15–6. 79 Bonvesin writes “dolzor dexmesurao,” “unmeasured sweetness” (De Scriptura Aurea, v. 292). 80 This infusio transforms any element: See Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo, X, 28.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

167

’Nanti ch’e’ llo provasse, demandava amare Cristo, credendo dulzura; en pace de dolcezza star pensava, for d’onne pena possedendo altura. Provo tormento, qual non me cuitava ch’el cor sì me fendesse per calura. No pozzò dar figura - de que veio semblanza, ché moro en delettanza - e vivo senza core! (Lauda 89, 11–8) [Before my heart knew this, all unsuspecting I asked for the grace to love you, O Christ, confident that love would be a gentle peace, a soaring to a height and leaving pain behind. Now I feel torment I could never have imagined for that searing heat rends my heart. This love is beyond image or similitude. My heart beats no longer, and in joy I die.] Lauda 89 questions the paradox of the painful sensation experienced by the penitent when he dispossesses himself of all his perceptive and interpretative abilities based on an earthly sensitivity that has not been yet purified.81 It is not the sweetness of Christ that is put in doubt here, but the sensitive modality by which the penitent experiences ecstatic Love: he finds pain, and remains unable to interpret it as a pleasant sensation, he needs to perform a deep sublimation of his own feeling. On the contrary, the “taste” of Christ, the awareness of his resplendent and superior beauty, first appears to be a cathartic disgust of every earthly thing: “celo né terra non me dá dulzura, / per Cristo amore tutto m’è fetente” (“the earth and the heavens have no sweetness; compared to Christ, all is stench,” Lauda 89, 53–54). Only a total eradication of the sensitive and intellectual abilities allows the spiritual restoration of “un arbore d’amor con granne frutto” (“a tree of love … with its fruits,” v. 23), that transforms the lover’s heart, “gettando tutto fora - voglia, senno e vigore” (“destroying the old will and mind and strength,” v. 26). This “good” death completely transmutes human will.82 Then, in this phase, the soul can bring about its union with Christ in embracing him “con dolzore” (“with sweetness,” v. 50).83 “Sweetness” could very well be 81 See Bernard of Clairvaux, De Conversione Ad Clericos, XIII. 82 See Lauda 99, 41–2. 83 “Alma, co’ m’èi salita – a pposseder tal bene? / Cristo, da cui te vene,- abraccial con dolzore” (“How did you come to possess this good? It was Christ’s dear embrace that gave it to you,” Lauda 89, 49–50).

168

CUIF

c­ onstrued as an act of transforming fervor of the inner sight; the lauda, with the invocation of the power of Love, becomes the space of this schola caritatis and the possibility of accessing the full dulcedo Dei.84 The “sweet” character of Christ hence designates a miraculous power: that of catalyzing human pain and transforming it into delight and serenity. But it is first of all his own pain that Christ transforms, exchanging it for a greater wound, that of Love: “l’amor si ll’à firito, / pena parli dolzore” (“Love has so wounded Him that pain seems to Him sweetness,” Lauda 86, 207–8). The goodness of God is revealed by a voluntary deprivation of one’s own pleasure, as His Son does: to cancel human pain, Christ assumes all suffering, not to receive sweetness, but “per morte d’amarezza” (“by death of bitterness,” v. 276). He creates a new order, a do ut non des, whose only commandment is to receive his blessing: Commuto le dolcezze en grande aversetate, vera tranquilitate en dolore e defetto. … Prindi da me dolcezza, dando dolore e pena; l’Amor che non alena m’à fatto sprecatore. (Lauda 86, 249–52; 277–80) [Yield sweetness and accept adversity, and true peace exchange for a life of pain and need. Take the sweetness I offer, give Me pain in return; The Love that never wanes has made Me prodigal.] The graceful gift of Christ acts as a paradoxical exchange of pain, deprivation and bitterness:85 he makes the total donation of himself, without waiting for compensation and is superior to any other pleasure. In comparison, “lo mondo me par fèle / con onne suo dolzore” (“the world and all its beauty tastes bitter indeed,” vv. 435–6). Here the “sweetness” of the Redeemer is not delight in itself, but the healing principle of conversion and salvation that purify the soul for a higher quest.86 84 See Lauda 89, 69–70. 85 See Lauda 86, 313–6. 86 See Lauda 92, 101–4.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

169

Thus, the soul answers this new order of Christ by exchanging the pain and by feeling the extreme enjoyment of contemplative union. The dulcedo does not designate an object but the contemplative experience in itself, as a continuous access to divine Love, and as an exercise of meditation that nourishes the soul, confirming the embrace and mystical union.87 It is a perceptual embrace, in which all the perceptive modalities of the soul are absorbed, to achieve contemplative happiness.88 The soul is tied to Christ “con sì dolce amare” (“with so much love,” Lauda 89, 176) and in this way the man, dispossessing himself, marries God, and marrying God, empties himself. But this fusion is not annihilation, it is profoundly transforming and redeeming.89 It is in the wedding of the soul with Christ that this divine ‘fusion-infusion’ is realized. Christ binds the faithful souls with a “jugum suave” (‘sweet yoke’), that is with of the chains of caritas.90 In Lauda 52, the soul weeps for having lost her “dolce (s)uo Scire” (“sweet Lord,” v. 4), and the possibility of living his love. In the fifth degree of the ladder of love, the soul is led by love “ad esser desponsata, / al suo Figliol dulcissimo - essere copulate” (“in wondrous fusion transformed into Christ,” Lauda 23, 23–4). The extreme sweetness of Christ comes from his loving father, God himself (that is, the great dulcedo of Love), in which the soul wishes to be embodied and to generate love.91 Thanks to this union—in which God is lord, doctor, friend, relative and lover (vv. 4–6)—Love acts as a medicine for the soul (v. 12). The adjective “dulcissimo” contains all these functions and the idea of an increasing and intimate relationship. Thus, Iacopone invokes “Amor-Iesú, dolce meo sposo” (“Love-Jesus, my sweet Spouse,” Lauda 89, 285) and as his “dolce vita” (“sweet life”) whose beauty he wishes to contemplate (Lauda 86, 417). The soul itself becomes the tender mother of this love, answering: “O dulce garzoncello, / en cor t’ho conciputo / et en braccia tenuto, / però sì grido: ‘Amore!’” (“O sweet child, I have conceived You in my heart and held You in my arms, crying out ‘O Love!’” Lauda 86, 445–8). So that “sweetness” designates, first of all, this most intimate and 87

See Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, II, 4; Albert the Great, De corpore Domini, I, ii, 194 b. 88 See Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Sermo Christus unus omnium magister, IV, 15, ed. Goulven Madec (Paris: J. Vrin, 1990). 89 See Lauda 99, 287–8. 90 See Mt 11–30: “Iugum enim meum suave et onus meum leve est” (‘For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’). The bonds of Christ, Grace and Charity are good and don’t hurt: see Ambrose of Milan, Esamerone, ed. Gabriele Banterle (Rome: Città Nuova, 2002), III, V, 13, 53; Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo, XIV, 38; Richard of Saint Victor, De quatuor gradibus violentae charitatis, I. 91 See Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones, IX, 5.

170

CUIF

deepest bond of love between the soul and Christ, that is the perfect adhaesio of the pure desire of God, and then, God Himself. Consequently, mystical delight does not consist in a destruction of identity but in a revelation: purged of any attraction or alteration of desires, the soul reveals its true identity and the sweetness of its intimate fruition. 5

The “Flavor” of Fruition

One of the peculiarities of the Laude is to highlight the active intervention of the human soul in the process of receiving and regenerating the dulcedo.92 Iacopone describes the various and complex movements of the spirit of love within the Trinitarian figures and with the soul. Sweetness is therefore the product of a fruition of the heart through a complex process of the sublimation of love: it is hidden in man, like the sugariness inside a ripe fruit.93 Behind the mystery of sweetness lies the mystery of human deity, of this universal ­virtue, ready to be delivered by the exercise of Charity.94 In Lauda 72, Chastity is the virtue that allows the exercise of Charity: it takes the form of a flower that is the condition of every complete fruition. It is characterized by a synesthetic pleasure: O castetate, flore che te sostene Amore! O flor de castetate, odorifero giglio, cun molta suavitate si de color vermiglio; et a la Ternetate 92

93 94

Francesco Santi says: “prima di Francesco … l’incarnazione sembrava dire che la salvezza dell’uomo proviene solo da Dio … Con Francesco la situazione cambia … L’uomo non deve rinnegare il mondo: deve rallegrarsi di fronte a Dio per tutto e tutto restituirgli, di tutto privarsi, nella consapevolezza che quel Dio amoroso sarà esternamente in grado di offrire nuovi doni … Il risultato della mistica è la povertà, come condizione di libertà.” (“Fugo la Croce,” pp. 286–87) See William of Saint Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris, XXVIII (in Zambon, Trattati d’amore, I, 111). See also Song of Sol. 2:3. Lauda 25, 97–100: “Non pòte l’om sapere questa cosa / (se non la Caritate ch’i l’à ’nfusa), / como entro ’n l’om penato sta retrusa / a pparturire” (“No man can comprehend how this can be if the understanding is not infused in him by charity that charity which lies hidden in suffering, waiting to give birth”).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

171

t’arapresent’a odore. … O luce splandïante, lucerna si preclara; da tutti si laudante et en pochi si cara. Le to dolce semblante placevel’ so’ al Signore. … O rocca de fortezza, en qual è gran tesoro, de for se pare asprezza e dentro è mèl savoro; non se cce vòl pigrezza e guardare a tuttore. O manna saporita ched è la castetate! (Lauda 72, 1–8; 15–20; 27–34) [Chastity, fait flower of long-stemmed Love, scented lily of soft vermilion, your fragrance rises to the Trinity …. Radiance of white light, praised by many but cherished by few, your noble countenance is pleasing to God. … Fortress that guards a great treasure, granite from without, honey-sweet within, your sentinels must never sleep. Chastity, you are manna.] The flower of Chastity is “soave” since it emanates the smell of its virtue throughout the whole Trinity, according to a current expression in Old ­Testament;95 then, it looks “dolce” as it sheds its light on everyone, but takes its source only in God;96 lastly, the sweetness of chastity is hidden, and originates from an internal strength.97 Referring to flavor, Iacopone highlights the fundamental duality of tasting God, between harshness and pleasure, evoking the necessity of revealing by “savoring inside,” thanks to humility.98 Christians 95 96 97 98

The “sweet smell” corresponds to the action of grace in the Old Testament and then to the fragrance of the virtuous soul in the New Testament: See Gn 8:21; Lv 2:2;9;12, 3:5;16, 4:31, 6:8;14, 8:21, 8:28, 17:6, Sg 5:13; Sir 39:17–19. See Eccl 11:6–7. See Jgs 14:8, 14:14, 14:18; Am 9:13; Ps 19:11; Dt 32:13; Prv 9:17. Lauda 68: “Magnum reputavi et reputo scire de Deo habundare. Quare? Quia exercitur ibi humilitas cum reverentia. Sed maximum reputavi et reputo scire de Deo ieiunare et penuriam pati. Quare? Quia exercitur ibi fides sine testimoniis, spes sine expectatione

172

CUIF

who are not guided by Love find this flavor bitter and sour.99 Thus, “sweetness” is the product of an inner beauty that is reserved for those who only have the desire forod.100 And so, the perfect man can be observed in Lauda 77 as imago Dei, and he is compared to a tree that grows its fruits ripe (vv. 41–50).101 The sweetness is implied, but in the pit, or in the groove of humility, the righteous man enjoys the “suavetate” of birdsong: Estannoce l’ocelli, loco canta, esbèrnace con grande suavetate, nascondoce lo nido e sì ll’amanta, che non se veia a so contrarietate. (Lauda 77, 57–60) [The tree harbors in its branches birds that announce the winter’s end with piercing sweetness, and so fashion their nests that no enemy can discover them.]

premii, caritas sine signis benivolentie. Fondamenta hec in montibus sanctis. Per ista fundamenta ascendit anima ad montem illum coagulatum, in quo gustatur mel de petra et oleum de saxo durissimo” (“I have always held, and still do, that it is a great thing to be filled with God. Why? Because humility is then wedded to reverence. But I have also always thought, and still do, that to know how to suffer His absence, how to endure that fast when He imposes it, is even greater. Why? Because faith is then attested to without witnesses, hope without expectation of reward, charity without signs of benevolence. Such are the foundations of the holy hills. They lead to that summit where rocks have the sweetness of honey and stones the savor of the finest oil”). See Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon, ed. Massimo Sannelli (Lavis: La Finestra, 2011), pp. IV and 1. 99 See Augustine, De cathechizandis rudibus, XVI, 25; Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo, IV, 11; De conversione, I, xxi. 100 On this internal sweetness See Gregory the Great, Expositio Super Cantica Canticorum, IV (PL 79 0513B); Richard of Saint Victor, Explicatio in Cantica Canticorum, XL. About “manna” as a subtle food from sky: Ws 16:20–21; L’Intelligenza, IV, 1–3; Guido delle ­Colonne, La mia vit’è sì fort’e dura e fera, v. 40. 101 Lauda LXXVII, 42; 47–50: “che ll’om perfetto a l’albor se figura … de rame, foglie e frutto è addornato, / lavora d’onne tempo senza mora; / da poi che lo frutto àcce apicciato, / conservalo e ’l notrica e po’ ’l matura” (“Perfect man, I now see clearly, is like a tree (…) And to conserve its moisture, adorned with branches, leaves, and fruit, the tree labors without ceasing. Once it has brought forth fruit it continues to nourish that fruit and bring it to perfection”). See Jgs 9:11; Ps 1:3. Guittone d’Arezzo, Lettera XXIV, 1.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

173

As for the tree of the Kingdom of Heaven described in Mt 13:32,102 and recalling a motif of courtly poetry,103 the “man-plant” evokes the necessity of growth and permanent exercise of one’s virtues to develop the happiness of the soul in divine Love. Lauda 76 alludes to the sweetness of fruit that man can’t produce himself: Aguard’a l’arbore, o omo, quanto fa süave pomo odorifero, e como è saporoso nel gustare. (Lauda 76, 35–8) [Consider the three and its fragrant, succulent fruit.] The taste and smell no longer signifies temptation as the tree of Heaven in Genesis.104 The agreeable flavor represents the substance of divine goodness, embodied by Christ, the “fruit” of the womb of Mary and of the grapevine that nourishes man in Eucharist.105 As Matteo Leonardi says: “il frutto che ‘pasce’ l’uomo è la presenza di Dio nell’uomo” (Laude 344). Iacopone chooses the olfactory and gustatory senses to qualify, in addition to pleasure, the benefit of divine action in the heart of man.106 Moreover, the fact of being able to eat and assimilate divine food is a main characteristic of a healthy soul and of the “sure” gift of Grace.107 The dulcedo, even if invisible and intangible, is a tasty and nourishing substance while the earthly condition, even if physically enjoyable, is fundamentally ephemeral and sterile.108 The weddings of the soul to Christ are “saporose” (“tasty,” Lauda 86, 451) and delight the soul “con richezze amorose” and “delizze grazïose” (“in loving riches and delights,” vv. 454–5).109 We are reminded that delight has no color (Lauda 92, 64), nor is it an expressible sound, yet here it is a powerful 102 See Mk 4:32 and Lk 13:18–19. Ez 17:23; 31:6; Dn 4:9–18 and Apoc. 22:2; Ws 17:17. 103 See Rinaldo d’Aquino, Ormai quando flore, vv. 14–15; Bonvesin da la Riva, De Scriptura Aurea, vv. 97–100. 104 See Gn 2:9; 3:6. 105 See Lauda 76, 39–42. See Matteo Leonardi, n. 35–46 in Iacopone da Todi, Laude, pp. 343–44. See also Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo III, 9. 106 The sweetness of the fruit means the experience of bliss: see Richard of Saint Victor, ­Explicatio in Cantica canticorum, XL (PL 196 05118B). 107 See Lauda 7, 57–8. See also Prv 16:24. 108 See Ps 54:15. 109 Taste is the expression of pleasure of intellect (Lauda 1, 61–8) and, with “flavor,” it’s the sign of a soul in a state of beatitude (Lauda 2, 59). According to Bonaventure of ­Bagnoregio, the third state of excessus mentis is the sweetest tasting experience (Itinerarium, IV, 3).

174

CUIF

taste for those who know how to give up their intellectual way of understanding God: “d’Amor sempre ne ciba / qual fariseo né scriba / non gusta per sapore” (“You, Love, were born for us; nourish us with that food whose sweetness is all unknown to scribes and pharisees,” Lauda 86, 470–2).110 Here we can understand that ‘sweetness’ doesn’t only designate a special enjoyment but the identity of God’s true itself, its own “taste” that is the principle of both His loving and living Spirit. Taste means that the perception of God must be total and beyond the limits of perception and interpretation, to transcend into fusion.111 Yet, while Bonaventure insists on the importance of spiritual sensations as a “vestige” of similarity with God, Iacopone heightened the total absence of sensation in union with God, or feelings without substance. Taste experience affirms this need to abandon any physical sense, even the intellect, to be understood and to be fulfilled. As seen in Lauda 92, this principle is radicalized; it is necessary to renounce the taste itself and the will to possess it, since God is enjoyed in the total dispossession of one’s faculties. The fruition has an insipid taste or a non-adjective sapidity, because it is pure enjoyment, without any intent of possession.112 6

The Sweetness of Sound

The experience of fruition and of its sweet flavor creates another need into the soul, that of delivering this ineffable joy in writing and celebrating it, in order to perpetuate its memory in the heart of man. In Lauda 9, Iacopone evokes the need to express the excess of joy that overflows from the heart of the soul, in its wedding with the Spirit: O iubelo de core, che fai cantar d’amore! Quanno iubel se scalda, sì fa l’omo cantare; e la lengua barbaglia, non sa que se parlare; drento no ‘l po’ celare (tant’è granne!) el dolzore. (Lauda 9, 1–8)

110 See Mt 5:20. 111 See Lauda 60, 61–2; 79, 18–9. 112 See Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina christiana, I, iv, 4.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

175

[O heart’s jubilation, love and song, joy and joy unceasing, the stuttering of the unutterable how can the heart but sing? Joy shooting upward uncontrollably, where is the heart to contain it?] The song emanates straight from the joy felt in the depths of the soul and is the most direct expression of the experience of the dulcedo.113 The “cantar d’amore” (“singing of love”) becomes a vocation of the laudator of divine Love who is totally absorbed by the immense pleasure that overwhelms him; this way of singing overcomes all forms of verbal expression and also constitutes an ascent in itself: O iubel, dolce gaudio, ch’è’ drento ne la mente! Lo cor deventa savio, celar so convenente; non pò esser soffrente che non faccia clamore. (Lauda 9, 21–6) [O jubilant joy and somersaults of happiness, pray, learn to be prudent: sensibile people with sensible smiles cannot understand the wildness of your ecstasy!] The jubilation designates both the interior wedding of the soul with the spirit and the pure love embodied in the most immaterial matter in which God can be expressed: harmonic sound.114 This musical verb is superhuman, and it is not a rhetorical product but also a spiritual experience, in which the singer becomes the instrument of God, the “cantor” of blessed life.115 113 According to Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cantica canticorum, I, 11 (PL 183, 789C): “Non est enim strepitus oris, sed jubilus cordis, non sonus labiorum, sed motus gaudiorum; voluntatum, non vocum consonantia” (“this (Song) is not a vocal utterance but a jubilation of the heart: not a cry from the lips but a movement of rejoicing; a symphony not of voices but of wills”). 114 Jubilation is a song that emanates directly from an intense inner joy and from the internal experience of divine Love. See Bruno Astensis, Expositio in Psalmos, XLVI (PL 164, 0863 A); LXV, (PL 164 0933D). 115 Singing reactivates the memory of Love in the heart: “Jesu dulcis memoria / dans vera cordis gaudia: / sed super mel et omnia / ejus dulcis praesentia. / Nil canitur suavius, / nil auditur jucundius, / nil cogitatur dulcius, / quam Jesus Dei Filius” (“The sweet memory of Jesus giving true joy to the heart: but more than honey and all things his sweet presence. Nothing more delightful is sung, nothing more pleasing heard, nothing sweeter thought, than Jesus, the Son of God,” Jubilus rhythmicus [PL 184 1317]). According to ­William of Saint

176

CUIF

For that, the sweetness of song does not only deal with a quality of sound, but designates the subject of Love and its presence in the soul.116 This perfect harmony that Love implies in the soul is expressed in Lauda 64: O novo canto, - c’ài morto el planto de l’om enfermato! Sopr’el ’fa’ acuto - me pare en paruto tal canto se pona e nel ’fa’ grave - descenda suave, ché el Verbo resòna. Cotal deciso - non fo ancor viso sì ben concordato. Li cantaturi - iubilaturi che tengo lo coro, so’ l’angeli santi, - che fo dulci canti al diversoro, denant’el fantino, - ch’el Verbo divino ce veio encarnato! ……………………………………….. En carta ainina - la nota devina veio c’è scripta, là v’è el nostro canto - ritto e renfranto a chi ben ci affitta; e Deo è lo scrivano, - c’à operta la mano, ch’el canto à ensegnato! (Lauda 64, 1–14, 21–6) [A new canticle I hear, to dry the tears of the afflicted! I hear it begin with a piercing tone, whence it slowly descends several octaves, for it celebrates the coming of the Word. Never was heard a descending scale of such exquisite melody! The joyous chorus is that of angels singing sweet songs around the manger before the Christ Child, The Word Incarnate. … The sacred notes, I see, are inscribed on parchment, skin of the lamb; Thierry, the fervor of singing stimulates the experience of ineffable sensations, unknown to the physical senses and restores the flavor of what seemed tasteless (Tractatus de natura et dignitate amoris, XIV, 43 in Zambon, ed., Trattati d’amore, I). For A ­ ugustine, singing the glory of God brings health and salvation (Meditationes, XXXII, PL 40 092 B). 116 See Ez 33:32; Ps 9:2; 39:4.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

177

In the Lamb-our penetrating eye discerns is all song, whether solo or ­choral.] In this lauda, the song celebrates the total opening of the soul who leaves the sorrowful song for the joyful one. The descending scale imitates the descent of divine grace into the heart as Matteo Leonardi explains: L’Incarnazione di Dio, modello della divinizzazione dell’uomo (cfr. Le laude 27, 69 e 86), viene qui metaforizzata nell’allegoria musicale del “deciso sì ben concordato” dal fa acuto al fa grave sul pentagramma. … Il canto di Dio significa infatti, giocando sul nome divino del Figlio come Verbo, l’espressione del Padre in terra (la nota devina scritta su carta ainina, l’Agnus Dei) e rappresenta la discesa dal fa alto a quello basso. L’Incarnazione diventa cioè, nell’allegoria, schola cantorum dove s’insegna uno speciale canto: l’amore. L’uomo che vuole corrispondervi dovrà dunque apprendere, fuor di metafora, la logica della conformazione all’amato.117 The metaphor of the singing school refers to the schola caritatis. Man goes up the descending path until God, that is, from the grave to the acute on the musical scale.118 The height of this love song is performed by the seraphs, who sing the Gloria. The subject of the song is Christ “flor de granato” (“pomegranate flower,” v. 44) and is embodied on an allegorical sheet whose God is the author.119 The adverb “suave” is related to the act of glorifying incarnation and to the aesthetic effect of the song, when it teaches and spurs the reader to love:

117 Iacopone da Todi, Laude, 135. 118 See Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. Angelo Valastro Canale (Novara: De Agostini, 2014), pp. III and xxii. Maria Sofia Lannutti writes “La mia ipotesi è che Iacopone volesse intendere che il canto comprendeva l’intera gamma di suoni della voce umana visto che nel medioveo l’ambitus considerato come proprio della voce umana era costituito dalle due ottave comprese tra il Fa acuto, sotto il Sol in chiave di Do, e il Fa grave, sotto il rigo in chiave di Fa” (cited in Matteo Leonardi, Laude 323, n. 3). 119 Maria Sofia Lannutti explains: “alla creazione poetica corrisponde il creato, cui appartiene il Verbo incarnato; all’esecuzione della creazione poetica, cioè al canto, corrisponde l’esaltazione del creato operata dalla Redenzione. Al poeta creatore del testo poetico corrisponde Dio creatore del cielo e della terra; al cantore che fa risuonare e vivere il testo poetico corrisponde Cristo che dà nuova vita al creato … il ‘novo canto’ di Cristo redentore compie il miracolo di far risuonare nuovamente il Verbo e con esso l’intero creato” (ibidem).

178

CUIF

Canto d’amore - ce trova a tuttore a chi ce sa entrare; con Deo se conforma – e (’m)prende la norma de ben Lo disiare; co’ serafino - deventa divino, d’amore enflammato. (Lauda 64, 33–8) [Here they hear unceasing songs of love; That love conforms itself to God, and finding in Him the law of its being, Seraphim-like, darts flames.] In fact, the act of singing creates a performative resonance in the soul, as it operates a perennial incarnation and redemption. The range extending from high F to low F also evokes a special mode in Gregorian chant; it could be a tritus autenticus which would correspond to the Greek Lydian mode, known for arousing strong emotions.120 Singing is the metaphor of God, absolute freedom as it breaks the limits of man and puts the being back into a dimension without dimension, in the truth of its immensity.121 And this is the supreme happiness of having no more limits and of enjoying this condition which on earth seems an unbearable condition, yet in God is an ocean of happiness. Finally, the excessiveness of God is the “measure” of true love that can be found, disregarding the human norm in order to rediscover a new harmonic dimension. In this harmonic conception of the divine universe, divine Love besieges every physical sense, namely by the sound through which he fertilized Mary (Lauda 32, 59–60). In Lauda 3, Christ represents the subtle instrument of God: “tutta la corte farà’ resbaldire se tu vorrà’ sonare esto stromento”. … “Se noi ce sonarim Cristo-stromento, tutta la corte terrimo en baldanza”. (Lauda 3, 111–2; 207–8)

120 This mode is considered as lascivious and softens hard minds. See Boethius, De Institutione musica, ed. Giovanni Marzi (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, 1990), I, i. See also Ecclus. 47:11. 121 Singing lauds is an act of grace: see Gregory the Great, Moralia I, LXI, (PL 75 0587B).

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

179

[Play this music, and make all the Heavenly Court rejoice … if we, too, play our Christ-instruments and break into song, all of the palace will be filled with joy.] The “music” of the Incarnate Word is related to the redeeming action of Christ. But it is also the instrument through which the human soul creates and ­maintains harmony in hearts, as David in the court of Saul: he who loves knows how to play it because he acts according to the way of Charity. But man has forgotten this action, a fact that the Gifts deplore. The similitude with the instrument demonstrates a hidden virtue, contained in the man who has been “creato vertüoso” (“created virtuous”) and whose sweetness is exercised with the lyrical performance.122 The lauda is the instrument of the heart, as it recalls, in every verse, the responsibility of man to act in a virtuous way and to search the real sense of Holy Scriptures.123 The analogy with the instrument also refers to another type of physicality, far from its corruptible and sinful part, but included in its pure dimension; in Lauda 50, the body is considered as an ornament that serves the soul: “e fo bello stromento, / no l’avess’escordato” (“a beautiful instrument it was, but now how out of tune!” vv. 33–34). This pure instrument is “out of tune” because of the lack of the exercise of love, which has made it become disharmonic.124 In this way, we understand that it is not the body that is responsible for the misperception of divine reality, but the lack of exercise of the soul that makes the body a servant of the senses and not of the spirit. The soul of man has been considered as a musical instrument that can produce harmony, when one knows how to play it, that is, with the “plectrum” of Love.125 The laude gives voice to this love and attracts the intellect to the desire to know and embody

122 For Aelred, the soul has spiritual strings thanks to which it is stimulated to meditate and imitate the acts of Christ. See Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermones de oneribus, XXXII. 123 See Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon, V, 2, 1. 124 According to Gregory the Great, the ‘string’ of the mind could break if the preacher does not know how to seduce his audience (See Regula pastoralis, XXXIX, PL 77 0124 A). 125 Hugh of Saint Victor compares the cithara to human body: the string is the body, the plectrum is the grace that plays the affection of the hearts (See Miscellanea, LXV De spirituali cithara, PL 177 06 26 C). We find the same image in Scala del divino amore in Zambon, ed., Trattati, 117: “E poiché il tuo cuore è un organo cavo e rotondo, è naturale che tremi e risuoni per la dolcezza che ode provenire da Dio e dalle creature. E poiché dal tuo cuore escono vene che si diramano per tutto il corpo, più delicate e sottili che corde di viola, ne consegue che, quando il cuore trema e risuona per la dolcezza che ode, tutte le vene del corpo si agitano e tremano. Da questo moto del cuore e delle corde che da esso si diramano nasce la più dolce melodia che esista in questa vita.”

180

CUIF

Love.126 Besides, the smoothness of the sounds designates a ravishing effect in the heart linked to the phenomenon of attraction with which the poem, like music, predisposes the soul to love.127 The Laude of Iacopone da Todi reveal a new way to consider the rhetorical and theological concept of “sweetness”: as a synthesis of the whole mystical experience from the first to the last level of Love, this apparent kind of delight – tightly linked to physical and intellectual experience – is the ­principle of the highest form of affective knowledge, itself liberated from human science.128 As a sense beyond any sense, as a feeling above every feeling, as a taste beyond any flavor, “sweetness” designates both the path of asceticism, the fulfillment of joy and the principle of universal harmony that human writing can’t contain. Man must not be satisfied by perceiving Love, but also by embodying it, leaving the mark of its ecstatic experience in the poetic “body” of the Laude. So that writing is already an operation of salvation: Iacopone above all intends to move and deliver the movement of the loving spirit in the soul, giving an account of these ineffable transfigurations from suffering to delight. The Laude imply an exercise for the soul through hearing and recall the duty to stimulate and nourish constantly the feeling of Love in the heart. “From sweetness to sweetness,” “di grado in grado,”129 man has the virtue to transform himself and to nourish the Love that is his only true happiness. Works Cited Aelred of Rievaulx. L’amicizia spirituale. Edited by Giovanni Zuanazzi. Rome: Città Nuova, 2015. Aelred of Rievaulx. Opera omnia. I: Opera ascetica. Edited by A. Hoste and C. H. Talbot. Turnhout: Brepols, 1971. Aelred of Rievaulx. Sermones de tempore et de sanctis, PL 195, Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: 1855. Albert the Great. Opera Omnia, 34.1. Edited by Dionysius Siedler, Geyer Bernhard, Monasterii Westfalorum: Aschendorff, 1978.

126 As we can see in the similitude of the Eagle in Dante, Paradiso 18–20. 127 See Richard of Saint Victor, De contemplatione (Beniamin maior), ed. Jean Grosfillier (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), V, xvii. 128 Francesco Santi says: “Non è contro il corpo, vuole trovare nel corpo lo spirito; non è contro la ragione: vuole costringere la ragione a volgersi al suo spirito, per servirlo come si serve un amico.” (“Fugo la Croce,” p. 290). 129 See Dante Alighieri, Paradiso 28, 114.

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

181

Alighieri, Dante. Convivio. Edited by Gianfranco Fioravanti and Claudio Giunta. Milan: Mondadori, 2019. Alighieri, Dante. La Divina Commedia. Vol. I–III. Edited by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi. Milan: Mondadori, 2016. Alighieri, Dante. Vita Nova. Edited by Luca Carlo Rossi. Milan: Mondadori, 2016. Ambrose of Milan. Esamerone. Edited by Gabriele Banterle. Rome: Città Nuova, 2002. Anonimo Genovese. Rime e ritmi latini. Edited by Jean Nicolas. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1994. Augustine of Hippo. De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus; De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum. Edited by Lorenzo Perone, Jean Pépin, Francesca Cocchini. Rome: Città Nuova, 1996. Augustine of Hippo. De doctrina christiana. Edited by Luigi Alici, Rome: Città Nuova, 1995. Augustine of Hippo. Il libero arbitrio. Edited by Rita Melillo. Rome: Città Nuova, 2011. Augustine of Hippo. La Catechesi. Edited by Ulisse Marinucci. Rome: Città Nuova, 2005. Augustine of Hippo. La città di Dio. Edited by Luigi Alici. Milan: Bompiani, 2019. Augustine of Hippo. Le confessioni. Edited by Maria Bettetini and Carlo Carena. Turin: Einaudi, 2015. Baby, Hélène and Josiane Rieu, eds. La Douceur en littérature de l’Antiquité au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Garnier, 2012. Bassetti, Massimiliano, and Enrico Menestò, eds. “Fugo la croce che me devura”: studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Bernard of Clairvaux. Il dovere di amare Dio. De diligendo Deo. Edited by Ambrogio M. Piazzoni. Rome: Paoline, 2014. Bernard of Clairvaux. Of conversion: a sermon to the Clergy. Edited by Watkin Williams. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1938. Bernard of Clairvaux. Sermones in Cantica Canticorum. PL 183, Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: 1854. Boethius, De Institutione Musica. Edited by Giovanni Marzi. Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, 1990. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Itinerario della mente verso Dio. Edited by Massimo Parodi and Marco Rossini. Milan: BUR Rizzoli, 2009. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Sermo Christus unus omnium magister. Edited by Goulven Madec. Paris: J. Vrin, 1990. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Opera Omnia S. Bonaventurae. Vol. V. Rome: Quaracchi, 1891. Bonvesin da la Riva. Libro delle Tre Scritture. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Ravenna: Longo 2014. Carruthers, Mary. “Sweetness.” Speculum 81.4 (2006): 999–1013.

182

CUIF

Cavalcanti, Guido. Rime. Edited by Roberto Rea and Giorgio Inglese. Roma: Carocci editore, 2016. Davanzati, Chiaro. Canzoni e sonetti. Edited by Aldo Menichetti. Turin: Einaudi, 2004. De Romilly, Jacqueline. La douceur dans la pensée grecque. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979. Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: doctrine et histoire. Edited by Marcel Viller. Paris: Beauchesne, 1937–1995. Finoli, Anna Maria. Artes amandi. Da Maître Élie ad Andrea Cappellano. Milan: ­Cisalpino, 1969. Frescobaldi, Matteo di Dino. Rime. Edited by Giuseppe Renzo Ambrogio. Florence: Le Lettere, 1996. Goldstein, James R. “Dolcezza: Dante and the Cultural Phenomenology of Sweetness.” Dante Studies 132 (2014): 113–43. Guinizelli, Guido. Poesie. Edited by Edoardo Sanguinetti. Milan: Mondadori, 2005. Guittone d’Arezzo. Canzoniere: i sonetti d’amore del Codice Laurenziano. Edited by Lino Leonardi. Turin: Einaudi 1994. Guittone d’Arezzo. Lettere. Edited by Claude Margueron. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1990. Hugh of Saint Victor. Didascalicon. Edited by Massimo Sannelli. Lavis: La finestra, 2011. Hugues de Saint Victor. De Sacramentis, PL 176, Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: 1854. Hughes, Serge, and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. Iacopone da Todi: The Lauds. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. I poeti della scuola siciliana. Vol. II. Poeti della corte di Federico II. Edited by Costanzo di Girolamo. Milan: Mondadori, 2009. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Franco Mancini. Rome: Laterza, 1974. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Leo. S. Olschki, 2010. Iacopone da Todi. Laudes. Translated and edited by Claude Perrus. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013. Il Laudario di Cortona. Cortona, Biblioteca del Comune e dell’Accademia etrusca, ms. 91. Edited and commented by Marco Gozzi and Francesco Zimei. Lucca: Libreria musicale italiana, 2015. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum. Edited by Angelo Valastro Canale. Novara: De Agostini, 2014. Leonardi, Matteo, “Nec sine te nec tecum”: la sofferta dialettica tra le laude iacoponiche e la tradizione lirica.” In“Fugo la croce che me devura”: studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi,” eds. Bassetti and Menestò, 89–102. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Landoni, Elena. “Strategie linguistiche di un intellettuale sovversivo. La poesia di Iacopone da Todi dall’antiletterarietà all’ultraletterarietà.” In “Fugo la croce che me

SWEETNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF ASCETICISM AND SALVATION

183

devura”: studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, eds. Bassetti and Menestò, 119–40. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Latini, Brunetto. Trésor. Edited by Pietro G. Beltrami, Paolo Squillacioti, Plinio Torri, and Sergio Vatteroni. Torino: Einaudi, 2017. Le Lay, Cécile. Marie dans la “Comédie” de Dante. Fonctions d’un “personnage” féminin. Rome: Aracne, 2016. Mamoojee, Abdul H. “‘Suavis’ and ‘Dulcis’: a Study of Ciceronian Usage.” Phoenix 35.3 (1981): 220–236. Montefusco, Antonio, “Il laudario e le sue fonti.” In “Fugo la croce che me devura”: studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, eds. Bassetti and Menestò, 59–88. ­Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Onesto da Bologna, Le Rime. Edited by Sandro Orlando. Firenze: G. C. Sansoni, 1974. PL: Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: 1844–1855. Poemetti del Duecento: Il Tesoretto, Il Fiore, L’Intelligenza. Edited by Giuseppe Petronio. Turin: UTET, 1976. Poeti del Duecento. 2 voll. Edited by Gianfranco Contini. Milan: Ricciardi, 1995. Richard of Saint Victor. De contemplatione (Beniamin maior). Edited and translated by Jean Grosfillier. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Richard of Saint Victor. Beniamin minor, PL 196, Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: 1855. Rinaldo d’Aquino. Le Rime. In I poeti della scuola siciliana. Vol. II. Poeti della corte di Federico II, ed. Costanzo di Girolamo. Milan: Mondadori, 2009. Santi, Francesco, “Avvicinandosi a Iacopone mistico”. In “Fugo la croce che me devura”: studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi,” eds. Bassetti and Menestò, 277–90. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. The Bible. Authorized King James Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Thomas Aquinas. Commentaire sur les Psaumes. Edited by Jean Eric Stroobant de Saint Eloy. Paris: Cerf, 1996. Thomas Aquinas. Somma contro i gentili. Edited by Tito S. Centi. Turin: UTET, 1992. William of Saint Thierry. Opera didactica et spiritualia, Vol. III. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. Zambon, Francesco. Trattati d’amore cristiani del XII secolo. Vol. I–II. Milan: ­Mondadori, 2007.

Chapter 8

Rhythm and Poetic Mysticism in the Laude of Iacopone Da Todi Alexander J. B. Hampton The emergence of the mystical tradition in Christianity is intrinsically bound up with poetry. The first Christian mystical thinkers were not themselves poets, but instead reflected upon the μυστήριον (mystery or secret) considered to be contained within scriptural poetry. In confronting the figurative and lyrical language of the Bible, they developed an understanding of the capacity of poetry to embody and express the deeper mystical wisdom contained within scriptural text. The development of vernacular mysticism, and with it mystical poetry, applied the poetics of biblical mystery to the articulation of personal mystical experience. The life of the mystic is defined by deeply embedded rhythmic patterns that in the case of mystical poets, find their expression in poetical form. Rhythm is any regularity in repetition, either in time or in space, of a process, feature or condition. In its breadth, it extends to physiology, such as the rhythm of a heartbeat, breathing, or any other range of biological processes. Equally, it covers psychology, from states of joy and fear, sin and redemption, and all of the other patterns that characterize the life of the individual. Of course, it concerns the music of language. Prosody is the measured flow of syllables, words or phrases, that in verse form a pattern of sounds existing in a mimetic relationship to the physical and psychical rhythms of the self, representing, performing, and even enacting them. This examination focuses upon rhythm as a fundamental connection between mystical praxis and mystical poetics through an examination of the laude of Iacopone da Todi. The life of the mystic is often characterised by a range of rhythmic oscillations—between spirit and flesh, ideal and real, personal and divine, presence and absence—that together constitute the mystical experience. Some of these rhythmic dichotomies are sometimes overcome in the course of the mystical journey, such as the right ordering of the soul over the body. Other experiences, particularly the overwhelming moment of mystical union between the individual and God, cannot be maintained if the self is to avoid permanent annihilation. Instead, the self must return to itself, and represent this moment in the tension of poetic expression. Rhythm, therefore, plays an essential role at each stage of the mystical journey, particularly its experience and its © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_010

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

185

communication. The early vernacular poetry of Iacopone da Todi is a paradigmatic example of this rhythmical connection of praxis and poetics. Here Iacopone’s laude are shown to evince the intrinsic connection between personal mystical praxis and the mystical poetical form that seeks to record and embody it. Together his laude express and embody the story of his mystical journey. However, before this is undertaken, this consideration situates Iacopone in the broader context of the relationship between mysticism, rhythm and vernacular poetry, and places the laude within the context of Iacopone’s own spiritual life. In undertaking this examination, this consideration aims to add to what has historically been a limited amount of scholarship exploring the important connection of mysticism and poetry.1 Critical examinations of mystical poetics have often tended to be concerned with either form or content in unequal measure. One of the contributing factors to this may be that mystical poetry falls between two disciplinary traditions. Scholars of literature are more likely to consider the literary form of the vernacular works of poet mystics in the context of the development of national literatures, and their relationship to, and subsequent influence upon, native canons. Conversely, scholars of religion are more apt to approach mystical poetry from a content-based perspective, with attention directed toward the developing praxis of personal spirituality, and its expression in the growth of lay piety and religious orders. In either context, form or content are privileged over one another given the understandable concerns of differing disciplinary approaches. However, this leaves the remarkable relationship between mystical praxis and poetical form largely unattended. Here this omission is addressed in the context of Iacopone’s laude. 1

Mysticism, Vernacular Mysticism and Rhythm

The term mysticism, referring to a range of practices, experiences and ideas, themselves distributed across a diversity of traditions and cultures, is at once problematic and essential. Here, the scope is limited to the Christian tradition, 1 See Henri Brémond, Prière et poésie (Paris: Grasset, 1926); Jacques Maritain and Raïssa Maritain, Situation de la poésie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938); Edgar Hederer, Mystik und Lyrik (Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1941); John Huizinga, Homo Ludens: Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), pp. 119–45; Alois M. Haas, Sermo Mysticus (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg, 1979); Edward Ingram Watkin, Poets and Mystics (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953); Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 2012), pp. 137–40 and 179–92; Bernard Mcginn, Mysticism in the Reformation (New York: Crossroad, 2016), pp. 223–62.

186

HAMPTON

and further to early mediaeval vernacular mysticism. As scholarly consideration of mysticism has developed from the early efforts of William James and Evelyn Underhill, attention has productively shifted from a focus upon the moment of mystical ecstasy and divine union, to also include the process of preparing for and recording the mystical experience.2 Bernard McGinn’s expansive and well-regarded consideration of the mystical tradition offers a helpful definition that reflects this development.3 He writes: “the mystical element in Christianity is that part of its belief and practices that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the reaction to what can be described as the immediate or direct presence of God.”4 As McGinn describes it, mysticism is something beyond the individual, subjective and private; it is also communal, objective and public. Part of understanding this broader sense of mysticism, in particular its public communication, involves taking into account how the rhythmic aspects of mystical praxis inform the poetic expression of mysticism. Poetry is of intrinsic importance for the development of the Christian mystical tradition, with its origins deeply influenced by the exegesis of scriptural poetics. The first use of the term ‘mystical’ was made by Clement of Alexandria, to describe among other things, the deeper understanding that arose from the study of scripture.5 Clement, Origen and the Cappadocians used mystical interpretation as a means of seeking out secret or hidden Christological meaning in scripture.6 This was particularly the case with the Song of Songs, one of the Bible’s most influential poetical books, upon whose early interpretation Jewish and Gnostic precedents was built upon by Christian thinkers. The figurative language of the canticle introduces a degree of equivocacy that leaves the text open to continual reflection, successive searching, and the making and remaking of meaning that naturally arises from the contemplation of the divine.7 For Origen, probably the most influential interpreter of the Song of Songs, and those who followed him such as Gregory of Nyssa, and later Bernard

2 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (London-New York: Longmans, Green & Co, 1901); Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1910). 3 Bernard McGinn, Christian Mysticism: The Presence of God (New York: Crossroad, 1991–2021). 4 Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1991), p. xvii. 5 McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. 100–08; Clement, Clemens Alexandrinus zweiter Band: Stromata Buch I–VI, ed. O. Stählin (Leipzig: Akademie Verlag, 1960), 5.6.37. 6 Louis Bouyer, “Mysticism: An Essay on the History of the Word,” in Understanding Mysticism, ed. R. Woods (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 42–55. 7 Alexander J. B. Hampton, “Poetics and Mysticism,” The Oxford Handbook to Mystical Theology, eds. Edward Howells and Mark McIntosh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 241–6; Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 186.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

187

of Clarivaux, William of St Thierry, and Rupert of Deutz, the allegorical reading of the texts was the means for a transformative spiritual experience.8 This personal poetic dimension became key to the subsequent development of vernacular mysticism beginning in the mid-thirteenth century. Its development marked a shift from reading and reflection upon scriptural poetry, from which arose mystical experience, to the production of one’s own poetry to record first-person narratives of divine personal encounter, often with the aim of providing a programme for readers to experience a similar union themselves. The expression of personal feeling, the importance of spiritual self-investment, and the transformative nature of the mystical experience, each of which is present in Iacopone’s laude, all figure as key characteristics of vernacular mysticism.9 The rise of mystical poetry was part of a wider growth in Western European vernacular spirituality, whose causes are located in a complex set of historical, social and political changes, that responded to the demands of a growing educated laity.10 A number of developments, including the requirement by the Lateran Council (1215) that the laity both confess and receive the Eucharist a minimum of once per year, the founding of Iacopone’s own Franciscan order (1223) and the Dominican order (1217), both of which were concerned with the task of preaching, and a marked increase in the publication of sermons, treatises, visionary accounts, confessional manuals and mystical writing in the vernacular tongues, all affected and reflected this change.11 Both scriptural mysticism and the subsequent form of vernacular mysticism are undergirded by the rhythmical structure of mystical experience and its representation in poetry. The poetic language of scripture, particularly the Song of Songs, establishes a literary strategy that arises from the natural inability of words to describe the divine object that conceptually transcends them. The 8

9 10 11

Origen, The Song of Songs. Commentary and Homilies, trand. R. P. Lawson (Westminters: Newman, 1957),p. 40; Ann W. Astell and Catherine Cavadini, “The Song of Songs,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. J. A. Lamm (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 27–40; Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 1–8, 17; E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 20–41; McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. 108–30. Denis Renevey, “Mysticism and the Vernacular,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. J. A. Lamm (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), p. 564. Linda Georgianna, “Vernacular Theologies,” English Language Notes 44.1 (2006): pp. 87–94. Barbara Newman, “Latin and the Vernaculars,” in The Cambridge Companion to ­Christian Mysticism, ed. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2012), p. 225; Renevey, “Mysticism and the Vernacular.”

188

HAMPTON

figurative language of scripture undermines the possibility of univocal description, opening the text to a process of reading and rereading, itself reflected in the rhythmic exchange between the lovers in the canticle. In this way scripture provides the model for both a hermeneutical and hence rhythmic relationship to God, and the embodiment of that hermeneutical relationship in the figurative language of poetry. Accordingly, “rhythm and poetry render language approximate and playful, capable of giving presence to absence, materiality to the immaterial, and lexicon to the non-lexical.”12 To this vernacular mysticism adds its first-person element. With it, the poetic struggle is no longer the description of God alone, but also is characterised by a struggle with the self, generating the aforementioned oscillations between spirit and flesh, ideal and real, personal and divine, and presence and absence, that constitute mystical praxis. Whilst some of these lived rhythmic dichotomies may be overcome by the mystic in the course of their spiritual journey, such as the ordering of the soul over the body, others, particularly between the absolute identity of God and the contingent identity of the self, cannot be overcome without the permanent annihilation of the self into divine oneness. Consequently, some rhythmic dichotomies must remain part of the life of the mystic, whilst all of them remain part of its poetic communication. In this manner, the experience of rhythm defines, and through poetics comes to express, the path of the mystic, both in terms of the journey to divine union, and life after it. The transient nature of divine union, which is necessary if the mystic is to avoid self-annihilation, is nevertheless distressing. This is something equally lamented by mystical predecessors Plotinus, Augustine, and Plato who stated: “Your beauty drew me to you, but soon I was dragged away from you by my own weight and in dismay I plunged again into the things of this world.”13 Following the achievement of mystical union, rhythm (ῥυθμός), derived from the ancient Greek to flow (ῥεῖν), maintains a flowing connection between creature and divinity. These rhythmic oscillations are translated into linguistic form in the measured flow of phrases, words, and syllabic stresses found in vernacular mystical poetry. Together they come to form the public communication of a private praxis through which the reader’s own receptivity and reorientation are cultivated and encouraged through a repeated, rhythmic pattern.

12 13

Hampton, “Poetics and Mysticism,” p. 246. Plato, Phaedrus, 244a-257b; Plotinus, Enneads, 6.9.10; Augustine, Confessions, VII, 17.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

2

189

Iacopone da Todi

With these general characteristics of mysticism and mystical rhythm adumbrated, it is possible to turn to Iacopone da Todi as an early representative of vernacular mystical poetry. Of the sources that came to constitute the birth of the Italian vernacular tradition, Iacopone occupies an honoured place. This Franciscan friar and mystic wrote with a spiritual intensity and emotive lyricism not before seen in the language. The personal journey of Iacopone is essential for understanding the story which he tells in his poetry. Born in 1230 as Jacopo dei Benedetti, member of a noble family, he studied law, probably at Bologna, and became a successful notaio, a kind of lawyer cum accountant; a position which he reportedly undertook with avaricious vigour.14 After the sudden death of his pious wife, and reportedly the discovery that she had worn a hair shirt in penance for her husband’s iniquitous character, he began the process of what was to be a total conversion, disposing of all his property and dedicating himself to a life of absolute poverty as a lay brother of the Franciscan order.15 As he continued his spiritual journey to becoming a mystic, he gained the reputation of a bizoccone, a holy repentant fool, and came to be known as Iacopone da Todi. He entered into the fold of the Franciscans at a tempestuous moment in the life of the order and the church, identifying with the spiritual faction of the Franciscans who maintained a resolute adherence toward Francis’ ideas of poverty. He also signed the Lunghezza Manifesto (1297) against the worldly Pope Boniface VIII, about whom he composed bitterly satirical verse. Shortly after, Dante would agree, placing Boniface in the eighth circle of his Inferno, in the company of the simoniacs, even before his death in 1303.16 For his resistance, Iacopone was excommunicated and put under house arrest, until he was finally freed upon the death of Boniface. In his final years at Todi he produced some of his best verse, describing the completion of a lifelong spiritual journey. Iacopone’s work is amongst the earliest Italian poetry, and for its model it relied upon the French tradition of Occitan poetics that preceded it by about a century. In Iacopone’s day, and in the period preceding, the Italian nobility was enamoured of French courtly literature, and the works of Chrétien de Troyes, Benoît de Saint-Maur and Marie de France, which were characterised by the central themes of the paradox, sorrow and joy of love, all of which could be 14 15 16

La Franceschina, II, 86–89. La Franceschina, II, 86–89. Dante, Inferno, 19.49–63.

190

HAMPTON

transmuted to the mystical experience.17 The direct influence and interweaving of the French courtly tradition is evinced in one of the earliest verses written in Italian, where the lover addresses his lady in Provençal, and she responds in Genovese dialect.18 Iacopone, native of the provincial centre of Todi, was not directly influenced by French literature, but the sources which sought to imitate it—in particular, the so-called Sicilian School (1230–50), named not for its place of geographical origin, but for the Hohenstaufen Court of Friedrich, the Sicilian Emperor. It was these poets, under whose achievements one can credit the invention of the sonnet, and their Tuscan imitators, that were a major influence upon Iacopone.19 However, unlike the poets of the Sicilian school he made no attempt to replicate the Gallicisms of Occitan poetry. Instead, true to his Franciscan roots, he chose to emulate the vulgar tongue, despite his own knowledge of Latin, for the sake of accessibility. In this manner he was also influenced by the cantastorie, the itinerant singers and storytellers of the Italian countryside. Their influence is reflected in Iacopone’s use of assonance, apostrophe, and the minstrel style of address that inaugurates many of his laude.20 Just as important as these formal literary influences are the popular laude of Iacopone’s day. The laude were a manifestation of the rise of vernacular spirituality and were developed and spread by the newly founded Franciscan and Dominican orders, and their mendicant and missionary activities in Tuscany and Umbria. In their form, they employed the elements of the ballad, particularly the lilting effect of rhyming each stanza back to the initial couplet distich with the resulting harmonic refrain. Their accessible, and hence popular form consequently came into favour among Marian confraternities, charismatic preachers, and the millenarian penitential practices of processions of flagellants, which were all part of the fervent religious tapestry of the developing vernacular spirituality of thirteenth century Italy.21 The laude were favoured as an effective rhetorical tool, as Francis himself had demonstrated in his Cantico delle Creature (Laudes Creaturarum, 1224). Francis had instructed his followers, 17 18 19 20 21

Ernest Hatch Wilkins, A History of Italian Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), pp. 6–12. George T. Peck, The Fool of God Jacopone da Todi (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980), p. 34. Piero Cudini, “Contributo ad uno studo di fonti siciliane nelle laude di Jacopone da Todi,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 145.452 (1968): pp. 561–72; Walter Mönch, Das Sonett: Gestalt und Geschichte (Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle, 1955), pp. 55–61. Peck, The Fool of God, pp. 42–43. Blake Wilson, “Lauda,” in Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001), https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.43313.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

191

among them Iacopone, to preach and praise as jocularatres Dei, mistrals of the Lord. In this sense the Franciscans were invited to engage with secular song in order to undertake their vocation.22 In Iacopone’s context, therefore, the laude are decidedly modern in their form, and intentionally popular in their choice. 3

The Journey of the Laude

All of these poetic elements come together to tell the story of Iacopone’s life, forming a poetic chronical through the ninety-two laude that catalogue his mystical journey. Though any strict division among the body of his laude is arbitrary, and their order is not established, it is helpful to understand this follower of Francis as progressing through a number of stages, each represented by tension that resolves itself into a harmony, and each expressed through the rhythmic structure of the laude. In Iacopone’s early penitential stages this is reflected in the tension between body and soul, and between the ideal and real of spiritual life. As he progresses it is represented by the tension between spirituality as it is personally conceived and as it is, in actuality, demanded by God. Finally, following the experience of mystical union, it is reflected in the tension between dealing with the presence and absence of God. As such the body of his work demonstrates an increasing richness and complexity of mystical insight, with mystical praxis reflected and expressed in poetic form. In the first of four laude which this examination considers, the initial stage in Iacopone’s religious journey is described as a “bataglia [battle]” between the body and the soul, as he turns from his previous life of the flesh, to one led by the spirit. Laude 7 dramatizes this struggle, which aims to give the soul, and its form of valuation, priority. The initial distich of the poem announces this theme with an Alexandrian couplet: Audite una ’ntenzone, ch’è ’nfra l’anema e ’l corpo; bataglia dura troppo fine a lo consumare!23 In these lines Iacopone names the poetic tenson which he employs to great effect both here and elsewhere in his laude. Originating with Provençal poetry, and frequently employed by the Sicilian School, the tenson is originally an interlocutory challenge between two troubadours. The challenging troubadour 22 23

Peter V. Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought (Boston: Brill, 2013), pp. 56–60. “Listen to this argument between body and soul. / A bitter exchange, until almost the very end.” 7.1–2.

192

HAMPTON

first offers two opposing statements and calls upon his adversary to choose one. The challenger then takes up the remaining position, and an exchange of around six to eight couplets occurs, each of which maintains the metre of the initial challenge.24 As such it serves to provide a rhythmic embodiment that works toward “consumare [consummation]”. Iacopone adopts this highly ordered formula but places it in a form that suits his own ends, and reflects his own vernacular setting. Additionally, he does not mimic the formal form of address, which the tenson traditionally takes. Iacopone’s choice of the word “consumare” is important to note. The word occupies the important closing place of the initial distich, which allows it to then serve as an anchor for the entire rhyme scheme of the ninety-line poem. What follows is a sequence of twenty-two quatrains of contrapuntal alexandrine verse between the body and the soul. The rhyme scheme follows the sequence ab (the opening distich), cccb (first quatrain). Hence, the final line of every quatrain, whether spoken by the body or the soul, refers back to the difficult “consumare” between the body and the soul. In this way Iacopone draws particular attention to the end of the dialogue, which is not to present a simple dualism between the evil flesh and a good soul, but to present a story which seeks out the proper union between them both. This much is made clear in the first quatrain, where the soul addresses the body with an invitation: L’anema dice al corpo: «Facciamo penetenza, ché pozzamo fugire quella grave sentenza e guadagnim la gloria, ch’è de tanta placenza;»25 Here the soul first offers a proposal, rather than attempting a hostile takeover of an adversary. However, this soon changes, as the soul encounters resistance from the body, the cause of which then reveals itself to be a lack of shared understanding. The body prefers a life of comfort and pleasure and dismisses the soul’s request.26 In the following stanza, the soul responds harshly, complaining that the body is always deaf to its salvation: 24 25 26

Claude Charles Fauriel, History of Provençal Poetry, trans. J. G. Adler (New York: Derby, 1860), p. 417. The soul says to the body: “Let us do penance together. In this way / We can escape a harsh judgment / And come to a shared joy and glory. / Isn’t that well worth a bit of suffering?” 7.3–6. 7.7–10.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

193

«Sozzo, malvascio corpo, lussurïoso ’ngordo, ad onne mea salute sempre te trovo sordo; sostene lo fragello d’esto nodoso cordo, emprend’esto descordo, cà ’n t’è ci òpo a danzare!».27 In arguing that what the erring soul perceives as discord is in fact the correct tune to which it must dance, Iacopone is indicating a lack of attunement between what the body and soul perceive as good. This is demonstrated when the soul explains that it will see to it that the senses are no longer the body’s source of pleasure, and the body sullenly replies that it will diminish the soul’s joy in retaliation.28 Through the progression of the poem, the rhythmic oscillation of the tenson works toward the attunement of the body towards the soul’s perceived idea of good and its goal of salvation. This is achieved through a series of penitential mortifications enacted by the soul upon the body to assert its headship over the body. These punishments include the wearing of a hairshirt, the forgoing of shoes and winter clothing, and the regimentation and poverty of the simple life of a friar. At each stage the body bitterly complains, but the soul responds with yet a further attempt to make the body conform to its reasoning. Only in the final quatrains does the body relent, saying that it will complain no more, with the soul responding that it looks forward to “nostra vita salvare [our shared salvation].”29 In this way the lauda, through its rhythmic tenson dialogue and rhyme scheme, moves toward and re-enforces the theme of “consumare.” This avoids a simple body-soul dualism, and instead points toward a rightly ordered marriage of the two, where the soul acts in its rightful headship, with the body following after. Lauda 43 carries forward the topic of balance introduced by lauda 7 into a further phase of Iacopone’s mystical development. With the body and soul rightly ordered, it takes up the question of finding a “mezzo virtüoso [virtuous mean]”, where virtue is defined in the Aristotelian sense of an intermediate condition between excess and deficiency.30 This lauda follows the same integrated metrical and thematic scheme that characterises lauda 7, beginning 27 28 29 30

“Filthy, evil body, lustful master of gluttony! / Is this your answer in my hour of need? / Here, feel the lashes of this knotted cord! / They may sound like jarring rhythms to you, / But you will have to master them / And learn to dance to this music!” 7.11–14. 7.21–22; 25–26. 7.86. 43.1; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106a26-b28.

194

HAMPTON

with a separate theme-establishing distich, followed by a set of quatrains that rhythmically refer back to its first two lines: O mezzo virtüoso, retenut’a bataglia, non n’è senza travaglia per lo mezzo passare!31 Here the distich ending in “passare” becomes the anchor point, constituting the ab in an abcccb rhyme scheme. In the following fifteen quatrains topics such as audacity and fear, anger and enjoyment, righteousness and forgiveness, silence and preaching, and charity and poverty, are all explored. The first quatrain deals with love and hate: L’amore che me ’n costregne d’amar le cose amante e nell’amore è ll’odio de le cose blasmante! Amare et onodiare enn un coraio stante, sòce bataglie tante, non lo porrì’ estremare.32 As the poem moves through examples such as this, constantly bringing up the question of the mean, the stanzas cumulatively have the effect of challenging the possibility of the very notion of the concept, or even exposing it as an impossible abstraction. The rhythmic refrain of lauda 43 sets the human ideal of the golden mean aside, pointing instead towards the mystic’s need to transcend the self as it moves toward divine union. Iacopone’s conclusion indicates as much by declaring the practical impossibility of the Aristotelian abstraction: demoro enfra le forfece, ciascun coltel m’affétta, abrevio mea ditta, en questo loco finare.33 Here the abrupt ending indicates Iacopone’s frustration with the limitations of human ambition as represented by the concept of the mean, the dualism it results in, and his desire to transcend both. The passing of the mean that is the

31 32 33

“Virtuous mean, unremitting self-discipline, / To find you and cling to you is no easy task.” 43.1–2. “Love compels me to love the lovable; / the hatred of evil is a part of love. / Love and hatred, that is to say, / Are locked in unending struggle / In the selfsame heart.” 43.3–6. “I am caught between the two blades of the scissors, / Each of the blades cutting into me. / Enough!” 43.61–2.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

195

object of the lauda’s rhythmic refrain designates not a destination, but a transit point in the life of the mystic. Lauda 2 represents the mindset of Iacopone as a mystic on the other side of the human ambition described in lauda 43. In this lauda he returns to the ­tenson format, employing it to probably its greatest poetic effect within all of the laude. The tenson is enacted between two friars contemplating the cross. The first, a more mature friar, is undergoing the frightening experience of transcending his personal spirituality, an action already pointed toward in lauda 43. The result of his metanoia is contrasted to his interlocutor, an incipient friar, who is in the joys of his new conversion. The poem may be more conventionally understood as a conversation between two separate persons, but it is not outside the realm of Iacopone’s psychological insight to also read it, as with lauda 7, as an internal dialogue. Either case sets up a series of contrasts that are rhythmically played out in the tenson action of the poem. The contemplation of the cross opens one’s eyes or blinds them, mutes one’s voice or calls one to preach, brings death to life or life to death, causes pain or leads to joy. In each case, spirituality as conceived by the self and under its own terms is contrasted with a greater spirituality demanded in divine union and affected on God’s own terms. As with the two previous laude, the opening distich introduces the topic and acts as a rhythmic counterpoint for the following tenson. It begins with the words of the mature friar: «Fugio la croce, cà mme devora; la sau calura non pòzzo portare!»34 In the fifteen quatrain stanzas that follow, the ballad rhyme scheme links the close of each stanza back to “portare”, to bear or carry. This word forms the question that underlies the poem, symbolised by the cross, and carried by the metaphor of its contemplation. Fundamentally, it asks whether a personally conceived religion can truly bear the cross for what it is? The clear answer to this in the life of the mystic, as Iacopone articulates, is no. Divine union, the goal of the journey, can only be achieved on God’s terms alone. If laude 2 is understood as Iacopone’s conversation with himself, then his conclusion is the realisation that love is a disruptive force where personal religion and the self face their annihilation before God. The cross carries with it a negative logic. It cannot be an object of affirmation. Rather it must be 34

“I flee the consuming cross and its fires; / Their heat drives me back and I flee from Love.” 2.1–2.

196

HAMPTON

understood as an object of utter transcendence and personal overthrow. This is the subject of the lauda’s concluding stanza: «Frate, ’l to stato è ’n sapor de gusto, ma eo ch’ho bevuto portar non pò’ el mosto; no n’aio cerchio che sia tanto tosto che la fortuna no ’l faccia alentare».35 The powerful cup of divine love from which the incipient friar has barely sipped, but the mature friar has deeply imbibed, threatens to destroy the latter. In an allusion to Matthew 9:17, that new wine cannot be put into old wineskins, the new fermenting and bubbling frizzante wine of divine love cannot be contained by the categories of a pre-determined, secure, personal spirituality. Instead, a new level of mysticism must be reached on Iacopone’s rhythmic journey, one which is capable of the excesses of divine love. Lauda 89 is one of Iacopone’s culminating poetic achievements.36 It looks back on his mystical journey and describes its highest state through some of his most finely tuned poetry. Unlike laude 7 and 43, both of which describe “bataglia [battles]”, or 2, which similarly describes a struggle with a personally contained version of spirituality, lauda 89 does not outline a rhythmic struggle within the self. Instead, at the advanced mystical stage depicted, with earlier dichotomies transcended, rhythm is here employed to describe a state of mystical blessedness, and the attempt to retain a relationship to both God and creation. In order to express this, Iacopone offers a more elaborately structured lauda in comparison to those previously considered. Over its thirty six stanzas it progresses in three broad movements, beginning with an autobiographical summary of his own spiritual journey. This culminates in a description of his experience of mystical union. This is then followed by a dialogue with Christ, and then finally concludes with a paean to divine love. In the end, the rhythmic dynamic which it describes deals with the challenge of relating to God after the experience of divine union. As in his other laude, Iacopone employs an opening distich (ab), which again acts as the rhythmic anchor for the poem, yet here it is followed by octaves, a prototype of the Italian ottava rima, whose cdcdcdbb rhyme scheme connects all thirty-six stanzas of the poem to the opening distich through their rhyming with “amore”, the lauda’s subject: 35 36

“Brother, you have barely sipped, / But I have drunk of this new wine, / And no iron bands could contain this pressure, / Which threatens to split me stave from stave.” 2.59–62. Peck, The Fool of God, p. 174.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

197

Amor de caritate, perché m’ài ssì feruto? Lo cor tutt’ho partuto, et arde per amore.37 The experience of this burning love is part of the struggle toward the completion of his conversion, already rhythmically outlined in the previous laude, where layers of self, bodily pleasure, abstract ideals, and personally conceived spirituality, are burned away in a process of approximating God’s encompassing love in divine union. In the language of the poem this love burns Iacopone down to his bare heart, and it is at this stage, and in this state, that he finally achieves a moment of mystical union with Christ: En Cristo trasformata, è quasi Cristo, cun Deo conionta tutta sta devina.38 Following these lines, Iacopone becomes lost in his moment of union, and his continued celebratory description only comes to a close when it is interrupted by Christ himself, who calls him back to reality.39 Christ explains that according to the love of charity, the burning love that is the subject of the poem, all creatures have their own “numero e mensura [number and measure].”40 Iacopone cannot remain lost in rapture, but as Christ instructs him, he must put order in his love and return to himself.41 At first Iacopone objects to this enforced absence after a life of divine longing, and the sense of the overwhelming presence of divinity which he has finally experienced. However, in following Christ’s instruction, and by employing number and measure through the vehicle of poetry, Iacopone is able to maintain his connection to both creation and Christ. The third and final movement of the poem, the paean to divine love, affects this rhythmic reconciliation.42 Here Iacopone outlines the drama of self-­transcendence, and gives voice to his mystical ecstasy. In this section he represents the boundaries of self and language, and transcends them through divine love, expressed in rhythm. In this act of transcendence, he does not offer a description of divine love, but instead takes syntax to its breaking point, using 37 38 39 40 41 42

“Why do you wound me, cruel charity,/ Bind me and tie me tight? / My heart all trembling, in fragments, / Encircled by flames,” 89.1–2. “United with Christ she [my soul] is almost Christ; / Fused with God she becomes divine.” 89.99–100. 89.156; 147–62. 89.155–60. 89.147. 89.243–90.

198

HAMPTON

words increasingly as empty signs that communicate more their own failure to articulate divine love, than they do the love itself. In the lauda “Amore” acts as a rhythmic anchor point for each of the octaves, but in this section of the poem love overwhelms every line of the octave: Amor, Amor-Iesù, so’ iont’a pporto, Amor, Amor-Iesù, tu m’ ài menato, Amor, Amor-Iesù, damme conforto, Amor, Amor-Iesù, ssì m’à’ enflammato, Amor, Amor-Iesù, pensa l’opporto, famme en te stare, Amor, sempre abbracciato, con teco trasformato en vera caritate e ’n summa veretate de trasformato amore.43 This excess of “amore” continues for forty-seven lines to the end of the poem. For Iacopone, following his experience of divine union, all individuality is overcome and transformed by love. This experience is poetically embodied by the effective desemanticization of the words that make up these stanzas. In this way Iacopone’s poetry preaches a kind of paradoxical erotic ascesis. Love overcomes all difference, as “amore” literally takes over the stanza, and what previously was divine absence is now saturated with divine love, which makes God present beyond words, in the number and measure of the lauda’s rhythm. 4

The Praxis of Poetic Mysticism

The development of the Christian mystical tradition is inseparably bound up with poetry, with its origins deeply influenced by the exegesis of scriptural poetics, and its first vernacular writers expressing themselves in poetry. However, the remarkable relationship between mystical praxis and poetical form has often been left unattended. Deciphering the intrinsic connection between personal mystical praxis and the mystical poetical form that seeks to embody and record it presents a challenge to any modern interpreter.

43

“Love, Love-Jesus, I have come to port; / Love, Love-Jesus, You have led me there. / Love, Love-Jesus, comfort me; / Love, Love-Jesus, You have set me afire. / Love, Love-Jesus, consider my needs: / Keep me always in Your embrace, / United with You in true charity, / The supreme realization of unifying love.” 89.251–58.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

199

Despite this, it is clear that there is a deep connection between the rhythmic musicality of words, and its rhythmic patterns—between spirit and flesh, ideal and real, personal and divine, presence and absence—that constitute mystical praxis. In the case of Iacopone, these stages come to structure the shape of his poetry, and tell the story of his spiritual journey forming a poetic chronical through the rhythmic structure of the laude. As such, the body of his work demonstrates an increasing richness and complexity of mystical insight, with mystical praxis reflected and expressed in poetic form. To make wide ranging claims concerning the relationship between mystical praxis and poetical form is beyond the scope of this limited examination. Nevertheless, the relationship explored here could be extrapolated more widely to other mystical poets, and other periods. These patterns make their presence widely felt, in the work of various mystics ranging from Mechthild of Magdeburg, to John of the Cross, and from Angelus Silesius to W. B. Yeats. Works Cited Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books, 1985. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard ­University Press, 1926. Astell, Ann W. The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Astell, Ann, and Catherine Cavadini. “The Song of Songs.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by J. A. Lamm, 27–40. Chichester: ­Wiley­Blackwell, 2013. Augustine. Confessions, 2 vols, translated by Carolyn J. B. Hammond. Cambridge: ­Harvard University Press, 2014. Bouyer, Louis. “Mysticism: An Essay on the History of the Word.” In Understanding Mysticism, edited by R. Woods, 42–55. Garden City: Doubleday, 1980. Brémond, Henri. Prière et poésie. Paris: Grasset, 1926. Clement. Clemens Alexandrinus zweiter Band: Stromata Buch I–VI, edited by O. Stählin. Leipzig: Akademie Verlag, 1960. Cudini, Piero. “Contributo ad uno studo di fonti siciliane nelle laude di Jacopone da Todi.” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 145.452 (1968): 561–72. Dante. La Divina Commedia. Edited by S. A. Chimenz. Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 2003. La Franceschina, testo volgare umbro del secolo XV scritto dal P. G. Oddi di Perugia, edited by Nicola Cavanna. Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1931. 2 vols.

200

HAMPTON

Fauriel, Claude Charles. History of Provençal Poetry. Translated by J. G. Adler. New York: Derby, 1860. Georgianna, Linda. “Vernacular Theologies.” English Language Notes 44.1 (2006): 87–94. Haas, Alois M. Sermo Mysticus. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg, 1979. Hampton, Alexander J. B. “Poetics and Mysticism.” In The Oxford Handbook to Mystical Theology, edited by Edward Howells and Mark McIntosh, 241–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Hederer, Edgar. Mystik und Lyrik. Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1941. Huizinga, John. Homo Ludens: Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1950. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. London-New York: Longmans, Green & Co, 1901. Lamm, Julia. “A Guide to Christian Mysticism.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by J. A. Lamm, 1–24. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Loewen, Peter V. Music in Early Franciscan Thought. Boston: Brill, 2013. Maritain, Jacques, and Raïssa Maritain. Situation de la poésie. Paris: Desclée de B ­ rouwer, 1938. Matter, E. Ann. The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval ­Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. McGinn, Bernard. Christian Mysticism: The Presence of God, 7 vols. New York: ­Crossroad, 1991–2021. McGinn, Bernard. The Foundations of Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 1991. McGinn, Bernard. Mysticism in the Reformation. New York: Crossroad, 2016. McGinn, Bernard. The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 2012. Mönch, Walter. Das Sonett: Gestalt und Geschichte. Heidelberg: F.H. Kerle, 1955. Newman, Barbara. “Latin and the Vernaculars.” In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman, 225–39. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Origen. Origen: The Song of Songs. Commentary and Homilies. Translated by R. P. ­Lawson. Westminster: Newman, 1957. Peck, George T. The Fool of God Jacopone da Todi. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980. Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. Plotinus. Enneads, 7 vols., translated by A. H. Armstrong. Cambridge: Harvard ­University Press, 1984. Renevey, Denis. “Mysticism and the Vernacular.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by J. A. Lamm, 562–76. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism. London: Methuen, 1910.

RHYTHM AND POETIC MYSTICISM IN THE LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI

201

Watkin, Edward Ingram. Poets and Mystics. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953. Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. A History of Italian Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. Wilson, Blake. “Lauda.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford ­University Press, 2001. Accessed 28 Oct. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article .43313.

Chapter 9

“Sapor de Sapïenza”: Spiritual Senses and Body of the Spirit in Iacopone’s Laude Matteo Leonardi 1

Was Iacopone a Traitor to Francesco?

Dark Iacopone and bright Francesco. Even today while paging through literary histories and anthologies it’s not unusual to slip into the presentation of Iacopone’s lauds as if they were proof of a resentful acesticism streaked with dualism, praising contemptus mundi et corporis (contempt for the world and the body), and therefore like the reversal of the creatural theology of ­Francesco—in turn understood as recognition—sic et simpliciter (simply), of the “goodness” of creation. Clearly we’re dealing with simplifications that do not account for complexity of thought, neither for Francesco of Assisi nor for Iacopone da Todi. To fuel these suggestions, however, it is Iacopone himself who does not fail (like Francesco) to harshly inveigh in his lauds against the lust of the senses bent toward earthly pleasures, invoking their punishment.1 “Sozzo, malvascio corpo,  lussurïoso e ’ngordo, ad onne mea salute  sempre te trovo sordo; sostene lo fragello  d’esto nodoso cordo, emprend’esto descordo,  cà ’n t’è ci òpo a danzare!” (7, 11–14) [Filthy, evil body, lustful master of gluttony! Is this your answer in my hour of need? Here, feel the lashes of this knotted cord! They may sound like jarring rhythms to you, 1 Citations of Iacopone da Todi throughout this chapter are from Franco Mancini, ed., Laude (Bari: Laterza, 1974).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_011

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

203

But you will have to master them And learn to dance to this music!]2 The sin of the senses appears particularly harmful to Iacopone since it exposes the soul to the assault of its enemies, summarized in the traditional triad “carne mundo lo demone” (22, 65; the world, the flesh, and the Devil).3 In the same lauds, Iacopone demonstrates that he is not able nor willing to exclude material and therefore corporeal dimension in any way from salvation in God, proposing in this the ambivalence of Francesco’s pamphlets (opuscola). Indeed, Iacopone integrates the invective to the enemy aseno da macerare4 with the celebration of the transfugured body. Likewise, Francesco does not naturally celebrate the intrinsic beauty of the body, but scolds “frater asinus” (brother ass), that is, his own “despectum corpusculum” (despicable and tiny body),5 deeming it necessary to correct and punish him6 because in its inertia it hinders assimiliation to Christ,7 according to the spirituality of Phil 1, 23: flesh is “animae inimica” (enemy of the soul) and “cito morituram” (soon destined for death).8 Nonetheless, in the beauty of created things Francesco perceives the imprint of the Great Creator9 and in the Cantico di frate Sole affirms that even mortality of the flesh is God’s glory: “Laudato si, mi signore, per sora nostra morte corporale, / da la quale nullu homo vivente pò skappare” 2 This and all subsequent English translations of Iacopone’s lauds are from Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes, trans., Iacopone da Todi: The Lauds (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). 3 See 73, 77. 4 43, 40. 5 Tommaso da Celano, Vita secunda L 82. 6 Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, Legenda maior V 6: “corpus suum fratrem asinum appellabat, tamquam laboriosis supponendum oneribus, crebris caedendum flagellis et vili pabulo sustentandum” (he used to call his body Brother Ass, for he felt it should be subjected to heavy labor, beaten frequently with whips, and fed with the poorest food). Here I cite Menestò’s edition of the fontes franciscani. See Matteo Leonardi, “‘Carne corrotta … carne bianchessima’. Censura e santificazioe del corpo nelle laude francescane tra XIII e XIV secolo,” in Il corpo impuro e le sue rappresentazioni nelle letterature medievali, a cura di Francesco Mosetti Casaretto (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2012), pp. 461–514. 7 Tommaso da Celano, Vita prima XXVII 71. 8 Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, Legenda minor CXXXII, 175. 9 “Exsultat in cunctis operibus manuum Domini, et per iucunditatis spectacula vivificam intuetur rationem et causam. Cognoscit in pulchris Pulcherrimum; cuncta sibi bona: ‘Qui nos fecit est optimus’, clamant. Per impressa rebus vestigia insequitur ubique dilectum, facit sibi de omnibus scalam, qua perveniatur ad solium” (Tommaso da Celano, Vita secunda CXXIV 165.4–6).

204

LEONARDI

(lines 27–28; Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whom no living man can escape). 2

Sensuality of the Spirit: Soteriology of the Senses

Implicit in the dogma of the resurrection of bodies, the redeemability of the senses and the “sensitivity” of bliss in God is a qualifying thesis of Christian theology, founded on the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, caro factum (made flesh), and on the paradox of the hypostatic unity of humanity and divinity in the enduring distinction of nature. Having recognized the irreducibility of human flesh to the Spirit as a distinctive feature of humanity (so as not to slip into forms of dualism or pantheistic monism), what kind of salvation does Christian soteriology therefore preach? The salvation of man or from man? The history of Christian thought from Christological controversies to the Franciscan Canticle has taught us to not underestimate the importance of prepositions. Are Earthly senses that involve man in the penultimate world, certifying membership to it,10 destined to disolve in order to be replaced by an exquisitely, metaphysical, and spiritual form of enjoyment? Is pleasure taught by the senses part of bliss by nature or transfiguration? Or is it slag to discard in order to access a totally different “pleasure?” The centuries-old debate about the lawfulness of the “auditory” enjoyment of liturgical and paraliturgical chants, including the lauds, testifies to the delicate nature of the question: this reminds us of Pope John XXII’s bull of conviction in 1324–25 against the Ars nova (or the announcement by the Camaldolese, Carthusian or Vallomborisan people, of the organ as a polyphonic instrument), the controversy of Girolamo Savonarola against “figurative songs,” the Tridentine fathers’ suspicions of singing in the vernacular, excluded from the liturgy, and towards polyphony.

10

Modern psychology has investigated the dialectic between the self and the other, mediated by the senses and governed by the logic of desire, where the fundamental vocation of each individual is measured, engaged in the definition of self in relation and in distinction from the other, suspended between the pursuit of happiness in the perceived data or “elsewhere” to it. See Giuseppina De Simone, Sentire l’uomo, gustare Dio, ed. De Simone (Cittadella, 2013); Antonio Gentili, I nostri sensi illumina. Saggio sui cinque sensi spirituali (Ancora, 2000); Antonio Montanari, I sensi spirituali. Tra corpo e Spirito, ed. Montanari (Glossa, 2012); Michel Olphe-Galliard, “Les sens spirituel dans l’histoire de la spiritualité,” in Nos sens et Dieu (Desclee de Brouwer, 1954), pp. 179–93; Pietro Pisarra, Il giardino delle delizie. Sensi e spiritualità (AVE, 2009); and Roberto Zavalloni, Le strutture umane della vita spirituale (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971).

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

205

A theologian attentive to the complexity of the human psyche—like Augustine of Hippo—doesn’t hide the anguish that would bring him the thought of enjoying God not as a man (that is, with human senses), but in completely “superhuman” forms; since the senses that cannot experience God cannot refrain from him either.11 Quid autem amo, cum te amo? Non speciem corporis nec decus temporis, non candorem lucis ecce istis amicum oculis, non dulces melodias cantilenarum omninodarum, non florum et unguentorum et aromatum suaveolentiam, non manna et mella, non membra acceptabilia carnis amplexibus; non haec amo, cum amo Deum meum. Et tamen amo quamdam lucem et quamdam vocem et quemdam odorem et quemdam cibum et quemdam amplexum, cum amo Deum meum, lucem, vocem, odorem, cibum, amplexum interioris hominis mei, ubi fulget animae meae, quod non capit locus, et ubi sonat, quod non rapit tempus, et ubi olet, quod non spargit flatus, et ubi sapit, quod non minuit edacitas, et ubi haeret, quod non divellit satietas. Hoc est quod amo, cum Deum meum amo. (Confessiones x, 6, 8) (Not with doubting, but with assured consciousness, do I love Thee, Lord. Thou hast stricken my heart with Thy word, and I loved Thee. Yea also heaven, and earth, and all that therein is, behold, on every side they bid me love Thee; nor cease to say so unto all, that they may be without excuse. But more deeply wilt Thou have mercy on whom Thou wilt have mercy, and wilt have compassion on whom Thou hast had compassion: else in deaf ears do the heaven and the earth speak Thy praises. But what do I love, when I love Thee? not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs acceptable to embracements of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, and melody, and fragrance, and meat, and embracement when I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, e­ mbracement of my inner man: where there shineth unto my soul what space cannot contain, and there soundeth what time beareth not away, and there smelleth what breathing disperseth not, and there tasteth what eating diminisheth not, 11

See also Augustine’s sermo 159.

206

LEONARDI

and there clingeth what satiety divorceth not. This is it which I love when I love my God.) But what does it mean to affirm the “perceptibility” of the Spirit? What kind of sense can see it, enjoy it, smell its fragrance and touch its “body”? Is it merely a rhetorical device, the need to describe an actual metaphysical experience to man in the grammar of domestic senses? Or is it, à la Dante, the grace granted to human senses in order to transfigure them beyond their own natural limits? Or better still, is it the paradoxical preaching of the “possibility” of God incarnate in earthly senses? Since Origen of Alexandria’s era, Eastern theology has celebrated the Contra Celsum (i, 48) the spiritual senses of internal man which are a soul precipitated into a body, capable of perceiving divine nature and developing scriptural insights; for example II Cor 2, 14: “odorem notitiae suae manifestat per nos in omni loco” (diffonde ovunque per mezzo nostro il profumo della sua conoscenza; maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place) or I John 1, 1: “quod audivimus quod vidimus oculis nostris quod perspeximus et manus nostrae temptaverunt de verbo vitae” (ciò che noi abbiamo veduto con i nostri occhi, ciò che noi abbiamo contemplato e ciò che le nostre mani hanno toccato, ossia il Verbo della vita; That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life).12 These are senses that must be refined through assiduous exercise, allowing us to perceive the consistency of the Spirit. Gregory of Nyssa believes that the operations of the soul can be placed in analogy with the bodily senses, for which God is food to “taste” and a lover to “kiss” (In Canticum canticorum, 1): mystical knowledge in particular appears to him both negative by subtraction, and positive by analogically “sensorial” experience.13 Evagrius Ponticus, Diadochos of Photiki, Pseudo-­Macarius, and Symeon the New Theologian also developed a doctrine of spiritual senses. As we have seen, in the West Augustine passionately preaches the ­impossibility—both theological and psychological—of excluding the sensorial dimension from divine fruition. In times closer to the appearance of lauds 12

13

See Origene, De Principiis i, 9 e Id., Commentarium in Canticum canticorum 1–2. See Karl Rahner, “I ‘sensi spirituali’ secondo Origene” in Teologia dall’esperienza dello Spirito (Paoline, 1978), pp. 133–63; e Umberto Occhialini, “Sensi spirituali” in Nuovo dizionario di mistica, eds. L. Borriello et. al. (Roma: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2016), pp. 1941–44. See Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique. Doctrine spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Aubier, 1953), p. 224.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

207

in the vernacular (between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) that explored God’s experiementability, referring to the exegetical comments of the Song of Songs, where a refined mysticism of unitive love is conceived: from William of Saint-Thierry with his De contemplando Deo and his De natura et dignitate amoris to Bernard of Clairvaux with his De diligendo Deo; from Aelred of Rievaulx with his De speculo caritatis to Brother Ivo’s Epistola ad Severinum de caritate, up until Richard of San Vittore’s De quattuor gradibus violentae caritatis. God experienced through love is a God who embraces, tastes, smells, hears, and contemplates: the scriptural allegories of the amplexus (hug) and osculum (kiss), in which lovers abandon themselves in the wine cellar and in lectulus noster floridus (our flower bed) of the Song of Songs enrich mystical tropology. In these pamphlets the “sensory” description of the union, philosopically defined as voluntatum consensio (agreement of wills),14 is sometimes a metaphor, by anaology with the physical senses that respond to an expresive need. Other times it exalts the full-bodied union of human integrity with God. In love the knowledge of divine mystery is sublimated (“amor ipse intellectus est” [love itself is knowledge], according to William’s noted sententia):15 affectus (love) is capable of penetrating into regions closed to ratio, as we will also read in Iacopone’s mystical lauds. When the soul surrenders to God’s transcendence, letting itself fall into the abyss of His embrace, it experiences a renewed “spritual childhood,” characterized by the experience of the Other not through meaningless words but through acute sensations, notitiae (perceptions) of the warmth of His embrace, of the mysterious music of His incomprehensible language, of His melifluous perfume and his sweetness.16 Franciscan spirituality deepens the paradox of “sensorial” knowledge of the divine by exalting the consubstantiality of the experience of God as irreducibly transcendent to man (to the point that the latter confesses and expresses its intrinsic nihilism in material poverty) and as paradoxically immanent in creation in which the Sublime was incarnated, or in the kénosis of the infinitely impoverished God in Christ. Francesco himself, writes Claudio Leonardi, makes “esperienza del Dio fatto uomo, del Cristo, in cui si sperimenta la gioia dell’unità d’amore, ma si sperimenta anche la differenza tra l’uomo e Dio, il

14 15 16

Bernardo di Chiaravalle, Sermones super Cantica canticorum, lxxi, 7. The monastic treatises de amore can be found in Francesco Zambon, Trattati d’amore cristiani del xii secolo, ed. Zambon (Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla-Mondadori, 2008). Guglielmo di Saint-Thierry, Epistula ad fratres de monte Dei § 173, 282; see Jean-Marie Déchanet, “‘Amor ipse intellectus est’. La doctrine de l’amour intellection chez Guillaume de Saint -Thierry,” Revue du Moyen Age latin no. 2, (1946): pp. 241–60. On the sweetness of the spiritual senses, I refer to Joseph Ziegler’s classic work.

208

LEONARDI

nulla appunto di Dio che l’uomo è.”17 In the formation of history the incarnation of the God-Being18 summarizes lógos and trópos, restoring divinity in man, as Maximus the Confessor already suggested (Epistolae 12–13; Ambigua, 31). In other words, the Franciscan tradition recognizes the abyss that separates human misery from divine perfection with greater awareness, and therefore the miracle and the stultitia (nonsense) of their contextuality in Christ, only possibile with the ablatio (removal) of each proprium (characteristic), that is, climbing on the same cross: “il mondo e la storia sono il nulla di Dio. Nulla e tutto, povertà e gioia, uomo e Dio sono contestuali,”19 in the vera laetitia (full joy) celebrated by the Song of Songs. This is what Franciscan Iacopone insists upon in his ecstatic lauds. From this perspective, the possibility of perceiving the body of God in Christ in which the Sublime made itself “possibile” in the sense of his creatures acquires a particular importance. It’s not surprising that Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, one of the finest theologians of the first Franciscan century (in Itinerarium mentis in Deum, 4, 3) dwells on the senses that allow us to enjoy the Spirit,20 specifying that sight and hearing are proprietary to his intellectual fruition; taste, touch, and smell of adhesion to God of the voluntas (will). The ecstatic confessions of Iacopone must be included in the bed of Franciscan mysticism that, while striving to verbalize the ineffable experience of dispossession, suffers and protests the paradox of fully experiencing the transcendent Spirit, the non-Viduto amato (Laude, 21, 10), with the senses of hearing without hearing and speaking en quïetaio (Laude, 82, 52 and 66). Iacopone’s spirit inhabits the region, ambiguous and fruitful, of the unresolved contradiction, of the contextuality of aut-aut and et-et in the dialectic between man and God, incessantly correcting every thesis in its antithesis.

17 18 19 20

Claudio Leonardi, “Introduzione,” in Il Cristo, vol. 5, Testi teologici e spirituali da Riccardo di San Vittore a Caterina da Siena, ed. C. Leonardi (Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo-­­VallaMondadori, 1992), p. xvii. Possibile as God-Trinity; Leonardi, “Introduzione,” p. xvi. Leonardi, “Introduzione,” p. xviii. In the Breviloquium (5, 6–5, 259) Bonaventure dwells on the spiritual sense as mental perceptions of the truth to be contemplated. See in this regard Fabio Massimo Teboldi, in La dottrina dei cinque sensi spirituali in San Bonaventura (Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum, 1999); and Rahner, “La dottrina.” Bonaventure’s works in Latin, different from the Franciscan legendae, can be read in Bonaventure, Opera omnia.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

209

3 “Voglia ’n non-voglia sente” (51, 54; He Feels Desire in the NonDesire): Perceiving and Affecting Passivity in God Sometimes Iacopone seems to wish for pacification in the stillness of God: “Anegat’hone Entelletto enn un quieto” (90, 96; Intellect drowns / In this silence of frozen waters”); “O glorïoso stare en nihil quïetato, / lo ’­ntelletto pusato e l’affetto dormire!” (51, 61–62; O glorious state, in the quiet ­center of the void, / The intellect and the emotions at rest!). However, Iacopone’s “­quietism” ante litteram is powerfully contradicted21 by the friar’s inability to find rest in the stagnation of a condition of fixed and stable enjoyment of God. The p ­ sychological-spiritual cagetgory in which the apotheosis of the self is ­consummated is for this reason incompleteness; the heroism of the will22 that experiences with amazement that loving without consummation, surpassing itself incessantly, is the only possibility of being the One who is impossible to be. On the other hand, Iacopone’s spirit is very much alive: too much to be able to say “dead” in God. Paradoxically, the need to “feel” the presence of God prevents the conciliation of the soul in God,23 as the lauds on dereliction or mystical barrenness certify:24 a requirement that presupposes the persistence of a sentient humanity that he can enjoy, in the grammar of his own affections, an Other. There would be no mystical lauds if there were no feeling, contemplation, protest, and celebration of one’s own transcendence, or a human conscious that remains, like a drop of wine lost in the sea or a red-hot iron in the fire (according to the metaphors of Bernard of Clairvaux and Richard of St. Victor), in order to live elsewhere-in-itself. 21

In the same lauds where he appropriates theological theses circulating among the proponents of the Free Spirit (for example 89 e 92), he forces these statements into the incompatible framework of Bernardian-Victorian mysticism, perhaps denouncing the immaturity of his theological formation. See Leonardi, ad locum. 22 In his lauds, Iacopone proclaims the necessity of “null’avere / e nulla cosa poi volere” (36, 120; having nothing / wanting nothing), and then repeats the verb verbo voglio (I want) dozens of times. 23 The senses mourn the absence of the Beloved (52, 27–34): “O occhi mei, e como finate / de plagnere tanto ch’el lume perdate? / Perduta avite la gran redetate / de resguardare al polito splandore. // O recchie mee, e que vo deletta / de odire planti de amara festa? / Non resentet’ a la voce diletta, / che vo facìa cantar ‹’n› iubilore?” (O my eyes, continue to weep / For you have good reason! / You have lost a great inheritance, / The contemplation of pure splendor. // O my ears, why do you find solace / In the weeping of a grieving fellowship? / Do you no longer hear the voice of the Beloved / Who made you rejoice and break into song?) 24 See iv, 36–38.

210

LEONARDI

For these reasons, the alphabet of the senses is a particularly important code for Iacopone, the constitutive foundation of his tropology of ecstasy. Mind and heart do not know how to renounce the “taste” of God: Lo ’Ntelletto sì è menato a lo gusto del sapore, l’Affetto trita co li denti et egnotte con fervore. (1, 133–136) (Intellect savors the taste, Attention chews and Swallows the food with gusto.) Even the obstinate speech with which the mystic, echoing Richard’s evangelical “ex abundantia enim cordis os loquitur” (in fact, the mouth speaks for overabundance of the heart)25 and the “urget caritas de caritate loqui” (love demands that we talk about love),26 confesses the folly of wanting to tell the ineffable leads back to the need to preserve a human form of ecstasy in the transcendent, which should logically lead to silence: Parlar de tale Amor faccio follia, dïota me cognosco en teologia; l’Amor me conestregne en so pazzia e fame bannire. Prorompe l’abundanza en voler dire, modo non ce li trovo a pprofirire; la Veretà m’empone lo tacere, ch’e’ no ’l so fare. L’abundanza non se pò occultare, loco se cce forma el iubilare, prorompe en canto che è sibilare, che vidde Elya. (25, 41–52)

25 26

Mt 12, 34. Richard of Saint Victor, De quattuor gradibus violentae caritatis, p. 1.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

211

[It is folly for me, ignorant of theology, To speak of this highest Love, But Love in its wildness Forces me to shout out its praises With so much to say, I know not how; And though I know it would be better For me to remain mute, I cannot hold my peace How can this overflowing love be suppressed? The jubilation will out, As Elias once learned, In prophetic song.] Human language, forced to the challenge of “dilating” infinitely in order to become capax Dei (capable of containing God), is shipwrecked in the rendering of glossolalia, an escialenguata word, transfiguring itself into the remains of itself, an icon of unsolveable tension, or of the desire, of becoming Word:27 ‘O lengua scottïante, como si stata usante de farte tanto ennante, parlar de tal estato? Or pensa que n’ài detto de l’Amor benedetto; onne lengua è ’n defetto, che de lui à parlato. S’è lengua angeloro, che sta en quel gran coro, parlanno de tal sciòro, parlara escialenguato. Ergo, co’ non vergogni 27

The cry that is limited to the geminatio (repetition) of “Amore, amore, amore!” certifies the renouncement of semantic proprium (capacity) to plastically transfigure into the icon of one’s own dispossession, sublimating itself into pure desire, or affectus (love), of the unattainable Word. See Matteo Leonardi, “La retorica del silenzio nelle Laude di Iacopone da Todi.” Revue des Études Italiennes 48, no. 3–4 (2002) and “Nec sine te, nec tecum: la sofferta dialettica tra le laude iacoponiche e la tradizione lirica profana,” in “Fugo la croce che me devura”.Studi critici sulla vita e sull’opera di Iacopone da Todi, eds. M. Bassetti-E. Menestò (Spoleto: Cisam, 2020), pp. 100–2.

212

LEONARDI

nel tuo laudar lo ’mpogni? Nel suo laudar non iogni, ’nanti l’ài blastimato’. Non te ’n pòzzo obbedire c’Amor deia tacere; l’Amor voglio bannire fin che mo ‹’n› m’esce el fiato. Non n’è condicïone che vada per rasone, che passi la stasone c’amor non sia clamato. Clama lengua e core: Amore, Amore, Amore! Chi tace el to dolzore lo cor li sia crepato. E credo che crepasse lo cor che te assaiasse; s’Amore non clamasse, crepàrase affocato. (39, 115–146) [“O proud tong, how have you dared To speak of holy Love? Human speech cannot rise to such heights. “In speaking of this Loce The tonges of angels falter— And you feel no misgivings and shame? “You reduce Love To the measure of your words; This is not praise, but blasphemy.” I cannot obey your command to be silent; As long as I have breath in me I will sing of Love’s glory. It is not right That time should pass Without my singing the praises of Love. My heart and tongue call out, “Love, Love, Love!” Should a man taste of Your sweetness And say nothing, may his heart burst!

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

213

If his heart does not shout The praises of Love He will surely suffocate and die!] 4 “S’e’ esco per lo viso, ciò ch’e’ veio è ’n amore” (41, 6 If I Come out through Sight I See Love): Apotheosis of the Transfigured Senses In forms similar to other ascetic-mystical itineraria (journies) of the monastic, Franciscan tradition, even in the Jacoponic lauds we recognize the stages of a redemptive and therefore inclusive path of sensuality in divine perfection. Of course, the exercise of senses in lust of the flesh is immediately and vehemently condemned as sin against the very goodness of creation, perverted by the logic of abuse. In the vehemence of the battle against corrupt senses, the tone sometimes seems to evoke a dualistic spirituality, which confines the flesh in ripa diaboli (to the power of the devil). In laud 34, the senses are stigmatized as the “doors” through which the Temptor insinuates himself into the soul to wreak havoc:28 O frate, guarda ’l Viso,  se vòi ben reguarire, cà mortal’ ferite a l’anema  spesse fiate fa venire. Del diavolo a l’anema  lo Viso è roffïano, ‹’n› quanto pò, se studia  de mettarlil’ en mano; se ode fatto vano,  reportalo a la corte; la Carne sta a le porte,  per le novelle odire. (…) La Carne dice: “Eo ardo,  no lo pòzzo portare; satisfan’me esta volta,  ch’e’ me pòzza pusare! Vògliolte poi iurare  de starte poi soietta, sirò sì casta e netta  che te sirà en placere». (…) Vedite li periculi,  c’ò breve ’ncomenzate, che ’n nasco l’omecidia,  guastanse le casate! 28

The twentieth laud is entirely built on the warning to “beware” of the senses, “doors” through which the devil enters to wound the soul: “Guarda el viso dal viduto, / cà ’l coraio n’è feruto, / c’a gran briga n’è guaruto, / guarda!” (lines 7–10; Shield your eyes from what you see: / It can wound the heart, / And healing is slow and painful, / take care!).

214

LEONARDI

Guardatevo a l’entrate,  che non intr’esto foco; se se cci anida loco,  no ’l ne pòi scarporire. (34, 1–6; 19–22; 55–58) [If you would once more be made whole, Brother, Do not trust the sense of sight; If often wounds the soul mortally. Sight is the Devil’s pimp, a master of the art. On spying your sins, it denounces you Before his court, anxious to hand you over. Outside the court, Flesh waits impatiently, Straining to hear what is being discussed. “But I am burning with desire,” Flesh retorts, “I can no longer endure it. Let me satisfy myself just once, And then I will submit to your rule, Be as pure and chaste as you want me to be.” See how great sins grow from little ones, And end in murder and the downfall of families. Be alert, keep the fire away from the city gates! Once it burns within the walls You’ll not be able to put it out.] Sin is not in the touch of the senses; it is in the complacency and perversion of the mind which lets itself be ensnared by the prospect of an enjoyment as an end in itself promised by the enticement of the senses, according to the evangelical morality of Matt 5, 28 “omnis qui viderit mulierem ad concupiscendum eam iam moechatus est eam in corde suo” (But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart): O femene, guardate  a le mortal’ ferute! Ne le vostre vedute  el basalisco mustrate. (…) Co’ non pensate, femene,  col vostro portamento quante aneme a esto seculo  mannate a perdemento? Solo col disiderio,  senz’altro toccamento (pur che li èi en talento)  l’aneme macellate. (45, 1–2; 11–14)

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

215

[Women, you know how to inflict a mortal wound! There is poison in your sidelong glances. (…) Do you know, women, that you destroy souls? And with nothing more than burning desire? You steal from Christ, wound him mortally; Handmaids of the Devil, You wait solicitously upon your master, And your knowing ways assure him a plentiful harvest.] In particular, Jacoponic arrows point toward the condescension of the body to minor and easy pleasures, which come at the cost of losing great and eternal bliss: “Malvascio corpo e rio, / or que avem guadagnato!” (31, 75–76; O evil and vicious body, / What have we won for ourselves now?).29 In this perspective, the exhortation not to trust the sensible world, “O mondo emmondo, / che de onne ben m’ài mondo!” (57, 167–168; Filthy world, you have stripped me of all), and the warning agasint the vanity of the pleasures pursued by physical senses30 are justified, to the point of invoking its punishment: “O Signor, per cortesia, / manname la malsanìa!” (81, 1–2; Send me illness, O Lord, / I beg of You, out of courtesy!). Senses must be ordered according to the primacy of spiritual goods. The natural propensity for the emjoyment of penulitmate things must be punished, which instead must be “used” and not “enjoyed,” as Augustine already exhorted (De doctrina christiana, I, 4–5) elaborating scriptural ideas (Rm 1, 25) and as Iacopone recalls, for example, in the first laud (v. 12). The senses, however, offer strenuous resistance to punishment: Lamentase el tatto  e dice: ‘Eo so uso d’aver reposo  en me’ delettare; or lo m’ài tolto,  sirò rampognoso e corroccioso  en mea vivitate’. Se alento lo freno  al corpo taupino, so’ preso a l’oncino  de la tristanza. (33, 51–56)

29 See 62, 13–20. 30 See 51, 31–38.

216

LEONARDI

[The sense of touch complains it has a right to certain satisfactions: “All your life I’ll nag you!” But what choice have I? If I release the brake that keeps my miserable body in check, The anguish of remorse overwhelms and crushes me.] Therefore, the pugna spiritualis becomes tight, as the seventh laud allegorizes: the senses refuse the “medicine”31 that the spirit tries to administer to them, but in the end they are “restrained” and “imprisoned” (77, 171–180). Once the senses have yielded to the spirit’s reasoning, it’s clear that discipline’s harshness was not aimed at suppressing the senses32 as the Temptor suggested: “Falsadore, eo notrico lo meo corpo, no l’occido” (66, 35; Hypocrite, I’ll nourish my body, not kill it!) but to orient them toward the spirit of the true Good:33 “accordati simo enseme che vivamo en povertate” (66, 47; And we’ve agreed to live in poverty). In other words, the body becomes enslaved to reason: Lo corpo s’à redutto a suo servito, li sensi regulati ad obidito, l’eccessi sottoposti so’ al ponito et a rasone. (25, 69–72) [It has subjugated the body, Ordered the senses, Made them servants obediant to reason, And justly punished their excesses.] The re-educated senses find new citizenship in the space of life ordainted towards God, as “vassals” of the soul in turn servant of the righteous Lord, in whom it is possible to find fulfillment of the infinite thirst for joy (44, 25–43). Therefore, the senses are once again included in the horizon of salvation, even if in an ancillary function at this point of the itinerary: that is, illuminated and

31 32 33

56, 51. In laud 16 Love, without Discretion, forces the flesh to yield with its vehemence. The Jacoponic emphasis that, among the five senses, that of hearing is the most redeemable as it mediates the proclamation of the Word, according to the Pauline motto fides ex auditu (faith depends on listening) is noteworthy (Rm 10, 17), cfr. 11, 47; 15, 1–2; 25, 16; 28, 7–8; 32, 60; 77, 91–94. Tinnitus, or the direct revelation of the Spirit in itself to the physical senses, is instead not narrated in Iacopone’s lauds. When God speaks to the mystic’s spirit, it is always through an interior locution, perceived in the depths of one’s mind.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

217

redeemed by a good that is not its own. In this perspective, the properly ascetic path of the book of lauds is consummated. However, when purified man pushes himself to the threshold of mystical union with God, the purgative moment is transcended by experiencing the necessity of the annihilation of every proprium (characteristic), which again calls into question the possible inclusion of the sensorial dimension tout court within the perfection of the Sublime. When from the aesceticism of one’s own perfection in order of God, that is, when one passes to the mystical experience of unio (union) with God who reveals himself in his full transcendence, the mystic touches firsthand the incommensurability of any creatural dimension to the Almighty. The language of senses is suddenly reduced to silence (“Drent’à lo cor firito, / non se sente de fore” [9, 31–32; There is meaning all unknown to sensible people / In the joyous gyrations of the wounded heart]), in the face of one’s evident “inability” to give form to Spirit, which has suddenly become “imperceptible” to the five senses.34 Only the apophatic alphabet of the negation of the forms of earthly being appears possibile in the Divine Being: Sappi parlar e or so’ fatto muto; vedìa e mo so’ ceco deventato. Sì granne abisso non fo mai veduto, tacendo parlo, fugio e so’ legato; (89, 139–148) [Once I spoke, now I am mute; I could see once, now I am blind. Oh, the depths of the abyss in which, Though silent, I speak; fleeing, I am bound;] The mystic experiences the “binding of powers” and lies in paralysis of his human faculties of action—understanding and narration—absorbed in a Light of “infigurable” imperfection as it is irremediably other than human imperfection: Non pòzzo plu fugire né cacciare; ché m’à fulto lo mare; sì so’ coverto, no ’l pòzzo parlare! Parlanno taccio, grido forte mente. 34

On the inability of the human senses to record the experience of God, see Gv 20, 24–29 e 2Cor 5, 16.

218

LEONARDI

Saccio là ’v’è velato (ch’eo no Lo veia, sempre sta presente en onne creatura trasformato). Da l’essere a lo none ho fatta l’unïone e, per affetto, lo ’si’ e ’l ’no’ mozzare. Mozzato da lui tutto, e nulla perde e nulla pò volere; (…) O entenebrata luce ch’en me luce, que è ch’eo en te non veio? Per lo peccato, ch’e‹n› cecità enduce (90, 9–20; 61–63) [I am no longer able to flee or to pursue; Caught in the swell of the sea I drown, and my words drown with me! My speech is silence and shout. I know where He is hidden, for though I see Him not I recognize the signs of His presence In every creature that is one with Him. Being and nonbeing I have fused together, And out of love banished my will with its “yes” and “no.” Once cut off from all things, Nothing is lost and nothing is sought; (…) O dark light shining within me, What is it that I do not see in you? Sin blinds me to what I ought to see] Laud 92, which takes on the language of the mysticism of being, insists with particular emphasis on the irreducibility of Divine Light to any analogy with earthly things, which can be experienced by the senses:35 Enfigurabel luce, chi te pò figurare, 35

Light is darkness, according to Bonaventure, since when the eye sees “puram lucem, videtur sibi nihil videre “(pure light, it has the impression of not seeing anything) (Itinerarium mentis in Deum, v, 4–5, 213), cfr. Commentaria in IV libros sententiarum, i disp. 36, a. 3, q. 1, concl. I, 672.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

che volisti abitare ’n obscura tenebria? (…) Luce li pare obscura, qual prima resplandìa; que vertute credia, retrova gran defetto; ià non pò dar fegura como emprima solìa, quanno parlar sapìa, cercar per entelletto; en quello Ben perfetto non c’è tal simiglianza qual pens’e à’ per certanza, e no n’è’ ‹’n› possessore. (…) Se ‹te› vai figurando imagen’ de vedere e per sapor sapere que è lo esmesurato, cridi poter, cercando, enfinito potere, sì com’è, possedere, multo parm’engannato; non n’è que ài pensato, que cridìi per certanza; ià non n’è simiglianza de lLui senza fallore. (92, 17–20; 113–124; 137–148) [Light beyond metaphor, Why did You deign to come into this darkness? The light of the intellect, Which had seemed dazzling, Now seems dark and feeble; What it thought was strength It now recognizes as weakness. No longer can the intellect describe divinity As it once did when it could speak; For perfect Good no meaphor is adequate. […]

219

220

LEONARDI

Oh, the futility of seeking to coney With images and feelings That which surpasses all measure! The futility of seeking To make infinite power ours! Thought cannot come to certainty of belief And there is no likeness of God That is not flawed.] Love calls the mystic excessus sui (outside of himself) and abandonment in the One whose senses cannot give notitia, “nel non-Viduto amato” (21, 10; in the beloved Unseen).36 This is what the perfect mystic tries to explain in the second laud to the student who is enthusiastic to “taste” God. The embrace with that God is an experiene that makes every human structure of thought or word “explode” because it was believed it could contain it: “Frate, ’l to stato  è ’n sapor de gusto, ma eo c’ho bevuto  portar non pò’ el mosto; no n’aio cerchio  che sia tanto tosto che la fortura  no ’l faccia alentare.” (21, 59–63) [“Brother, you have barely sipped, But I have drunk of this new wine, And no iron bands could contain this pressure, Which threatens to split me stave from stave.”] Jacoponian mysticism could therefore dry up in the condition of annihilation in God, and of silence, as the only possibility of experiencing the Untestable. Yet we have already seen that Iacopone neither knows nor wants to renounce, in Augustian terms, a perceptible experience of the Spirit. In fact, the mystic’s soul remains active without ever abandoning itself to full inanition, not even in the lauds 89, 90 e 9237 where the annulment is stranded on the threshold of

36 37

See Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaëmeron, xxi, 33. Iacopone, in the embrace of Love with God, does not celebrate the fusional identification that cancels distinctions, as he also certifies the subordination of the man “led” to a law. See laud 96.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

221

the quasi38 (“En Cristo trasformata, è quasi Cristo,” [89, 99; United with Christ she is almost Christ]), and he notes with amazement the impossible need to get ahead of himself. He stubbornly perseveres in describing the impossibility of describing the Sublime; he continues to preach and act his own passivity in God with passionate enthusiasm. Iacopone “wants” to “not want” (51, 54: “voglia ’n non-voglia sente”) and “sees” to “not see:” “O alma nobelissima,  dinne que cose vide.” “Veio un tal non-veio,  c’onne cosa me ride (la lengua m’è mozzata  e lo pensier m’abscide), miraculosa sède,  veio, enel suo adornato.” (21, 23–26) [“Tell me, O most noble soul, what you see.” “I see something unseen, and sense a smile; (I cannot say more, nor do I understand.) I see in all its splendor a place of wonder.”] And in laud 92 in which he solemnly proclaimed the irreducibility of God to the categories of human senses and knowledge, Iacopone ends up affirming that in unio the soul positively “tastes” bland, “contemplates” the blindness of its own void, the formless form of God “without shape”:39 “que non conubbe vede / (…) / gusta senza sapore / (…) / mirare e contemplare, / questo reman en atto / (…) / veder senza fegura / la summa Veretate / con la nichilitate / de nostro pover core” (lines 74; 76; 91–92; 481–484; sees what it did not know / […] / Savors that which has no taste / […] / To gaze upon and contemplate / That is the work of unceasing exchange / […] / Without images, the deepest and highest Truth / Through the annihilation of our poor hearts). Therefore the senses have not ceased to be solicited in the experience of limitless love and have sublimated themselves into senses capable of perceiving what transcends the natural perception of being (as in Dante’s Comedy), when they were called to understand the “non-being” of oneself in God and of God in oneself. It’s the starting point for a reflection on the space of being and value of human senses, nihility and “not-of-God,” in God himself. No longer as inferior and ancillary natures (or evocative in a metaphorical sense) but as an 38 39

Enrica Salvaneschi, “Gita a Cariddi: ordine o disordine?” in L’immagine riflessa 7.1 (1998): p. 3. On the view of the invisible, see Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaëmeron, xxi, 32 e v, 435.

222

LEONARDI

expression of the imperfection of man, who, although irremediably “other” to God’s perfection can be—indeed must be—included by transfiguration. In fact, human faculties can live the condition of their emptying, they can also be where they are not, as the mystic proclaims in laud 86: “Vive amore senz’affetto / et saper senza entelletto” (lines 111–112; Love no longer needs the heart, / Nor knowledge the intelligence). It’s the experience of their rebirth, as we read in laud 48:40 “Poi che l’omo è annichilato, / nascei occhio da vedere” (lines 89–90; The soul is infused with God’s will, its own annihilated. / Then man acquires eyes with which to see). For Iacopone, the indictment does not, in fact, constitute the annulment of man (and his faculties) nor his replacement by God; rather, he resorts to figures of paradox to preach the contextuality of the absence and presence of the human being in his own absence in God-Being: Vivar eo e‹n› non eo e l’esser meo e‹n› non esser meo! Questo è ’n un tal travieo che non ne so difinitate. (36, 115–118) [To live as myself and yet not I, My being no longer my being, This is a paradox We cannot pretend to understand!] But how is the persistence of human imperfection possible in divine ­perfection? Although Iacopone does not constitute an articulated and explicit ­mystical theology, neither does he ignore the theological implications evoked by his ecstatic confessions, and from time to time makes some theses explicit, demonstrating his awareness of the matter. To be in one’s own absence, or to be what one is not, seems possible to Iacopone when it is one’s own form and not one’s own matter that is annihilated, to transfigure oneself into the form of the Other, as Iacopone makes explicit, evoking Bernard’s De diligendo Deo in laud 51: Signore, àime mustrata,  ne la tua claritate, la mea nichilitate  ch’è menor ca neiente; 40

After death for and in Love, the soul returns to live, as is also stated in laud lxix: “ch’eo gusti morendo la Vita!” (v. 34; That as I die, I may taste Life!). In laud lxxxii Iacopone dwells on the wonder of a “positive in the negative” perception of God-Love, once accepted, embracing him, to make himself love in turn (lines 48–87).

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

223

de quest’esguardo nasc’  esforzata umiltate, legata de viltate,  voglia ’n non-voglia sente. Umilïata mente  non n’è per vil vilare; ma, en vertuoso amare,  vilar per nobelire. Non pòzzo essar renato,  s’e’ en me‹ne› non so’ morto, annichilato en tutto,  en l’esser conservare; de nihil glorïoso  null’om ne gusta el frutto, e Deo no i fa el condutto,  cà om non ci à que fare. (51, 51–60) [In your light, O Lord, I have seen my nothingness, My less than nothingness. The vision compels humility, A sense of my worthlessness, A consciousness that my will has become Yours. The humble man does not abase himself to be the lowest of the low, But so as to be ennobled by virtuous love. I cannot be reborn unless I first die to myself. No man can taste the fruit of this glorious nihil If not led by the hand of God; of himself he can do nothing.] “Alioquin quomodo omnia in omnibus erit Deus, si in homine de homine quidquam supererit?” (Otherwise, how will God be all in all, if in man anything remains of man?), Bernard asks himself: “Manebit quidem substantia, sed in alia forma, alia gloria aliaque potentia” (the substance of man will certainly remain, but in another form, in another glory, in another power).41 The ­nothing-of-himself that man accepts being, for Iacopone, is necessary in order to be the image of the Other, an “informed” nihility: “Questa sì summa altezza / en nichil è fundata, / nichilità enformata, / messa en lo suo Signore” (92, 337–340; The base of this hightest of peaks / Is founded on nichil, / Shaped nothingness, made one with the Lord). Since only love can give those who love the shape of another, or rather, the one they love, the grace to transform themselves into the meaning of the Other is called love:42 “L’Amor è ’n quest’offizio, / unir dui ’nn una forma” (40, 133–134; This is the misson of love, to make two one). And the man who is annulled and transfigured in the form of God is therefore sublimated in Love:

41 42

Bernardo di Chiaravalle, De diligendo Deo, X, 27. See 39, 91–94: “Amore, che dài forma /ad omnia c’à forma, / la forma tua reforma / l’omo ch’è desformato.” In laud 66, lines 33–44, we read that kénosis in love appears to be the only way to be able to “incarnate” in the other, as God taught in Christ.

224

LEONARDI

Tutti li atti vecchi e novi enn un nichil so’ fundati; so’ formati senza forma, non n’ò termen né quantetate; uniti co la Veretate, coronato sta l’Affetto, quïetato lo ’Ntelletto ne l’Amore trasformato. (82, 68–75) [Now the faculties of the soul, both old and new, Rest firmly on nichil, formed without form, With no limits set to time or space, fused with Truth. Affection reigns, the intellect is at rest, one with Love.] In laud 90 this condition coincides with the return to the condition of prelapsarian Adam: “Formati senza forma, / mozze tutte le faccie per amore, / però che so’ tornati en prima norma” (lines 131–133; Formed without form, the features of all faces / … acquire once more / The traits of an original innocence). But in order for man to mean God, he must actively affirm that he is not himself but Other; that is, that he perennially loves who he is not.43 Thus the poet translates the thesis expressed in laud 36 into the language of nuptial mysticism, with the language of the mysticism of being as the condition of “vivar eo e‹n› non eo.” In this perspective, the figure of the human condition remains irresolution,44 since man is called to sublimate himself in love for those who will always remain Other to him:45 ché, quanto plu el sapere va crescenno, tanto plu trova en Deo la esmesuranza (lo ’ntennemento vàsen devencenno, 43 44

45

In order to make love you need a lover, distant from the Beloved, who, in rushing toward the latter and making himself the form of the Other, is transfigured into Love: nichilità enformata appears in the lauds as the only possibility of indignation. On the other hand, the key to the human condition is the need to relentlessly aspire to an ever-unstable perfection, to be relentlessly regained 43, 1–2 (“O mezzo virtüoso, retenut’a bataglia, / non n’è senza travaglia per lo mezzo passare!” Virtuous mean, unremitting self-discipline, / To find you and cling to you is no easy task). Additionally, remember the very subtle battle with which the Enemy tests the soul in laud 56. “Lo enfinito amare / finito en demustrare! / La mustra termenare / ’nn Amor esster��menato!” (79, 37–40; That infinite Love / Should reveal Itself / To finite creatures, / Limit and define the limitless!).

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

225

anegalo êl profundo per usanza). L’ordene serafico apparenno, en lo ’nfocato viver per amanza, questo defetto vàsence adimplenno, abraccianno el Signor per desidranza; e cusì sempremai lo va tenendo (e ’n ciò la caritate à consumanza) (77, 211–220) [For the more his knowledge increases, The more he experiences the limitlessness of God— The understanding is annihilated, Drowned in the depths. But with the appearance of the order of Seraphim, Succumbing to the fire of love, he gradually comes to life again, Acquires new strength, and in the plenitude of love Embraces the Lord forever, in the consummation of charity.] Love, as Iacopone would have read in the monastic ­treatises of ­Cistercian and Victorian love, is a desire that cannot be extinguished because it exists as long as there is an Other to covet: “Amore, Amore, tanto si prefondo, / chi plu ­t’abraccia, sempre plu t’abrama!” (86, 261–262; Love, Love, so ­inexhaustible are You / that he who clasps You close desires You all the more!). But by ­transfiguring ­himself into love that is always unresolved to the Other, man s­ urprisingly d­ iscovers that he has conquered prescisely the indentation because of the identity of the One who he cannot be is precisely the ­identity of Love.46 In other words, the mystic suddenly finds himself conformed to the ­circumincession of the ­perennial dispossession in the Other which is the intrinsic nature of the Uni-Triune God. From this perpsective, human senses are the subject of a singular and ­extraordinary re-evaluation: their nature as receptors of the physical and non-spiritual dimension, initially a reason for condemnation, becomes an instrument of grace, of perception of the Spirit in physical reality when the

46

It is the tension that is the Unattainable: “A tte più che me tutta, / Amor, s’eo dar potesse, / non n’è ch’eo no ’l facesse, / ma plu non n’ho que dìa; / lo mondo e ciò che frutta / (se tutto ’l posedesse) / e plu se ancora avesse, / darì‹n›te, vita mia!” (86, 389–396; More than myself I would give You if I could-- / The world and all its fruits, were they mine-- /But that is beyond my power. / What I have I will give You with all my heart) that promotes transfiguration into infinite yearning): “e volere infinito / (ché non è’ termenato)” lines 404–405.

226

LEONARDI

latter is felt as a binding force towards God, or rather, as Love.47 The same author who wrote of the arrows against the five senses as instruments of temptation now becomes, surprisingly, the singer of God’s happy siege of man through those same five senses in laud 41, where creation is redeemed by the kénosis of the Almighty in Christ on the Cross, where the absence of God and his fullness have become contextual, the incarnation of the Trinity as Love in the creatural horizon:48 O Amor, devino Amore,  perché m’ài assidiato? Pare de me empazzato,  non pòi de me posare. De cinqui parte veio  che tu m’ài assidiato: audito, viso, gusto,  tatto et odorato. S’e’ esco so’ pigliato,  non me tte pò’ occultare. S’e’ esco per lo viso,  ciò ch’e’ veio è ’n amore; ’n onne forma è’ adepento  et en onne colore; representime allore  ch’eo ce deia abergare. S’e’ esco per la porta  per posarm’enn audire, lo sòno e que significa?  Representa te, Scire. Per essa non po’ ’scire,  ciò ch’e’ odo è ’n amare. S’e’ esco per lo gusto,  onne sapor te clama: ‘Amor, devino Amore,  Amor pieno de brama, Amor priso m’ai all’ama  per voler en me rennare’. S’e’ esco per la porta  che sse clama odorato, en onne creatura  ce te trovo formato; retorno volnerato,  prìndim’êll’odorare. S’e’ esco per la porta  che sse clama lo tatto, en onne creatura  ce te trovo detratto; Amor, e cco’ eo so’ matto  de voler te mucciare?

47 48

The void in love with God is also celebrated by Francis in the Cantico. See Leonardi, “‘Benedicite apocalypsim’.” The grace of the Christological paradox is the way of access to the mystery of the Trinity. See 65, 63–84.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

Amore, eo vo fugenno  de non darte el meo core, veio ch’en me trasforme  e fàime essare Amore, sì ch’eo non so’ allore  e non me pò’ artrovare. S’eo veio ad omo male  o defetto o tentato, trasformem’entro en lui  e fàice el me’ cor penato. Amor esmesurato,  e cui ài priso ad amare? Prindim’e‹n› Cristo morto,  trâme de mare ad lito; loco me fai penare,  vedenno el cor firito; e perché l’ài soffrito?  Per volerme sanare. [O Love, divine Love, why do you lay seige to me? In a frenzy of love for me, You find no rest. From five sides You move against me, Hearing, sight, taste, touch, and scent. To come out is to be caught; I cannot hide from You. If I come out through sight I see Love Painted in every form and color, Inviting me to come to You, to dwell in You. If I leave through the door of hearing, What I hear points only. to You, Lord; I cannot escape Love through this gate. If I come out through taste, every flavor proclaims: “Love, divine Love, hungering Love! You have caught me on Your hook, for You want to reign in me.” If I leave through the door of scent I sense You in all creation; You have caught me And wounded me through that fragrance. If I come out through the sense of touch I find Your lineaments in every creature; To try to flee from You is madness. Love, I flee from You, afraid to give You my heart: I see that You make me one with You, I cease to be me and can no longer find myself. If I see evil in a man or defect or temptation, You fuse me with him, and make me suffer; O Love witout limits, who is it You love? It is You, O Crucified Christ, Who take possession of me, Drawing me out of the sea to the shore;

227

228

LEONARDI

There I suffer to see Your wounded heart. Why did You endure the pain? So that I might be healed.] The senses can savor the glory of God not only indirectly in the processes of being that originate in Him, as Thomas Aquinas49 teaches, but also directly in the fragility of creatures, which, while they remain of a distinct and corruptible nature (and therefore a source of perdition), take on divine form by transfiguring themselves into yearning for the Different, or into Love: “‘Amore, Amore’ grida tutto ’l mondo, / ‘Amore, Amore’ onne cosa clama” (89, 259–260; ‘Love, Love,’ the world cries out, / ‘Love, Love,’ shouts all of creation).50 And man becomes a brother to it, assuming the spirit of Francesco’s Song of Songs, in the expression of that same love (39, 139–140).51 5 “Lo Sapor de Sapïenza” (83, 12; The Taste of Wisdom): the Body of Christ, the Sensitive Host of the Spirit The redemption of the senses, therefore, is also the grace of Christ,52 who redeemed the physical body when he conferred onto God a possible and feeling body, allowing the affected senses to to graze it: “Quann’isso te sogìa, / l’amor con’ te facìa, / la smesuranza sia / essar da te lattata?” (32, 103–106; When you gave Him suck, how could you bear such excess of joy?).53 In Christ, Love became flesh (“umanato Amor” 89, 214)54 and in the flesh, from that day, man was able to grasp the nostalgia for Love:

49

See 89, 67–72 and Edison Higuera Aguirre, “Laudato si’: la metafísica de la significación en el ‘Cantico di Frate Sole’,” Revista Puce, no. 104 (2017). 50 It’s the mystical theme of the subtlety of the Spirit. 51 See 89, 244: “altro che amore non pòzzo gridare” (Your name only can I invoke). It is precisely the renunciation of possessing things in themselves that allows their possession in the Other, or in the Deus omnia: “Poi ’l meo volere a Deo è dato, / possessor eo d’onn’estato; / en loro amor eo trasformato, / ennamorata cortesia” (47, 51–54; Since I gave my will to God / All things are mine and I am one with them / In love, in ardent charity). In other words, adnihilatio (annihilation) becomes dilatatio (expansion) when the excessus extra se (exit outside oneself) leads to being indicted in God onne-cosa. 52 See 66, 43–44. On the salvation of man “through” man thanks to the incarnation, refer to III, 57–58.262. And on the full assumption of human physicality 48, 45 e 73, 47–48. 53 See 70, 135. 54 See 71, 43–46.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

229

ch’en carne me ss’è dato; terròlon’me abracciato, ch’è fatto meo fratello. O dulce garzoncello, en cor t’ho conciputo et en braccia tenuto, però sì grido: ‘Amore!’ (86,443–448) [who now appears in the flesh, And embrace Him, He who is now my brother. O sweet child, I have conceived You in my heart And held You in my armts, crying out “O Love!”] According to a different metaphor, the supersensitive Word has becaome an audible melody:55 Sopr’el ’fa’ acuto  me pare en paruto tal canto se pona 5 e nel ’fa’ grave  descenda suave, ché el Verbo resòna. Cotal desciso  non fo ancor viso sì ben concordato. (…) Canto d’amore  ce trova a tuttore a chi ce sa entrare; 35 con Deo se conforma  e ‹’m›prende la norma de ben Lo disiare; co’ serafino  deventa divino, d’amore enflammato. (69, 3–8; 33–38) [I hear it begin with a piercing tone, Whence it slowly descends several octaves, For it celebrates the coming of the Word. Never was heard A descending scale of such exquisite melody! […] 55

And visible in 27, 42–44.

230

LEONARDI

Here they hear unceasing songs of love; That love conforms itself to God, And finding in Him the law of its being, Seraphim-like, darts flames.] The miracle of the Eucharistic56 transubstantiation daily renews the mystery of the contextuality of materiality perceivable by the senses and their transcendent Spirit in the grace of Christ, but only when the senses—enlightened by faith—know how to grasp the visible form of the invisible God, as Iacopone specifies in laud 78 in the wake of Francesco’s first admonitio (admonition): Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo,  la luce del dì medïante, a me representa denante  cosa corporeata. Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo  veio ’l divin sacramento; lo preite ’l me mustra a l’altare,  pane sì è en suo [vedemento; la luce ch’è de la fede  altro me fa mustramento a l’occhi mei c’aio drento,  en mente razïonata. Li quatro sensi sì dicono:  “Questo sì è vero pane!». (Solo l’audito résistelo,  ciascheun de lor for remane). So’ queste vesebele forme  Cristo ocultato ce [stane; cusì a l’alme se dàne,  en questa mesterïata. Como porìa esser questo?  Vorrìmlo veder per [rasone’. L’alta potenzia devina  summettarite a rasone? Piaqueli celo creare  e nulla ne fo questione; vui que farite entenzone  enn esta so breve operata? A lo ’nvesebel è’ ceco,  venim cun baston de [credenza; a lo devin sacramento  vènce con ferma fidenza; Cristo, ch’è loco ocultato,  dàte la sua benvoglienza; e qui sì se fa parentezza  de la sua grazia data. La corte o’ se fo queste nozze  sì è questa eclesia [santa; tu veni a llei obedente  et ella de fede t’amanta; po’ t’apresent’al Signore,  isso per sponsa te planta; loco se fa nova canta,  ché l’alma per fede è sponsata. 56

See 3, 329–336 and 22, 29–44.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

231

E qui sì se forma un amore  de lo envesebele Dio; l’alma no ’l vede, ma sente  che li desplace onne rio; miracol se vede enfenito,  l’onferno se fa celestìo; prorump’enn amor fernosìo,  plagnenno la vita passata. [With the eyes in my head by the light of noon I see corporeal things. With the eyes in my head I see the Blessed Sacrament As the priest on the altar raises it high. In appearance it is bread; to the inner eye, The eye of faith, that bread is something more. Four of the senses concur: this is bread as we know it. The sense of hearing alone dissents— Christ is hidden under this visibile form; Thus, in this mystery, does He give Himself to the soul. “How can this be? I want reason to account for the change.” Should Divine Power be subject to reason? It pleased God to create the heavens, and no one questions how; Why then should this transformation provoke such endless debate? The blind man leans on the cane of faith; He comes to the Blessed Sacrament sustained by firm faith. Hidden within, the Lord bestows His blessings And the grace He gives us weds us to Him forever. Holy Mother Church is in the hall for the wedding. Enter by the door of obedience and be mantled with faith, And she will then set you before the Lord as His bride. Sing a new song for the bride now wedded in faith! Here is born the love of the invisible God; the soul feels, Though it cannot see God, that all evil is hateful to Him. A wondrous change—Hell is transformed into Heaven! Weeping over its sinful past, the soul is overcome with love.] The first lauda’s battle between the soul and the body offers a significant ­synthesis of Iacopone’s Eucharistic mysticism, which includes the s­ensorial sphere in the experience of the Spirit. Affection inclined to the sensory ­enjoyment of fleeting pleasures is punished by Justice, which submits it to Reason; at that point Affection can taste grace gratis data (lines 29–30; granted freely), which directs him to God. The Intellect rejoices in the i­ ndirect and creatural contemplation of the Spirit, but Affection claims the reasons for a more ­integral and direct enjoyment, accompanied in protest by Feeling: “L’Affetto

232

LEONARDI

non se cci acorda, / ché vòl altro ca vedere!” (lines 69–70; Affection, which takes little delight in seeing). Affection wants to perceive, and more precisely “feed” on divine infinity. The synthesis of needs is offered by the feast of a nova mensa, which recalls the Eucharistic feast, where the transcendence of God is immanent, since God—remaining as Spirit only—can be “touched:” La Bontate n’à cordoglio de l’Affetto tribulato; poneli una nova mensa, ché à tanto deiunato. Lo ’Ntelletto ammirato, l’Affetto entr’a la tenuta; la lor lite si è fenuta, per questo ponto passare. Lo ’Ntelletto sì è menato a lo gusto del sapore, l’Affetto trita co li denti et egnotte con fervore; (1 125–135) [Goodness, taking pity on troubled Affection, Suffering from his long fast, has a table spread before him. Intellect marvels at this, and Affection sits down to eat. The argument is over. Intellect savors the taste, Affection chews and swallows the food with gusto.] Unlike what Bonaventure suggests, the senses of taste and touch, as well as those of sight and hearing, therefore contribute to understanding the mystery of God. Senses participate in the enjoyment of God, of the paradoxical God that is felt in His absence, or in materiality, when this void is binding to Being, or love for the Other in the likeness of the Trinity. It’s the region where the mystic can affirm: “In Te, non più essendo, Io Sono.”57 In Iacopone’s lauds, the incessant dialectic between contempt and ­exaltation of the senses finds synthesis in this mystical creatural theology: Iacopone despises and celebrates his sensitive and sentient body, since it is and at the same time is not God’s house. He is not so in himself, miserable and 57

Bruno Forte, Il silenzio di Tommaso (Segrete: Piemme, 2002), 52.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

233

fragile and other than God, and he is so in that he “speaks” of God, sings and clama his glory, devorato by the fire of his desire when his senses are consumed and transfigured into affectus (love) in order to gustare et videre quoniam suavis est Dominus (Ps 33, 9; taste and see how sweet the Lord is). Since the body is longing, or Love, ad imaginem Dei (in the image of God): and looking for God stirred by love, Aelred of Rievalux had said (De speculo caritatis, I, i, 3), already means having found him. Works Cited Aelred of Rievaulx. De speculo caritatis. Bernard of Clairvaux. De diligendo Deo. Bernard of Clairvaux. Sermones super Cantica canticorum. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Breviloquium. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Collationes in Hexaëmeron. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Commentaria in IV libros sententiarum. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Doctoris seraphici s. Bonaventurae s.r.e. episcopi cardinalis Opera omnia..., edita studio et cura pp. Collegii a s. Bonaventura ad plurimos codice mss. emendata anecdotis aucta prolegomenis scholiis notisque illustrata. Quaracchi, 1882-. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Itinerarium mentis in Deum. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Legenda maior. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Legenda minor. Commission on the Franciscan Intellectual-Spiritual Tradition (CFIT), https://www .franciscantradition.org/early-sources Daniélou, Jean. Platonisme et théologie mystique. Doctrine spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse. Paris: Aubier, 1953. Déchanet, Jean-Marie. “‘Amor ipse intellectus est’. La doctrine de l’amour intellection chez Guillaume de Saint -Thierry.” Revue du Moyen Age latin no. 2 (1946): 241–60. De Simone, Giuseppina. Sentire l’uomo, gustare Dio. Edited by G. De Simone. Cittadella, 2013. Forte, Bruno. Il silenzio di Tommaso. Segrate: Piemme, 2002. Gentili, Antonio. I nostri sensi illumina. Saggio sui cinque sensi spirituali. Milano: Ancora, 2000. William of Sainth-Thierry, Epistula ad fratres de monte Dei. Higuera Aguirre, Edison. “Laudato si’: la metafísica de la significación en el ‘Cantico di Frate Sole’.” Revista Puce, no. 104 (2017): 585–610. Hughes, Serge, and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. Iacopone da Todi: The Lauds. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.

234

LEONARDI

Leonardi, Claudio. “Introduzione.” In Il Cristo, vol. 5, Testi teologici e spirituali da Riccardo di San Vittore a Caterina da Siena, ed. C. Leonardi, ix–xxiii. Fondazione LorenzoValla-Mondadori, 1992. Leonardi, Matteo. Iacopone da Todi, Laude, a cura di M. Leonardi. Firenze: Olschki, 2010. Leonardi, Matteo. “Benedicite apocalypsim: varietà e unità nel Cantico di frate Sole.” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura religiosa 57:1 (2021): 49-82. Leonardi, Matteo. “‘Carne corrotta... carne bianchissema’. Censura e santificazione del corpo nelle laude francescane tra xiii e xiv secolo.” In Il corpo impuro e le sue rappresentazioni nelle letterature medievali, ed. Francesco Mosetti Casaretto, 461–514. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2012. Leonardi, Matteo. “La retorica del silenzio nelle Laude di Iacopone da Todi.” Revue des Études Italiennes 48.3–4 (2002): 321–36. Leonardi Matteo. “Nec sine te, nec tecum: la sofferta dialettica tra le laude iacoponiche e la tradizione lirica profana.” In “Fugo la croce che me devura”. Studi critici sulla vita e sull’opera di Iacopone da Todi, eds. Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 89–102. Spoleto: Cisam, 2020. Mancini, Franco ed. Iacopone da Todi, Laude, a cura d F. Mancini. Bari: Laterza, 1974. Menestò, Enrico. Fontes franciscani. Edited by Enrico Menestò et al. Assisi: Porziuncola, 1995. Montanari, Antonio. I sensi spirituali. Tra corpo e Spirito. Ed. A. Montanari. Milano: Glossa, 2012. Occhialini, Umberto. “Sensi spirituali.” In Nuovo dizionario di mistica, eds. L. Borriello et al., 1941–44. Roma: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2016. Olphe-Galliard, Michel. “Les sens spirituel dans l’histoire de la spiritualité.” In Nos sens et Dieu, 179–93. Bilbao: Desclee de Brouwer, 1954. Origen, Commentarium in Canticum canticorum. Origen, De Principiis. Pisarra, Pietro. Il giardino delle delizie. Sensi e spiritualità. Roma: AVE, 2009. Rahner, Karl. “I ‘sensi spirituali’ secondo Origene.” In Teologia dall’esperienza dello Spirito, 133–63. Roma: Paoline, 1978. Rahner, Karl. “La dottrina dei ‘sensi spirituali’ nel medioevo. Il contributo di Bonaventura.” In Teologia dall’esperienza dello Spirito, 165–208. Roma: Paoline, 1978. Richard of San Vittore, De quattuor gradibus violentae caritatis. Salvaneschi, Enrica. “Gita a Cariddi: ordine o disordine?” L’immagine riflessa 7.1 (1998), 1–38. Thomas of Celano, Vita prima. Thomas of Celano, Vita secunda. Teboldi, Fabio Massimo. La dottrina dei cinque sensi spirituali in San Bonaventura. Roma: Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum, 1999.

SPIRITUAL SENSES AND BODY OF THE SPIRIT IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

235

Zambon, Francesco. Trattati d’amore cristiani del xii secolo. Edited by Francesco Zambon. Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla-Mondadori, 2008. Zavalloni, Roberto. Le strutture umane della vita spirituale. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971. Ziegler, Joseph. Dulcedo Dei. Ein Beitrag zur Theologie der griechischen und lateinischen Bibel. München: Aschendorff, 1937.

Chapter 10

The Marian Laude of Iacopone da Todi: Tradition and Renewal Brian K. Reynolds Iacopone’s Marian compositions, “O Regina cortese,” “Vergen plu ca femina,” and “Donna de Paradiso,”1 which form only a small fraction of his ninety plus laude, even if we include the dubia,2 have enjoyed a fame, almost since the time of their writing, well beyond what might be expected of a relatively obscure thirteenth-century Franciscan poet and mystic, writing not in Latin, nor in the Tuscan that Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch were to make famous, but in the obscure dialect of Umbria. Some might argue that his enduring fame is due to his being among the earliest vernacular Marian compositions on the Italian peninsula, while others might perhaps suggest that the ­long-held attribution of the Latin Stabat Mater – inspiration for multiple composers – to him, has given him an outsized reputation.3 But this would be to fail to recognise the extraordinary appeal of his Marian poems, which even in his own time influenced the composers of the laudesi companies,4 and which are still studied in Italian schools to this day. These are warm, personal compositions, whose apparent simplicity belies the underlying sophistication of a well-­educated man. Unlike the more formulaic and impersonal style of so many Marian prayers and poems, composed on the whole within the collective context of a monastery or confraternity, his laude bear witness to an intensely personal relationship with the Virgin that is both convincing and compelling. Their 1 I also include analysis of “L’omo fu creato virtuoso,” since it contains an important section on Mary’s freedom from sin. 2 On the possibility that several of the laude in the Laudario di Urbino are his, or are part of his “school” see Rosanna Bettarini, Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate (Florence: Sansoni, 1969), and Bettarini, “Ancora su Jacopone,” Studi di filologia italiana 32 (1974): pp. 391–434. Based purely on Mariological criteria, there is room for considerable doubt on these claims. 3 On the question of the authorship of the Stabat Mater see Enrico Menestò, Le prose latine attribuite a Jacopone da Todi (Bologna: Pàtron, 1979); and Giuseppe Cremascoli, “Lo ‘Stabat Mater’,” in Iacopone da Todi: Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico nazionale (Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000) (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001), pp. 323–36. 4 For a recent and extraordinarily comprehensive study of the laude see Matteo Leonardi, ­Storia della Lauda (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_012

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

237

appeal is immediate and direct, his intimate portrayal of the loving relationship between Christ and his Mother, perfectly expressing the affective piety that characterised post-millennial Marian devotion. In this essay, my principal intention is to place Iacopone’s Marian laude within the context of the centuries-long devotional and theological tradition to which he was heir, highlighting in particular how he aligns with the religious currents of his time,5 typified by a heightened emphasis on the Virgin’s humanity and her intimate bond with her Son (partly, though by no means exclusively a Franciscan trait), as well as in a preoccupation with unworthiness and repentance, characteristic of the disciplinati and spiritual Franciscanism, but again not exclusively so.6 I shall also consider how he diverges from the norm, perhaps most obviously in his sparing and often allusive deployment of the large storehouse of Marian typological imagery (burning bush, stella maris, sealed fountain, Jesse tree, rose, and many more) that characterizes, and not infrequently burdens so many Marian texts, both in the Greek and Latin traditions, as well as a number of vernacular compositions.7 In like manner, although he does adopt some of the language of fin’amor poetry, this is 5 Giorgio Petrocchi notes the multiple spiritual currents that were familiar to Iacopone in “La letteratura religiosa” in Storia della letteratura italiana: le Origini e il Duecento, eds. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno (Milan: Garzanti, 1965), 1:670. 6 On Iacopone’s Franciscanism, see, amongst others, Stefano Brufani, “Fonti e motivi francescani nelle ‘laude’ di Iacopone da Todi,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di Studio (Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006), ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2008), pp. 253–74; Franca Ageno, “Motivi francescani nelle laudi di Iacopone da Todi,” Lettere italiane 12.2 (1960): pp. 180–84; and Antonio Montefusco, Iacopone nell’Umbria del Due-Trecento. Un’alternativa francescana (Roma: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2006). On the history of the Franciscan Spirituals, see David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), and on their poetic corpus, see Alessandro Vettori, Poets of Divine Love: Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004). For the disciplinati, see Ignazio Baldelli, “La Lauda e i Disciplinati,” in Il Movimento dei disciplinati nel settimo centenario dal suo inizio (Perugia, 1620), ed. Lodovico Scaramucci (Spoleto: Panetto and Petrelli, 1962), pp. 338–67. 7 Typical of the transference of typological imagery from Latin into vernacular is the “Rayna potentissima,” where one finds types such as ladder, flower, fortress, fountain, lamp, and so on. Rare instances do occur in Iacopone, such as the virgin earth topos in “L’omo fo creato virtuoso” (129–36; 169–76), the Eve-Mary parallel (“L’omo fo creato virtuoso” 137–44), and Mary as the closed gate of Ezekiel (Ez 44:1–3) in “O Vergen plu ca femena” (85–88), but they never dominate the text. For some good examples of the extensive use of typological imagery in Latin Marian hymns see Joseph Mone, Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, vol. 2 of Marienlieder (Aalen: Scientia, 1964), for instance, the thirteenth-century De s. Maria conductus (71), the twelfth-century De conceptione s. Mariae Virginis, (8–13) or the Prosa de beata Virginis, sometimes attributed to Adam of St. Victor (309–311). On Marian typology, see Brian

238

REYNOLDS

no clumsy rejection of the courtly lady in favour of the Lady of heaven but a delicate deployment of courtly tropes that does not burden the text.8 Striking too is how Iacopone, unlike the laudesi, for instance, manages to address theological issues of considerable heft concerning the Virgin, perhaps most notably the Immaculate Conception, with a remarkable lightness of touch that in no way detracts from the immediate emotional appeal of his compositions. I shall spend less time on ground that has already been well-trodden by earlier scholars, such as metrical analysis, philological scrutiny and comparison with the many compositions of the laudesi and disciplinati, unless directly relevant.9 1

Marian Theology, Devotion and Affective Piety

From a literary, theological and devotional perspective, Iacopone’s Marian compositions must be understood within the context of the great flowering of Marian devotion in Latin Christianity after the turn of the first millennium, which reached its height roughly between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, paralleling and even superseding the earlier Patristic cult that had developed, particularly in the Eastern Churches, over the course of the first millennium.10 8

9

10

K. Reynolds, “Marian Typological and Symbolic Imagery in Patristic Mariology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mary, ed. Chris Maunder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 78–92. For a more detailed treatment of the relationship between the courtly lady and the Virgin, see Brian K. Reynolds, “The Virgin and the Lady: Some Considerations on the Intersections between Courtly and Marian Literature,” Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 7.2 (2014): pp. 229–77 and for the use of courtly terminology in the laude see his “L’immagine di Maria nelle laude del XIII secolo,” Fu Jen Studies: Literature & Linguistics 43 (2010): pp. 69–93. On the Virgin in Iacopone see Concetto Del Popolo, “Maria nelle Laude di Iacopone” in Iacopone poeta: Atti del Convegno di studi (Stroncone – Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005), ed. Franco Suitner (Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 2007), pp. 67–92; Italo Bertelli, Impeto mistico e rappresentazione realistica nella poesia di Jacopone: Appunti sulla lauda “Donna de Paradiso,” (Milan: Bignami, 1981); Giuseppe Cremascoli, “Lo ‘Stabat Mater’,” in Iacopone da Todi,” in Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000) (­Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001), pp. 323–36; and Franco Mancini, “­Tradizione e innovazione in ‘Donna de’ Paradiso’,” in Atti del Convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi (Todi, 29–30 novembre 1980), ed. Enrico Menestò (Firenze: La Nuova Italia 1981), pp. 155–76. See also Mario Martelli, “Cielo e terra in una Lauda di Jacopone da Todi,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 141.434 (January 1964): pp. 161–85; and George T. Peck, The Fool of God: Jacopone da Todi (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980), pp. 141–44. For the broad lineaments of the Medieval cult of the Virgin see Vito Sabilio, “Su alcuni aspetti della mariologia medieval,” Marianum 66.165–66 (2004): pp. 623–58; and Brian K. Reynolds, chap. 5 in Gateway to Heaven (New York: New City Press, 2012). Specifically

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

239

In many respects, the post-millennial Latin cult of the Virgin is in ­continuity with the rich tradition of the Patristic era, but it is also marked by considerable innovation, whether in the doctrinal area concerning matters such as the bodily assumption of Mary, her role as Mediatrix and Co-­Redemptrix, and her Immaculate Conception. While Iacopone engages directly with the latter, coming down on the side of maculists, as we shall see, he entirely ignores the question of the bodily assumption,11 just as he does not focus on the risen Christ12 and only indirectly addresses Mary’s role in the economy of salvation. Instead, he engages far more with the matter of Mary’s virginity. Stylistically, he falls somewhere between the high Mariology of the theologians and sermonists, and the range of popular vernacular texts – mainly hymns and miracle tales, often associated with the rise of the mendicant orders. As to devotion to the Virgin, Iacopone’s Marian laude are an excellent example of a broad post-millennial paradigm shift in Latin Christianity in which Mary was transformed from the rather hieratic Theotokos to the gentle Mater misericordiae, just as Christ came to be seen less as the divine Pantocrator as his humanity came into greater focus. This more emotional expression of devotion to Jesus and his Mother, a phenomenon that has come to be termed “affective piety,” is clearly evident in the warm devotion that typifies Iacopone’s poetic output on Mary,13 where the emphasis is on Christ’s abasement, first in becoming human and then in allowing himself to be humiliated on the Cross in obedience to the Father. Likewise, Mary is the humble maiden who gave birth to Jesus in poverty and shared in a uniquely maternal way in his suffering on the Cross. Just as the object of devotion became more reachable, so too did the mode of relating to Jesus and Mary change, as emotion began to take over from a more reserved formality. This is true not only of Franciscanism but of other post-millennial spiritual currents, most notably the Anselmian-­Benedictine

11 12 13

on the thirteenth century, see Emanuele Boaga, “Culto e pietà mariana nel secolo XIII,” Theotokos 19, (2011): pp. 49–86. Treated in a number of the laudesi compositions, for instance, Garzo’s Ave donna santissima, and the Urbino De recommendatione ad virginem in assumption sua, in Rosanna Bettarini, Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinante, vi [27], 574–75. Quotations are from Anna Maria Guarnieri, ed., Laudario di Cortona (Spoleto: Centro ­italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1991), pp. 9–28. On affective piety, see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1200–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 234–35; Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), especially pp. 58–59; and Rachel Fulton, From Judgement to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), particularly chapters 2 and 3.

240

REYNOLDS

and the Bernardian-Cistercian, whose influence is evident in Iacopone’s ­Marian laude alongside that of his own order. Francis of Assisi was both an expression and agent of this new focus on the humanity of Christ and his Mother.14 His two Marian compositions, “Sancta Maria virgo” and the “Salutatio Beatae Mariae Virginis” have some distinctive features, particularly in his focus on her relationship with the Trinity and his stress on Mary and the Church, especially her virginal motherhood (which may partially explain Iacopone’s focus on her virginity). Although “Sancta Maria virgo,” which is part of his “Officium Passionis Domini,” does not explicitly mention her presence at the Cross, both the selection of texts from the Psalms for the Office, and the position of a Marian prayer at its heart identify her with the Passion. Theologically, what is most significant is how Francis identifies Mary with each Person of the Trinity, as daughter, mother and bride, just as Iacopone will do: “Daughter and servant / of the most high and supreme King and of the Father in heaven, / Mother of our most holy Lord Jesus Christ, / Spouse of the Holy Spirit” (filia et ancilla / altissimi summi Regis Patris caelestis, / mater sanctissimi Domini nostri Jesu Christi, / sponsa Spiritus Sancti). The intimate bond between the Church and Mary is even more clear in the “Salutatio Beatae Mariae Virginis,” where she is “Ecclesia facta” (made Church), which is to say fully become Church, and therefore, in a certain sense, the ­living mystical body of Christ. How Iacopone’s Marian laude reflect both tradition and the innovations of post-millennial Christianity will become more apparent through a close analysis of the texts. 2

“O Regina cortese”

“O Regina cortese” (O Courteous Queen) picks up on a number of courtly tropes, playing them cleverly against Mary’s role as heavenly queen and intercessor.15 The title of the lauda is already loaded with significance. While “­cortese” is a 14

15

Text and translation are taken from Francis of Assisi, “Office of the Passion,” and “Salutation,” in Early Documents, eds. Regis Armstrong, Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 1:141–157, 63. For the most recent treatment in English of these texts see Michael W. Blastic, “The Virgin Mary in the Writings of Francis and Clare of Assisi,” in Medieval Franciscan Approaches to the Virgin Mary: Mater Misercordiae, Sanctissima et Dolorosa, eds. Steven J. McMichael and Katherine Wrisley Shelby (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2019), pp. 13–31. Italian text, Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. Franco Mancini (Bari: Laterza, 1990), pp. 46–47. Though I have consulted the translation by Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes, the translations are mine since I deemed theirs too far from the original for an effective ­analysis.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

241

pre-eminently Medieval term, closely associated with the fin’amor lady from the emergence in Occitan France of so-called “courtly love” in the twelfth ­century,16 the title of Queen is altogether more complex in its origins. Iacopone is far from alone or unique in associating the two terms, as will be seen from a quick glance through any number of Marian texts, whether Latin hymns, or vernacular texts such as the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio, Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame, or the numerous collections of laude, beginning with the Laudario di Cortona (1.1: “Ave regina gloriosa,” [Hail glorious queen]; 7.28: “raïna incoronata” [crowned queen] in “Da ciel venne messo novella;” “regina sovrana” [sovereign queen] [1.1] in the eponymous lauda where she is also called “alta raina” [high queen] 6.23)17 as well as individual compositions such as the thirteenth-century Bolognese “Rayna potenitissima” (Most Powerful Queen), where she is also addressed as “Donçella cotexissima” (most courteous Lady).18 There is a common misconception among many that it is only in the Medieval West that Mary comes to be identified closely with queenship. While it is undoubtedly true that feudal and courtly notions of queenship played an important role in forging the Virgin’s image as we know it today, the reality is that already in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke she is implicitly identified as a Queen Mother, in the tradition of the Hebrew Matriarchs, and there were solid theological reasons for the title, long before the Middle Ages.19 The introduction of the Feast of the Assumption into the Western liturgical calendar added further impetus, with Alcuin († 804), for instance, calling Mary “Queen of Salvation,” “Queen of Heaven,” who always interceding for us with the King.20 Following the initial address to the “courteous Queen” Iacopone moves directly into what is the central notion of this lauda, the Virgin’s ability to cure the wounded heart of her devotee, again fusing the fin’amor notion that the Lady has it within her power to heal the poet-lover from his love wound, if only she would return his affection, with the idea that Mary, as Mother of Mercy,

16 17 18 19 20

Jacopone da Todi, The Lauds, trans. Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: ­Paulist Press, 1982). Their translation of “O Regina cortese,” p. 69. The term is used in many of the laude, for instance, “Venite a laudare” and Garzo’s “Ave donna santissima” 9.35, in Guarnieri, Laudario di Cortona, pp. 4 and 17. Guarnieri; Laudario di Cortona; pp. 37, 43, 58, and 60. Text, Giorgio Varanini, Laude dugentesche (Padua: Antenore, 1972), pp. 23–27. See Edward Sri, Queen Mother: Biblical Theology of Mary’s Queenship (Steubenville. OH: Emmaus, 2005); and Gabriel M. Roschini, “Royauté de Marie,” in Maria: Études sur la Sainte Vierge, ed. Hubert du Manoir (Paris: Beachesne, 1949), 1:601–18. Alcuin calls Mary “Queen of Salvation (PL 101, 771A), Queen of Heaven (PL 101, 757C), and speaks of her always interceding for us with the King (PL 101, 749B).

242

REYNOLDS

was a medicament or even an apothecary,21 who could cure the wounds of sin.22 Several of the non-Iacoponian laude speak of Mary’s ability to restore health. In the Laudario di Cortona we find her as the “great medicine that heals” (“Venite a laudare” 2.10: grande medicina ke sana). The late thirteenth-century “­Lauda-Orazione,” whose composition Varanini places somewhere in the Po valley, calls Mary the “medicine of the world” (8: medicina del mondo) and asks her to grant health to those who are praying to her.23 It is possible that behind the sentiments of this lauda is the influence of the disciplinati, the movement of flagellants that first emerged in Perugia in the mid-thirteenth century, typified by the Cortona lauda, “Madonna santa Maria.”24 If the Madonna does not take mercy on him, Iacopone will be “consumed” just as the unrequited fire of love consumes the heart of the courtly poets.25 O courteous Queen, I have come to you, for my wounded heart, you must heal (medecare)! I have come to you as a desperate man; having lost any other help, only yours is left to me; if it were denied to me, it would consume me. My heart is so wounded, my Lady, I cannot describe how much; and to such a state is it reduced that it is beginning to putrefy; you must not delay in deciding to help me.

21 22

23 24 25

Pseudo-Albert the Great (Richard of Saint-Laurent † c. 1250) actually dedicates a whole section of his De laudibus Beatae Mariae Virginis libri XII (10.16) to Mary apotheca. The notion that Mary as healer grew in part out of the idea of Christus medicus, which is already present in the Gospels, and was further developed by Patristic writers such as Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome and above all Augustine, who was principally responsible for transmitting it to the Middle Ages and beyond. A further element was that, as the cult of the Virgin grew, so did the belief that even the most putrid and pustulent of sinners could rely on the Virgin’s mercy in seeking to overcome God’s harsh justice. See the Urbino “De planctu virginis,” xi [19], Bettarini, pp. 48–56 for an excellent example of how sinners turned to Mary because Jesus was held in fear. Varanini, Laude, p. 29. Guarnieri, Laudario di Cortona, pp. 28–33. On Iacopone’s use of courtly love motifs for Mary and Christ, see Evelyn Underhill and Theodore Beck, Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic, 1228–1306: A Spiritual Biography (­London, Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1919), pp. 212–14. For Mary as doctor, see Peck, The Fool of God, pp. 82–83.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

243

Lady, the pain that I am suffering is putting me in danger, evil has got me in its power, my very being is in pain; have compassion on me, pray heal me! (1–11) The fundamental difference, of course, between this “donna” and the courtly lady is that there can be no fear of rejection. Though fear of death and damnation are almost ever-present in Iacopone’s poems, and he even contemplates the possibility that Christ will not forgive him (Lauda XXI, 54–65), he can be confident that Mary will intervene on his behalf to mitigate the harsh justice of God (on this, see below, the comments on “L’omo fu creato virtuoso”). The lauda goes on to present a rather curious version of a popular Marian trope in which Mary is asked to remind her Son of how she suckled him at her breast so as to gain mercy for the sinner. Iacopone, instead, calls on Mary to grant the favour in the name of the love that her Son has for him. It seems almost that Christ is the price for the guerdon he is seeking from his Lady: I have nothing with which to pay, so reduced am I; draw up a contract (stromento) as for a servant whose ransom has been paid. Lady, the price has been established by Him to whom you have given suck. Lady, out of that love which your Son had for me, you should have it in your heart to grant me your favour; come to my aid, fragrant lily, come and do not tarry! (12–17) This portrayal of Christ not as an intimidating judge but as loving in his willingness to offer himself as sacrifice on the Cross is consistent with Franciscan spirituality, while the use of legal terms here reminds us of the theology of atonement or ransom, which from the time of Origen (†c. 253), in one form or another, saw Satan as having a legal right over humanity, out of which he was cheated by God through Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, and which Iacopone may well have known from Anselm of Canterbury’s († 1109) theory of satisfaction.26 Behind these lines may also be the Theophilus legend, a widely popular 26

See the first three chapters of Ben Pugh, Atonement Theories: A Way through the Maze (Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press, 2014) where he considers atonement theology in a variety of the Fathers, most notably Origen, Gregory of Nyssa († c. 395), and Augustine

244

REYNOLDS

tale about a priest who was saved by Mary from a signed contract that he had made with the Devil to hand over his soul in exchange for a bishopric, also the inspiration centuries later for Goethe’s Faustus.27 The lauda concludes with Mary, unlike the courtly lady, granting her favour, but offering a rather severe remedy, giving very precise medical instructions for the cure of the patient, which includes a diet of the senses, which should be deprived of pleasure, and contemplation of death and the prospect of hell. Showing his essential orthodoxy, despite his disagreements with the Church, and in contrast to some of the more outré Marian tales, which have the Virgin overruling the priest, or the “Rayna potentissma,” in which Mary herself is called a “preta,” who is above the “dodexe prete” (the twelve priest-apostles), Iacopone’s lauda concludes with an instruction to attend confession: “Before my priest, rid yourself of this poison; / for it is through his office that God expunges the sentence of sin; / so if the Enemy tries to make it stick, he will nowhere find proof” (30–32). 3

“O Vergen plu ca femena”

“O Virgin More Than a Woman”28 is rightly admired for the tender awe with which Iacopone contemplates Christ’s incarnation and birth from Mary, but there is much more to this lauda than an affectionate portrayal of the Nativity. Although it may in some respects be categorized as an incarnation lauda, along the lines of the Cortona “Ave Maria gratïa plena” or “Da ciel venne messo novella”29 in that it follows the Lucan narrative of the Annunciation, it is a far more complex and sophisticated composition partly because it combines the events of the Annunciation and Nativity, but also because, amid passages that portray the intimate relationship between the Mother and her new-born Child, it tackles a series of theological issues of considerable weight. It is almost as if, in the very structure of the poem, Iacopone wants to reflect both the depth of the divine mystery and the simple warmth of human love that are inherent to the Incarnation.

27 28 29

(† 430), then moves on to Irenaean recapitulation, and finally deals with Anselm’s theory of satisfaction in Cur Deus homo? On the legend, which inspired numerous writers and artists, see Jerry Root, The Theophilus Legend in Medieval Text and Image (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2017). Jacopone da Todi, The Lauds, pp. 70–71. Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes give this lauda the title “The Blessed Virgin Mary.” Italian text from Mancini, Laude, pp. 97–102. Guarnieri, Laudario di Cortona, pp. 39–45.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

245

It is already evident from the title and opening lines that this is no simple outworking of the angel’s greeting to Mary. The sentiment that Mary is, yes, a woman like all others but also something more, will be familiar to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of the myriad encomia addressed to her over the centuries. The specific context that would have been familiar to Medieval readers would have been the liturgy for the Assumption,30 which no doubt is behind the Cortona laudario’s “exalted above the angels” (“Laude novella sia cantata,” 2.10: sovra li angeli exaltata) and “Hail, crowned Mother, / raised above the heavens” (“Ave regina gloriosa” 9-35-36: Ave, madre incoronata, sovra i cieli exaltata),31 as well as the similar formula in the “Rayna potentissima”: “exalted above the heavens / above the angels you are made holy” (1–2: sovr’el cel si’ asaltaa. / Sovra la vita ançelica vu sij sanctificaa)32 and in several other laude. But Iacopone chooses to ignore the question of the Assumption, instead focusing first on Mary’s freedom from all stain of sin (which I shall discuss below in the analysis of “L’omo fo creato virtuoso”) which he links to the preservation of her virginity, both in the conception (virginitas ante partum) of Jesus, and in giving birth to Jesus (virginitas in partu), a doctrine that was formally defined by the Second Council of Constantinople (553).33 The world is amazed by it, conceiving through the spoken word, your body remained pure and was not touched! Beyond all telling, for a woman to conceive and without corruption be with child! Beyond all imagination without any seed you give milk! You alone were able 30 31 32 33

Exaltata est sancta Dei Genitrix super choros Angelorum ad cælestia regna, PL 78, 798D. And see Henri Barré, “Antiennes et Répons de la Vierge,” Marianum 29 (1967): p. 224, who points out how it links to the notion of Mary’s royal status as Queen of Heaven. Guarnieri, Laudario di Cortona, pp. 7 and 38 respectively. Full text, Varanini, Laude, pp. 23–27. For dating, between 1243 and 1276, see pp. 20–21. Norman P. Tanner, ed., “Anathemas against the ‘Three Chapters’,” in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: From Nicaea I to Vatican II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990). See Georges Gharib, Ermanno M. Tonio, Luigi Gambero, and Gerardo di Nola, eds., Testi Mariani del Primo Millennio. 4 vols. (Rome: Città Nuova, 1988–91) 1:679–82 for an account of the Council and the full text of its proclamations in Italian.

246

REYNOLDS

to be impregnated in this way. […] Mary, bears God and man, each preserves their own state, bearing such a great load, yet not burdened by it! O birth unheard of! The little child was born, exiting the womb, yet leaving the Mother intact. Without breaking the seal, the fair Child was born, leaving his castle with the gates still locked! (It would not have been proper for divine Power to use force in his own guesthouse.) (56–92) Most of what he writes here echoes the tradition though his simple and immediate style is refreshing and accessible. The belief that Mary was the first to make a vow of virginity dates back to Augustine, and was repeated through the centuries by many.34 The notion of conception through the ear is found as early as Tertullian († c. 230?).35 Though it was eschewed by many of the Fathers for fear that it smacked of Docetism, it nevertheless lived on and reappears in a variety of Medieval writers including Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153).36 Of course, it is also frequently present in Annunciation scenes, where the angel’s words, or a beam of light enter into Mary’s ear. Iacopone’s use of the castle is one of the rare instances in which he employs a Marian type, the eastern gate of the temple from Ezekiel, which always remained closed (44:1–3) as was Mary’s womb, except to the Lord.37 As time went on it came to represent not just Mary’s virginity but also her humility and general impregnability to the 34 35 36 37

See Frederick L. Miller, “Lk 1:34: Mary’s Desire for Virginity?” Angelicum 75.2 (1998): pp. 189–208. De Carne Christi 17, PL 2, 282B. Sermo 2, PL 183, 327C. Ambrose of Milan († 397) is among the first to use the type, De institutione virginis, 52–53, PL 16, 320A.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

247

wiles of the Devil.38 Garzo makes use of the type in the Cortona “Ave, donna santissima” in order to affirm Mary’s virginal conception and birth-­giving: “While the gates were closed, / Christ enclosed himself in you; / when he came forth from you, / you remained most pure” (4.15–18 Stando colle porte kiuse, / en te Cristo Se renchiuse; / quando da te Se deschiuse / permanesti purissima).39 In another of the Cortona laude, “Ave Dei Genetrix,” Mary’s virginity in her conception and parturition is also affirmed (although without the Ezekiel type). The lines, “O Virgin do not tarry / give your assent to his words! / the people are crying out to you. / That you might come to their aid” (47–50) are obviously inspired by Bernard of Clairvaux’s famous words in which he describes the whole of creation waiting with bated breath for the Virgin to give her consent to God’s plan of salvation.40 Lying behind much of the gentle image of this lauda is the harsh reality of a centuries-long polemic over whether the person of Jesus was both fully human and divine. Crucial to the argument that Christ possessed two natures, one divine, the other human, was Mary. If Mary conceived virginally, surely this was proof that the child was of divine origin, while the fact that he was born of woman ensured his humanity. Awe at the fact that her finite womb could contain the infinite Logos was a constant trope in Patristic writings to the extent that it became almost formulaic.41 The same issue was at stake in the Iconoclast controversies, since only if one acknowledged fully the humanity of Christ could one admit to the possibility of his image being contained in an icon. Similarly, images of the suckling Virgin, and portraits of the human relationship between Mary and her divine child were aimed at those who denied that Jesus was fully human. Although polemics concerning the hypostatic union had largely subsided by the time of Iacopone, there was a renewed awareness of the issue due to the adoptionist tendencies of Abelard’s theories, which at least implicitly suggested that Jesus was the adopted, not the real Son of God,42 and the persistence of Catharism. But there are undoubtedly other factors involved in Iacopone’s portrayal of the Incarnation, in the first instance, 38 39 40 41 42

See, for instance, the extensive exegesis of Pope Honorius III († 1227) in his First Sermon for the Feast of the Assumption, Testi Mariani del primo millennio, 4:126–29. Guarnieri, Laudario di Cortona, p. 16. Bernard of Clairvaux, “Fourth Sermon on the Glories of the Virgin Mother,” in St. Bernard’s Sermons on the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. by a priest of Mount Mellary (Chulmleigh: Augustine Publishing Company, 1984), pp. 70–71. See Antonia Atanassova, “Container of the Uncontainable God: Mary and the Theotokos Controversy” (PhD diss., Boston College, 2003). The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Adoptionism,” by Joseph Sollier (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907), accessed May 2, 2022, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01150a.htm.

248

REYNOLDS

the central place that it holds in the spirituality of Francis, and also the increasing focus on Christ’s humanity after the turn of the first millennium, as noted above in the discussion of affective piety. O Mary, what did you do, when you beheld him? How was it that you did not die set alight with love? How was it that you were not consumed, when you looked on him? For it was God you were contemplating, veiled in that flesh. When he suckled at your breast. he was making love to you; the immensity of it, of being nursed by you. When he called out to you, addressing you as Mother, how is it that you were not consumed, being called Mother of God! O my Lady, those acts, those gestures, full of fire, have silenced my tongue. When (the thought crushes me) … How was it when he suckled you? Tears must have welled up with the love that bound you. O salamander-heart, living so enflamed, how were you not consumed by the wound of love? (93–120) The second image, that of fire, which Iacopone employs here together with suckling, would have been familiar to any Medieval reader, who would have recognized it as deriving from the type of the burning bush (Ex 3:2; Dn 3:49–50), which exegetes understood to be a foreshadowing of Mary’s virginal

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

249

conception. Ephrem († c. 373)43 may have been the first to use it, and like the affective imagery of the Christ child, it too is particularly characteristic of the Syriac Churches (see, for instance, Jacob of Serug († 521), who writes: “Blessed is she: she touched with her lips him before whose fiery heat the burning seraphim recoil”),44 though it was also frequently used in both the Greek and Latin areas throughout the Patristic period, and into the Middle Ages. Closer to Iacopone’s time, Amadeus of Lausanne († 1159) provides one of the most developed exegeses of the type in the Latin Church.45 Originally, its purpose was mainly doctrinal,46 just like the images we have already considered, pointing to the divine origin of the child and the miraculous preservation of Mary’s virginity, though it also allowed for lyrical descriptions of Mother and Child, just as we see in Iacopone. Characteristically, Iacopone employs the imagery with great subtly,47 so that it adds to our sense of wonderment rather than weighing upon the text. The searingly beautiful metonymic image of the “salamander-heart” at the conclusion of the verses quoted above also points to a fin’amor motif, just like the “wound of love.” In Giacomo da Lentini’s, “Madonna, dir vo voglio,” for instance, we find these lines in which the passionate fire of love continues to burn unrequitedly in the poet’s heart, typical of the courtly lady’s unavailability: “And what I say is nil / Concerning the distress / I feel in my heart. / I think the fire will not die out, / But if it’s still ablaze, / Why am I not consumed? / The salamander, I have heard, / Can live in fire and yet remain unharmed. / I’ve long endured like this, / I live in passion’s fire, / Yet can’t express how” (2.21–31).48 43 44 45 46 47

48

Diatessaron, 1, 25, TMPM IV, p. 77. Hymn to Mary the Virgin, In Early Christian Prayer, trans. Adalbert Hamman and Walter Mitchell (London: Longmans and Green, 1961), p. 192. De Incarnatione Christi et Virginis Conceptione, PL 188, 1319A. For a full discussion of Mary’s virginity in the Patristic and Medieval periods, see R ­ eynolds, Gateway, chapter 2. Contrast his verses, for instance with the Lauda veronese author, who simply exclaims how his heart burns for the Virgin (“ch’el meo cor arda / del vostro amor plu che la braxa,” Varanini, Laude, pp. 87–88), but makes no link with courtly ardor, nor with the typology of the burning bush. “E zo che’eo dico è nente / inver ch’eo son distretto / tanto coralmente: / foc’aio al cor non credo mai si stingua; / anzi si pur alluma: / perché non mi consuma? / La salamandra audivi / che ’nfra lo foco vivi - stando sana; / eo sì fo per long’uso, / vivo ’n foc’amoroso / e non saccio ch’eo dica: / lo meo lavoro spica - e non ingrana.” Original text and translation in da Lentini, Giacomo, The complete Poetry, trans. Richard Lensing, with an introduction by Akash Kumar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 18–19.

250

REYNOLDS

Likewise, though in a somewhat more positive vein, Guido Guinizzelli († 1276), in “Lo fin pregi’ avanzato,” likens his heart to a salamander in that it enlightens itself with love, though the ability to “survive” the fire hints at a darker meaning: “through her my heart / is raised to such splendor / that it shines like / the salamander that lives in fire, / so too does my heart survive anywhere.”49 Unlike the poet-lover’s passionate love for the courtly lady, which can never be requited, Our Lady makes divine Love available to humanity through clothing the Son in her flesh, and also through her continued intercession from Heaven. Before leaving this lauda, a brief word about humility. Although Francis undeniably practiced this virtue to a degree that perhaps no other follower of Christ has, he did not have a lot to say about it, if not implicitly urging ­imitation of Christ’s self-abasement. Prior to Augustine, for whom humility was the fundamental perquisite in following Christ, the emphasis among most of the Fathers had been more on the related virtue of obedience, both that of Christ to his Father, and of Mary to the plan of God.50 Even in later centuries, humility did not receive much emphasis in the East, while in the Latin Church it is really only after Bede that it begins to gain greater prominence, primarily as a monastic virtue. Perhaps its greatest medieval proponent was Bernard of Clairvaux, who asserts that virginity is not a prerequisite for entering heaven, but humility is, and also that Mary’s humility rather than her virginity was the most important quality in God’s choice of her to be his Mother.51 Iacopone is broadly in line with these sentiments, though, as is typical for him, and more broadly for the Franciscans, especially the spirituals, the focus remains unrelentingly on Christ, with Mary’s humility being a rather diminished mirror of his: His humility made yours seem small, for all other humility seems vain compared to his. So that you might rise up to glory, 49

50 51

“già per cui lo meo core / altisce in tal lucore / che si ralluma come / salamandra ’n foco vive, / ché ’n ogni parte vive – lo meo core.” Translation and text in Akash Kumar, “Sì come dice lo Filosofo: Translating Philosophy in the Early Italian Lyric” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2013), p. 152. See, in the regards, Brian K. Reynolds, “The Patristic and Medieval Roots of Mary’s ­Humility,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mary, ed. Chris Maunder (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press), pp. 320–37. Bernard of Clairvaux, “First Sermon on the Glories of the Virgin Mother,” in St. Bernard’s Sermons, 7–8.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

251

he descended into wretchedness, how can such different realities be brought together? In the face of his humility, in taking on human nature, every other humility, seems prideful. (127–38) 4

“L’omo fo creato vertuoso”

It is not surprising that the Virgin Mary plays a prominent role in “Man was Created Virtuous,” a lauda that deals with the question of God’s mercy and justice in sending his only Son to save us from the consequences of Adam and Eve’s Fall.52 Beginning with what might be said to be an internal dialogue within the Trinity, reflected in the multiple voices of the lauda, Iacopone manages to convey with great effect God’s purpose in setting in motion his plan of salvation by calling Mary into being. Here, he takes up the age-old Eve-Mary parallel, contrasting Gabriel’s words to Mary with Satan’s wily entrapment of Eve, suggesting that the Virgin played a role, alongside Christ, in repairing the damage caused by original sin. Sophisticated in its simplicity, Iacopone manages to convey the entire richness of soteriological thought from Irenaeus († c. 202) down to Anselm’s Cur Deus homo? concerning the restoration of creation in a way that it is immediately accessible.53 O earth without thorn or barb, Blooming with every good fruit, Filled with every virtue and grace, You brought an end to our mourning, Whose cause was sin, and to the punishment Of Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit; Restoration of our ruin, 52

53

There appears to be a Bernardian influence in this poem, which has strong parallels with the First Sermon on the Annunciation where Bernard sets Mary in contrast to Eve and offers an exegesis of Ps 84 (85):11: “Mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed.” See St. Bernard’s Sermons 110–28. For Irenaeus, see Dialogus cum Trypho 100.4–5; Adversus Haereses 3.22.4 and 5.16.2, Demonstratio apostolicae praedicationis, 32–33. Anselm, in his celebrated Oratio 7 (51), speaks of Mary as “the Mother of re-created things,” PL 158, 956AB.

252

REYNOLDS

Virgin Mary, blessed in all things (129–36) Another important issue that arises in this lauda is the manner in which Mary was prepared for being the Mother of God through ensuring that she was free from all stain of sin. Here, one must examine the precise language used by Iacopone, for which reason I offer the texts both in the original and in my translation: God in his bounty formed for himself the body of a young comely maiden, and when the body had been organized, in an instant he created a soul for it, and in an instant he sanctified it of that original sin that before had been sown by the first man in all his stricken descendants. (121–28) Deo per sua bontate sí à formato / un corpo d’una iovane avenente / e po’ che’el corpo fo organizzato / creace e l’alma enn uno icto istante / et en estante – l’à santificato / de quell’original peccato, c’ante / per lo primo omo fo sementato / en tutte le progenie sue afrante. The same precision is evident, though with slightly less technical terminology, in the opening verses of “O Vergen plu che femina:” More than woman, I say; every human is born marked with sin; (through Scripture I recount it), you were holy before you were born. While enclosed in the womb you were infused with a soul, a power filled with virtue entirely sanctified you, The divine anointing truly sanctified you, of all contagion you remained free.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

253

Original sin which Adam sowed, so that all are born with it, of it you were purified. No mortal sin arises from your will, and with venial sin, you alone are immaculate. (2–22) (Plu ca femena, dico; / onn’om nasce inimico / (per la Scriptura espleco), / nant’è’ santa ca nata. / Estanno en ventr’enclusa, / po’ l’alma ce fo enfusa, / potenzia virtuosa / sì tt’à santificata. / La divina onzïone / sì te santificòne, /d’onne cuntagïone / remasesti ellibata. / L’original peccato / c’Adam à sementato, / onn’om con quel è nato, / tu n’èi da cquel mundata. / Nul peccato mortale / en to voler non sale / et dall’ovenïale tu sola è’ emmaculata.)54 What is immediately obvious here is that Iacopone has chosen his words with great care. Words such as organizzato, istante, santificato and sementato, enfusa, potenzia vertuosa are all very precise technical terms. One should not be distracted by the use of “immaculate” (emmaculata). Instead, what is more important is the lack of any mention of the precise moment of Mary’s conception. By saying “in an instant” (“L’omo fo creato virtuoso,” 123, and 124) rather than “at the instant,” Iacopone leaves open the possibility that there could have been a momentary gap between conception and purification. Moreover, the fact that he places her purification after the organization of her body is significant, since it postpones her sanctification from her physical conception to the time of her reception of a rational soul. Again, in “O Vergen plu che femena,” it is while she was enclosed in the womb that she is ensouled and purified, not at the time of her conception. Iacopone therefore seems to believe Mary was fully sanctified in the womb, including being freed from the fomes (residual traces that are left after baptism causing a continuing innate inclination towards sin) of original sin, rather than undergoing a second purification at a later time, as some believed.55 All this will be clearer if we consider briefly the theories of generation that were current in Iacopone’s day, derived mainly from ­Aristotle’s 54 Mancini, Laude, p. 121. 55 For a detailed discussion of evolution of the doctrine and the issues involved see c­ hapter 8 of Reynolds, Gateway.

254

REYNOLDS

On the Generation of Animals.56 It was on Aristotle that Aquinas based his elaboration of ensoulment. Unlike the vegetative and sensitive souls that naturally inform the body, Aquinas holds that the rational soul of each human being is created directly by God once a properly organized body exists for it to inform.57 Again, following Aristotle, Aquinas holds that a developing embryo is informed by a rational soul forty days after conception if it is male and ninety days for females.58 It will be immediately obvious from this that Iacopone is using the same highly technical language adopted by Aquinas in order to set forth his position on the conception of Mary. So, what may we conclude about Iacopone’s position on the matter? Firstly, that despite the apparent simplicity and informality of his verses, he was very much aware of the issues and was not averse to using sophisticated terminology in order to set forth his own viewpoint. Far from his Marian verses being pure sentimentalism (or, to put it another way, expressions of affective piety), they contain a very solid theological and doctrinal core. As to his precise view on the Immaculate Conception, these lines would suggest that he is in agreement with what was at the time the mainstream position, that Mary was purified in the womb, and not free from all stain of sin from the moment of her conception.59 5

“Donna de Paradiso”

In many respects “Donna de Paradiso,” which takes the form of a dramatic dialogue between Mary, Christ on the Cross, and an anonymous messenger, is uncharacteristic of the rest of Iacopone’s corpus in that it is entirely devoid of the poet’s first-person voice, and is also his only purely dramatic poem.60 It stands out as one of his most accomplished compositions both in its technical sophistication and its emotional impact. The careful balance between 56

Galen’s slightly different views on the active part played by the woman in De semine, De uteri dissectione, De foetuum formatione do not concern us here. 57 See Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate III 9; Summa contra Gentiles II 86–87; Summa Theologiae Ia 90.2, 118.2; Compendium Theologiae 93. 58 Scriptum super sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi III 3.v.2; see also Questiones de Anima XI. ad 1; Summa Theologiae Ia 76.3. ad 3, 118.2. ad 2; Summa contra Gentiles II 89; Compendium theologiae 92; Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis III. ad 13. 59 See Reynolds, Gateway, pp. 148–69 for the evolution of the theology of the Immaculate Conception in the centuries up to Iacopone and beyond. 60 See Vincent Moleta, “Dialogues and Dramatic Poems in the ‘Laudario Jacoponico’,” Italian Studies 30.1 (1975): p. 7–29.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

255

the formal Latinate vocabulary of the herald and the more familiar colloquial discourse of the Virgin strikes the right note between solemnity and intimacy while the economy of the narrative and the decision to foreshorten the events that precede the Crucifixion in order to focus almost exclusively on Mary and Jesus is an effective strategy whether from a devotional or theological perspective. Iacopone also manages to avoid the pitfalls of excessive sentimentality and unnecessarily graphic detail that mar not a few Marian plaints. He maintains an emotional intensity in portraying Mary’s piteous distress as she helplessly witnesses her Son in his agony without ever suggesting that hers is a cloying, self-indulgent love, so that the reader is effectively drawn into reliving the Passion vicariously through her. From a spiritual point of view, Mary’s battle to countenance what has befallen her Son reveals her profoundly human struggle to comprehend the logic of the Redemption, echoing Iacopone’s own journey towards a serene embrace of the Cross, as is particularly evident from the parallels between “Donna” and “Oi dolze Amore” where the poet, like Mary, does not want to be separated from the crucified Christ.61 The question of whether and in what manner Mary understood and co-­ operated in the redemptive sacrifice of her Son is one that has exercised theologians since the Patristic period. In the Eastern Church, several of the early Fathers, beginning with Origen, interpreted the sword that the elderly Simeon prophesized would pierce Mary’s heart (Lk 2:35) as a loss of faith that she experienced on Calvary.62 Although this belief had largely faded by the sixth century, it is perhaps a factor, alongside cultural influences63 in the greater willingness of the Eastern Churches to contemplate and depict Mary’s grief on Calvary. In the West, on the other hand, Ambrose of Milan’s famed portrayal of the Virgin as standing stoically by the Cross with no external displays of her inner turmoil long held sway.64 So too did his assertion that, “if she wanted to die along with her Son, it was because she was looking forward to rising with him,” eliminate any question of a loss of faith, though he was equally clear that

61 62 63 64

See Mancini, “Tradizione,” p. 161. Text of “Oi dolze” in Mancini, Laude, pp. 227–29; ­Jacopone da Todi, The Lauds, pp. 240–41. In Lucam 6.3–4, and 17, PG 13 1814–15 and 1845. See Reynolds, Gateway, pp. 249–63 for the Eastern Churches, and 263–92 for the Western tradition, with extensive quotes from a wide selection of authors, including Iacopone. See Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, second edition revised by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). For a good example of the continuing influence of Ambrose see Rabanus Maurus († 846), Opusculum de Passioni Domini, 6, where he expresses his wonder at how Mary was able to stand in silence, PL 112, 1428B–D.

256

REYNOLDS

she played no active role in the Redemption.65 While we cannot be sure of how much Ambrose’s influence was a factor in the late emergence of Marian plaints in the Latin Church, it is certainly true that they became a prominent feature of the Eastern tradition long before. The difficulty, from a theological perspective, of maintaining that the Virgin fully assented to and co-operated with the divine plan for Redemption while at the same time portraying her in paroxysms of grief in order to arouse sympathy and a desire for repentance on the part of the faithful, was that the two sets of behavior seem irreconcilable. How could Mary experience both unimaginable grief and joyful anticipation under the Cross, and how can we totally empathize with her if her anguish is in some way alleviated because she knows that her Son will rise again? This is the careful balancing act that composers of Marian plaints, including Iacopone, needed to achieve. The apocryphal fifth-century Acta Pilati B also known as the Gospel of Nicodemus, which employs the rhetorical technique of ethopoeia (putting oneself in the place of the subject in order to better express his or her feelings)66 is possibly the first example of Mary displaying frantic grief at the death of her Son,67 at least if one excludes the Syriac Lament of Mary at the Cross, a moving plaint in which Mary calls on all of creation to weep at the death of her Son, which modern scholarship has shown to belong to a later period than its putative author, Ephrem the Syrian, († c. 373).68 The sixth-century Siro-Greek hymnographer, Romanos the Melodist († after 555), composed the earliest and most influential of the dramatic Marian plaints, “Mary and the Cross.”69 Iacopone’s plaint shares several features with this lament, most notably the 65 66 67 68

69

De isitutione virginis 49, PL 16.318B–319A [333]. See Fulton, From Judgement, pp. 537–38, and n. 56. Sandro Sticca, The Planctus Mariae in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, trans. Joseph Berrigan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), p. 34 quotes a passage. See Sebastian Brock, trans., Bride of Light: Hymns on Mary from the Syriac Churches (­Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), pp. 122–23 for the text. As he argues, there are considerable grounds to be sceptical about the attribution, both on the basis of internal evidence and the lack of a manuscript tradition. See also Peter Dronke, “Laments of the Maries: From the Beginnings to the Mistery Plays,” in Idee, Gestalt, Geschichte: Festschrift fur Klaus von See, Studien zue europäischen Kulturtradition, ed. Gerd Wolfgang Weber (Odense: Odense University Press, 1988), pp. 99–100; and Fulton, From Judgement, pp. 215–16. See Thomas Arentzen, The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), pp. 141–58; Niki Tsironis, “The Lament of the Virgin Mary from Romanos the Melode to George of Nicomedia: An Aspect of the Development of the Marian Cult,” (PhD diss., Kings College London, 1998); and Gregory W. A. Dobrov, “Dialogue with Death: Ritual Lament and the θρῆνος Θεοτόκου of Romanos Melodos,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 35.4 (1994): pp. 385–405.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

257

dialogue between Mary and Jesus, in which Christ attempts to assuage his Mother’s grief. Chapter Six of The Life of the Virgin, attributed to Maximus the Confessor (662) is one of the most complete accounts of Mary’s compassion in the Patristic Church, and, as Shoemaker has shown, was the main source for the Passion homilies of George of Nicomedia (fl. 9th cent.), as well as the Lives of the Virgin by John the Geometer (fl. 10th cent.) and Symeon the Metaphrast († c. 1000).70 Though one cannot rule out the possibility of an independent development in the West,71 on the basis of empirical evidence alone, the multiple points in common between the Eastern plaints and their Latin counterparts are certainly suggestive of some sort of transference, although no study has examined the question in any depth.72 What is indisputable is that by the twelfth century, emotive portrayals of Mary at the Cross were appearing in Latin texts, and that not long thereafter the first vernacular plaints were written. The most significant of the early Latin Passions are the Pseudo-Anselmian Dialogus Mariae et Anselmi de Passione Domini73 and the Pseudo-Bernardian Liber de Passione now known to be the work of the Italian Cistercian Ogier.74 70

71

72

73 74

See Stephen J. Shoemaker, “A Mother’s Passion: Mary at the Crucifixion and Resurrection in the Earliest ‘Life of the Virgin’ and Its Influence on George of Nikomedeia’s Passion Homilies,” in The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images, eds. Leslie Brubaker and Mary B. Cunningham (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). Anslem of Canterbury, for instance, breaks with the Ambrosian convention writing in one of his prayers to the Virgin of the fountains of tears that must have drenched her face as, sobbing, she heard her Son say to her, “Woman, behold your Son, and to John, “Behold your mother” (Jn 19: 26–27), Oratio 2, pp. 92–102; Benedicta Ward, trans., The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm (New York: Penguin, 1973), p. 96. In a similar vein is Chapter 5 of Eadmer of Canterbury’s (†c. 1100) De eccellentia Virginis Mariae, PL 159.557B–580B, entitled De compassione beatae Mariae pro Filio crucifixo (566A–567D). Some initial reflections are to be found in Shoemaker, “Mary at the Cross, East and West: Maternal Compassion and Affective Piety in the Earliest Life of the Virgin and the High Middle Ages,” The Journal of Theological Studies 62.2 (2011): pp. 570–606. Although Sticca, The Planctus Mariae, 32 writes that “around the eleventh or twelfth centuries there occurred in the Western church a dramatic and fundamental intermeshing of the two traditions”, he provides no evidence of how this might have happened. PL 159. 271A–290A. Latin text, PL 182 1133–42. English translation: Ogier of Locedio, In Praise of God’s Holy Mother. On our Lord’s Words to his Disciples at the Last Supper, trans. D. Martin Jenni (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2006), pp. 145–46. On attribution see Henri Barré, “Le ‘Planctus Mariae’ attribué a S. Bernard,” Revue d’ascétique de mystique 28 (1952): pp. 243–55. Strangely, Sticca, in his Planctus Mariae, repeatedly fails to point out that they are not genuine. Also of interest is Pseudo-Bernard’s Meditatio in Passionem et Resurrectionem Domini and Sermo de vita et Passione Domini (PL 184, 741–766D; 954D–66A) and the hymn Rhythmica oratio, attributed to Bernard (PL 184, 1319–23). And for the Franciscans

258

REYNOLDS

Pseudo-Anselm takes the form of a decidedly artificial interview of the Virgin in which she responds in a somewhat scholastic style to the saint’s questions, quoting extensively from Scripture as if she were a classroom magistra. The Liber also has Mary as the principal witness of the Passion. Though it is less dry than the expressly didactic Dialogus, the Liber’s emotional impact is still limited since Mary makes clear from the outset that she is beyond tears now that she is glorified in heaven. An important Latin plaint, probably twelfth century, is the Planctus ante nescia, a composition of considerable beauty and accomplishment in which the Virgin’s grief never overshadows that of her Son but instead directs our gaze towards him. However, it is marred by an underlying tone of bitterness and blame towards the Jews.75 The oldest known vernacular text on Mary’s suffering at the Cross is a three-line fragment at the end of a Latin Passio from Benedictine abbey of Montecassino.76 However, it is not until the latter half of the thirteenth century that fully developed plaints appear, often the product of the laudesi and disciplinati companies, in which a number of different currents of piety mix, including the Benedictine and Bernardian, the spirituality of the new mendicant orders, especially the Franciscans, and elements of Joachimite millenarianism. Among the more significant vernacular plaints that have come down to us from this time are the Abruzzo Lamentatio beate Mariae de Filio and the Marche Pianto delle Marie,77 which were composed within a largely Benedictine context. Of the early laudesi companies, only the Urbino laudario, which has greater Franciscan influence, contains Marian plaints, including Donna de ciel and the four De planctu Virginis that Bettarini argues are also by Iacopone’s hand.78 While Donna de Paradiso has a number of affinities with the vernacular and Latin plaints and passions, and with its Eastern counterparts, both in its emotional tone and the adoption of several well-worn tropes, one immediately appreciates the unusual compactness and intense yet contained emotion. Iacopone notably avoids any hint of the overwrought and self-indulgent grief of

75

76 77 78

see Ubertino da Casale’s Arbor vitae as well as Bonaventure’s Lignum Vitae and Officium de Passione Domini. Planctus ante nescia, in Songs in British Sources c. 1150–1300, ed. Helen Deeming (London: Stainer and Bell, 2013), accessed April 29, 2022, https://frenchofengland.ace.fordham .edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Planctus-ante-nescia.pdf. One also finds anti-Semitic sentiments in other texts, such as Ogier of Locedio, In Praise, 147, 148, and the Urbino De planctu Virginis, IV [18], and x [17], but they are happily absent from Iacopone. See Sticca, “The Montecassino Passion.” Ugolini, Testi volgari, pp. 116–40. See Bettarini, Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate, and “Ancora su Jacopone.”

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

259

the Virgin that sometimes obscures the suffering of her Son, and also eschews excessively graphic descriptions of Christ’s bodily torment. And while the poet’s voice is not overtly present in the poem, that the sentiments expressed are the product of a personal spiritual journey shines through, unlike the majority of plaints, which, in the case of the laudesi, arise from a collective and are intended for communal displays of piety. The same is true of many of the individual compositions which are less the articulation of an intimate experience of the divine than a consciously constructed account intended for public consumption. The title, Donna de Paradiso, is itself striking in how it contrasts starkly with the subject of the lauda.79 It provides just a hint of the conflict between present grief and future joy, that beyond the Cross lies the resurrection, that the Mater dolorosa will reign in glory. It is as if Iacopone wants to tell us before we plunge into the suffering of the Passion that Heaven awaits those who, like Mary, follow Christ to the Cross and join in his redemptive sacrifice. The use of this epithet is also very different from its normal context, namely to indicate Mary’s assumption and her heavenly queenship, especially in terms of her intercessory powers (as we discussed already in the analysis of “O Regina cortese”). Indeed, the exact term is used in the Lauda Veronese, in precisely this context: “O dolçe dona del paraís, / pregai per mi l’anto Dio vivo” (O sweet Lady of Paradise, / pray for me before the living God” 117–118).80 The urgent vocative of “Donna”’s opening, as the voice of the herald tells Our Lady (and us) that she should hurry because her Son has been taken (4: “hasten, Lady, and see”; Accurre donna, e vide)81 is very effective, as is the highly truncated account of the events that lead up to the Crucifixion, very different from the drawn-out narratives of, for instance, the Pianto delle Marie or the Passione lombarda.82 Engaging too is the back and forth between the voices of the herald, Mary and the people, with only brief allusions to the betrayal by Judas, the scourging of Jesus and the soldiers spitting on him, and the crowd crying out to Pilate for Christ’s crucifixion and the release of the thief, Barabbas. Mary’s initial dismay – “how can this be” (8: Como essere porria), is balanced by her words to the Magdalene, “as has been foretold” (19: come e’ annunziato), perhaps a reference not only to Christ’s own foretelling of what would befall him, but also to the prophecy of Simeon at the time of the Presentation 79

Mancini, “Tradizione,” p. 166 notes the incongruity of the title, which he attempts to link to the Liber de Passione. 80 Varanini, Laude, p. 19. 81 English translations mine. Italian text, Mancini, Laude, pp. 230–35; translation, Jacopone da Todi, The Lauds, pp. 278–80. 82 For texts, see Ugolini, Testi volgari, pp. 119–28.

260

REYNOLDS

in the Temple, when he told Mary that a sword would pierce her heart (Lk 2:35).83 The urgency is further intensified by Mary’s urging of Magdalene (16: “Make haste”, soccurri), echoed by the herald’s “soccorre” (19), again addressed to the Virgin. Mary’s vocative “O Pilato” (24) appeal for mercy is negated in the next verse by the crowd’s “Crucefige, crucefige!” (28). Mary is now the “full of pain” (56: plena de doglia), a subtle allusion, where others have labored the point,84 to the angel’s greeting, “Hail, full of grace” (Lk 1:28), and to the belief that Mary suffered the birth pangs at the Cross which she avoided in her virginal birth-giving.85 The climax of this set of direct addresses is when Mary poignantly calls out to her Son, recalling his former joy and beauty: “O my Son, my Son, my Son, my Son, my loving lily, who can console my anguished heart? Son whose eyes once smiled, why do you not answer me? Son, why do you hide from the breast that once gave you suck?” (40–47) While neither the appeal to Jesus not the recollection of his former beauty and happier times are original to Iacopone,86 the intensity of the anaphoric “figlio” 83

84 85

86

This prophecy, which had been a mainstay of exegesis concerning Mary’s role at Calvary from the time of Origen, as we have seen, is present in a number of plaints and passion texts. See, for instance, Maximus, The Life of the Virgin, 85, p. 112, Planctus ante nescia, 6a–6b, Pianto delle Marie, in Ugolini, Testi volgari, pp. 190–93, Ogier, In Praise, 150, ­Pseudo-Anselm, Dialogus 2, 8, 12, 14, PL 159.274B, 281A, 284B, 286A. See Pianto delle Marie, in Ugolini, Testi volgari, pp. 214–17, and the Urbino De planctu ­Virginis (IV [18]), 238–243. This is a standard belief in both the Eastern and Western Churches. See, for instance, John of Damascus († 749), Exposition on the Orthodox Faith, 6, 14, Rupert of Deutz († 1130), Commentaria in Evangelium S. Joannis, 13, PL 169, 790A–B, and Albert the Great († 1280), Postilla in Isaiam, 7, 14, and Commentary on Matthew, TMSM, IV, 333 and 335. On his former beauty see Acta Pilati B, Pianto delle Marie, pp. 104–7; Ugolini, Testi volgari, pp. 119–28; Urbino Laudario, De planctu Virginis (IV [18]); Bettarini, pp. 59–90; Ogier, In Praise, p. 146; and on happier days see the Pianto delle Marie, in Ugolini, Testi volgari, pp. 218–21, which recalls her nursing; and the Urbino De planctu Virginis (II [9]), Bettarini, pp. 69–76, which evokes both his beauty and his preaching.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

261

perfectly conveys the human anguish of a mother losing her child, as it will even more forcefully a few lines later. We have now reached the Cross and the herald solemnly proclaims, “Lady, behold the Cross,” (48), perhaps echoing the words of the Good Friday liturgical antiphon, “Ecce lignum crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit” (Behold the wood of the Cross on which the Saviour of the world hung). To this formal proclamation Mary responds with a much more personal and colloquial: O Cross, what will you do? Will you take my Son? and of what will you accuse him, he who is without sin? (52–55) This direct address of the Cross echoes the poet’s own in “Oi dolce Amor” (31–33), while Iacopone’s economy is again evident here as in just two lines Mary affirms Christ’s innocence. In contrast to the anxious urgency of the opening verses, the pace now slows almost to a standstill as the herald describes how Jesus is suspended from the Cross,87 one nail at a time, giving us space to contemplate the horror before the dialogue between Mother and Son begins. The dialogue is announced in a slightly awkward “fourth wall” moment, when Mary declares that she is beginning her lament, (76: Et eo comenzo el corrotto). She then directly addresses her Son, declaring that it would have been better if they had ripped out her own heart which is “wrested to the Cross” (82: che ennella croce e’ tratto), a natural sentiment for a mother but also an indication of Mary’s compassio, her sharing in the agony of the Cross through a spiritual martyrdom.88 The alternation between “mamma” and “figlio” in the openings of the following four verses emphasizes the intimacy and familiarity of their relationship, but Mary’s affirmation that he is her “Son, Father and Spouse” (89: figlio, pat’e mmarito), a formula also found in other texts,89 reminds us that this is no ordinary Mother and Son for, as second Person of the 87 88

89

This is a point that Mancini makes, “Tradizione,” p. 169. On understanding of the nature of Mary’s compassion and her co-operation in Christ’s work of redemption in the Medieval Church, see Reynolds, Gateway, pp. 263–92. In the Urbino Laudario’s De compassione filii ad matrem, ii [2], this is precisely what Jesus says to Mary: “The wounds that my body has without / you have in your heart” (10–11). See the Lamentatio Beate Marie de Filio, 27.106 and 29.114 pp. 42–46, the Urbino De planctu Virginis (II [9]), p. 51, and Ogier, In Praise, 148.

262

REYNOLDS

Trinity, the Father and the Spirit indwell Jesus, a notion dear to St. Francis, as we have seen. In contrast to Mary’s declaration that she wants to suffer with her Son, even to die with him and be buried in the same tomb, never to be separated (96–103), perhaps the most frequent motif in the plaints and passions,90 Jesus wishes that Mary remain and not die with him so that she may be of service to his companions (92–95),91 reflecting the belief that she is to become the Mother of the Church, symbolised in the entrustment to John, which follows at lines 104–111. Hereafter, Iacopone takes a very different direction from the norm. He excludes from the dialogue any attempt by Jesus to provide an explanation for the necessity of the manner of his death, thereby avoiding the didacticism that characterizes many of the plaints.92 Mary does not abandon herself to the sort of melodramatic grief that one finds elsewhere,93 nor is there any semblance of the bleak dialogue between “mamma” and “fillo” as in the Urbino De mutua lamentatio Matris et Filii, for instance, which concludes with John accepting to receive Mary into his home despite the “immeasurable pain” (49) of them both being separated from the Lord. Instead, the consignment to John is straightforward and simple, Jesus asking the beloved apostle to have pity on his Mother

90

See Maximus, Life of the Virgin, 81, p. 109 (would that I could take your place), ­Pseudo-Anselm, Dialogus 14, PL 159.286A (would that I could die for you) and Dialogus 16, 287D–288A (Mary grieves bitterly at the tomb and is reluctant for John to sperate her from her Son), Planctus ante nescia, 7a–7b, 8b (spare my child or let me be hung on the Cross with him), Lamentatio Beate Marie de Filio, 8.31–32, 28.109–112 (let me be crucified and buried with him). Similar sentiments are expressed in the Urbino De planctu Virginis (I [5]), De planctu Virginis (II [9]), 25–29, 61–64, and the De mutua lamentatione Matris et Filii, ix. [15], 7–10 (though Jesus rebukes her for her self-pity, 11–14). See also the Pianto delle Marie, in Ugolini, Testi volgari, pp. 202–5 and 226–29, Ogier, In Praise, pp. 147 and 154. 91 This same sentiment, which is found in the is expressed in De mutua lamentatione Matris et Filii, ix [15], 28–30. 92 This is particularly characteristic of Romanos’ On Mary at the Cross. The Lamentatio beate Marie de Filio uses the device of inserting an interlude between Christ’s death and deposition from the Cross on his harrowing of Hell. (19,74–23.92). In the Pianto delle Marie Christ himself explains that his death is necessary to save his people and that he needs to descend to Hell (238–250). Two of the Urbino plaints which Bettarini attributes to ­Iacopone, De planctu virginis I, 97–111 and IV, 295–358, have Mary’s sisters explain the ­purpose of her Son’s sacrifice, perhaps unintentionally endorsing the heterodox belief that she had lost faith in Christ. The lengthy Passio Lombarda goes beyond the Crucifixion to the resurrection. 93 See Acta Pilati B, Pianto delle Marie, 120–123, Lamentatio Beate Marie de Filio 9.34–36, the Urbino De dolore Matris (VI), De planctu Virginis (IV [18]), and unrelentingly self-pitying De planctu Virginis (I [5]), 49–56, the De mutua lamentatione Matris et Filii, ix [15], 23–26.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

263

since her heart is “pierced” (111: furato), an allusion to the sword of Simeon.94 Significantly, as Mancini notes, the entire dialogue between Mother and Son takes just thirty-three lines, the length of Jesus years on earth, from the joy of the Nativity to the agony of the Cross.95 The plaint concludes with the death of Jesus, not the deposition from the Cross and entombment, which in other texts offer further opportunities for melodramatic displays of grief, so that the focus is maintained on the Crucifixion and death, by far the most significant events, both theologically and emotionally. Iacopone, instead, has Mary cry out “Son” no less than fifteen times (the word is used forty-two times in the poem as a whole), abruptly and ­dramatically followed by a verse that opens with, “John, new son,” (128), an altogether more satisfactory way of emphasizing the close bond between Mother and Son, and the pain of its sundering: Son, your soul has flown away, Son of she who is bereft, Son of she who is desolate, Son who has been poisoned. Son fair-skinned and ruddy, Son without likeness, Son, to whom can I turn? Son, truly you have left me! Son fair and blond, Son whose face gave joy, Son, why was it, Son, why did the world despise you so? Son, sweet and pleasing, Son of this doleful heart, Son, you were treated by the people in such a wicked way. 94

95

One finds the entrustment in many of the plaints, for instance, Maximus, The Life of the Virgin, 82, p. 106; Ogier, In Praise, p. 149, where he is described as a nephew; the Lamentatio Beate Marie de Filio, pp. 51–60, where he is a relative; and the Urbino De mutua lamentatione Matris et Filii, ix [15], 31–50, where Mary deems it a poor exchange. Pseudo-Anselm mentions that John is the son of Mary’s sister (Dialogus 2, PL 159.274B), while he has Mary directly quoting Jesus, from Jn 19:26–27 (12.284C). Mancini, “Tradizione,” p. 170.

264

REYNOLDS

John, my new son, your bother, he has died, now I feel the knife that was prophesized. (112–131) Aside from the dramatic impact of the anaphoric “figlio,” these lines have the effect of turning the focus away from Mary’s pain at her loss of her Son to the now severed bond that they shared. There is no rebellion against God’s will here, merely the desolation and bewilderment that follow death, especially a premature and unjust one, and the poignant memory of a Son whose beauty and joy reflected both his human perfection and the divinity that shone forth from him. How could such a Son ever be replaced? And yet, with a hint of the iron will of the mulier fortis (strong woman, see Prv 31:10), the focus abruptly shifts to John (it is as if we can feel her turning from Jesus’ dead body to address her “new son”) as Mary says her second fiat (Lk 1:38), this time, not to becoming the Mother of God, but, as the new Eve, “mother of all the living” (Gn 3:20). The cost, however, is her spiritual immolation,96 the loss of her Son-God, for God in her new child, who represents all the children of God to whom she now becomes Mother. This holocaust is expressed powerfully in the closing verse, where Son and Mother, Mother and Son, embrace upon the Cross, just as Iacopone does in his own life, following the example of Francis and inviting us to follow: May Son and Mother die, in the clutches of the one death, may they both embrace, Mother and Son on the one Cross! (132–135)

96

In this regard, Sopr’onne lengua Amore, subtly hints at the similarity between the sort of union with God that a soul which has learnt how to become nothing experiences, and the Virgin Mary, supreme Bride of Christ, who emptied herself to the extent that she could contain God, and experienced total annihilation under the Cross. This is particularly evident in the last verse, where, in addressing her as donna and later Madonna Iacopone identifies the Bride not only as love Love, but as Mary, who reigns in Heaven with many graces, and envelopes the faithful with her mantle. (“Sopr’onne lengua Amore” 473–485. Jacopone da Todi, The Lauds, pp. 265–74; Mancini, Laude, pp. 335–49.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

265

Works Cited Abbruzzetti, Véronique. “La ‘Donna de Paradiso’ de Jacopone da Todi: un exercise ­spiritual.” Chroniques Italiennes 16.3–4 (2000): 17–28. Ageno Franca. “Motivi francescani nelle laudi di Iacopone da Todi.” Lettere Italiane 12.2 (1960): 180–84. Alexiou, Margaret. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Second edition revised by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. Amato, Angelo, Maria Campatelli, Ferdinando Castelli, Stefano De Fiores, Luigi Gambero, George Gharib, Giovanni Guaita, Tomás Josef Spidlík, and Ermanno M. Toniolo, eds. Testi Mariani del Secondo Millennio. 8 vols. Rome: Città Nuova, 1996–2008. Aquinas, Saint Thomas. S. Thomae de Aquino Opera Omnia, Corpus Thomisticum. www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. Accessed 9 September 2021. Arentzen, Thomas. The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Atanassova, Antonia. “Container of the Uncontainable God: Mary and the Theotokos Controversy.” PhD diss., Boston College, 2003. Baldelli, Ignazio. “La lauda e i Disciplinati.” In Il Movimento dei disciplinati nel settimo centenario dal suo inizio (Perugia, 1260), edited by Lodovico Scaramucci, 338–67. Spoleto: Panetto and Petrelli, 1962. Barré, Henri. “Le ‘Planctus Mariae’ attribué a S. Bernard.” Revue d’ascétique de mystique 28 (1952): 243–55. Barré, Henri. “Antiennes et Répons de la Vierge.” Marianum 29 (1967): 153–254. Bernard of Clairvaux. St. Bernard’s Sermons on the Blessed Virgin Mary. Translated by a priest of Mount Mellary. Chulmleigh: Augustine Publishing Company, 1984. Bertelli, Italo. Impeto mistico e rappresentazione realistica nella poesia di Jacopone: Appunti sulla lauda “Donna de Paradiso.” Milan: Bignami, 1981. Bettarini, Rosanna. “Ancora su Jacopone.” Studi di filologia italiana 32 (1974): 391–434. Bettarini, Rosanna. Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate. Florence: Sansoni, 1969. Blastic, Michael W. “The Virgin Mary in the Writings of Francis and Clare of Assisi.” In Medieval Franciscan Approaches to the Virgin Mary: Mater Misericordiae, Sanctissima et Dolorosa. Edited by Steven J. McMichael and Katherine Wrisley Shelby, 13–31. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2019. Boaga, Emanuele. “Culto e pietà mariana nel secolo XIII.” Theotokos 19 (2011): 49–86. Brock, Sebastian, trans. Bride of Light: Hymns on Mary from the Syriac Churches. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010. Brufani, Stefano. “Fonti e motivi francescani nelle ‘laude’ di Iacopone da Todi.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi: Atti del Convegno di studio (Todi, 3–7 dicembre

266

REYNOLDS

2006), edited by Enrico Menestò, 253–74. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2008. Burr, David. The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. Cremascoli, Giuseppe. “Lo ‘Stabat Mater’.” In Iacopone da Todi: Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000), 323–36. Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001. da Lentini, Giacomo. The Complete Poetry. Translated by Richard Lansing, with an Introduction by Akash Kumar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Del Popolo, Concetto. “Maria nelle Laude di Iacopone.” In Iacopone poeta: Atti del Convegno di studi (Stroncone – Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005), edited by Franco Suitner, 67–92. Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 2007. Di Nola, Gerardo, Luigi Gambero, Georges Gharib, and Ermanno M. Toniolo, eds. Testi Mariani del Primo Millennio. 4 vols. Roma: Città Nuova, 1988–91. Dobrov, Gregory W. A. “Dialogue with Death: Ritual Lament and the θρῆνος Θεοτόκου of Romanos Melodos.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 35.4 (1994): 385–405. Dronke, Peter. “Laments of the Maries: From the Beginnings to the Mystery Plays.” In Idee, Gestalt, Geschichte: Festschrift fur Klaus von See, Studien zur europäischen Kulturtradition, edited by Gerd Wolfgang Weber, 89–116. Odense: Odense University Press, 1988. Duffy, Eamon. English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580. Yale University Press, 1992. Francis of Assisi, Early Documents. Vol. 1. Edited by Regis Armstrong, Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short. New York: New City Press, 1999. Fulton, Rachel. From Judgement to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Galen. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia. Edited by Karl Gottlob Kühn. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2012. Guarnieri, Anna Maria, ed. Laudario di Cortona. Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1991. Hamman, Adalbert, and Walter Mitchell, trans. Early Christian Prayers. London: ­Longmans and Green, 1961. Hughes, Serge, and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. The Lauds. By Jacopone da Todi. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Franco Mancini. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1990. Kumar, Akash. “Sì come dice lo Filosofo: Translating Philosophy in the Early Italian Lyric.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2013. https://scholar.archive.org/work/37ddg oboifbqldvn6lun5zimhu/access/wayback/https://academiccommons.columbia.edu /doi/10.7916/D8FT8T9 B/download.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

267

Leonardi, Matteo. Storia della Lauda. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Mancini, Franco. “Tradizione e innovazione in ‘Donna de’ Paradiso’.” In Atti del Convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi (Todi, 29–30 novembre 1980), edited by Enrico Menestò, 155–76. Firenze: La Nuova Italia 1981. Martelli Mario. “Cielo e terra in una Lauda di Jacopone da Todi.” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 141.434 (January 1964): 161–85. Maunder, Chris, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Mary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Maximus the Confessor. The Life of the Virgin. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Stephen J. Shoemaker. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. McNamer, Sarah. Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Menestò, Enrico. Le prose latine attribuite a Jacopone da Todi. Bologna: Pàtron, 1979. Migne, Jacques Paul, ed. Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Graeca. 161 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1857–91. Migne, Jacques-Paul, ed. Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina. 221 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1841–64. Miller, Frederick L. “Lk 1: 34: Mary’s Desire for Virginity?” Angelicum 75. 2 (1998): 189–208. Moleta, Vincent. “Dialogues and Dramatic Poems in the ‘Laudario Jacoponico’.” Italian Studies 30.1 (1975): 7–29. Mone, Franz Joseph. Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters. Vol. 2 of Marienlieder. Aalen: Scientia, 1964. Montefusco, Antonio. Iacopone nell’Umbria del Due-Trecento. Un’alternativa francescana. Roma: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2006. Ogier of Locedio. In Priase of God’s Holy Mother. On our Lord’s Words to his Disciples at the Last Supper. Translated and annotated by D. Martin Jenni. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2006. Peck, George T. The Fool of God, Jacopone da Todi. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980. Petrocchi, Giorgio. “La letteratura religiosa.” In Storia della letteratura italiana: le Origini e il duecento, edited by Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, 1, 627–88. Milan: Garzanti, 1965. Planctus ante nescia. In Songs in British Sources c. 1150–1300. Edited by Helen Deeming. London: Stainer and Bell, 2013. Accessed April 29, 2022, https://frenchofengland .ace.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Planctus-ante-nescia.pdf. Pseudo-Albert the Great (Richard of St. Lawrence). De laudibus beatae Mariae virginis libri duodecim. In B. Alberti Magni Opera Omnia. Edited by Auguste Borgnet, Êmilie Borgnet, Jacques Quétif. Vol. 36. Paris: Ludovicum Vives, 1898. Pugh, Ben. Atonement Theories: A Way through the Maze. Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press, 2014.

268

REYNOLDS

Reynolds, Brian K. Gateway to Heaven. Vol. 1, New York: New City Press, 2012. Reynolds, Brian K. “L’immagine di Maria nelle laude del XIII secolo.” Fu Jen Studies: Literature & Linguistics 43 (2010): 69–93. Reynolds, Brian K. “Marian Typological and Symbolic Imagery in Patristic Mariology.” In Maunder, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Mary, 78–92. Reynolds, Brian K. “The Patristic and Medieval Roots of Mary’s Humility.” In Maunder, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Mary, 320–37. Reynolds, Brian K. “The Virgin and the Lady: Some Considerations on the Intersections between Courtly and Marian Literature.” Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 7, no. 2 (2014): 229–77. Romanos the Melodist. Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist, On the Christian Life. Vol. 1. Translated and Annotated by Marjorie Carpenter. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1970. Root, Jerry. The Theophilus Legend in Medieval Text and Image. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2017. Roschini, Gabriele M. “Royauté de Marie.” In Maria: Études sur la Sainte Vierge, edited by Hubert du Manoir, 1, 601–18. Paris: Beauchesne, 1949. Sabilio, Vito. “Su alcuni aspetti della mariologia medievale.” Marianum 66.165–166 (2004): 623–58. Shoemaker, Stephen J. “A Mother’s Passion: Mary at the Crucifixion and Resurrection in the Earliest ‘Life of the Virgin’ and Its Influence on George of Nikomedeia’s Passion Homilies.” In The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images, edited by Leslie Brubaker and Mary B. Cunningham, 53–67. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Shoemaker, Stephen J. “Mary at the Cross, East and West: Maternal Compassion and Affective Piety in the Earliest Life of the Virgin and the High Middle Ages.” The ­Journal of Theological Studies 62.2 (2011): 570–606. Sollier, Joseph. “Adoptionism.” In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. www.newadvent.org/cathen/01150a.htm. Sri, Edward. Queen Mother: Biblical Theology of Mary’s Queenship. Steubenville, OH: Emmaus, 2005. Sticca, Sandro. “‘The Montecassino Passion’ and the Origin of the Latin Passion Play.” Italica 44 (1967): 209–19. Sticca, Sandro. The ‘Planctus Mariae’ in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages. Translated by Joseph Berrigan. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Tanner, Norman P., ed. “Anathemas against the ‘Three Chapters’.” In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: From Nicaea I to Vatican II. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 1990. Tsironis, Niki. “The Lament of the Virgin Mary from Romanos the Melode to George of Nicomedia: An Aspect of the Development of the Marian Cult.” PhD diss., Kings College London, 1998.

THE MARIAN LAUDE OF IACOPONE DA TODI: TRADITION AND RENEWAL

269

Ugolini, Francesco A. Testi volgari abruzzesi del Duecento. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1959. Underhill, Evelyn and Theodore Beck, Mrs. Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic, 1228–1306: A Spiritual Biography. London, Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1919. Varanini, Giorgio, ed. Laude Dugentesche. Padua: Antenore, 1972. Vettori, Alessandro. Poets of Divine Love: Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm. New York: Penguin, 1973.

Chapter 11

Victorine Traces in Iacopone’s Laude Carlo Zacchetti Traces of Victorine influence in Iacopone’s poetry have been noticed since the first commentary on the Laude written by the Franciscan friar Francesco Tresatti in 1617.1 Afterwards, several scholars have studied the contacts between Iacopone and Victorine theologians, exploring the spirituality of the Franciscan poet, especially in poems focused on contemplation.2 However, in the Laude Iacopone never executes a mere translation or adaptation into verses of a specific Victorine text, even though some texts by Hugh or Richard are clearly recognizable. Even in the emblematic case of the lauda 89, “Amor de caritate,”3 the intertextuality between Iacopone’s poem and Richard’s of Saint Victor De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis is established by a coherent system of conceptual and textual correspondences, “una serie di convergenze incrociate che agiscono sul livello semantico del testo” (Mocan, Iacopone, 296), and there is 1 I would like to thank Dr. Sandro-Angelo De Thomasis for his valuable contribution to the linguistic review of this essay. 2 See at least Mira Mocan, “Iacopone e la spiritualità vittorina: ‘’Amor de caritate’ e il ‘’De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis’ di Riccardo di San Vittore,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi: Atti del Convegno di studio (Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006), ed. Enrico Menestò, pp. 289–309 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007); Matteo Leonardi, “Per un nuovo commento a Iacopone da Todi,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 123 (2006): pp. 89–91; Leonardi, “‘La lengua m’è mozzata’: La violenza d’Amore nel linguaggio mistico tra XII e XIII secolo,” in Per violate forme: Rappresentazioni e linguaggi della violenza nella letteratura italiana, eds. Fabrizio Bondi and Nicola Catelli, pp. 205–23 (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2009); Agide Gottardi, “L’‘’albero spirituale’ in Jacopone da Todi,” Rassegna critica della letteratura italiana 20.1–2 (1915): pp. 1–28; and 20. 3–4 (1915): pp. 85–116; Francesco Zambon, “Gli alberi della contemplazione in Iacopone da Todi,” in La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura medioevale: Atti del Convegno internazionale. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Pisa, 23–25 gennaio 2019), eds. Corrado Bologna and Carlo Zacchetti, pp. 149–86 (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022). Recently, Montefusco observed that “il rapporto con la tradizione vittorina (Ugo e Riccardo) meriterebbe un supplemento e un infittimento qualitativo e quantitativo dell’analisi.” Antonio Montefusco, “Il laudario e le sue fonti” in “Fugo la croce che me devura”: Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, eds. Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020), p. 85. 3 For consistency with the rest of the volume, the present essay adopts the text and the numeration of the Laude of Franco Mancini’s edition. Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. Franco Mancini (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1974). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_013

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

271

not a single occurrence where it is possible to recognize a vulgarization from Latin. The connection with Richard’s text is also supported by the presence of the De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis in the library of San Fortunato in Todi, a noteworthy presence considering that it is the only known copy of the text that circulated in Italy before the second half of the fourteenth century.4 In this respect, the case of the lauda 78 is even more significant because it offers an indisputable material antecedent that reveals a strong connection with Hugh of Saint Victor’s thought. The arboreal diagram associated with the poem “Un albero è da Deo plantato” has been realized following closely the ­description of the qualities of Seraphic love in Hugh’s Dionysian comment known as Super Ierarchiam Dionisii. This iconographic and ­ideological convergence reveals an intense dialogue between Iacopone and the School of Saint Victor, which is not restricted to the figure of the tree of love but a­ ccompanies the poet to discover the incomprehensible light of the Divine Trinity, until the expression of the “alta nichilitate”. Therefore, the present essay intends to explore the Victorine background of Iacopone’s imagery of love starting from the material evidence offered by the manuscript tradition linked to the lauda 78.

4 Matteo Leonardi had already noticed the presence of the De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis in the ancient catalogue of the Biblioteca di San Fortunato in Todi (Leonardi, Per un nuovo commento, p. 84). Mira Mocan has taken into consideration this relevant material evidence, but has observed as well that a systematical and careful reconstruction of the material and ideological means by which Richard (and Hugh) had been received in the medieval centuries is still missing (Mocan, Iacopone, p. 292). A first conspectus of the material circulation of the Victorine works in Italy between the twelfth and the fourteenth century has been presented by Carlo Zacchetti, “La circolazione dei manoscritti vittorini nell’Italia medievale,” in La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura medioevale: Atti del Convegno internazionale. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Pisa, 23–25 gennaio 2019), eds. Corrado Bologna and Carlo Zacchetti, pp. 149–86 (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022) – as an anticipation of a broader doctoral thesis dedicated to Victorine influence in medieval Franciscan literature (La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura francescana dell’Italia medievale [XIII–XIV secolo], defended on 27 January 2022 and currently ahead of publication). This study shows that the copy of the De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis in the library of Todi (ms. Todi, Biblioteca comunale L. Leonj, 55, ff. 124v–132v) – which belonged to Matthew of Aquasparta’s personal library until 1287 (Enrico Menestò, “La biblioteca del convento francescano di San Fortunato di Todi,” in I manoscritti medievali della biblioteca comunale “L. Leonii” di Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò [­Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2008], p. 204) – is the only one that apparently circulated in Italy before the ending of the thirteenth century. Then numerous copies of the text are attested after the 1400, whilst the only one of the fourteenth century is the ms. Vatican City, B.A.V., Chigi B. V. 87, ff. 86v–96r (1364).

272 1

ZACCHETTI

The Diagram of the Tree of Love

The iconographic apparatus directly connected with the lauda 78 has been ­discovered in 1989 by Ciociola, who identified the correspondence of the poem dedicated to the description of the ascension on the tree of love with an a­ rboreal diagram associated with the pseudo-Bonaventurian Arbor amoris, edited in 1964 by Urs Kamber.5 The diagram and the poem share an identical arboreal pattern, which marks the same steps of the ascension towards the inaccessible eternity of the Holy Trinity. In a similar essay that appeared in 1985, Blake had already compared the lauda “Un arbore è da Deo plantato” with the text of the Arbor amoris, but despite the several similarities detected, he appeared more cautious in establishing a direct derivation of the lauda from the Latin work.6 Ciociola states, on the contrary, that this is a rare case where it is p ­ ossible to demonstrate the “operante ‘intertestualità’” (­Ciociola, Visibile parlare, 113). He relies, in fact, upon the exceptional discovery of the same ­arboreal figure in the manuscript D 46 sup. (c. 121r) of the Biblioteca ­Ambrosiana of Milan (see figure 11.1), in which a vernacular couplet ­accompanies every branch of the tree. The use of vernacular and the correspondence of the arboreal p ­ attern with the one described in Iacopone’s poem allows the association of the ­figure and  the lauda 78, “Un arbore è da Deo plantato.” On the other hand, the ­vernacular verses inscribed in the branches of the drawing at the c. 121r – the only leaf whose contents are not coherent with the rest of the ms. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, D 46 sup., as it is a palimpsest – reveal an indisputable correspondence with the Latin verses inscribed in the diagram ­associated to the Arbor amoris, studied by Kamber in the version present in the ms, ­Olomouc, Universitätsbibliothek, M I 305.7 This is why Blake was more ­cautious in establishing the dependence between the lauda and the Latin pseudo-­Bonaventurian text: it is necessary to consider the diagrams and not the text of the Arbor amoris itself. Since its discovery, the manuscript of the Ambrosiana has been indicated as one of the most important proofs to understand how the Laude circulated

5 Claudio Ciociola, “‘Visibile parlare’: agenda,” Rivista di letteratura italiana 7 (1989): pp. 9–77; Urs Kamber, ed. Arbor amoris. Der Minnebaum: Ein Pseudo-Bonaventura-Traktat. Herausgegeben nach lateinischen und deutschen Handschriften des XIV und XV Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1964). 6 A.A. Blake, “A Mystical Tree of Jacopone da Todi,” Spunti e ricerche. Rivista d’Italianistica 1 (1985): pp. 81–98. 7 Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 60.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

figure 11.1 Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, ms. D 46 sup., f. 121r

273

274

ZACCHETTI

while Iacopone was still alive.8 In strict terms, there is no proof that the lauda 78 was transcribed in that manuscript of the Ambrosiana, accompanied then by the arboreal diagram. At the same time, the language, the perfect correspondence of the ascetic degrees and, most of all, the manuscript tradition of the Laude – which presents some collections of Iacopone’s poems that include the drawing and the vernacular verses – authorize the inclusion of the arboreal diagram in Iacopone’s artistic register. The posterior circulation of the Laude also reveals that, in some cases, the vernacular verses of the figure have been considered as an independent poem.9 Indeed, the diagram was originally associated with the lauda 78 in its integrality and not with such a “surrettizia pseudo-lauda” (Ciociola, Visibile parlare, p. 29). However, the fact that one crucial branch of Iacopone’s manuscript tradition, “una delle sottofamiglie degli antichi laudari umbri”, presents only the “didascalie, destrutturate come una lauda a parte” (Leonardi, La tradizione, p. 180)10 could reveal an essential aspect of the practical use of the diagram. Succinctly put, before being transformed into a pseudo-lauda, it could have circulated autonomously as a mnemotechnical device to support preaching, like it was most likely used by Iacopone.11 8

See especially Lino Leonardi, “La tradizione manoscritta e il problema testuale del laudario di Iacopone,” in Iacopone da Todi: Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000), ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001), pp. 179–80 and Angelo Eugenio Mecca, “La tradizione manoscritta delle Laude di Iacopone da Todi,” Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 19.2 (2016): p. 10. 9 Rosanna Bettarini, Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate (Florence: Sansoni, 1969). Bettarini still believed in the autonomy of this pseudo-lauda, entitled “Lo cor umilïato” (477–78), even though Tresatti himself – who included the poem in his large collection – recognised that this assembly of verses gives the impression of someone who “passeggiando borbotti, et parli con se stesso, et de’ suoi concetti parte ne accenni, parte ne lasci”. Francesco Tresatti Le poesie spirituali del B. Iacopone da Todi accresciute di molti altri suoi cantici nuovamente ritrovati, che non erano venuti in luce […] (Venezia: Appresso Niccolò Masserini, 1617), p. 981. 10 In La tradizione, Lino Leonardi signals the presence of this pseudo-lauda in the manuscripts A’ (Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, 2306), Ch (Chantilly, Musée Condé, XIV.G.2), G (Giaccherino, Convento di San Francesco, I.F.6) and Ve (Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, V.E. 941). 11 Regarding this performative aspect of the Laude see Enrico Menestò, “Le laude drammatiche di Iacopone da Todi: fonti e scrittura,” in Le laudi drammatiche umbre delle origini: Atti del V Convegno di Studio (Viterbo, 22–25 Maggio 1980), pp. 105–40 (Spoleto: Centro di Studi sul Teatro Medioevale e Rinascimentale, 1981); Lina Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini: Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin: Einaudi, 2009), pp. 121–44 and Samia Abdel Tawwab’s essay in this volume.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

275

This hypothesis could shed light on the arboreal pattern shared in common by two texts such as the lauda 78 and the pseudo-Bonaventurian Arbor amoris, which come from different countries and environments. All the manuscripts of the Arbor amoris collected by Kamber come from German-­speaking areas, and they do not go further back than the fourteenth century.12 So, the Arbor amoris text appears to belong to a different tradition from the one of Iacopone, as it seems to be confirmed by the Dominican environment to which most of the manuscripts can be ascribed. Besides, the arboreal diagram in the ms. Biblioteca Ambrosiana, D 46 sup. has been dated back to the third quarter of the thirteenth century by Emanuele Casamassima.13 In sum, the lauda and the pseudo-Bonaventurian text appear to have nothing in common except for the arboreal pattern on six levels to represent the love’s ascension: in other words, the diagram with its verses. Still, some details are to be added to this particular tradition. Firstly, one of the manuscripts with the German-vernacular text of the Arbor amoris, the ms. München, Staatsbibliothek, cgm 132, could be dated back to the end of the ­ thirteenth century.14 More importantly, three different discoveries enrich Kamber’s study. The first is identifying three more Italian witnesses of the Arbor amoris, two of which are accompanied by the arboreal diagram.15 12

When Kamber edited the Arbor amoris, in fact, he set up his research in the wake of those promoted by Kurt Ruh with the publication of his doctoral study on some medieval German treatises attributed to Bonaventure. Kurt Ruh, Bonaventura deutsch: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Franziskaner-Mystik und -Scholastik (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1956). 13 Concordanze della lingua poetica italiana delle origini [CLPIO], ed. D’Arco Silvio Avalle, (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1992) p. 1, xxxix). 14 See Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 97 and the latest updated dating in Elisabeth Klemm, Die illuminierten Handschriften des 13 Jahrhunderts deutscher Herkunft in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1998), p. 282. It is noteworthy that a large portion of the manuscript contains David of Augsburg’s works, an author presumed to be an itinerant preacher who shares some characteristics with the figure of Iacopone, namely belonging to the Franciscan order and especially the fact of being one of the first author to write in ancient German-vernacular. See Sophronious OFM Clasen, “David von Augsburg,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie, 3,533–34 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1957) and Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350), vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), pp. 113–16. 15 The Arbor amoris is present in the following manuscripts: Padova, Biblioteca civica, C.M. 50 (1426–1475), ff. 126r–128v (see Leonardo Granata et al., eds., I manoscritti medievali di Padova e provincia [Florence: SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2002], pp. 37–38, nr. 58); ms. Innsbruck, Universitätsbibliothek, 705 (II 3 F 11), (fourteenth century), ff. 5r–11r, with

276

ZACCHETTI

­ oreover, the drawing with the tree of love has also been discovered in a fragM ment at the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome (Frammenti I, busta 5, n. 6), realised in the fifteenth century on a palimpsest sheet (see figure 11.2).16 All this interesting material needs to be carefully studied and compared to Kamber’s analyses on the German-speaking area tradition. However, it should also be compared to the text and arboreal drawing of Galvanus de Levanto’s Liber de amando Deum, indicated by Ciociola as “un’ulteriore testimonianza della fortuna italiana di quel modello (o di archetipo strettamente affine).”17 In the case of Galvanus’s treatise, once again, it is just the diagram that raises the correspondences, establishing a new dating for the tradition of the Arbor amoris: the offering of the codex to Boniface VIII by Galvanus himself, represented in the drawing at f. 1r, settles the realisation of the Liber de amando Deum and the arboreal diagram before 1303, when Iacopone was still living.18 Among others, Galvanus’s diagram introduces a critical innovation to the traditional Arbor amoris, namely the correspondence of each grade of love to an angelic order, which obliges the author to add three more degrees. Then, it should be observed that the more complicated schema adopted by Galvanus de Levanto to represent his arboreal diagram reminds the one of the ms. B ­ olzano, Franziskanerkloster, I 73 (1476) – the only Italian one studied by Kamber, even if it belongs to a German-speaking area19– which distinguishes each level in four different branches. The four branches of the last level, for instance, correspond the diagram on f. 10v: the manuscript comes from the Charterhouse of Senales, Bolzano (see Neuhauser, pp. 33–37); ms. Subiaco, Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale del Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 289 (CCLXXXIII) (1390; fifteenth century), ff. 69r–71v: on the manuscript the sheets are marked erroneously as 66, 67 and 68; the arboreal diagram is at f. 72r, marked another time 68, see Raffaella Crociani et al., eds., I manoscritti datati di Grottaferrata, Subiaco e Velletri (Florence: SISMEL, 2009), p. 49. 16 See Elisabetta Caldelli, I frammenti della Biblioteca Vallicelliana: Studio metodologico sulla catalogazione dei frammenti di codici medievali e sul fenomeno del loro riuso (Rome: ­Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2012), pp. 231–32. 17 Visibile parlare, p. 34. 18 The Liber de amando Deum is included in the ms. Paris, BNF, Latin 3181, ff. 21r–24r, with the diagram following on f. 24v. The text is still unedited and the ms. Lat. 3181, which belonged to the Visconti library in Milan (Elisabeth Pellegrin, La bibliothèque des Visconti et des Sforza, ducs de Milan, au Xve siècle [Paris: Service des publications du C.N.R.S., 1996], p. 174), is the only known witness of the treatise. According to the last biographical portrait of Galvanus de Levanto, he was really close to the Franciscan friars during his life, but he never wore their habit – he joined at most the Third Order, see Patrick Gautier-Dalché, “Levanto, Galvano da,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2005), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/galvano-da -levanto_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. 19 Kamber, Arbor amoris, pp. 36–39.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

277

figure 11.2 Roma, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Frammenti I, busta 5, n. 6 (Caldelli 232)

to the four parts in which Galvanus distinguishes the level of the “Seraphim ardentes”: “amor excessus”; “cecitas”; “mentis alienacio”; “Jubilus amoris”.20 As such, if we add the ms. Innsbruck Universitätsbibliothek, 705 belonging to the Charterhouse of Senales, near Bolzano, to the couple Liber de amando Deum 20 Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 37.

278

ZACCHETTI

and ms. Bolzano, Franiskanerkloster, I 73, there is a convergence of three witnesses in that area. A careful comparison of all this material is required to determine exactly all the similarities and differences between the various diagrams and texts – in both vernaculars, Italian and German, and in Latin – and also to examine the other texts among which the Arbor amoris had been circulating. Such an analysis could shed more light on the circumstances in which Iacopone conceived his lauda “Un arbore è da Deo plantato”. Nevertheless, what emerges from the abundance of this material is the existence of a common archetype that can be reduced to the arboreal schema with six levels, each of which is distinguished into two different branches. A careful examination of all the diagrams may reveal who is the author at the origin of this archetype. For the moment, all the clues lead to thinking that the author was a Franciscan friar – or someone very close to the Franciscan environment – who was probably active as a preacher during the third quarter of the thirteenth century.21 2

Seraphic Love in Hugh of Saint Victor’s Words

The diagram of the Arbor amoris discloses a strong Victorine imprint. Kamber had already drawn attention to the Victorine component of the Latin text,22 based almost entirely on a passage of Hugh of Saint Victor’s comment to the pseudo-Dionysian De caelesti hierarchia.23 This strict dependence is confirmed by the quotations of Hugh’s comment present in the pseudo-­Bonaventurian text,24 and by the manuscript tradition, which points out several codices where the extract from Hugh’s comment is transcribed just next to the Arbor amoris.25 This particular extract from Hugh’s comment, which circulated quite 21

We may not exclude therefore the possibility that Iacopone himself elaborated the arboreal diagram in a first moment, but nothing can confirm it and it is more cautious to maintain the identity of the author unknown. 22 Kamber, Arbor amoris, pp. 78–91. 23 Dominique Poirel, ed., Hugonis de Sancto Victore Super ierarchiam Dionisii (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), VI.vii.62–256. 24 The explicit quotations from Hugh’s comment are in Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 52, lines 177–80; 55, lines 242–43; however, the pseudo-Bonaventure employs several expressions already used by Hugh, as well as many scriptural quotations already proposed by the ­Victorine. 25 The extract from Hugh’s comment is present in the mss. Innsbruck, ­Universitätsbibliothek, 705 (fourteenth century), ff. 1v–5r (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, 61); S­ ubiaco, ­Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale del Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 289 (CCLXXXIII), ff. 64r–65v; Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, 972 (fifteenth century), ff. 75v–79v – followed by

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

279

as an independent work, coincides precisely with the passage in which the Victorine describes the adjectives used by the pseudo-Dionysius to describe the Seraphim order: “Quid est illud angelorum ‘mobile semper circa divina et incessabile et calidum et acutum et superfervidum motionis semper intentae et inflexibilis semper’?” (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.115–17).26 Hugh proposes to read these adjectives as the qualities of love (“dilectio”), not as something irrelevant or futile, but in the way the pseudo-Dionysius demonstrates to conceive it, “qui tam multa de dilectione dixit” (121).27 Hugh proposes the allegorical and anagogical lecture of the Seraphim order as the image of charity, whereas Dionysius never alludes to such correspondence. In this passage, Hugh introduces one of the most original aspects of his reading of ­pseudo-Dionysius, who, in turn, has since then appeared more Augustinian in the western tradition.28

26 27 28

an another little passage from Hugh’s comment (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VII. vii.835–836), ff. 79v–80r, and then by the Arbor amoris, ff. 80v–87r (see Kamber, Arbor amoris, pp. 20–21 and Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, 57); Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 900 (fifteenth century), ff. 42v–52v – followed by the Arbor amoris, ff. ff. 52r–66r (see Kamber, Arbor amoris, pp. 19–20 and Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, 83). We don’t have updates about the ms. Olomouc, Universitätsbibliothek, M I 305 (fifteenth century), which includes the drawing reproduced in Kamber’s edition, but Kamber reports what the then director of the Czech library told him in a letter, confirming the presence of extracts from Hugh and Richard of Saint-Victor’s works, without specifying the titles (Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 18). Other manuscripts include this particular extract from Hugh’s comment, such as the ms. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz germ. 4° 1522 (fifteenth century), ff. 24v–28r (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, p. 42); Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, 1075–1078 (Van den Gheyn 919) (sixteenth century), ff. 221v-223v (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, 44); Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek, 293 (fifteenth century), ff. 135r-136v (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, p. 61): it may be useful to examine the contents of these manuscripts too, for they could reveal other material interesting for the tradition of the Arbor amoris. “What is it that ‘always mobile around divine realities, and unceasing and warm and sharp and superheated, always moving with tension and always inflexible’, which [he says about] angels?” (trans. mine). “… who has said so many things of love.” (Rorem, Hugh, p. 174). See Paul R. Rorem, “The early Latin Dionysius: Eriugena and Hugh of St. Victor,” Modern Theology 24.4 (Oct. 2008): p. 608, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.2008.00488.x. “Hugh reflects the Augustinian appropriation of Platonism, not a Dionysian one. […] John the Scot became a Dionysian, but Hugh of St. Victor remained an Augustinian, or rather, was his own Victorine”. See also Coolman and Csaba Nemeth, “The Victorines and the Areopagite,” in L’école de Saint-Victor de Paris. Influence et rayonnement du Moyen Âge à l’Époque moderne: Actes du Colloque international du C.N.R.S. pour le neuvième centenaire de la fondation (1108–2008) tenu au Collège des Bernardins à Paris, les 24–27 septembre 2008, ed. Dominique Poirel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).

280

ZACCHETTI

The Victorine, “with his pervasive interest in fire” (Rorem, Early Latin Dionysius, 608),29 seizes the image of the fire with which the Seraphim burn to introduce his Augustinian interpretation of the Pauline-Dionysian “ecstatic love”.30 Hugh explores the meaning of the qualities referred to as the Seraphic order in the Dionysian text by transforming the simple series of adjectives in a scaled ascension to the highest degree of love, where the soul no longer belongs to itself, being totally conquered by God’s charity. Hugh, then, and not Dionysius, provides a hierarchy of love based upon the Dionysian “discretio nominis” (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.62–63) of the Seraphim. The Victorine warns against a reductive concept of love. The idea of “dilectio” that Hugh affirms to read between the lines of the pseudo-Dionysius’s text is comprehensive of a wide range of concepts that establishes a sort of ascensional progression. Love is considered firstly as something active (“mobile”) that can last eternally (“incessabile”) and makes someone move by inflaming their hearth (“calidum”)31 and then thinning them to the point where they can penetrate

29

30

31

On this aspect see Dominique Poirel, “L’eau et le feu chez Hugues de Saint-Victor († 1141),” in L’eau et le feu dans les religions antiques: Actes du premier colloque international d’histoire des religions organisé par l’École Doctorale Les Mondes de l’Antiquité (Paris, 18–20 mai 1995), ed. Gérard Capdeville (Paris: De Boccard, 2004), pp. 358–66. In his De divinis nominibus, IV.xiii, the pseudo-Dionysius introduces explicitly the concept of “amor exstaticus” to describe Paul’s experience of God’s love: “Est autem et exstaticus divinus amor, non sinens seipsos esse amantes, sed amandorum. Et declarant: quidem superiora providentia facta inferiorum, et aequiformia inter se invicem continentia, et minora ad prima diviniore conversione. Proinde et Paulus magnus, in excellentia divini factus amoris, et mente excedentem suam virtutem assumens, divino ore: ‘Vivo, ait, iam non ego vivit autem in me Christus’. Ut vere amator et mente excedens sic inquit Deo, et non ipsam sui vivens sed ipsam amatoris vitam ut nimis dilectissimam.” Philippe Chevallier , ed., Dionysiaca. Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l’Aréopage. 2 vols. (Paris-Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937– 1950), pp. 215–16. Translation by Colm Luibhéid and Paul Rorem, eds., Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works (New York-Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 82: “This divine yearning brings ecstasy so that the lover belongs not to self but to the beloved. This is shown in the providence lavished by the superior on the subordinate. It is shown in the regard for one another demonstrated by those of equal status. And it is shown by the subordinates in their divine return toward what is higher. This is why the great Paul, swept along by his yearning for God and seized of its ecstatic power, had this inspired word to say: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’. Paul was truly a lover and, as he says, he was beside himself for God, possessing not his own life but the life of the One for whom he yearned, as exceptionally beloved.” See Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.126–42.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

281

in the holy Beloved, Christ, and to know him (“acutum”).32 Thus, when this thinness has attained its highest level, the power of love liquefies the soul to let the Beloved enter the most intimate part of the heart and become one thing with it (“liquidum”).33 The lover, that is, the soul, is then torn away from herself in the affirmation of the Beloved, starting to look at herself like a stranger (“superfervidum”).34 Among the many essential elements in this passage, two must be put in evidence. Most importantly, the idea of these qualities of love as gradually ordered degrees is already present in Hugh’s comment. The Victorine underlines, for instance, the importance of sequentially reading the words in the pseudo-Dionysius’ text. So it will appear clearly that “calidum” is written before “acutum” for the reason that the knowledge always follows the movement of the heart moved by the power of love, like the episode of the disciples of Emmaus plainly shows: “Propterea non dixit: ‘acutum et calidum’ sed ‘calidum et acutum’, quemadmodum prius ‘mobile’, postea ‘incessabile’, ut ‘mobile’ ad inquisitionem excitet, ‘incessabile’ ad perseverantiam confirmet; ‘calidum’ ut sensum vivificet, ‘acutum’ autem penetret ad comprehensionem” (Poirel, ­Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.147–52).35 Secondly, we may note that the text of Dionysius’ De caeleste hierarchia does not contain the love-quality “fervidum”, but it is yet another innovation by Hugh of Saint Victor, who calls it “liquidum”. To better define the concept of “acutum”, Hugh insists on the idea of being made thin by love to become one with the beloved: “Amor autem unum te facere vult cum ipso, et iccirco penetrat omnia et appropinquat quantum potest ad unum ipsum” (VI.vii.163–65).36 He argues that in other places the same adjective “acutum” can be replaced by the different one “liquidum” to express the idea of the sweetness of spousal love, “blandimento dilectionis” (VI.vii.172), as the bride of the Song of Songs says (VI.vii.174–75). Then, Hugh resorts to the biblical metaphor of liquefaction, an image that he holds dear and that occurs several times in his different 32 33 34 35

36

See Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam,VI.vii.152–63. See Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.166–97. See Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.218–55. “For this reason, he did not say: ‘sharp and warm’ but ‘warm and sharp’, as first ‘mobile’, then ‘unceasing’, in order that ‘mobile’ would incite to search, ‘unceasing’ would confirm in perseverance; ‘warm’ would revive sense, whilst ‘sharp’ would penetrate to comprehension” (trans. mine). “However, love wants to make you one thing with it, and therefore penetrates everything and approaches how much it can to that unity” (trans. mine).

282

ZACCHETTI

works.37 The author of the arboreal diagram associated with the Arbor ­amoris – who could be different from the author of the Latin text, as explained above – transforms this degree (“liquidum”) in “fervidum”, still recurring to the Victorine vocabulary, as Hugh introduces the concept of “fervidum” to describe again the encounter of the disciples with Jesus on the way to Emmaus.38 As it appears, the unknown author tries to establish a logical connection between “fervidum” and “superfervidum”; however, still maintaining the idea of “liquidum” as characteristic of this level – the branches of the fifth degree in the diagram are “liquefaccio” and “languor”. Hugh knows that using a metaphor such as the liquefaction of the soul is the only way to try to perceive the sinking of Seraphic love into God, something which is hardly possible to grasp for a human mind, “quoniam dilectio supereminet scientiae et maior est intelligentia” (VI.vii.202–03).39 Seraphic love sinks into God to such a profoundness and intimacy that the intellect cannot follow it: “Plus enim diligitur quam intelligitur, et intrat dilectio et appropinquat ubi scientia foris est. Nec mirum, quia dilectio semper amplius ­presumit et confidit semper et ingerit se sine cunctatione amori” (VI.vii.203–06).40 These words, with which Hugh describes the pre-eminence of charity, reveal the most original aspect of Hugh’s comment on the Dionysian text and have been presented by Rorem as a “case study,”41 for they are at the origin of the

37

See Patrice Sicard, “De la liquéfaction à la défaillance: pour un vocabulaire mystique au XIIe siècle,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 4 (2013): pp. 447–48, https://doi.org/10.4000 /rhr.8171. 38 Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.131–36: “Ubi ‘calidum’ illud et ‘fervidum’ ostendere poterimus in dilectione? Ubi fervorem et calorem amor habuit, vel potius ubi amor sine calore et fervore fuit? Ambulantes et amantes, incedentes et ferventes, quid dixerunt de Iesu quem audierunt et non cognoverunt in via? Ambulabant enim et movebantur impatientia dilectionis acti, quia si starent non amarent.” (“Where could we point out that ‘warm’ and ‘fervid’ in love? When has love had fervor and warmth, or rather, whenever has love been without warmth and fervor? Walking and loving, approaching and fervoring, what did they say about Jesus, whom they heard and yet did not know along the way? In fact they were walking and were being moved by the impatience of love, as if they stood still, they would have not being loving” (trans. mine). 39 Rorem, Early Latin Dionysius, p. 608: “Love surpasses knowledge, and is greater than intelligence.” 40 “[All this] is loved more than understood, and love [dilectio] enters and approaches where knowledge stays outside. It is not surprising, because love [dilectio] further dares and is always confident and offers itself to love [amore] without any hesitation” (trans. mine). 41 Rorem, Early Latin Dionysius, pp. 608–11.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

283

“medieval affective Dionysian tradition”, 42 deepened by Thomas Gallus43 and then reduced to an anti-intellectualistic and anti-scholastic interpretation by a different and posterior tradition headed by Hugh of Balma’s De Theologia mystica.44 It is important to note that Hugh proposes this progressive order of love after a lengthy introduction where he faces the great question of God’s communicability. To talk about the summit of the angelic hierarchy, of that order that is the closest to God, leads back to the original unsolved problem: how to talk about God? This question is like a leitmotif of the whole comment and, in a way, of the whole work of the Victorine.45 Hugh’s meditation is balanced between two lines of thinking: “(a) tout discours humain sur Dieu est inadéquat; (b) mais l’est pas vain pour autant, à condition de garder la conscience de cette inadéquation.”46 The extract from Hugh’s comment that circulated with the Arbor amoris begins with acknowledging that the words that Hugh is about to interpret 42

See Boyd T. Coolman, “The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition,” Modern Theology 24.4 (October 2008): p. 615, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.2008.00489.x: “Arguably, this medieval interpolation of love over knowledge is produced by the convergence of two theological traditions flowing through the western Middle Ages: the (Augustinian) assumption that God is fully known and loved in a beatific visio Dei, which is the goal of human existence, and the (Dionysian) insistence that God is radically and transcendently unknowable.” 43 See Boyd T. Coolman, Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 1–27; and Declan Lawell, “Affective Excess: Ontology and Knowledge in the Thought of Thomas Gallus,” Dionysius 26 (2008): pp. 170–71, Dalhousie University Libraries Journal Hosting Service, ojs.library.dal.ca/dionysius/article/view/dio26lawell/. It is worth to notice what Lawell states: “Clearly, intellectual knowledge and concepts are relegated to a position below affective excess, without however being denigrated. Thomas Gallus, it has been seen, carefully distinguishes intellect and love, without thereby diluting the two. … This affective approach to God is the obverse of the apophaticism engendered by the failure of intellect to penetrate the cloud of unknowing – love takes over when knowledge can advance no further. I find however the label ‘anti-intellectual’ inappropriate to what I have discovered in Gallus’s thought. Gallus allows the intellectual path to complement affective excess.” 44 See Dominique Poirel, ed., “‘Mystique’: histoire d’un mot, histoire d’un malentendu.” In Existe-t-il une mystique médiévale? Actes du Colloque international, organisé par l’Institut d’Études Médiévales et tenu à l’Institut Catholique de Paris les 30 novembre et 1er décembre 2017, edited by Dominique Poirel, 11–33. Turnhout : Brepols, 2021. 45 As Dominique Poirel, Des symboles et des anges: Hugues de Saint-Victor et le réveil dionysien du XIIe siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 228–39 accurately demonstrated, this question relative to the theological language characterises the whole comment upon the De caelesti hierarchia, the work of his whole life, which is meant to be – in reality – an introduction to all the hierarchies described by the pseudo-Dionysius, considering also the Mystica theologia. 46 Poirel, Symboles, p. 522.

284

ZACCHETTI

have not been said to a man nor have even been said by a man. They appear to be more than human speech: they should be the perfection of any human speech. These words were born from those which can be only heard, but not pronounced, which in turn have been suggested by someone who entered the “paradisum Dei,” where words are “secreta omnino et proxima silentio”47 and are not even audible by human ears. So, in Hugh’s terms, “nata sunt de verbis verba, sicut verba de Verbo nata fuerunt: de verbis quae intus servari debuerunt verba quae foris proferri potuerunt, de immensis magna, de occultis obscura, de impenetrabilis profunda, quae a nobis audita sunt, utrum intellecta nescio” (VI.vii.87–91).48 These words astonish man, before the truth could enlighten his hearth, like the astonishing loud noise of thunder, which resonates without teaching. Nevertheless, if the wonderment awakens the soul, it could convert man, and conversion could bring illumination so that the words become sweet, not only admirable but also lovable. To love them is the only way to understand them and tasting them is the only way to love them. Then Hugh concludes: Quid ergo? Quare audivimus si non intelligimus? Aut quomodo intelligimus si non diligimus? Ego pro mea parte respondeo: si non presumo de dilectione, non discedo ab admiratione. Forsitan ipsa admiratione evigilabo ad cognitionem; et si minus excitor ad cognitionem, incitor ad dilectionem. Et erit interim dilectio ipsa refectio, donec ex ea oriatur contemplatio, per quam fiat illuminatio. (VI.vii 109–14)49 Even Hugh’s reflections in this passage are pretty obscure, but what emerges is the fact that there is no intelligence of divine words without an engagement of love, which can lead to contemplation and then to illumination. He does not speak of an intelligence of love but stresses the idea of continuity and complementarity between love and intellect instead. Therefore, the determination 47 Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.80–81 “… entirely secret and really close to silence” (our translation). 48 “… words are born from the words, as well as words were born from the Word: from the words that must be kept inside [are born] the words that could be said outside, from the immeasurable the great, from the secret the obscure, from the impenetrable the profound, which we have heard, but I am not sure if we have understood.” (Our translation). 49 “So what? How could we hear if we did not understand? Or even how could we understand if we did not love? As for me, here is my answer: if I do not dare following love, I cannot depart from astonishment. Perhaps, thanks to astonishment, I could stand with zealous in the search for knowledge; and if I am less led to knowledge, I am incited to love. Meanwhile, love will be the restoration, until contemplation will arise from it, by means of which there will be illumination.” (Our translation).

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

285

of the pre-eminence of love is proposed as a result of the question of the incommunicability of the divine Mystery, re-enacting the Pauline adage of the restless power of charity: “‘Quis’, inquit Apostolus, ‘separabit nos a caritate Christi?’” (VI.vii.212–13).50 The same particular affective interpretation of pseudo-Dionysius will be developed by Thomas Gallus, who will introduce the concept of “affective excess”,51 re-enacting another Pauline adage, the one of the dispossession of the self in God (Gal 2:19–20).52 3

Iacopone and the Victorine Affective Tradition

The whole Victorine-Dionysian tradition will lead then to the arboreal representation of the ascension of love, a characteristic progression conducted in the complementarity of love and intellect until the point where intellect cannot further follow love. The author of the diagram surely knew the extract of Hugh’s comment, most likely knew the whole comment, and perhaps even knew the long description of the allegorical tree that occupies the whole

50 51 52

“‘Who will separate us from the love of Christ?’, asks the Apostle.” (Our translation). See Lawell, Affective Excess. See, for instance, what Thomas Gallus writes in his Extractio upon the De divinis nominibus: “Ad auferendum autem molestiam verbi a multitudine non valente intelligere unitivum Dei amorem, propter ipsorum sursumactionem et suscitationem ad cognitionem veri amoris, cautum est a Theologia ut nomen amoris in divinis assumeretur; … Qui autem recte divina intelligit, aequipollenter accipit in divinis nomen amoris et nomen dilectionis, et indifferenter significatur utroque nomine virtus unifica et conjunctiva et concretiva dilecti et diligentis in bono et pulchro, praeexsistens in Verbo, per bonum et pulchrum ex bono et pulchro distributa, continens coordinata in una hierarchia aut in uno ordine vel gradu, secundum alternam et mutuam ipsorum habitudinem, movens autem prima ad providendum subjectis, et collocans inferiora in conversione ad superiora. Est autem amor in Deum tendens, faciens ecstasim, non permittens amatores esse sui ipsorum per mentis sobrietatem, sed eorum qui amantur, per excessum mentis; et facit superiora esse inferiorum per providentiam, et coordinata sibi invicem per mutuam continentiam, et inferiora superiorum per amoris conversionem ad ipsa. Unde et B. Paulus in amore Dei magnifice excellens, dicit: Vivo autem jam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus. Hoc autem dicit sicut verus amator, et ecstasim passus, vivens Deo, et non sibi, sed amati vita sicut valde diligibili” (205C–06B). Parts of this passage have been used to interpolate the Prologus of the third comment upon the Song of Songs (see Barbet, p. 119 and the discussion about the prologue at pp. 27–35); from this Prologus Rudolf from Biberach keeps his quotation “exponens Vercellensis” to speak about the perfection of the charity in the “mentis excessum”. Rudolphus de Bibraco “De septem itineribus aeternitatis,” in S. R. E. Cardinalis S. Bonaventurae ex Ordine Minorum, episcopi Albanensis, Doctoris Ecclesiae Seraphici, Opera Omnia […], ed. Adolphe C. Peltier (Paris: Vivès, 1866), p. 447.

286

ZACCHETTI

central part of Hugh’s De archa Noe,53 a definite source of Bonaventure’s Lignum vitae as well.54 These assumptions do not reveal the author’s identity, but they help understand the characteristics of the environment where this tradition had its origins and its relationship with Iacopone. Despite having treated Iacopone’s apophatic and contemplative language widely, scholars never noticed the pertinence of this significant passage of Hugh’s Dionysian comment, even though Agide Gottardi had already observed the affinity between Iacopone and the Victorine in 1915, referring to Hugh’s comment to the De caeleste hierarchia as to “il più importante antecedente, se non la fonte”55 of the arboreal laude he analyzed (77, 78 and 84).56 The main reason for this absence in scholarship is that Iacopone does not refer to the Hugonian-Dionysian degrees of love, although he describes the ascent upon the branches named in the diagram linearly. Blake suggested that Iacopone does not include these degrees of love because in the Latin text of the Arbor amoris there is a “lack of instruction”57 about the relationship between the degrees of love and the branches – the unknown author of the Latin version focuses mainly on the branches rather than the degrees, as Iacopone does. In reality, links to the Seraphic degrees are easily recognizable in the lauda 78, even if most of them are hidden behind a novel form of vernacular poetics. There is an allusion to the degree of “mobile” in verses 67–68, where Iacopone 53

54 55 56

57

See Patrice Sicard, ed., Hugonis de Sancto Victore. De archa Noe. Libellus de formation arche (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), II.xv–III.xvii. As Patrice Sicard, Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle. Le “Libellus de formatione arche” de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris: B ­ repols, 2008), pp. 29–31; and Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study in Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 257–60 have shown, the description of the allegorical tree represents quite a different work inserted within the exegetic treatise upon Noah’s Ark and it is even possible that it had circulated as an independent work too. See Grover A. Zinn, “Book and Word. The Victorine Background of Bonaventure’s Use of Symbols,” in S. Bonaventura 1274–1974, ed. Jacques G. Bougerol, 2 (Rome-Grottaferrata: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1973), pp. 143–69. Gottardi, p. 16. In reality, Gottardi proposes the comment upon the Celestial Hierarchy as the source of the other arboreal laude, 77 and 84, whilst he introduces other Hugonian works for the lauda 78, namely the De archa Noe (26–28 and 91), the De vanitate rerum mundanarum (86–87), the In Ecclesiasten (100) and other minor works of uncertain attribution, such as the Adnotationes in Ioelem (93) and other sermons (100). Despite this, he deserves the merit of recognizing the Victorine background of Iacopone’s arboreal laude, Gottardi’s analysis is affected by an inclination to generalizing that prevent from a clear understanding of the relationship between the poet and the Victorine theologians. A. A. Blake, “A Mystical Tree of Jacopone da Todi,” Spunti e ricerche. Rivista d’Italianistica 1 (1985): p. 91.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

287

affirms that it is not possible to rest upon the first branch (“Encontenente ch’eo fui ionto, / non me lassò figere ponto”).58 It is reiterated in verses 83–84, implicitly alluding to the force “incessabile” of love (“Salenno su crisi pusare, / l’amor me non lassò finare”).59 The level of the love “calidum” is more explicitly marked by the passage on the branch of “ardor”, where Iacopone states that he has been heated by love (“Passanno là, sintit’ho Amore, / che mm’avì’ tutto rescaldato”, lines 93–94).60 The two levels of “acutum” and “fervidum” – which are unique to Hugh’s comment – are less discernible, but the idea of the sharp thinness which liquefies the soul is present in verses 113–114 (“passanno là, êll’ardor pognente, / ferenno al cor, l’à estemperato”).61 Lastly, the idea of “superfervidum” is conveyed by the image of the stealing of the soul out of ­herself (117: “fui furato a ppoco a ppoco”; 120: “che en quello ramo fui rapito”).62 The seventh degree is an extension of the diagram representing the soul’s access to the “inaccessibile” divine Mistery. This is yet another Hugonian-­Dionysian term that Hugh utilizes since the Prologus to speak about God’s light.63 On this point, the most relevant differences in the tradition of the Arbor amoris can be reduced to the most important one: the different trees having 58 59 60 61 62 63

Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 255: “As soon as I found myself there, / Without a moment’s rest …” Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 255: “When I had climbed up / I meant to rest; / But Love did not allow that, / He had me move to the branch above”. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 256: “And once again Love’s warmth / spread all through me”. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 256: “The heat from that branch / Struck the heart and liquefied it”. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 256: “I was gradually raised to the next level. Here Love struck me with a mortal blow”. See Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, I.prol.360–63; II.i.881–905; V.iv.296–318. It is worth noting that these passages of Hugh’s comment correspond to those that have been taken as an argument by theologians during all of the thirteenth century to discuss the theory of the theophanies. Hugh of Saint-Victor was considered a “témoin majeur” (Hyacinthe-François Dondaine, “L’objet et le ‘’medium’ de la vision béatifique chez les théologiens du XIIIe siècle.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 19 [1952]: p. 98) in this debate, at least since the Parisian condemnation (1241) of the ten articles about the Visio beatifica in which Hugh’s position was presented to contrast an orientalist interpretation of the Dionysian theophania. See also Christian Trottmann, La vision béatifique dès disputes scolastiques à sa définition par Bénoit XII (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1995), pp. 94–98 and 175–86. In his Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, Bonaventure recalls Hugh’s words dealing with the question “Utrum anima Christi in cognoscendo Deum defigat aspectum in ipsum lumen aeternum, an in aliquid infra ipsum”. Bonaventura, Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae S.R.E. Episcopi Cardinalis Opera Omnia. Edita, studio et cura PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura (Ad Claras Aquas [Quaracchi]: Ex Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902) 3,302–6.

288

ZACCHETTI

either twelve or fourteenth branches, depending on the presence of an interpretation of the “amor inaccessibile”. The diagram of the Ambrosiana and the one from Innsbruck have six degrees of love with twelve branches and a seventh level, separated from the trunk, that crowns the arboreal structure. The diagrams from Olomouc64 and Subiaco, on the contrary, present a structure of fourteenth branches, with the only difference that the one from Olomouc adds the degree “inaccessibile” as a seventh level (see figure 11.3), while the one from Subiaco adds two more branches65 to the sixth one (see figure 11.4).66 Most importantly, this is the most relevant difference between the text of the lauda 78 and the Latin text of the Arbor amoris. Iacopone does not speak about what happens to the soul after being stolen by the Spouse’s love, and he refers to this moment as the one where the heart has been drowned (“ch’el meo core ce fo annegato”, 78, 126).67 Additionally, the Latin text’s author, on the contrary, explains the characteristic of this level by referring to it as a “distinccio” (Kamber, Arbor amoris, 58, line 310). He prevents any accusation of arrogance by saying that these inaccessible things have been told by others who could go beyond their human condition; then, he proposes briefly to name the seventh level “iubilum amoris” and the two relative branches “mentis alienacionem vel excessum” and “racionis omnis excecacionem” (lines 315–18). Once more, the lauda and the Latin text of the Arbor amoris appear as two branches of a main tradition based upon the same arboreal archetype. This distinction of inaccessibility is also confirmed in lauda 84’s description of the tree of charity, where Iacopone explicitly states that the summit of the tree is not visible: “enn alto estendo le so rama / e la cima è ’n che non pare” (171–72).68 The ecdotic 64 65 66

67 68

See Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 60. The two branches are: “Mentis alienatio. Mens absorbitur tum gloria magis videtur” (on the left, numbered “XIIImus”) and “Rationis excecatio. Cum Deus excedit mentem ratio sibi cedit” (on the right, numbered “XIVmus”). The fragment from the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome (Frammenti I, busta 5, n. 6) presents a sort of compromise between the two solutions, adding the two more branches between the level of the superfervidum and the summit of the tree (“Inaccessibilis – ­Status aeternitatis”). As already observed, the variant attested by Galvanus de Levanto and the diagram from Bolzano differ from the main tradition because they introduce a distinctio of each degree of love into four branches. Anyway, the last degree, which corresponds to the Seraphic order in Galvanus’ diagram, is divided in four branches in which are clearly recognizable the terms used by the pseudo-Bonaventure: “excessus”, “cecitas”, “mentis alienation”, “Iubilius amoris” (see the diagram in ms. Paris, BNF, Latin 3181, f. 24 and Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 37 for the ms. Bolzano, Franiskanerkloster, I 73). Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 256: “… That my heart sank beneath the waves / and I drowned.” Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 214: “To do so one must climb the three of charity, / Whose highest branches are lost to sight.”

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

289

figure 11.4 Subiaco, Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale del Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 289 (CCLXXXIII), f. 72r figure 11.3 Olomuc, Státní Vedecká Knihovna, olim Univerzitní Knihovna (Olmütz, Universitätsbibliothek), M I 305, f. 120r (Kamber 60)

290

ZACCHETTI

figure 11.4 Subiaco, Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale del Monastero di Santa Scolastica, 289 (CCLXXXIII), f. 72r

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

291

r­ econstruction of the lauda 78 also reveals the presence in some manuscripts of two other groups of verses that enumerate the twelve branches of the tree: “Non ne dato a creatura / salir ultra esta misura / che sopre onne statura / ennaccesebele e clamato”; and “Dodici rami colli fructi / de sette ramora producti / se li porrai salire tucti / tu sera en perfecto stato”.69 Therefore, it is more interesting to observe the correspondence of the lauda with the comment of Hugh of Saint Victor instead of the Latin text of the Arbor amoris. This is so because the Victorine description of the Seraphim is the undeniable common point shared between two texts that appear as two independent developments of the tradition of the Arbor amoris diagram. The extract from Hugh’s comment offers relevant points of comparison for the lauda 78 and Iacopone’s entire developing reflection upon love throughout his poems. It is possible to discern Victorine traces in Iacopone’s poetry by following the main aspects of Hugh’s description of the Seraphic love: first, the question of the dynamic dialectic between apophatic language and the necessity of the speech; secondly, the description of an ordered charity; and finally, the violence of love at its apex. As it will appear, these three aspects help to understand how Iacopone’s discourse on love grows upon the axes of the affective Dionysian tradition traced by Hugh of Saint Victor. 4

Nata de verbis verba

First of all, the long and expressive introduction that Hugh places before the description of the qualities of Seraphic love offers an important antecedent to the often discussed question of the language of the laude, a poetic speech that 69

See Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. 609. “No creature is allowed to climb over this measure, because above any height, it is called inaccessible”; “Twelve branches with the fruits, produced by seven branches [?], if you can climb them all, you will be in the perfect state” (my trans.). “Ramora” and “rami” have evidently two different meanings, because the twelve branches [rami] of the tree are generated by the seven branches [ramora], which appear more likely as the parts of the trunk from which the couplets of branches are originated”. Ferri had already signaled the addition discovered by Bonaccorsi “en alcuni libri”. See Iacopone, da Todi, Laude di Frate Jacopone Da Todi, secondo la stampa fiorentina del 1490 con prospetto grammaticale e lessico, ed. Giovanni Ferri (Rome: Società Filologica Romana, 1910), p. 138. Mancini confirms the presence of these verses – although with different positions in the last part of the lauda – in the mss. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 8521; Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conventi Soppressi, C.2.608; Todi, Biblioteca Comunale L. Leonj, 195; Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 1049; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticano, Archivio Capitolare di S. Pietro, G.58; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 9976; Parigi, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, it. 1037.

292

ZACCHETTI

is constantly overwhelmed by its limits in front of the divine “­esmesuranza”.70 Hugh’s allusion to the Pauline raptus in the third sky – a constant theme in Iacopone’s laude71 – is accompanied by a reflection upon the possibility of making a testimony to those who have not yet reached this state. It is not a mere modesty topos, but rather a real ontological consideration about the “nata … de verbis verba”: the only testimony conceivable is the one generated in the ­dialogue between “magister” and “discipulus”, whereby as well as the first disciple has been made “doctus” by the Verb, so this “magister” can make his disciple “doctorem” (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.91–95). At the beginning of lauda 78, this same dynamic is described in the dialogue between a man who is “en terra ottenebrato” (78, 6)72 and a man (“omo”, 78, 3) who has already been over the unseen summit of the tree. The request of the Iacoponian disciple to be instructed by the “magister” for the glory of God enables the speech in the form of a “laus”, composed by words that should not only astound, but also be loved to be finally understood (“non solum miranda, sed amanda”, Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.105–06). As Hugh explains in the previous book of his comment, if it is not possible to praise by words what is incomprehensible, one should praise God by living, for one’s life points out the good: “Si ergo dicendo non potes, lauda vivendo. Quod lingua non explicat, vita bona commendat. Bona voluntate contingitur, qui per scientiam non investigatur. Si ergo non comprehendis ipsum, vivendo secundum ipsum tende ad ipsum: hoc est laudare ‘divina religione’. Rursum si dicere non potes ipsum, dicere potes quae data sunt ab ipso.” (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, V.iv.58–63).73 Iacopone appears to meditate upon these 70

71 72 73

On this aspect, Matteo Leonardi conducted a fundamental analysis in his essay “La retorica del silenzio nelle laude di Jacopone da Todi,” Revue des Études italiennes 48.3–4 (2002); see also Matteo Leonardi “‘La lengua m’è mozzata’: La violenza d’Amore nel linguaggio mistico tra XII e XIII secolo,” in Per violate forme: Rappresentazioni e linguaggi della violenza nella letteratura italiana, eds. Fabrizio Bondi and Nicola Catelli (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2009), pp. 119–223; Armando Maggi “The Splendor of the World’s Tree: The Angelic Language of Salvation in Jacopone of Todi,” Viator 33 (2002); and Alessandro Vettori, “Singing with Angels. Iacopone da Todi’s Prayerful Rhetoric,” in Franciscans at Prayer, ed. Timothy J. Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2007). See Alvaro Cacciotti, “Il terzo cielo di 2 ‘’Cor’ 12:1–10 nel ‘’Laudario’ di Iacopone da Todi,” in Paolo di Tarso: Archeologia, storia, ricezione, ed. Luigi Padovese (Turin: Cantalupa, 2009). Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 253: “… That I might leave this darkness behind”. “If you cannot do it with words, praise [God] with your life. What speech does not explain, a good life enhances. By means of good will is reached the one who cannot be found by means of investigation. Therefore, if you do not grasp him, aim towards him living according to him: this means to praise with a ‘divine conscience’. Moreover, if you cannot name him, you can name what has been given by him” (trans. mine).

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

293

words, discovering that to tell what is from God is a way to praise God and to get closer to the unreachable Mystery. It is love that demands to pronounce the word, forcing reason to strive for a speech that is necessarily out of reason, as Iacopone explains in the Prologus of the lauda 77: “Ma lo volere esforza êl rasonare, / preso à lo freno e tello en sua bailìa” (77, 9–10).74 The speech of love is not therefore irrational; it is the only way to go beyond the initial astonishment, to put oneself on the path to eternal knowledge: “Forsitan ipsa admiratione evigilabo ad cognitionem, incitor ad dilectionem” (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.111–12). The possibility of the speech of love leads then to apophatic discourse. Hugh’s “lux inaccessibilis”, which remains “incomprehensibilis” (Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, I.Prol.362) but makes itself known by means of the angelical “signa” or “theophanies” (II.i.878–91), finds a counterpart in Iacopone’s “enfigurabel luce” (92, 17),75 equally incomprehensible and

74 75

Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 247: “Still, stronger than reason / Is the will to speak out; / It leads me by the bridle, / And I follow along”. As Franca Ageno observed, “infigurabilis” is a “termine tecnico” employed in the Latin translation of the pseudo-Dionysius; however, it is worth noting that this term is employed for the translations of the De divinis nominibus and the De caelesti hierarchia and not “nelle traduzioni latine della Mystica theologia” (qtd. in note 2 of the comment to Leonardi, Laude, p. 382). A confirmation that, at the time when Iacopone was writing his poems, Hugh’s words upon the theophanies were read together with the Dionysian definition of God’s light as “infigurabilis” is provided, for instance, by the Quaestiones disputatae de anima beata of Matthew of Aquasparta (written after 1277). In quaestio 8, the general minister of the Franciscan Order deals with the problem of the beatific vision, questioning if the “divina essentia”, in such a vision, is to be considered as “obiectum visionis et ratio vivendi” or rather if God is seen by means of any “speciem vel similitudinem ab ipsa impressam”. He opens by citing the passage of the De divinis nominibus in which Dionysius talks about the “infigurabilis” essence of God; hence the impossibility to know the divine essence by means of something created. Matthaeus, de Aquasparta. Fr. Matthaei ab Aquasparta quaestiones disputatae de anima separata, de anima beata, de ieiunio et de legibus, ed. Aquilinus Emmen (Quaracchi: Ex Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1959), 339. Nevertheless, in his responsio, Matthew presents Hugh’s confutation of the orientalist theory of theophaniae to provide Hugh’s reasonable interpretation of them as emanation in variable forms of the divine light: “Non enim ponimus quod intellectus sistat in aliquo citra Deum, ipsum autem Deum non attingat; sed ponimus quod intellectus beatus videt ipsam divinam essentiam et in ipsam dirigit aspectum atque in ea eius terminatur obtutus. Tamen hoc est impossibile nisi mediante aliqua similitudine, quae sit forma intellectus et formalis ratio cognoscendi; et si illud vocat theophanias, non est inconveniens Deum in theophaniis videri. Et ipsemet Hugo, qui reprobavit errorem de theophaniis, theophanias ipsas hoc modo astruxit et concessit; quod apparet per ipsum, super 1 cap. Angelicae hierarchiae, ubi, reprobato theophaniarum errore, dicit sic: […]” Matthaeus, Quaestiones, 351–52.

294

ZACCHETTI

immeasurable, but concrete enough to change radically one’s view of reality (“e tutto ved’en torto / que diritto pensava; / … novo stato l’è oporto”, 92, 31–35).76 5

The Path towards the supereminentia caritatis

As observed above, the most original characteristic in Hugh’s presentation of Seraphic love’s qualities in his commentary Super Ierarchiam Dionisii is not the idea of an ordering of charity or a path of love to follow to reach God, for these ideas are also developed in his other works.77 The original aspect of that particular section of Hugh’s comment that circulated with the Arbor amoris is how he conceptualizes these properties of love from the perspective of participating in the divine mystery. Therefore, Hugh institutes a complementarity between love and intellect and subsequently establishes the pre-eminence of charity for its capacity to penetrate the intimacy of the bright embrace of God. The same could be said of Iacopone, who makes the tree of love – and the figure of the tree tout court – “the most cogent symbol and ­synthesis” of his project (Maggi, The Splendor, 170–71). Although the tree must be abandoned at some point, it is only through it that man is introduced to the “supereminentia caritatis.” In a similar fashion to Hugh’s work, the apparent contrast between a pursued intellectual knowledge of God and the desire to be embraced by his love can be retraced all along Iacopone’s Laude (the most relevant are the 1, 16, 21, 43, 56, 66, 82).78 In lauda 78, the poet ends his poem at the precise moment of the drowning of his mind: neither the intellect nor love can tell what happens to the soul in the state of “alienatio mentis” and “excecatio rationis”. In this lauda and the whole collection of his poems, Iacopone never appears to think of an ascetic itinerary where either love or the intellect is presented as a 76 77

78

Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 266: “… And the soul sees that what it thought was right / Was wrong. A new exchange occurs […]; / A new and unsought state is needed”. For the theme of “caritas ordinata” see Hugues de Saint-Victor, “De substantia dilectionis,” in Six opuscules spirituels, ed. Roger Baron (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969), IV.95–145; the idea of love as a path to God is particularly stressed in Hugues de Saint-Victor, “De laude caritatis,” in De institutione novitiorum. De virtute orandi. De laude caritatis. De arrha animae, ed. and trans. Patrice Sicard, Hugh B. Feiss, Dominique Poirel and Henri Rochais, vol. 1 of L’œuvre de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), pars. 6–12. See also the laude 4a, 4b and 4c added to Mancini’s edition, where it is written, for instance: “La mente co lo core / se trova trasformato” (Mancini, 4a. 249–50, p. 327) and where the metaphor of the tree of life is proposed again as the summit of the path of love and reason: “O arbor de la vita, / si forte mente trai / che l’anema c’è apesa, / ché li a’ iettati l’ami, / ché tutti li toi rami / sì pao plen’ de foco” (Mancini, 4c. 17–22, p. 337).

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

295

better or even a unique way to achieve beatitude. The poet never restricts himself to the dichotomies that scholars seek to ascribe to his spiritual thought, instead he appears to “visitarle tutte, contaminandole generosamente, sempre ­contraddicendosi, proponendo un modello affettivo e intellettuale, nuziale e dell’essere, pratico e teorico” (Leonardi, Introduction to Iacopone, Laude 1, p. 6). Therefore, what Hugh proposes in his comment to pseudo-Dionysius corresponds more properly to Iacopone’s reflection upon the complementarity of love and intellect. The poet from Todi is entirely unfamiliar with the anti-­intellectualistic derivation of the Victorine-Dionysian affective tradition, which had its origin in Hugh of Balma’s De Theologia Mystica.79 He is also unfamiliar with a doctrinal and scholastic treatment of the concepts of love and intellect that would not consider his own experience.80 As can be easily confirmed by the “hierarchisatio” of the soul presented in the lauda 77,81 Iacopone follows directly the line marked by Hugh’s teaching, continued by Thomas Gallus, and “franciscanized” by Bonaventure.82 After an 79

80

81 82

The text of the Theologia mystica was written in the last decade of the thirteenth century and started to circulate in the fourteenth as a work by Bonaventure. Francis Ruello, Jeanne Barbet, introduction to Théologie Mystique, by Hugues de Balma, eds. Francis Ruello and Jeanne Barbet (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995), pp. 11–12. In Italy, the text was probably not well known before the translation in Italian requested around the half of the fourteenth century by Giovanni Colombini of Domenico of Monticchiello, see Giuseppe Pardi, “Sulla vita e sugli scritti di Domenico da Monticchiello,” Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 3 (1896): pp. 22–42. As Francesco Santi has observed, referring to one’s own experience is a typical aspect of Franciscan spiritual literature, developed on the example of Saint Francis: “Tra i mistici, soprattutto laici e donne, l’eredità di Francesco è recepita nel senso del riconoscimento di un’autorità fondata sull’esperienza della persona, che nell’eucaristia, l’esperienza del Dio vicino, assume coscienza di sé; è una consapevolezza che va oltre il potere del sapere e dunque oltre la Bibbia stessa, che del sapere medievale era stata il cardine e che nella cultura moderna si candidava a essere riferimento esclusivo del linguaggio spirituale. Avviene così che nei testi dei mistici di ispirazione francescana la Bibbia sembra posta ai margini, anche se in nessun modo questa marginalità significa un rifiuto.” Francesco Santi, “L’eredità di Francesco d’Assisi nella mistica fra XIII e XIV secolo,” in La mistica, ed. Francesco Santi, vol. 5 of La letteratura francescana (Milan: Fondazione Valla-Mondadori, 2016), p. xxv. See Maggi, The Splendor. Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200– 1350), vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), pp. 70–112; and Dominique Poirel, “Existe-t-il une école de Saint-Victor?,” in La cultura dei Vittorini e la letteratura medioevale. Atti del Convegno internazionale. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Pisa, 23–25 gennaio 2019), eds. Corrado Bologna and Carlo Zacchetti, 1–22 (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022). The importance of Thomas Gallus’ thought in the Franciscan spiritual environment of the second half of the thirteenth

296

ZACCHETTI

introduction focused on the necessity of speech authorized by God and forced by the will, the lauda 77 presents the subdivision of the soul into three hierarchies that correspond to the three angelical hierarchies, following Thomas Gallus’s explanation, that Bonaventure had already examined in preparation of his Collationes in Hexaemeron.83 At the end of the progressive path across the angelic orders, Iacopone deals with the last step, the passage from the Cherubim to the Seraphim, representing precisely the arising of the supereminentia caritatis. When the intellect tries to “stick” to God (“Lo ’Ntelletto vòlsece apicciare”, 77, 209),84 it grows and fails at the same time (“ché, quanto plu el sapere va crescenno, / tanto plu trova en Deo la esmesuranza”, 77, 211–12)85 and the discovering of the divine “esmesuranza” creates a void (“defetto”, 77, 217) that is filled up only by the ardor of a life lived according to Seraphic love (“L’ordene serafico apparenno, / en lo ’nfocato viver per amanza, / questo defetto vàsence adimplenno”, 77, 215–18).86 When Iacopone describes the passage from the activity of the ­intellect to the one of love, he utilizes a term that stresses the idea of “sticking” to God again, to let emerge the way love intervenes on the act of the i­ntellect: “lo ’­ntennemento vàsen devencenno, / anegalo êl profundo per usanza” (77, 213– 14).87 The verb “devencenno” appears to be a likely vulgarisation of the Latin devincire (“to tie”) instead of devincere (“to subdue, overcome”), as ­scholars commonly read it.88 The idea of “tying” and of “being tied” is central in this

83

84 85 86 87 88

century must still be studied; a specific analysis should be conducted upon the contacts between Iacopone and Thomas Gallus. See Jacques-Guy Bougerol, “Saint Bonaventure et le pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite,” in Saint Bonaventure: Études sur les sources de sa pensée (Northampton: Variorum Reprints, 1989). Cédric Giraud has recently worked upon the subject of the “hierarchisatio” of the interiority in a seminar at the EHESS entitled “Hiérarchie et configurations de l’intériorité dans l’Occident médiéval (XIIe–XVe siècle)”, whose contents – particularly interesting in respect of the continuity between the Victorine tradition and Bonaventure’s teaching – will be soon published in a volume of the collection “A companion of” by Brill. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 252: “Intellect, who loves to learn, / Wants to join the Virtues”. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 252: “For the more his knowledge increases, / The more he experiences the limitlessness of God”. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 253: “But when the appearance of the order of ­Seraphim, / Succumbing to the fire of love, he gradually comes to life again”. Hughues and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 253: “The understanding is annihilated, / Drowned in the depths”. Relevant examples of this use of the verb “devincire” can be found in Bernard of Clairvaux’ Epistola CIV ad Magistrum Gualtierum de Calvo-Monte, Epistolae. I. Corpus epistolarum 1–180. Vol. 7 of Sancti Bernardi opera, eds. Jean Leclercq and Henri Rochais (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1974), p. 263: “… materno vero devinctus amore …”; in Hugh of Saint-­ Victor, “Pro assumptione Virginis,” inSuper Canticum Mariae. Pro Assumptione ­Virginis.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

297

image of the mind getting involved with the mystery of God “per usanza”. The continuative form “vàsen” suggests an act developed through time, while the idea of “to win” and “to overcome” refers to the result of the action. Furthermore, the unusual choice of the verb conforms to Iacopone’s “volgare di carattere ‘illustre’”89 that exhibits a “soggezione alla tradizione scrittoria in latino” (613). In the same way, Hugh conceives the passage that introduces the soul to the definitive ­rapture into the “lux inaccessibilis” as an action developed through time, from the thinness of the acutum to the melting of the soul in the liquidum. There is no clean break between the sharpening of the knowledge and the melting of the “dilectio”: the bride, that is, the soul, is kept closer and closer to the Beloved and penetrates him with her thinness; but the Beloved wants to unite with her, so the bride is led to abandon everything of herself and is merged entirely with him. 6

The Violence and the raptus

The reading of the lauda 77 suggests then to extend the range of Iacopone’s sources to Thomas Gallus’ work and especially to his comment to pseudo-Dyonisius, which ought to be considered together with Hugh’s ­

89

De beatae Mariae virginitate. Egredietur virga. Maria porta, vol. 2 of L’œuvre de Hugues de Saint-Victor, eds. Patrice Sicard and Bernadette Jollès, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), p. 122: “… devinctus tibi caritate, …” and, most importantly, in Bonaventure’s text known as Vitis mystica IV.5: “Vinciamur ergo vinculis passionis boni et amantissimi Iesu, ut etiam vinculis caritatis cum illo vinciri possumus. Vinculis enim caritatis ipse devinctus, ad suscipienda vincula passionis de caelo tractus fuit in terram, et e contrario, qui de terries trahi desideramus ad caelum prius passionis vinculis nostro capiti colligemur, ut per hoc ad caritatis vincula pervenientes, unum cum ipso efficiamur”. Bonaventura, Opera Omnia, 8,168. The relevance of this quotation is reinforced even by the fact that in the Vitis mystica XXIV.2, Bonaventure introduces the figure of the Cherubim as the “guardian” of the “Scientia” that comes just before the paradise of Christ’s love: “Lege ergo me, librum vitae scriptum intus et foris, et lectum intellige; collige tibi flores meos, ut paradisum illum possis introire, ante cuius fores Cherubim est collocatus cum gladio flammeo. Valet enim Scientia, quam in me plenarie discere potes, ad amovendum impedimentum Cherubim; flores vero sanguinei gladii versatilis flammam exstinguunt. Intra ergo, o anima, hunc paradisum omnibus paradisis meliorem nunc solo quo potes meditationis affectu, ut postmodum anima et corpore caelestem illum paradisum valeas introire.” (Bonaventura, Opera Omnia, 8,188). For the discussed attribution to Bonaventure of the Vitis mystica, see Aleksander Horowski, “Opere autentiche e spurie, edite, inedite e mal edite di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio: Bilancio e prospettive,” Collectanea Franciscana 86 (2016), pp. 481–82. Marcello Ravesi, “Sondaggi sulla lingua del laudario oliveriano,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di studio (Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006), ed. Enrico Menestò, (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007), p. 608.

298

ZACCHETTI

comment and Richard of Saint Victor’s De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis. The same works, which mark the Victorine tradition’s evolution, appear side by side in a sort of spiritual summa written by Rudolph from Biberach, another lesser-known author of the German-speaking area where the Arbor amoris obtained its success. Once more, a text from a different area and environment indicates some aspects of the Franciscan literature of love relevant to Iacopone’s poems. Kamber and Ruh had already remarked Rudolph from Biberach’s interest in the same section of Hugh’s Dionysian comment that serves as a base for the arboreal diagram.90 In his main work, De septem itineraribus aeternitatis, which circulated for a long time under Bonaventure’s name, Rudolph from Biberach dedicates the fourth of its books to the itinerary of the loving charity, the “aeternorum charitativa affectio” (Rudolphus, Septem Itineribus, 437). After explaining why this itinerary just follows the one of contemplation, he gives an extended definition of charity, examines its various signs on man, and then focuses on how the “Doctores” have divided it into different degrees (Distinctio V, 447–56). Firstly, Rudolph from Biberach presents the degrees of the amor gratuitus by referring to different authorities such as Anselm of Canterbury, Augustine, Origen, Jerome, Bernard of Clairvaux, Robert of Lincoln, and Richard of Saint Victor (447–48). He then explores the degrees of amor violens, essentially summarizing Richard of Saint Victor’s De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis, partially compared to Thomas Gallus’ third comment of the Song of Songs (448–52). Lastly, he focuses on the highest kind of love, the amor seraphicus described by Dionysius the Areopagite and his commentators (452–56), namely Hugh of Saint Victor, Thomas Gallus, and Robert of Lincoln. In the whole treatise, Rudolph refers to Hugh’s comment and the more recent ones of Gallus and Grosseteste, both linked to the Franciscan environment. Nevertheless, the Victorine’s authority remains the most important since he follows exactly Hugh’s progression of the Seraphic love’s qualities and opens his itinerary of the charity with the quotation of the Hugonian “supereminentia caritatis” (437). It is improbable that the Septem itineraribus aeternitatis has been a source for Iacopone’s poetry, even though recent studies have shown that Rudolph from Biberach belonged to the Franciscan order, was active in the convent of Strasbourg as a lector, was renowned for his pastoral activity, and composed his main works in the last decades of the thirteenth century.91 Nevertheless, 90 91

See Kamber, Arbor amoris, pp. 85–86. See Margot Schmidt, “Rodolphe de Biberach.” In Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique. Doctrine et histoire, edd. André Rayez, et al. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1988) ; and ­Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New M ­ ysticism

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

299

the way he proposes to read Richard’s De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis in continuity with Hugh’s interpretation of the Seraphic love degrees could also reveal some important aspects of Iacopone’s reflection on charity. Rudolph’s treatise appears to belong to the same literary tradition as Iacopone’s Laude and the Arbor amoris.92 The definition of the fourth itinerary as “charitativa affectio” recalls the words with which Iacopone identifies the perfection of the love, “amor … de caritate” (25, 87–88). This is the subject of the lauda that has been the most influenced by Richard’s treatise on the violence of love, “Amor de caritate” (89, 1).93 Both the works of Iacopone and Rudolph appear to strive to give the right words to the experience of love, finding in the school of Saint Victor – where such impenetrable matters have been verbalized and fully developed – a rich source of material. This comparison between seemingly unrelated texts beckons a widening of the literary context of Iacopone’s poetics. Indeed, it can be still considered that “le coordinate della cultura di Iacopone possono grosso modo intendersi scorrendo il catalogo tardoduecentesco dei codici della Biblioteca dei Francescani del Convento di San Fortunato in Todi.”94 However, this ought to be in dialogue with the emergence of a figure less defined by geographical limits and involved in a dynamic transnational European culture.95 After all, a distinctive

92

93

94 95

(1200–1350), vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), p. 117. It is worth noting that Richard’s De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis appears as a source for the Latin text of the Arbor amoris too, even though its words are accredited to Augustine’s authority: “Nam sicut dicit Augustinus: ‘Amor primo vulnerat, secundo vulneratum ligat, postremo vulneratum et ligatum in defectum spiritualem convertit’” (Kamber, Arbor amoris, p. 57). Kamber did not recognize the quotation because of the attribution to Augustine, but it corresponds to Richard’s four degrees of love: “Caritas vulnerat, caritas ligat, caritas languidum facit, caritas defectum adducit” (4.4–5). Even if the quotation is not exact, Richard of Saint Victor’s work is confirmed as a source for the text of the Arbor amoris also by the German version (see Kamber 121). It could be interesting to compare Iacopone’s concept of the “amor de caritate” with the description of Rudolph in the “Distinctio III” (439–41), where the Franciscan analyses the different “affectus” presented in Aelred of Rievaulx’ Speculum charitatis, which he attributes as well to Hugh of Saint Victor. Paolo Canettieri, Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento (Milan: Rizzoli, 2001), p. 32. Montefusco suggests even the possibility that Iacopone spent a period of time at Paris studium: “Se il ragionamento proposto non è scorretto, significa che, negli anni ’80 del ’200, Iacopo possa aver passato un periodo fuori dall’Umbria per la propria formazione. Ne consegue il profilo di un lettore di provincia, con una specializzazione completata piuttosto tardivamente e messa al servizio, con una certa continuità (presumibilmente per 15 anni, da metà anni ’80 allo scontro di Lunghezza e all’incarcerazione nel 1298), nello studium del convento di San Fortunato di Todi (che diventerà generale solo nel 1336).

300

ZACCHETTI

c­ haracteristic of the “universalismo francescano”96 is its diatopic character, showing a fruitful dichotomy between the overpassing of the geographical limits and the integration in the particular localized societies, which translates to that “mobilità operativa … che fa pendant perfetto con quella della classe mercantile” and that is also, and more importantly, “mobilità intellettuale, curiositas coraggiosa, spirito d’avventura.”97 In the Septem itineraribus aeternitatis, after the description of the amor gratuitus, Rudolph from Biberach expounds amor vulnerans’ qualities as the highest dimension of love that man can achieve in life. Rudolph decides to open this section by reminding that “dilectio supereminet scientiae”, as he did at the beginning of the whole itinerarium by quoting Hugh of Saint Victor’s Super Ierarchiam Dionisii. The section focused on the amor vulnerans, then proposes the example of Christ, who concretely showed the “supereminentia caritatis”, as Richard of Saint Victor affirms in his De quatuor gradibus.98 Rudolph wants to give a concrete example of the supremacy of love achievable In questa fase della cultura francescana, credo che questo profilo, seppure biografico ed esterno (e con margini di incertezza) è però parlante e significativo. Invece di accostare la figura del frate-poeta tudertino ai poeti volgari del suo tempo … quando includiamo Iacopone nel suo quadro storico-istituzionale, figure a lui aggregabili e comparabili sul piano del progetto letterario e religioso sarebbero, piuttosto, autori come Giacomo da Milano, presumibile autore dello Stimulus amoris, e Giovanni da San Gimignano, a cui è attribuibile l’opera intitolata Meditationes vitae Christi.” Antonio Montefusco, “Il laudario e le sue fonti,” in “Fugo la croce che me devura”: Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020), 65–66. Furthermore, the same library of the Convent of San Fortunato in Todi shows, as its own peculiar characteristic, “l’internazionalità del processo della nascita e del suo sviluppo, pur legato … ai consueti e noti meccanismi di acquisizione” (Menestò, La biblioteca, 19*). 96 Antono Rigon, “Frati Minori e società locali,” in Francesco d’Assisi e il primo secolo di storia francescana, eds. Maria Pia Alberzoni et al. (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), p. 259. 97 Corrado Bologna, “Il modello francescano di cultura e la letteratura volgare delle origini,” in I francescani in Emilia. Atti del Convegno di Piacenza, 17–19 febbraio 1983, ed. Angiola M. Romanini (Milan: Electa, 1984), p. 70. See also the detailed analysis conducted by Corrado Bologna upon the revolutionary dynamics that characterized the relationship between the growth of the Franciscan movement as an order and the birth of a new cultural and literary model. Corrado Bologna, “L’Ordine francescano e la letteratura nell’Italia pretridentina,” in Il letterato e le istituzioni, vol. 1 of Letteratura italiana, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa, (Turin: Einaudi, 1982). 98 Rudolphus, Septem Itineribus, 449: “Et sequitur: ‘Cogitemus ergo, qua sit supereminentia charitatis Christi, quae dilectionem parentum vincit, amorem prolis superat, affectum carnis transcendit, vel extinguit, insuper et animam suam in odium vertit. O vehementia dilectionis ! o violentia charitatis Christi ! o excellentia, et supereminentia charitatis Christi ! Hoc est de quo loqui volumus, de vehementia charitatis, de supereminentia perfectae aemulationis, ascendendo ad opera violentae charitatis: et invenio quod charitas

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

301

in life before talking about the amor seraphicus. The degrees are presented not because it would be possible for someone to act like the Seraphim in their life but, instead, because in imitating them, they, in turn, are introduced to divine love.99 Rudolph from Biberach’s summa helps to understand Richard’s amor vulnerans as being in continuity with Hugh’s discourse of the supereminentia caritatis. What is impossible to obtain for man in life – at most glimpsed by few people who could elevate themselves to Seraphic love heights – has been made possible through Christ’s experience. To imitate Christ is the best way to achieve what the intellect cannot understand because love goes beyond science and “maior est intelligentia.”100 In his poems, Iacopone describes how violent and tormenting it is to love Christ, unlike what he could have imagined (89, 11–18). The poet affirms that the tree of love, which is planted in his heart, has nourished him and transformed him, shedding everything of himself (89, 23–26), so much so that now he can no longer suffer living out of Christ’s embrace. In the middle of the poem, as the hermeneutic center of the text, Christ himself asks the poet to order his love, for the only way to come to him is through “caritate … ordinata” (89, 152). Once more, the figure of the tree is proposed as the image of ordered love; but Iacopone refuses now to return to a measured love, for his soul is already “empascita”, has already left the order and measure of reason, and cannot find restraints for its “fervore” (89, 161–62). “En me medesmo vinni meno, / menato en quel ramo divino” (78, 123–24):101 the love of Christ has already kept the soul in the level of superfervidum, where the fervent heart is no longer able to stay within itself (“in seipso stare non valens”, Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.240). The violence of the warmth that has set the fervent heart on fire, which provoked a great and invisible movement upward by making it boil over, casts the soul outwards.102 vulnerat, charitas ligat, charitas languidum facit, charitas defectum inducit. Quid horum non violentum? qui horum non validum?’” (see Riccardo 3.1–10, 4.2–6). 99 Rudolphus, Septem Itineribus, p. 452: “De gradibus autem seraphici amoris nunc dicendum est, non quod nos similes actus amoris exercere in hac vita possimus ; sed quod nos studeamus aliqualiter imitari eos, in quantum possumus in divino amore”. 100 Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.202–03. 101 Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 256: “Led to that sacred branch I fainted”. 102 Poirel, Hugonis Super ierarchiam, VI.vii.222–25, 251–55: “Nostis enim quomodo id quod fervet quadam caloris et incendii sui violentia iactatur extra se et tollitur supra se et facit motionem magnam ex subiecta et invisibili estuatione concepti fervoris. … Quomodo ergo fervet et quomodo bullit corde qui per conceptum superni amoris ignem, dum in illum solum qui sursum est appetendum fertur, cogitatione et desiderio extra semetipsum proicitur et supra se elevatur nec se cogitat dum illum solum amat?” (“Indeed, now you know how what is burning because of the violence of its [divine love] warmth and

302

ZACCHETTI

By reading together Richard and Hugh’s texts, Iacopone poetically refines the common discursive thread of the violence of love and weaves his own innovations. Richard explained that love’s perfection leads one to madness because it is wholly situated beyond any limits or measures. It is the madness of Christ, who taught to give his own life for others by accepting to die for men’s sins.103 It is the same madness (“eo vo empazzato”, 89, 229; “co’ sirìa … / ch’eo non voglia empascire per abracciarte, Amore? / Ché quell’Amore che me fa empascire / a tte par che tollesse sapïenza”, 89, 233–6)104 that makes Iacopone know nothing but love and beckon for death by love (“altro che amore non pòzzo gridare”, 89, 244; “Amor, per cortesia, famme morir d’amore”, 89, 250; “Amore, Amor, la morte t’ademando”, 89, 286).105 However, there is a relevant difference between Richard’s text and Iacopone’s poem. On the one hand, the Victorine concludes by indicating that death by love comes at the third degree, whereas in the fourth and last level, the soul resuscitates to life, assuming the humility of Christ.106 On the other, Iacopone, without refusing to assume

103

104 105 106

fire is thrown away from itself and is raised above itself, and it makes a great movement from the invisible conflagration underneath of the fervor received. So, how does he burn and how could he boil in his heart, the one who, because of the heavenly fire received, is thrown out of himself with the thought and the desire and is raised above himself and does not consider himself as long as he loves that only one?” (my trans.). Riccardo 46.7–14: “Qui ad hunc caritatis gradum ascendit, absque dubio in hoc gradu amoris est qui veraciter dicere potest: ‘Omnibus omnia factus sum ut omnes facerem salvos’. Denique cupit anathema fieri a Christo pro fratribus suis qui eiusmodi est. Quid ergo dicemus? Nonne hic amoris gradus videtur animum hominis quasi in amentiam vertere, dum non sinit eum in sua aemulation modum mensuramve tenere?”. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 263: “If I lose my senses and mastery of self”; “How, then, could I find the strength to resist, / To refuse to share in its madness?”; p. 265: “Love, Love-Jesus, my sweet Spouse, I ask You for death”. Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 264: “Your name only can I invoke”; “Love, I beseech You, let me die of love.” Riccardo 44.6–21: “In tertio itaque gradu anima in Deum glorificatur, in quarto propter Deum humiliatur. In tertio gradu conformatur divinae claritati, in quarto vero conformatur christianae humilitati. Et cum in tertio gradu quodammodo quasi in forma Dei esset, nihilominus tamen in quarto gradu sempetispum exinanire incipit, formam servi accipiens et habitu iterum invenitur ut homo. In tertio itaque gradu quodammodo mortificatur in Deum; in quarto quasi resuscitatur in Christum. Qui igitur in quarto gradu est veraciter dicere potest: ‘Vivo autem, iam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus’. Incipit itaque in novitate vitae ambulare qui eiusmodi est et de reliquo sibi vivere Christus est et mori lucrum. Coarctatur sane e duobus, desiderium habens dissolvi et cum Christo esse, multo enim melium permanere in carne necessarium ducit propter nos. Caritas enim Christi urget eum.”; 47.14–18: “In primo et semetipsum ascendit, in secundo semetispum transcendit, in tertio configuratur claritati Dei, in quarto configuratur humilitati Christi. Vel in primo reducitur, in secundo trnasfertur, in tertio transfiguratur, in quarto ressuscitatur”.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

303

Christ’s ­humility, concludes his poem asking for his death by sinking: “Amor, voglio morire te abracciando, […] Iesù, speranza mia, abissame enn amore!” (89, 284,290).107 It seems as though the poet is not content with a didactic conclusion, such as a reiteration of the “caritas ordinata”, which would not take into account the path already achieved, or moralistic praise of the life of the good Christian who does good deeds for others. Iacopone understands that he needs to stress more deeply on this kind of love that is “ultra hominem” (Riccardo 47.3) to discover how the “caritas ordinata” and the life of the good Christian are beyond human too. 7

Towards the Adnichilatio: an Engagement

Iacopone shows a certain maturation in his reflection upon love, never retracting what he discovered before, but also never content to rest upon a definition that could define what cannot be grasped, for his own love is ardent and fervent. He wants to see what is beyond the tree, where the trees are broken and skies are smashed (“e li tre arburi à spezzati, / e li tre celi à fracassati / e vive ne la Deietate”, 84, 278–80).108 The poet finds his reference point in the School of Saint Victor, with its attraction for the imagery of love as fire. He is in dialogue with its major figures, who shared the same perspective that deepens from Hugh to Richard and then to Thomas Gallus. Iacopone identifies what is beyond death by love as the “alta nichilitate” (92, 341), the perfect consequence of the self’s abnegatio in divine love. As it has been shown, the concept of the adnichilatio is a new concept introduced by Franciscan spirituality, inherited by Peter of John Olivi and Iacopone himself from the theological tradition based upon Alexander of Hales’ teaching and developed by Bonaventure to explore Francis’ highest virtue: humility.109 Iacopone plays an active role in this Franciscan tradition and helps to understand how the nichilità “viene a

107 Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 265: “Love, I want to die in Your embrace”, “Jesus, my hope, drown me in Love”. 108 Hughes and Hughes 216: “He has left all stages behind / And the three trees as well. / Shattered are the three heavens; / He now lives in God”. 109 See Sylvain Piron, “Adnichilatio,” in Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, edited by Iñigo Atucha et al. (Porto: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2011) and Alvaro Cacciotti, “La ‘’nichilità’ in Jacopone da Todi,” in Albert Deblaere, S. J. (1916–1994), Essays on mystical literature, ed. Rob Faesen, (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004).

304

ZACCHETTI

descrivere il versante intimo (o, se si vuole, interiore) dell’unione tra Dio e l’uomo.”110 It is worth noting that the Franciscan aspect of Iacopone’s poetry is still entirely Victorine. It follows the path indicated by Hugh of Saint Victor,111 who has recognized that existence ex nihilo, out of nothing, is the first and most important gift that God gave to man: “Quare ergo, Deus meus, fecisti me, nisi quia esse magi quam non esse voluisti me? … Cum ergo, Deus meus, esse michi dedisti bonum et magnum, bonum et pulchrum, bonum tuum michi dedisti”.112 This is the first and most relevant part of the arrha that the divine Spouse gave to his beloved. It is the same spousal “arra” that often recurs in Iacopone’s laude,113 which introduces the image of the “market of love” (18, 34–65 and 86, 221–364), where the bride affirms that she wants to prepare herself to embrace

110 Cacciotti, Nichilità, p. 395. 111 Sylvain Piron observed that the nichilitas of Peter of John Olivi and Meister Eckhart had been already coined as a new term one century earlier by a disciple of Hugh of S­ aint-­Victor, Achard, “en opposant à la hauteur et à la majesté divine ‘comme une certaine nihilité’ du sujet humain” (Piron, Adnichilatio, p. 24). 112 “Hugue, “De arrha animae,” in De institutione novitiorum. De virtute orandi. De laude caritatis. De arrha animae, vol. 1 of L’œuvre de Hugues de Saint-Victor, eds. and trans. Patrice Sicard et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), pp. 400–4. Why then my God have you created me, unless you wished me to be rather than not to be? … When you gave me the existence, my God, you have given me great goods, pleasant goods, you gave me your goods” (my trans.). 113 18.42: “Amor, omo ch’è ricco et à moglie ennarrata, / tornali a granne onore, s’ella va mennicata? / Rechez’à’ esmesurata e non sai quella te ’n fare / e poimen’ satisfare e non par che ’l facci, Amore. / Amor tu èi meo sposo, àime per moglie presa; / tórnate a granne onore vetata m’è la spesa?” (Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds: “Love, is it to the honor of a rich man / If his bethrothed should go about begging? / Your riches, Love, cannot be counted; / You could satisfy me, buti t seems You will not. / Love, You have taken me for Your bride; / Is it to Your honor if I have not one penny to spend?”); 28.60–62: “Benedetta sia l’ora e la dia, ch’eo sì credetti a tui mutti; parme che questa sia l’arra de ’n trarme a cel per condutti; l’affetti mei su m’ài redutti, ch’è’ ame la to redetata.” (Hughes and Hughes, 160: “Blessed be the day and the hour I believed in your word. / This is the foretaste of the joy of Heaven: / You have taught me to love my inheritance”); 56.10: “l’arra n’ài del paradiso, no ’n ce pòi ma’ dubitare.” (Hughes and Hughes, 160: “… can you have any doubts / As to the reward you will receive in Heaven?”); 72.45–50: “Alma che stai ennarrata / de lo Sposo diletto, / sèrvate ben lavata, / lo tuo volto sia netto, / che non si’ arenonciata / e fàttote desonore.” (Hughes and Hughes, 134: “Betrothed, delight of your Beloved, / Guard the candor of your image / That you be not dishonored and cast aside”); 86.437–40: “Voglio oramai far canto, / ché l’amor meo è nato / e àme recomparato, / d’amor m’à messo anello” (Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 202: “I sing for the birth of my Love; He has redeemd me and slipped on my finger His ring”).

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

305

her Spouse, become one with him, and be transformed in him by the power of love: 114 Amanti, eo vo envito a nozze sì ioiose, che so’ sì saporose, là ’ve l’amor se prova. Esser con vui unito con ricchezze amorose, delizze grazïose, là ’ve l’Amor se trova! Anema, or te renova, abraccia questo sposo, sì se dà delettoso, cridamo: ‘Amore, amore!’. Amor, or ne manteni d’Amore ennibrïati, teco stare abracciati enn Amor trasformato! (86, 449–64)115

114 If need be, it is possible to find the text of Hugh’s Soliloquium de arrha animae in a manuscript of the library of San Fortunato in Todi (ms. Todi, Biblioteca Comunale Lorenzo Leonj, 74, ff. 169v–175r), recorded since the catalogue of 1341 (it corresponds to the item “ |63r| Hugo de sacramentis”, see Menestò, Biblioteca, 103), but it is possible that it was another of Matthew of Acquasparta’s manuscripts (see the item “ |41b| Liber de sacramentis” of his act of donation, Menestò, Biblioteca, 72). In any case, the Soliloquium de arrha animae has been, in Italy as in the whole Europe, one of the most read and copied text of Hugh’s works; besides, since the thirteenth century, it started circulating among other short texts of different authors that appear to define a particular literary corpus focused on meditation and interiority. It appears to have been shared mostly in spiritual environments, see Carlo Zacchetti, “La circolazione dei manoscritti vittorini nell’Italia medieval,” in La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura medioevale: Atti del Convegno internazionale. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Pisa, 23–25 gennaio 2019), eds. Corrado Bologna and Carlo Zacchetti (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022), pp.168–71. Bonaventure demonstrates a particular interest in this work, as it appears, for instance, in his Soliloquium (Bonaventura, Opera Omnia, 8,28–67). 115 Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, pp. 202–3: “Lovers, come to our festive wedding; / Where Love is, there is joy. / He is one with us in loving riches and delights. / Soul, you are created anew – / Hurry to embrace your spouse / Who gathers you into His joy – O love, love! / Love, keep us drunk with love; / Keep us in Your embrace, in Love that unites”.

306

ZACCHETTI

The love of the bride must be ordered, because – as Hugh explains by deploying yet again the imagery of fire – the power of love is so strong that it transforms the lover into what he loves, to which he is united by affection: “Scis quia amor ignis est, et ignis quidem fomentum querit ut ardeat. Sed cave ne id inicias quod fumum potius aut fetorem ministrat. Ea vis amoris est, ut talem te esse necesse sit, quale illud est quod amas, et cui per affectum coniungeris, in ipsius similitudinem ipsa quodammodo dilectionis societate transformaris” (Hugues, Arrha, 107–12).116 Iacopone will follow this indication, already assumed by Bonaventure as the central point of his Franciscan t­heology:117 “L’amor prende la norma / de quello en que trasforma, / vistito è ne la forma / del vero trasformato” (79, 100–04). For both Iacopone and Hugh, the term transformatio becomes “altamente segnaletico, quasi un ideologema, materiale segnico capace di collocare la prospettiva iacoponica rispetto alle posizioni ideologiche del suo tempo.”118 The adnichilatio at the end of the path of love coincides with the transformatio at the end of the engagement with the Spouse: “per certo possedere / et en quel Ben notare, / e ’n isso reposare, / là ’v’el se vede ratto; / questo è tutto el baratto, / atto de caritate, / lume de veretate, / che remane en vigore” (92, 93–100).119 Nobody can speak about this nihil (“Quest’è tal trasformanza, … ià non andar chedenno / trovarne parlatore”, 92, 85–88),120 but it is certain that in this abnegatio inaccessibilis, where the soul

116 “You know that love is a fire, and fire needs some kindling to burn. But beware not to put on it something that produces rather smoke or stench. The force of love is such that you are necessarily like the one that you love and, in a certain way, by means of the union with love, you are transformed to the resemblance of the one whom you are joined by affection” (our translation). It is not irrelevant that an explicit quotation from this passage of the Soliloquium de arrha animae appear in the fourth itinerary of the De septem itineraribus aeternitatis (Rudolphus, 444). 117 See at least Antonio Montefusco, “Una fedeltà paradossale: Sulla memoria bonaventuriana di Iacopone” Linguistica e letteratura 33, no. 1–2 (2008), 25–26: “Si tratta di un cogente quadro di convergenze teologiche e lessicali che fanno del pensiero di Bonaventura più di una semplice mediazione della sistemazione vittorina rispetto alla tradizione neoplatonica e dionisiana, ma una sua profonda rilettura sub specie Francisci. Dal canto suo il poeta tudertino tradisce cospicuamente e volutamente il magistero speculativo di Bonaventura proprio saldando insieme la ‘francescanità’ dell’esperienza della Verna e la possibilità di un innalzamento spirituale concreto segnalato dal termine trasformatio”. 118 Antonio Montefusco, Iacopone nell’Umbria del Due-Trecento. Un’alternativa francescana (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2006), p. 123. 119 Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 267: “To possess utterly, / To float in that immensity / And to rest therein – / That is the work unceasing exchange / Of charity and truth”. 120 Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 267: “It now holds in its grasp / The unimaginable Good / In all its abundance, / A loss and a gain impossible to describe”.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

307

is like a stranger to itself, renovated and revived (92, 41–52),121 where all the ancients pains are forgotten and the heart does not want anything else but to be tied in that embrace that fulfills every desire,122 one finds the Spouse who

121 “Sì l’atto de la mente / è ’n tutto consupito, / en Deo stanno rapito, / ch’en sé non se retrova; / de sé reman perdente, / posto nello enfinito, / amira co’ c’è gito, / non sa como se mova; / tutto sì se renova, / tratto for de suo stato, / en quello esmesurato / o’ sse ‹ci› anega amore.” (Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 266: “In God the spiritual faculties / Come to their desired end, / Lose all sense of self and self-consciousness, / and are swept into infinity. / The soul, mad new again, / marveling to find itself / In that immensity, drowns. / How this comes about it does not know”); and see Hugues, Arrha, 845–49: “Quid est illud dulce, quod in eius recordatione aliquando me tangere solet et tam vehementer atque suaviter afficere, ut iam tota quodammodo a memetipsa abalienari et nescio quo abstrahi incipiam? Subito enim innovor et tota immutor, et bene michi esse incipit ultra quam dicere sufficiam.” 122 92.101–12: “Altr’atto non ci à loco, / lassù ià non s’apressa; / quel ch’era sì sse cessa / en mente che cercava; / calore, amor de foco, / né pena non ci è ammessa; / tal luce non n’è en essa / qual prima se pensava; / quel con que procacciava, / bisogno è ch’e’ llo lassi, / a ccose nove passi, / sopra onne suo sentore” (Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, pp. 267–68: “The light of intellect, / Which had seemed dazzling, / Now seems dark and feeble; / What it thought was strenght / It now recognizes as weakness. / No longer can the intellect describe divinity / As it once did when it could speak; / For the perfect Good no metaphor is adequate”); and then again, lines 197–208: “De te ià non volere / se non quel ne vòle Isso; / perdir tutto te stesso / en Isso trasformato; / en tutto suo placere / sempre te trova innesso, / vistito sempre d’Isso, / de te tutto privato; / per ciò ch’en questo stato, / che onne vertute passa, / Cristo, che c’è, non lassa / cadere mai en fetore” (Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, p. 269: “Will nothing for yourself but what He wills for you; / Lose yourself, be united to Him, / Do His bidding. Shed your self / And put on the Lord; / You will ascend to a height / Surpassing all virtue / And Christ, who is there, / Will never let you slip and fall.”); and see Hugues, Arrha, pp. 849–59: “Exhilaratur conscientia, in oblivionem venit omnis preteritorum dolorum miseria, exultat animus, clarescit intellectus, cor illuminatur, desideria iocundantur, iamque alibi nescio ubi me esse video et quasi quiddam amplexibus amoris intus teneo, et nescio quid illud sit, et tamen illud semper retinere et nunquam perdere toto annisu laboro. Luctatur quodammodo delectabiliter animus, ne recedat ab eo quod semper amplecti desiderat, et, quasi in illo omnium desideriorum finem invenerit, summe et ineffabiliter exultat, nichil amplius querens, nichil ultra appetens, semper sic esse volens.” Our translation: “The conscience is brightened, I forget every suffering of the ancient pains, the soul is exultant, the intellect becomes clear, the heart is enlightened, the desires are pleased, and now I see myself in some other place, but I do not know where, and inside I hold something, embracing it with love, but I do not know what it is; and yet I dedicate all my efforts to always hold it and never lose it. In a certain way, the soul struggles pleasantly because it does not want to retire from the one that it wants to always embrace, and, as if it found in him the fulfillment of every desire, it exults intensely and ineffably, asking for nothing more, looking for nothing else, wishing to stay there eternally.”

308

ZACCHETTI

has been waiting for the bride: “Vere ille est dilectus tuus qui visitat te, sed venit invisibilis, venit occultus, venit incomprehensibilis.”123

Works Cited

Avalle, D’Arco Silvio, ed. Concordanze della lingua poetica italiana delle origini (CLPIO), vol. 1. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1992. Bettarini, Rosanna. Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate. Florence: Sansoni, 1969. Blake, A.A. “A Mystical Tree of Jacopone da Todi.” Spunti e ricerche. Rivista d’Italianistica 1 (1985): 81–98. Bologna, Corrado. “L’Ordine francescano e la letteratura nell’Italia pretridentina.” In Il letterato e le istituzioni, vol. 1 of Letteratura italiana, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, 729–97. Turin: Einaudi, 1982. Bologna, Corrado. “Il modello francescano di cultura e la letteratura volgare delle origini.” In I francescani in Emilia. Atti del Convegno di Piacenza, 17–19 febbraio 1983, edited by Angiola M. Romanini, 65–90. Milan: Electa, 1984. Bolzoni, Lina. La rete delle immagini. Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena. Turin: Einaudi, 2009. Bonaventura. Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae S.R.E. Episcopi Cardinalis Opera Omnia. Edita, studio et cura PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura. 11 vols. Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi): Ex Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902. Internet Archive, 23 Dec. 2009. https://archive.org/details/doctorisseraphic11bona. Bougerol, Jacques-Guy. “Saint Bonaventure et le pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite.” In Saint Bonaventure: Études sur les sources de sa pensée, 33–123. Northampton: Variorum Reprints, 1989. Cacciotti, Alvaro. Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi. Rome, Edizioni ­Antonianum, 1989. Cacciotti, Alvaro. “Il terzo cielo di 2 ‘’Cor’ 12:1–10 nel ‘’Laudario’ di Iacopone da Todi.” In Paolo di Tarso: Archeologia, storia, ricezione, edited by Luigi Padovese, 3, 823–37. Turin: Cantalupa, 2009. Cacciotti, Alvaro. “La ‘nichilità’ in Jacopone da Todi.” In Albert Deblaere, S. J. (1916–1994). Essays on mystical literature, edited by Rob Faesen, 389–406. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004. Caldelli, Elisabetta. I frammenti della Biblioteca Vallicelliana: Studio metodologico sulla catalogazione dei frammenti di codici medievali e sul fenomeno del loro riuso. Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2012. 123 Hugues, Arrha pp. 862–63: “Truly he is your beloved who comes to visit you, but he comes unseen, comes in secret, comes incomprehensible” (my trans.).

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

309

Canettieri, Paolo. Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento. Milan: Rizzoli, 2001. Carruthers, Mary J. The Book of Memory: A Study in Memory in Medieval Culture. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Chevallier, Philippe, ed. Dionysiaca. Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l’Aréopage. 2 vols. Paris-Bruges: Desclée de ­Brouwer, 1937–1950. Ciociola, Claudio. “‘Visibile parlare’: agenda.” Rivista di letteratura italiana 7 (1989): 9–77. Clasen OFM, Sophronius. “David von Augsburg.” In Neue Deutsche Biographie, 3,533–4. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1957. Deutsche biographie. https://www.deutsche -biographie.de/pnd118679007.html#ndbcontent/. Coolman, Boyd T. “The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition.” Modern Theology 24, no. 4 (October 2008): 615–32. 29 Aug. 2008. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025 .2008.00489.x. Coolman, Boyd T. Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Crociani, Raffaella, Massimiliano Leardini, Marco Palma, eds. I manoscritti datati di Grottaferrata, Subiaco e Velletri. Florence: SISMEL, 2009. Dondaine, Hyacinthe-François, “L’objet et le ‘’medium’ de la vision béatifique chez les théologiens du XIIIe siècle.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 19 (1952): 60–130. Gautier-Dalché, Patrick. “Levanto, Galvano da.” Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2005. Vol. 64. Treccani. Web. 19 Nov. 2020. https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/galvano-da-levanto_%28Dizionario -­Biografico%29/. Gottardi, Agide. “L’‘albero spirituale’ in Jacopone da Todi.” Rassegna critica della letteratura italiana 20, no. 1–2 (1915): 1–28 and 20, no. 3–4 (1915): 85–116. Granata, Leonardo, Andrea Donello, Gianna M. Florio, Antonella Mazzon, Antonella Tomiello, Federica Toniolo, eds. I manoscritti medievali di Padova e provincia. ­Florence: SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2002. Horowski, Aleksander. “Opere autentiche e spurie, edite, inedite e mal edite di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio: Bilancio e prospettive.” Collectanea Franciscana 86 (2016): 461–544. Hughes, Serge and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. The Lauds. By Jacopone da Todi. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Hugues, de Saint-Victor. “De substantia dilectionis.” In Six opuscules spirituels, edited by Roger Baron, 82–92. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969. Hugues, de Saint-Victor. “De arrha animae.” In De institutione novitiorum. De virtute orandi. De laude caritatis. De arrha animae, vol. 1 of L’œuvre de Hugues de S­ aint-­Victor,

310

ZACCHETTI

edited and translated by Patrice Sicard, Hugh B. Feiss, Dominique Poirel and Henri Rochais, 226–82. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997. Hugues, de Saint-Victor. “De laude caritatis.” In De institutione novitiorum. De virtute orandi. De laude caritatis. De arrha animae, vol. 1 of L’œuvre de Hugues de Saint-­ Victor, edited and translated by Patrice Sicard, Hugh B. Feiss, Dominique Poirel, and Henri Rochais, 182–200. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997. Hugues, de Saint-Victor. “Pro Assumptione Virginis.” In Super Canticum Mariae. Pro Assumptione Virginis. De beatae Mariae virginitate. Egredietur virga. Maria porta, vol. 2 of L’œuvre de Hugues de Saint-Victor, edited by Patrice Sicard and Bernadette Jollès, 112–60. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. Iacopone, da Todi. Laude di Frate Jacopone Da Todi, secondo la stampa fiorentina del 1490 con prospetto grammaticale e lessico. Edited by Giovanni Ferri. Rome: Società Filologica Romana, 1910. Internet Archive, 29 Jul. 2009. https://archive.org/details /laudesecondolast00jacouoft/page/n7/mode/2up. Iacopone, da Todi. Laude. Edited by Franco Mancini. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1974. Iacopone, da Todi. Laude. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Olschki, 2010. Kamber, Urs, ed. Arbor amoris. Der Minnebaum: Ein Pseudo-Bonaventura-Traktat. ­Herausgegeben nach lateinischen und deutschen Handschriften des XIV und XV Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1964. Klemm, Elisabeth. Die illuminierten Handschriften des 13 Jahrhunderts deutscher Herkunft in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1998. Lawell, Declan. “Affective Excess: Ontology and Knowledge in the Thought of Thomas Gallus.” Dionysius 26 (2008): 139–74. Dalhousie University Libraries Journal Hosting Service. ojs.library.dal.ca/dionysius/article/view/dio26lawell/. Leclercq, Jean and Henri Rochais, eds. Epistolae. I. Corpus epistolarum 1–180. Vol. 7 of Sancti Bernardi opera. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1974. Leonardi, Lino. “La tradizione manoscritta e il problema testuale del laudario di Iacopone.” In Iacopone da Todi: Atti del XXXVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 8–11 ottobre 2000), edited by Enrico Menestò, 177–204. Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001. Leonardi, Matteo. “La retorica del silenzio nelle laude di Jacopone da Todi.” Revue des Études italiennes 48, no. 3–4 (2002): 321–36. Leonardi, Matteo. “Per un nuovo commento a Iacopone da Todi.” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 123 (2006): 65-5. Leonardi, Matteo. “Frate Iacopone: tra laus e predicazione.” Critica letteraria 35, no. 2 (2007): 211–39. Leonardi, Matteo. “‘La lengua m’è mozzata’: La violenza d’Amore nel linguaggio mistico tra XII e XIII secolo.” In Per violate forme: Rappresentazioni e linguaggi della violenza nella letteratura italiana, edited by Fabrizio Bondi and Nicola Catelli, 205–23. Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2009.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

311

Luibhéid, Colm and Paul Rorem, eds. Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works. New York-Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987. Maggi, Armando. “The Splendor of the World’s Tree: The Angelic Language of Salvation in Jacopone of Todi.” Viator 33 (2002): 166–84. Matthaeus, de Aquasparta. Fr. Matthaei ab Aquasparta quaestiones disputatae de anima separata, de anima beata, de ieiunio et de legibus, edited by Aquilinus Emmen, 179– 362. Quaracchi: Ex Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1959. McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New M ­ ysticism (1200–1350). Vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 1998. Mecca, Angelo Eugenio. “La tradizione manoscritta delle Laude di Iacopone da Todi.” Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 19, no. 2 (2016): 9–103. Menestò, Enrico. “Le laude drammatiche di Iacopone da Todi: fonti e scrittura.” In Le laudi drammatiche umbre delle origini: Atti del V Convegno di Studio (Viterbo, 22–25 Maggio 1980), 105–40. Spoleto: Centro di Studi sul Teatro Medioevale e Rinascimentale, 1981. Menestò, Enrico. “La biblioteca del convento francescano di San Fortunato di Todi.” In I manoscritti medievali della biblioteca comunale “L. Leonii” di Todi, edited by Enrico Menestò, 1–63. Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2008. Mocan, Mira. “Iacopone e la spiritualità vittorina: ‘’Amor de caritate’ e il ‘’De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis’ di Riccardo di San Vittore.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi: Atti del Convegno di studio (Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006), edited by Enrico Menestò, 289–309. Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007. Montefusco, Antonio. Iacopone nell’Umbria del Due-Trecento. Un’alternativa francescana. Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2006. Montefusco, Antonio. “Una fedeltà paradossale: Sulla memoria bonaventuriana di Iacopone.” Linguistica e letteratura 33, no. 1–2 (2008): 9–42. Montefusco, Antonio. “Il laudario e le sue fonti.” In “Fugo la croce che me devura”: Studi critici sulla vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, edited by Massimiliano Bassetti and Enrico Menestò, 59–88. Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2020. Nemeth, Csaba. “The Victorines and the Areopagite.” In L’école de Saint-Victor de Paris. Influence et rayonnement du Moyen Âge à l’Époque moderne: Colloque international du C.N.R.S. pour le neuvième centenaire de la fondation (1108–2008) tenu au Collège des Bernardins à Paris, les 24–27 septembre 2008, edited by Dominique Poirel, 333–83. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Neuhauser, Walter. Katalog der Handschriften der Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Tirol in Innsbruck. Vol. 8, (Cod. 701–800). Wien: Verl. der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014. Pardi, Giuseppe. “Sulla vita e sugli scritti di Domenico da Monticchiello.” Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 3 (1896): 22–42.

312

ZACCHETTI

Pellegrin, Elisabeth. La bibliothèque des Visconti et des Sforza, ducs de Milan, au XVe siècle. Paris: Service des publications du C.N.R.S., 1955. Piron, Sylvain. “Adnichilatio.” In Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, edited by Iñigo Atucha, Dragos Calma, Catherine König-Pralong, Irene Zavattero, 23–31. Porto: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2011. Poirel, Dominique. “L’eau et le feu chez Hugues de Saint-Victor († 1141).” In L’eau et le feu dans les religions antiques: Actes du premier colloque international d’histoire des religions organisé par l’École Doctorale Les Mondes de l’Antiquité (Paris, 18–20 mai 1995), edited by Gérard Capdeville, 349–70. Paris: De Boccard, 2004. Poirel, Dominique. Des symboles et des anges: Hugues de Saint-Victor et le réveil ­dionysien du XIIe siècle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Poirel, Dominique., ed. Hugonis de Sancto Victore Super ierarchiam Dionisii. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Poirel, Dominique. “ ‘Mystique’: histoire d’un mot, histoire d’un malentendu.” In Existet-il une mystique médiévale? Actes du Colloque international, organisé par l’Institut d’Études Médiévales et tenu à l’Institut Catholique de Paris les 30 novembre et 1er décembre 2017, edited by Dominique Poirel, 11–33. Turnhout : Brepols, 2021. Poirel, Dominique. “Existe-t-il une école de Saint-Victor?” In La cultura dei Vittorini e la letteratura medioevale. Atti del Convegno internazionale. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Pisa, 23–25 gennaio 2019), edited by Corrado Bologna and Carlo Zacchetti, 1–22. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022. Ravesi, Marcello. “Sondaggi sulla lingua del laudario oliveriano.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di studio (Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006), edited by Enrico Menestò, 603–24. Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2007. Riccardo, di San Vittore. “De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis.” In Trattati d’amore cristiani del XII secolo, edited by Francesco Zambon. 2, 478–530. Padua: Fondazione Valla, 2008. Rigon, Antonio. “Frati Minori e società locali.” In Francesco d’Assisi e il primo secolo di storia francescana, edited by Maria Pia Alberzoni, Attilio Bartoli Langeli, Giovanna Casagrande, Klaus Krüger, Enrico Menestò, Grado Giovanni Merlo, Giovanni Miccoli et al., 259–81. Turin: Einaudi, 1997. Rorem, Paul R. “The early Latin Dionysius: Eriugena and Hugh of St. Victor.” Modern Theology 24, no. 4 (Oct. 2008): 601–14. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ j.1468-0025.2008.00488.x/. Rudolphus, de Bibraco. “De septem itineribus aeternitatis.” In S. R. E. Cardinalis S. Bonaventurae ex Ordine Minorum, episcopi Albanensis, Doctoris Ecclesiae Seraphici, Opera Omnia […], edited by Adolphe C. Peltier, 8, 393–482. Paris: Vivès, 1866. Internet Archive, 18 Feb. 2009, archive.org/details/operaomniasixtiv08bonauoft/. Ruello, Francis and Jeanne Barbet. Introduction to Théologie Mystique, by Hugues de Balma, edited by Francis Ruello and Jeanne Barbet, 1, 11–120. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1995.

VICTORINE TRACES IN IACOPONE’S LAUDE

313

Ruh, Kurt. Bonaventura deutsch: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Franziskaner-Mystik und -Scholastik. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1956. Santi, Francesco. “L’eredità di Francesco d’Assisi nella mistica fra XIII e XIV secolo.” In La mistica, vol. 5 of La letteratura francescana, edited by Francesco Santi, xv–xxxv. Milan: Fondazione Valla–Mondadori, 2016. Schmidt, Margot. “Rodolphe de Biberach.” In Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique. Doctrine et histoire, edited by André Rayez et al., 13, 846–50. Paris: Beauchesne, 1988. Sicard, Patrice, ed. Hugonis de Sancto Victore. De archa Noe. Libellus de formation arche. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Sicard, Patrice. Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle. Le “Libellus de formatione arche” de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Paris: Brepols, 2008. Sicard, Patrice. “De la liquéfaction à la défaillance: pour un vocabulaire mystique au XIIe siècle.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 4 (2013): 447–83. https://doi.org/10.4000 /rhr.8171. Thomas, Gallus. “Extractio. De divinis nominibus”. In Doctoris ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani opera omnia in unum corpus digesta ad fidem editionum Coloniensium cura et labore monachorum Sacri Ordinis Carthusiensi, 16, 1–440. Monstrolii: Typis Cartusiae Sanctae Mariae de Pratis, 1902. Internet Archive, 24 Jun. 2011, archive.org/ details/operaomniainunu16deni/. Thomas, Gallus. Commentaires du Cantique des cantiques. Edited by Jeanne Barbet. Paris: Vrin, 1967. Tresatti, Francesco. Le poesie spirituali del B. Iacopone da Todi accresciute di molti altri suoi cantici nuovamente ritrovati, che non erano venuti in luce […]. Venezia: Appresso Niccolò Masserini, 1617. Google Books, 23 Apr. 2013, books.google.it/. Trottmann, Christian. La vision béatifique dès disputes scolastiques à sa définition par Bénoit XII. Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1995. Van den Gheyn. Vettori, Alessandro. “Singing with Angels. Iacopone da Todi’s Prayerful Rhetoric.” In Franciscans at Prayer, edited by Timothy J. Johnson, 221–48. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Zacchetti, Carlo. “La circolazione dei manoscritti vittorini nell’Italia medievale.” In La cultura dei Vittorini e la letteratura medioevale: Atti del Convegno internazionale. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Pisa, 23–25 gennaio 2019), edited by Corrado Bologna and Carlo Zacchetti, 149–186. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022. Zambon, Francesco. “Gli alberi della contemplazione in Iacopone da Todi.” In La cultura dei Vittorini e la letteratura medioevale: Atti del Convegno internazionale. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Pisa, 23–25 gennaio 2019), edited by Corrado Bologna and Carlo Zacchetti, 89–104. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022. Zinn, Grover A. “Book and Word. The Victorine Background of Bonaventure’s Use of Symbols.” In S. Bonaventura 1274–1974, edited by di Jacques G. Bougerol, 2, 143–69. Rome-Grottaferrata: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1973.

PART 4 The Many Forms of Franciscanism

∵

Chapter 12

Francis of Assisi and Franciscanism in the Laudario of Iacopone da Todi Alvaro Cacciotti 1

Iacopone Poet and Friar Minor

Repeated investigation by Enrico Menestò1 of questions concerning the biography of Iacopone da Todi have furnished to the modern critic the probability, or at least the possibility, of reconstructing credible details of his life with a certain degree of certitude. These can be arranged in two successive periods: before and after his conversion in 1268. The first is characterized by his activity in the legal profession and is marked by worldly conduct. The second is marked by the series of events affecting Franciscans in the second half of the 13th c­ entury, which modern historiography has often condensed around the criterion of fidelity to the Rule of Francis of Assisi. Regarding this second period it is possible to gather more abundant and more certain details derived for the most part from the Laudario itself and various other sources. In 1278, after a period of approximately ten years spent in the strictest personal penance, he entered the Order of Friars Minor. A man of strong temperament and a stranger to compromise, he stands with the “Spiritual” friars on the need to observe strictly the Rule of Saint Francis, even requesting, in 1294, through an embassy to Celestine V, dispositions to favor this group. But he will turn against them when he sees them falter in respect to the ideal they 1 For a current review of questions concerning the biographical motifs of Iacopone discussed by the author elsewhere: Enrico Menestò, “‘Che farai, fra Iacopone?’. Conferme e novità nella biografia di Iacopone da Todi,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Cisam, 2007), pp. 1–37. The entire volume is essential for the most recent results of research. For a handy collection on the figure of Iacopone see the excellent repertory: Bibliografia iacoponica, ed. Matteo Leonardi, Archivio romanzo 17 (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2010). In these two publications, which include ample and accurate bibliography, can be found all the indications concerning the material covered here, including the legendary motifs of Iacopone’s life. The English translation and editing of the present essay was done by Br. William J. Short, OFM, director of the Collegium S. Bonaventure – Frati Editori di Quaracchi, whom l wish to thank for his competent and diligent work. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_014

318

CACCIOTTI

professed. He is against the Roman Curia for its politics that favors intrigue; he is against the proud doctors of his Order who forget the humility recommended by their founder. In 1297, having signed the Lunghezza Manifesto against Boniface VIII, he stands alongside Cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna who attested to the invalidity of the resignation of Celestine V and the illegitimacy of the election of Benedetto Caetani as pope with the name of Boniface VIII, the one who had revoked all of Celestine’s concessions. The request of the signatories had as its object the convoking of a council for the election of a new pope. The pope’s harsh reaction was expressed in the bull of excommunication, Lapis abscissus of the 23rd May 1297 directed at the Colonnas and their supporters. In the autumn of 1298 came the fall of Palestrina, the town outside Rome that was the fortress of the Colonna family, and Iacopone, with the other signatories, was excommunicated and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The repeated requests to the pope from his prison (perhaps in the convent of San Fortunato in Todi) for absolution from the excommunication had no effect. Pope Caetani even excluded him from the Jubilee indulgence of 1300. He would leave prison only after the death of Boniface VIII, which occurred on the 11th October 1303, as the excommunication was lifted by his successor Benedict XI. The best known events in the life of our author are, therefore, those which for the most part arise from disagreements and debates within the Order of Friars Minor regarding the interpretation of the Rule of Saint Francis on crucial issues. In this regard, recent studies have suggested the incomplete nature of this view and have reframed it, as it has been too often presented as the only one to provide a definitive framework for the figure of our author from Todi. It should not be forgotten that the questions raised by the group of the “­Spirituals” – besides having been over-emphasized in the historiography of the 19th and 20th centuries – reached their apex and definitive resolution before the papal court much later, and only after the death of Iacopone. By now there has been a complete discrediting of the nefarious opinion of a disproportion between the presumed denier of the “positive” vision of life, affirmed by Francis of Assisi, and the strenuous defender of the criterion of poverty, approved precisely by the same saint. In contrast with these meager gleanings, the Laudario of the poet of Todi is much more informative. In its verses – in each Laud structured as a component enclosed within itself – one can find the constitutive reason for its new mystical language. It was new in the spiritual season inaugurated by the mendicant Orders in particular, in which the mystical lexicon will be put into effect even in its paradoxical overtones and in its removal of logical deductions, reaching a certain capacity for expressing the inexpressible, capable of connecting the human with the sublime, everyday speech with heavenly

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

319

eloquence. And all of this language is searching for words that will be adequate and fitting for restating – by inversion – how the human person is the “love of Love.”2 This implies a conviction that the Lauds of the poet of Todi are put this into effect also in their reflection on the figure of Saint Francis and by their sharing spiritual themes with the contemporary Franciscan movement. It is this particular nexus which will be our focus, one which the ministerial activity of the Franciscans spread through preaching in all of Europe. This is a meditated form of thought marked by a “journey carried out even into the vivisection of the most obscure movements of the soul, assembled into figures both classical and innovative, explored with the polyvalent sign of a highly developed spiritual vocabulary, offered with the knowing and wise use of a poetic art that has its counterpart in a theological content of high value.”3 The poetic activity of Iacopone,4 surely to be dated to the period following his conversion and continued in the time of his imprisonment, is gathered 2 For a partial initial review see: Iacopone da Todi, Laude, ed. Franco Mancini, Scrittori d’Italia 257 (Bari: Laterza, 1974), lauda 41, 22, 42: “veio ch’en me trasforme / e faime essare Amore.” The English translation used here is: Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. Iacopone da Todi: The Lauds (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), Laud 82, 240: “I see that you make me one with You, I cease to be me and can no longer find myself.” The Lauds will be cited from this translation during the course of this study: the first number refers to the progressive numbering of the Lauds, while the second number refers to the verses of the Laud, followed by the number of the page(s). [Please note that the numbering of the English edition follows that of Bonaccorsi and Ageno, below, not that of Mancini]. Citations of the Lauds in the text will not repeat the page number(s). For the theme indicated here it is useful to compare the following Lauds: 81, pp. 235–39; 40, 61, pp. 187–89; 83, pp. 240–41; 85, pp. 242–44; 87, 244–46; 90, pp. 257–65; 91, pp. 265–74. For those passages in the Laudario where biographical remarks by Iacopone can be found, see at least the following Lauds: 55, pp. 174–77; 5, pp. 177–78; 22, pp. 105–8; 58, pp. 180–2. For the overall and general aspects of Iacopone’s theological-spiritual proposal see Alvaro Caccciotti, La teologia mistica di Iacopone da Todi, Fonti e ricerche 31 (Milano: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2020). 3 Alvaro Cacciotti, “La mistica francescana del Laudario iacoponico,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, ed. Enrico Menestò, (Spoleto: Cisam, 2007), p. 288: “itinerario condotto fin nella vivisezione dei moti più riposti dell’anima, raccolto nelle figurazioni più classiche e innovatrici, indagato col polivalente segno di un lessico spirituale assai sviluppato, offerto nell’uso sapiente e spietato di un’arte poetica che trova il pari in un bagaglio teologico di pregio.” 4 Among many possible references, besides that already cited by Matteo Leonardi, Bibliografia iacoponica, (see note 1, above) we may refer to the following studies for the poetic language of the Lauds, the genre, forms and themes treated by Iacopone: Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento, ed. Paolo Canettieri (Milan: Bur, 2001); Iacopone poeta, Atti del convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005, ed. Franco Suitner (Rome: Bulzoni editore, 2007); Maria Sofia Lannutti, “Il verso di Iacopone,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, ed. Enrico Menestò, (Spoleto: Cisam, 2007), pp. 113–34; Lino Leonardi, Per l’edizione critica del laudario di Iacopone, in La vita e l’opera di

320

CACCIOTTI

fully in his Laudario.5 The 92 Lauds of definite attribution make of it the greatest example of this genre, typical of the religious lyrical structure to the end of the ’400s. Born in the context of the experience of Latin hymnography inspired by the liturgy and its psalms, the technical physiognomy of the Laud lends itself, because of its flexibility, to use in the most varied forms, from those that are meant for popularizing to those of greater literary refinement. Thus it is possible to dwell on a poetry rich in themes and personages that are typically human and religious, following one on another in motifs that are lyrical, dramatic, polemical and moralizing. Possessing a fine technique, Iacopone, as a Christian poet, consciously rejects the popular lyric of the time, considered the expression of an evanescent “love”, an escape sought by means of a rising, maddening solipsism. The Laudario, through its creation of well-defined frameworks opens rather toward the comprehension of a possible measure, a proper criterion between the loftiness of the matter to be treated and the human realities of this world, including its ugliness. Each of the Lauds, in a well-articulated economy of the theme being considered, expresses its message which as a whole is to be taken above all as a catechetical statement from which emerges – with a strong realistic emphasis – the global reality of the relationship between God and man. Though his work did not give rise to a true school with a literary model to follow, the influence of his thought can be found disseminated in a varied and vast religious panorama, which for centuries would consider him an auctoritas, capable of offering to religious literature in particular a type of reflection that addresses topics from the reform of the Church to the Christian life to the most dizzying of contemplative abstractions.

Iacopone da Todi, Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006, ed. Enrico Menestò, (Spoleto: Cisam, 2007), pp. 83–112. 5 Besides the historical editions of the Lauds of Iacopone (see those of Bonaccorsi: Laude di frate Jacopone da Todi impresse per messer Francesco Bonaccorsi in Firenze, a dì ventiotto del mese di Septembre 1490, reprinted by G. Ferri, Roma, 1910 e Bari, 1915; and that of Tresatti: Le poesie spirituali del B. Iacopone da Todi accresciute di molti altri suoi cantici nuovamente ritrovati,… con le scolie e le annotazioni di fra Francesco Tresatti da Lugnano, minor osservante della provincia di s. Francesco, in Venetia, appresso Nicolò Misserini, 1617), the following may be consulted usefully: Iacopone da Todi, Laudi, Trattato e Detti, ed. Franca Ageno (Florence: Le Monnier, 1953). See Poeti del Duecento, II/I, ed. Gianfranco Contini, (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi 19952 [19601]), pp. 61–166; Iacopone da Todi, Tractatus utilissimus, Verba, edizione critica ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Cisam, 2015), where a definitive account is given of the other brief Latin works of the poet of Todi as well as his ability as a prose writer.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

2

321

Iacopone’s Saint Francis

Two of Iacopone’s Lauds are entirely dedicated to Saint Francis, and not to Francis of Assisi. This observation is meant to point out from the outset the specific intention and poetic strategy that the poet of Todi reserves for the figure of Francis in his Laudario.6 The two Lauds are n. 40 [61]: O Francesco povero [O truly poor Francis]7 and n. 71 [62]: O Francesco, da Deo amato [O Francis, beloved of God].8 With the exception of the three Lauds entirely dedicated to the Madonna,9 the doubtful one dedicated to Saint Fortunato,10 patron of Todi, and the references to Saint Clare of Assisi, redacted in relation to the figure of Saint Francis, the two Lauds reserved for the saint of Assisi are the only ones in the Laudario dedicated by Iacopone to a saint. The choice of the sole figure of the saint of Assisi finds its explanation in the very scope of Iacopone’s poetic production,11 which focuses basically on Christian preaching freed from superstructures limiting

6

7 8

9

10 11

As already indicated in passing, it is worthwhile to note that the works of Iacopone are subject to a complex strategy and not easily retraceable to a certain model (see the useful statement of the problem offered by Ovidio Capitani, “Polemica religiosa e polemica pubblicistica nelle Laude di Iacopone da Todi,” in Atti del convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi, Todi, 29–30 novembre 1980, rist. ed. Enrico Menestò [Spoleto: 1992], pp. 11–33). Yet the work of Iacopone, considered as a whole, as collected in his Laudario, has a complete structure within each Laud. Each of the compositions of the poet of Todi thus constitutes a work unto itself, and that must be considered when reading the entirety of Iacopone’s production. Nevertheless, in regard to Saint Francis, the hagiographical character of his treatment is evident. See 61, pp. 187–93. The Latin title: De beato Francisco, and the vernacular: De san Francesco e de septe apparitione de croce a lui e de lui facte, are given in the same edition on p. 852. See 62, pp. 190–3. The Latin title: De beato Francisco, and the vernacular: De san Francesco e de le bataglie del nemico contra lui, are given in the same edition on p. 853. It should be remembered that the mention of Saint Francis in Laud 57: 32, p. 179 is intended only to indicate that the poet belongs to the Order of Friars Minor. In the edition by F. Ageno, Iacopone da Todi, Laudi, Trattato e Detti, the two Lauds occupy numbers 61, pp. 244–250; and 62, pp. 251–58 [in the translation by Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 61, pp. 187–89 and 62, pp. 190–3]. These are the Lauds: 1, p. 69; 2, pp. 70–71; 93, pp. 278–80. The very famous Laud 93, Donna de Paradiso, following the tradition of the planctus, places the figure of Mary within the much more complex theological presentation of the redemption accomplished by Christ. The Marian references, more or less extensive, can be found in other Lauds: 43: 101, p. 149; 26: 3, p. 116; 65: 26, p.196. Also among the dubious Lauds there are references to the figure of the Madonna: A2, 57, p. 314; A2, 131, p. 316 [not included in the Hughes translation]. See Laud A5, pp. 337–39 [not included in the Hughes translation]. On this topic see: Alvaro Cacciotti, “La mistica francescana,” pp. 278–79.

322

CACCIOTTI

the evangelical import of its message, well represented by Saint Francis, with his strong recalling of the figure of Christ himself, the saving goal of every Christian.12 In fact the theme of the figure of Saint Francis within the Lauds of the poet of Todi has been studied in various ways by scholars and commentators across the centuries, even if, surprisingly, only in recent times has it received more careful consideration. Beginning around the middle of the 20th century13 the basis and modes of Iacopone’s interpretation of the saint of Assisi received specific attention.14 In 1953, for example, one may note the contribution of F. Ageno, who would indicate more precisely the references to the Bonaventurean legends and other early Franciscan texts. Ageno herself would discover that some Lauds depend on the Admonitions and some of the Letters of Francis. Beginning with the conference on Iacopone in 1957,15 there would be an increasing number of scholarly contributions looking for Franciscan motifs and themes contained in the Laudario. A. Frugoni, R. Morghen, G. Petrocchi, F. Ageno herself again in 1964, and S. Nessi in 1965, would offer insights on a specific aspect, on the texts, on the surroundings that touch the Franciscanism of our poet. Only since the eighties of the 20th century do we see an increase in studies on Iacopone, almost all dedicated to defining also the theoretical terms of the poet of Todi.16 In the hope of offering a further contribution it will be helpful to examine more closely the interpretative profile of Saint Francis that Iacopone intends to communicate, one which without any doubt follows the model delineated and transmitted by the pen of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.

12 13

14 15 16

In this regard there are abundant references in the Laudario. See, as an example of the theme, Laud 39, 1–2, p. 137: “To see my deformities in the mirror of truth, / The life of Jesus Christ.” See the previously cited work of Matteo Leonardi which allows for a rapid and accurate view of the status quaestionis: Bibliografia iacoponica, 71 ff. Also, by the same author, see his commentary: Iacopone da Todi, Laude, Testi e documenti XXIII, ed. Matteo Leonardi (Florence: Olschki, 2010), particularly pp. 80–83 and 150–53. There is nothing new in including the works of Iacopone within the Franciscan tradition of thought and spirituality. Tresatti, a Friar Minor, already attributed the Laudario to Franciscan inspiration. See the citation above at note 5. Iacopone e il suo tempo, Convegni del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale I, Todi, 13–15 ottobre 1957 (Assisi: Accademia tudertina, 1959). Also in 1981 the presentation by Silvestro Nessi, Lo stato attuale della critica iacoponica, in Atti del convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi, 37–64, had presented a clear listing of the “Franciscan” interpretations of the Laudario available by that date. See also the more recent listing: Bibliografia iacoponica, 71–7.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

323

Laud 61 is a ballata mezzana of 188 verses in heptameters. It pictures the apparitions of the Cross to Saint Francis, in order to illustrate better the perfect assimilation of Francis to Christ, and to carry out to the full the purpose of the Christian life, consisting in the union of man with God. There are seven apparitions of the Cross to the saint of Assisi, and the direct source for Iacopone’s composition is the Legenda maior of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.17 The reading of the life of Francis carried out by our author is in line with the ­spiritual-theological thought of that same writer: Francis is the only one who, in the receiving of the stigmata (“No saint ever bore such signs upon his body” [61, p. 189]) shows the fulfillment of the plan of evangelical perfection, consisting in the Christian’s complete “incorporation” into Christ. The union that results between the two is exclusively the work of “the burning love of Christ” (v. 68): “This is the mission of love, to make two one” (v. 65).18 The text clearly explains that which until now was only an allusion: “It united Francis with the suffering Christ. It was Christ in his heart that taught him the way, And that love shone forth in his robe streaked with color” (lines 66–8). Commentators have always reflected little on how a thematic passage of this type – very ­frequent in the Laudario, so much so that it cannot be overlooked, only negated – besides staying in the dynamic proper to Christian faith, explains it in an argument based on the text of Saint Paul in 1 Cor 1:18–19 and 3:19, which reflects on the stultitia propter crucem that becomes the “norm” for being dressed in “a robe streaked with color.” In an outstanding way this Laud celebrates in the life of Francis the full realization of the Christian proclamation that considers as a “saint” one who 17

18

For ease and speed of consultation we prefer to cite from Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3 vols., eds. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William Short (Hyde Park NY: New City Press, 1999–2001), hereafter FA:ED with volume and page number. For Iacopone’s source, see: Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Major Life of St. Francis XIII 10, in FA:ED II: pp. 637–39. The apparitions or visions of the Cross concerning the life of Francis and occurring to Friars Sylvester, Pacifico, Monaldo and, finally the episode of the stigmatization on La Verna mentioned here (7 in all), are mentioned also by other biographers. For an initial and rapid review, in the order given by Iacopone, depending on Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, see: Thomas of Celano, The Life of St. Francis II 5 in FA:ED I, pp. 185–86 (palace with arms); Thomas of Celano, Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul VI 10 in FA:ED II, p. 249 (after meeting the leper, the dialogue with the Crucified); Remembrance LXXV 109 in FA:ED II, pp. 319–20 (Brother Sylvester); Remembrance LXXII 106 in FA:ED II, pp. 316–17 (Brother Pacifico); Thomas of Celano, The Life of St. Francis 48 in FA:ED I, p. 225 (Brother Monaldo); The Life of St. Francis III 94 in FA:ED I, pp. 263–64 (the stigmata on La Verna). For a further, brief overview, see the treatment given in Thomas of Celano, Treatise on the Miracles II 2–5 in FA:ED II, pp. 401–3. For a Christian reference to the adage, from a tradition that is even pre-Christian see: Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, VIII, 27, 1, in PL, 41, 255.

324

CACCIOTTI

is united to Christ. Following along the lines of a theologico-biographical approach based on the auctoritas of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, the Laud dwells on the consideration of the ontological nature of the Christian which, in the fact of the stigmata of Francis received on the mountain of La Verna, takes the form of testimony to the fact: “You give witness to the awesome p ­ resence behind the awesome sign” (v. 86). Anticipations of the visions of the Cross – all seven recalled in the opening part at lines 13–68 – are to be linked to two considerations. The first of these regards the “poor Francis” (v. 1) invoked with the title of “patriarch of our times” (v. 1). He shares this epithet with Jacob and Christ, and the sense of “our times” ends up designating at the outset that Francis is the patriarch of the new times marked by the banner of the Cross (“Yours is a new banner, emblazoned with seven crosses,” line 2). The second consideration consists in the effective relationship between Bonaventure’s thought and the opinions of the “Spirituals” (Zelanti) in general, which the text deals with here. In lines 5–12, [not in Hughes text] Iacopone says that he has summarized his source, Bonaventure, following him exactly, and in the treatment given there is nothing said to discredit him; rather he comes to garner more decisive credit at the formal-theological level, besides the factual level, as we will see further on. There are not many scholars who have distinguished themselves in ­mystical-literary research on some of the passages noted and, on this point, the opinion of Matteo Leonardi may suffice, as he writes that Iacopone “celebrates the identification of Francis with the Crucified [...] in order to propose the stigmatized Francis as the perfect example of man united to God in Christ.”19 The development of themes dear to the poetry of Iacopone is shown especially in the second part of this Laud. After the enumeration of the seven visions of the Cross there follows the series of witnesses to the event of the stigmatization – whether the saint’s companions, Clare, or the many who can confirm de visu that extraordinary sign – among which our author will inscribe with lapidary remarks the spiritual-mystical, theological passages of his doctrinal horizon. Francis is the exemplum of the Christian who finds in the Crucified access to a loving relationship with God. This is a religious love which, while pausing in meditation on the stigmata, ends with a “bodily” relevance deserving attention. The terms used in the course of its composition leave no doubts: it is love, or rather “the burning love of Christ” (v. 69) which “transforms”, “unites” Francis to Christ, so much so that the saint himself is described as “embraced”, “incorporated”, “bound” to Christ crucified. And the passage is rendered right down 19

See the previously cited commentary of Matteo Leonardi: “celebra l’identificazione di Francesco con il crocifisso […] al fine di proporre in Francesco stigmatizzato l’esempio perfetto dell’uomo unito a Dio in Cristo.” Iacopone da Todi, Laude, p. 81.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

325

to the results of feelings and physical sensations with an extension, between interiority and exteriority, which describes not only the attitude of Francis in regard to Christ crucified, but also others: “many there were who saw these marks” (v. 38). The confirmation of the unitive state, referring to Christ and Francis, represents the true motive of Iacopone’s writing, as the normal, daily result of the faith professed by a Christian. The exemplarity of Francis allows Iacopone to construct a Christian “biography” making use, in this case, of the topos of the cross, which, as it marks Francis throughout the span of his life, also configures to Christ the life of every Christian. And if it is in the Cross that the poet of Todi expressed his vision of Francis, in reality he means to express the figure of the true Christian. After the calm and smooth tone of the opening verses there is substituted, bit by bit, an acceleration driven by the onslaughts of love. Around these the writing becomes brief and incisive, sometimes stuttering, sometimes aphasic, not allowing the event to be defined within rigid limits: the ineffable is insinuated by the constant presence of the oxymoron. To the motif of the new patriarch marked by the seal of the Cross there succeed, urgently, the themes of the loving relationship that “transforms” Francis into Christ, and explodes, finally, “in the five wounds which stamp the figure of the Crucified on the body of the saint. The Cross thus is a man crucified to Christ through the conformity of love. ... [Francis] bears this form deep within himself, but it is also clearly visible on the outside.”20 The Cross, which is suffering, is also love; it is weeping and exaltation. Iacopone choice in the Laud leaves no doubt about his intentions: he does not pursue a mystical theology of captivating forms or a poetry of imaginary tones, ready to exalt its proper object. The poetics of the Laudario, even in its stylistic traits, is not motivated by the search for forms of escape from life’s urgent problems. To the contrary, it intends to be – and for this reason the Laudario also becomes preaching – an encouragement to discovery, confirmation and commitment to the transfiguring of this very life, as always proclaimed by the faith of the Church. Here is refuted a merely doloristic view of life while, on the contrary, pride of place is given to a realistic reading of existence, with the purpose of facing life’s serious and important problems. But the “unitive criterion” treated here does not give rise to a mere “identification” between Francis and Christ. The figure of Saint Francis lends itself to optimizing the codification of the features of the “new Christ”, offered 20

Alvaro Cacciotti, Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi (Rome: edizioni Antonianum, 1989) p. 220: “nelle cinque piaghe le quali fissano nel corpo del santo la figura del Crocifisso. La croce è, così, un uomo crocifisso per conformità d’amore a Cristo. [...] Egli [Francesco] porta impressa questa forma nell’intimo di sé, ma è ben visibile anche all’esterno.”

326

CACCIOTTI

commonly in Christian life and reflection. The texts of Paul and John21 in particular have always provided a repertory of reference for conceiving ­adequately a “union” consisting in the most extreme likeness, ever more intimate even as the diversity of the two still remains. Iacopone – and not only in this case – gives voice to the impetuosity of love that involves the two lovers: Christ is Love the Lover, boundless Love (as already in Bernard) who suffers with a heart burning with love. Francis is the one who cannot bear the vehemence of such burning love,22 so much so that the “passage” represented by the five wounds, besides being the result of an inviolable intimacy, opens outward toward considerations of pity and mercy for all the wounded throughout ­history.23 This is not, therefore, simple identification, but a precise indication of how the loving action of God is carried out – following the teaching already given by William of Saint-­Thierry – “In this way the human being deserves to become not God but what God is: man becomes through grace what God is by nature.”24 Thus while Laud 62 is characterized, as we will see, by it historico-­ eschatological tones, dear to the rigorist groups of the Franciscan Order, here, in Laud 61, one can follow more closely the theological tone which Iacopone broadly shares, among many others, with the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Richard of St. Victor, and with Angela of Foligno. Loving vehemence actually serves as the possible narration of the relationship of transforming love, where the linguistic solutions progressively move toward the fading of words, as the presence of the other, as Giovanni Pozzi writes, “is not a duplicate of the self, as in the human colloquy-soliloquy, but another who really exists.”25 So this 21 22 23

24 25

Obviously the use of the Bible and of liturgy is much more extensive in the Laudario. See for example the excellent study by Giovanni Boccali, La Bibbia e la liturgia nel laudario di Iacopone, in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, pp. 311–436. Compare this with Laud 75, 1–2, p. 225: “I flee the consuming cross and its fires / Their heat drives me back.” Without needing to cite the abundant Franciscan spiritual literature that shares, in its tones and themes, the thematic environment noticeable in Iacopone, it will be sufficient to recall a few titles: Stimulus amoris; Meditatio pauperis in solitudine; Meditationes Vitae Christi. It would not be unreasonable at this point to refer to meditative expressions, even musical ones, of this approach. We might think, for example, of the numerous texts used to accompany the Christian practice of the Via crucis, or even to something like the oratorio, for example that of Dietrich Buxtehude, Membra Jesu nostri from 1680, always guided by pious and loving consideration of the suffering members of Christ, the figure of every person who has fallen and in need of aid and sharing. William of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren at Mont Dieu (The Works of William of St Thierry, vol. 4, Cistercian Fathers series), trans. Theodore Berkeley (­Trappist KY: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 263, p. 96. Giovanni Pozzi, “L’alfabeto delle sante,” in Scrittrici mistiche italiane, ed. G. Pozzi e Claudio Leonardi (Genoa: Marietti, 1988), p. 30: “non è un io duplicato, come nel colloquio-­ soliloquio umano, ma un altro realmente esistente.”

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

327

is nothing else than the eclipse of the human ego, and to the annihilation of man in God – with Francis of Assisi here as the example – the response is a word that is broken, untrustworthy, poor. Reticentia and interruptio stand on the threshold of the failure of conventional language26 and, after the difficult narration of love endured and suffered, there follows the impetuous desire for such a love as will give the self rebirth in the love of God.27 And if the word is inevitably reluctant, (“it is best to pass over this in silence; / Let only those who have experienced it speak,” lines 83–4) reluctance is taken as an allusive asset for the telling of a story. The seventh apparition of the Cross to Francis, the stigmatization on La Verna, stands as the example (behold his holiness!) for the Christian who, in the Crucified, loves even unto dying of love, and lives again precisely in virtue of this love. The Christian who wishes to live the same experience as Francis must follow the same path: “Oh, that we might die at this sacred spring!” (v. 92). But how to speak of the image of Christ impressed on the body of Francis? “I have no words for this dark mystery; / How can I understand or explain / The superabundance of riches. / The disproportionate love of a heart on fire?” (lines 73–7). Laud 62, O Francis, beloved of God is a ballata minore in octameters, composed of 162 verses [English text, 105]. There are negligible references to specific episodes in the life of Francis. His virtues are recalled, those he exercised especially in his struggle against “The deceitful Enemy” (v. 3) the devil, the adversary of the Lord who has caused the downfall of the human race. Francis has thus arrived in the last days, to battle the enemy and, as a “the new Christ” (61, 56), bring to completion the mission which was already that of Christ Himself. As, at His first coming, Christ lifted up the human race, so now Francis, alter Christus (lines 18–32) fulfills that mission in perfect mimesis with Christ Himself: “Christ has made Himself manifest in you!” (v. 2). It is this type of identification of Francis with Christ, sealed by the stigmata, that will assert itself increasingly within the Franciscan hagiographical outlook, and beyond. The eschatological environment of the last days, within which the story of the saint of Assisi is inscribed, celebrates him as “leader” of God’s cavalry, their standard-bearer (confaluner) (v. 32). To the Enemy himself, Francis appears as 26

27

Among the many examples in the Laudario, see some verses of the Laud, On Divine Goodness and the Human Will (79: 19–22, p. 231): “O wise ignorance, led to such heights / You have risen miraculously to the point / Where there is neither word nor tongue, / And there you stand in a stupor, marveling.” For a partial confirmation see: 79, 23–6, p. 231: “‘Tell me, O most noble soul, what you see.’ / ‘I see something unseen, and sense a smile; / (I cannot say more, nor do I understand.) / I see in all its splendor a place of wonder.’” But it is helpful to read, for example, what is said in the same Laud 61, 89–91, p. 189: “O my arid soul, dry of tears, run – take the bait; / Drink of these waters and never turn away / Until you are drunk with love.”

328

CACCIOTTI

“the Christ of God” (v. 34) and like Him is tempted in order to prove his true identity (lines 33–90). These temptations, listed in the dialogue that ensues between the devil and Francis, rehearse themes from the Gospel text of the temptations of Jesus and from hagiographies of the saint: in the devil’s words there appears the echo of opinions of lax Franciscans aimed at the “Spirituals” (Zelanti). Among the most obvious themes are penance (lines 41–45), the humble recognition of being a sinner (lines 46–52), poverty (lines 53–60), the care of souls (cura animarum) and/or preaching (lines 61–9), women’s consecrated life (lines 70–9), the Third Order (lines 80–3), and the struggle against heresies (lines 84–7). The final verses, which treat of the coming of Antichrist and his definitive defeat, further enhance a reading dear to many Franciscan circles close to Joachism. That thematic approach, meticulously organized by Iacopone, seeks a unity of “heart and tongue” (81, 97), capable of explaining the implementation of the ministry of the Franciscan movement, originally precisely in the event of Francis of Assisi. Especially within the intense dialogue constructed with forms of conflict, accusation, dispute and exhortation, there emerges a diligent and careful teaching that the audience will treat as cornerstones of the ministry of the Friars Minor with the aim of living a more meaningful spiritual life. In these two Lauds, therefore, the figure of Francis is circumscribed within a framework of sanctity: the saint of Assisi is already the figure of a Christian fully immersed in the dynamic of faith that celebrates the union of love with his Lord and, at the same time, is the saint who inaugurates the new era of possible salvation. Iacopone, in regard to this sketch of the founder, does not deviate from but rather shares fully the approach of Bonaventure in the Legenda maior and, basically, that of the official texts regarding the saint of Assisi. As proof of this, and a correction of decentered interpretations of Iacopone’s position within Franciscan origins, are the titles of patriarcha and signifer Christi, which the poet of Todi uses for Saint Francis. These titles, shared by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, passing through Julian of Speyer, derive from the pen of Thomas of Celano,28 the Saint’s first biographer. The amazement of some modern critics 28

From the totality of the two Lauds under consideration (40 [61] and 71 [62]) it is clear that the earlier mentioned titles of “patriarch of our times” (61, 1, p. 187) and standard-bearer (confaluner) “chosen to lead the troops” (62, 18, p. 190), provide a direct reference to a ­specific theological operation that will prove successful, indebted to the creation of Thomae de Celano Vita prima s. Francisci, 108, 3, in Analecta franciscana, X, (Florence: Ad Claras Aquas 1941), 83; Thomae de Celano, Tractatus de miraculis, 149, 2, in Analecta franciscana, X, p. 318, and ibid., 173, 3, p. 323; Thome Celanensis Vita beati patris nostri Francisci (Vita brevior), ed. Jacques Dalarun, in Analecta Bollandiana 133 (2015), 72: “Sed amator

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

329

at the fact that Iacopone, though a person of decidedly rigorist and polemical statements, does not take advantage of the direct consideration of the figure of Saint Francis to express his forceful thought against the leaders and the doctors of the Order, is bound to give way to considerations that are more in keeping with the life and works of the poet of Todi. Following on these emphases, it must be remembered that Iacopone offers in his Laudario above all material for a wide-ranging catechesis. He never loses sight of the goal of preaching as giving reasons to believe, and Saint Francis is the figure most fitting in this regard. Thus the life of Francis – abbreviated in Laud 40 [61] – and his holiness for the new era – celebrated in Laud 71 [62] – exemplify the journey that a Christian has to complete. Furthermore, it must be noted that the two Lauds considered are distant from the concerns about the “real Francis” and even further removed any worry over the many questions that agitated the early days of Franciscan history, as these came to be described within recent Franciscan historiography, despite the notable advances of the most attentive critics. Stefano Brufani has written about the “Franciscan-ness” of Iacopone: “There is still the sensation that the immanence of the Bonaventurean tradition dominates the presence of Francis and that the central, recurrent themes of the pauperistic and anti-intellectual polemics of the Laudario are fed more by contemporary arguments than by the Franciscan background.”29 The caution that Brufani calls for serves, once again, to rectify certain views which, on the one hand, have presumed to judge the Franciscan position of our poet only by the debt he owes to the writings of Francis of Assisi and, on the other hand, consider the author of Todi as possessing a way of thinking different from the Franciscanism originating from the saint of Assisi.30 More generally, Iacopone’s work is interested rather in entering the debate over the new culture that was gradually replacing the literature of the aristocratic epic and the lyricism of courtly love, offering to the

29

30

pauperum, signifer Christi Franciscus” and p. 81; ibid., p. 56: “pauperum patriarcha Franciscus”; Iuliani de Spira Vita s. Francisci, 45, 3, in Analecta franciscana, X, p. 357 and ibid., 68, 8, p. 367; Bonaventurae de Balneoregio Legenda maior, 7, 3, 6, in Analecta franciscana, X, p. 588 and ibid., 15, 8, 6, p. 646 and 15, 10, 9, p. 652. Stefano Brufani, “Fonti e motivi francescani nelle laude di Iacopone,” in La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, p. 260: “Rimane comunque la sensazione che l’immanenza della tradizione bonaventuriana sovrastasse la presenza di Francesco e che i temi stessi centrali e ricorrenti della polemica pauperistica e antintellettualistica del laudario si alimentassero più del coevo dibattito che del retroterra francescano.” For an accurate and brief review of the early period of the history of the Franciscan movement, see: Grado Giovanni Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco. Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del XVI secolo (Milan: Editrici Francescane, 2003), pp. 7–276.

330

CACCIOTTI

new bourgeois and wealthy classes – who are already carrying on international commerce and are hungry for knowledge – a literature that is able to “say again” the basic themes of the Christian faith. Ideologically, then, Iacopone’s work, while engaged on the side of acute religious polemic opposing angelizing and consoling views of the faith, considers historically expressive the hagiographical notes of the saint of Assisi, since they are apt to suggest a possible life. This was a life, moreover, which sought, as we know, new coordinates of reference in every field of the society of the time. The internal controversies or polemics of the Franciscan movement, perhaps, at this juncture, are considered unfitting or of lesser interest – in fact, not very compelling! – with reference to the purpose chosen for its general framework. One cannot overlook, in regard to the figure of Francis, who is not an exception, the restatement of the evangelical motivation at work within the Laudario: “There where Love is a prisoner / In that dark light. / [...] This new philosophy / Has burst the old wineskins” (60, 75–6, 80–1). 3

The Mystical Franciscanism of the Laudario

Iacopone the Franciscan, while making use of motifs pertaining to the complex and varied “field” of Franciscan ministry – never understood univocally! – offers, to the same context, an ability for broadening out in a doctrinal range of forms and themes that will mark a spiritual season both long and enduring. Simply the use of the Laudario over the centuries, whether sung, read or meditated, especially in spiritual contexts, is already a sufficient indication to believe that the real and most urgent reason urging the poet to compose his rhymes was that of offering to the preaching (communication and socio-­cultural implanting of the faith) of the new Orders in particular, an ideal of the faith modelled on the decisive element of a renovatio inspired by the Gospel, capable of insisting not so much on a homogeneous program of inner life but rather on a spiritual doctrine. This forms a whole which, with its refusals, its choices and new spiritual-literary proposals, will be welded into a cultural framework that cannot be broken down into mere historical, religious, devotional and literary elements. In this way the poet’s cultural figure, grafted directly on the Christian proposal of his fellow countryman Francis of Assisi,31 gains credibility for being aware of the problems 31

Francis of Assisi, within the forms adopted by the Church of Rome, constantly indicates to his friars the goal to be reached by their preaching, consisting in the edificatio

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

331

debated in the socio-­cultural universe of the time, and in which he intervened vigorously. His attentive reader Giuseppe Ungaretti, for the beauty and incisiveness of his lyric numbers him among the seven greatest poets of the Italian and European lyric.32 These are far-reaching cultural problems and themes triggered by the influence of a style of life, originating in France, that will exercise its fascination on many in Italy, from the Sicilian School to the dolce stil novo, from Dante to Petrarch, presenting itself in many cases – beginning in part with the courtly lyric – in a solely imaginary exaltation of love. Finally, giving in to an escape from reality, it relegates much literature to the periphery of expressive power, acquired, on the other hand, by a literature of a didactic tone, eager to welcome proper requests for instruction. And of no lesser importance are the thematic elements of a varied spiritual thought that – supported by a theological culture of high quality and well represented, among others, by the ­aforementioned Bernard of Clairvaux and William of Saint-Thierry, by the Victorines and by the women’s movement – continued redacting a new, rich and varied “grammar” of Christian life with a European character, promoted in great part by the shrewd direction of the mendicant Orders. The Laudario’s strategic operation moves from the strictly religious-theological plane and takes shape in poetic forms that are varied,

32

of the people of God. See: Regula non bullata, 17, 1–4, in Opuscula sancti patris Francisci ­Assisiensis, ed. Kajetan Esser (Grottaferrata: Bibliotheca franciscana ascetica medii aevi, XII, Ad Claras aquas, 1978), p. 271; Regula bullata, 9, 1–3, in Opuscula, 234; Epistola ad custodes I, 6–9, in Opuscula, 103; Testamentum, 7–8 e 25, in Opuscula, 308–309; Testamentum, 312–313. “Iacopone è un gran nome, è il nome maggiore, insieme a quello di Guido Cavalcanti, della poesia predantesca; è insieme ai nomi di Cavalcanti, di Dante, del Petrarca, di Michelangelo, del Tasso, del Leopardi, uno dei sette nomi che fanno della poesia lirica italiana la più potente e gloriosa delle moderne europee.” (“Jacopone’s is a great name, the most important name, together with that of Guido Cavalcanti, in pre-Dantean poetry. Together with Cavalcanti, Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Tasso, Leopardi, one of the seven names of those who make Italian lyric poetry the most powerful and glorious of modern European poetry”). The citation, from Giuseppe Ungaretti, is reported by Achille Tartaro, “Ungaretti e Iacopone. Un momento del francescanesimo novecentesco,” in San Francesco e il francescanesimo nella letteratura italiana del novecento, Atti del convegno nazionale, Assisi, 13–16 maggio 1982, Accademia Properziana del Subasio, ed. Silvio Pasquazi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1983), p. 255.

332

CACCIOTTI

even austere, and often deliberately difficult.33 At times these are satirical,34 but the poet never enters directly into the controversies spreading through the various schools. He overturns completely the conception of love – of neo-Platonic inspiration and with a dualistic background – which dominated the religio-cultural views of a Bogomil and Cathar type and those religious environments which in the Church of the time were gaining importance as guides and points of reference because of their irresistible success.35 Iacopone more clearly sets himself in opposition to the process of “self-­ referential morality” that tricks the believer into believing himself “holy,” a true Christian, because of some acquired virtuous ability, able to manage alone the life of relationship with the God of Christian revelation. His poetic work fiercely stigmatizes persons and methods that presume to merit God, reducing Christianity, in fact, to mere moral practice, a system that can assure some salvific result. It is instead characteristic of Iacopone’s poetry to address the broad, immense moral-ascetical register to express the boundaries of the most disparate human conditions in a non-escapist representation of power between persons and between the person and society; the enduring dilemma of the struggle with oneself and the ever-enduring problem of God, also in light of the marked ministerial action of the Franciscan teaching. In figuring the direct relationship between God and man, within the wide formulary of an inviolable interiority, several themes come into play: love and pain, poverty and humility, annihilation and loss, darkness and nothingness, praise and thanksgiving, aid and care, joy and labor, death and glory. This is a kind of catechetical exercise, an articulate doctrinal complex, prepared in an impressive mass of motifs and personages of secure reference for all mystical literature which, with the help of biblical, liturgical, moral and historical references, structure the register of 33

34

35

Laud 92, 47–8: “The intellect stilled, taking feeling as my guide, / The light that shines seems to me darkness”; Laud 60, 75–6: “There where Love is a prisoner / In that dark light. // All light is shrouded in darkness, / All darkness bright as the noonday sun”; Laud 92: 75–80: “The cycle of the seasons is no longer, / The heavens are immobile, they spin no more. / Their harmonies are stilled, and the profound silence/ Makes me cry out, ‘O unsoundable sea, / I am engulfed by your depths / And shall drown in the abyss!’.” We should recall not only the famous invectives against Boniface VIII (see Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 56, pp. 177–78; 57, pp. 178–80; 58, pp. 180–82), but also those against friars who, forgetting humility, ignore the evangelical teaching of Francis of Assisi and the varied types of religious hypocrisy (see at least the following Lauds: 72, pp. 220–21; 30, pp. 121–23; 52, pp. 169–70; 33, pp. 125–26; 34, pp. 127–29; 31, pp. 123–24). For the aspects mentioned here, I would refer to: Alvaro Cacciotti, “‘Omo, mittite a ppensare’. Aspetti di polemica religiosa nel Laudario di Iacopone da Todi,” in “Una strana gioia di vivere,” a Grado Giovanni Merlo, eds. Marina Benedetti and Maria Luisa Betri (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2010), pp. 297–313.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

333

the transforming union between God and man,36 and measure the exemplarity of the Christian’s life against the event of Christ.37 Here emphasis is placed on the fundamental fact developed in the Laudario, its principal theological operation. And if the spiritual repertory used basically presents the common Christian patrimony, the originality of this operation consists wholly in making its trait emerge, irreducible and non-negotiable, not of man thus capable of meriting the unknowable God, but in the latter having made Himself the “suffering pilgrim”38 and repaid with an obsessive, acute, repeated plea for love to beloved man: “Christ Omnipotent, where will Your journey take You? / And why do You set out in the guise of a poor pilgrim? / I took a bride and gave her My heart, / With jewels I adorned her that she might do Me honor. / ... Tell my bride to come back, all wrongs forgotten, / To save Me from the cruel death she will have Me die” (41, 1–4; 31–2). In the rightful tension of rhetorical organization, Iacopone, as a poet and mystic,39 agreeing to measure himself against the solutions offered by the love lyric then in vogue, and with the varied proposals of spiritual paths in the ecclesial sphere, formalized the degeneration of man, who has given himself to a “love” defined as “counterfeit” (33, 1), “Spurious, bastard” (34, 27) and, though at times by means of incongruity, combines the sublime with the lowly, God and man: “Love beyond all telling, / Goodness beyond imagining, / Light of infinite intensity / Glows in my heart” (91, 1–4).40 The single category of refusal, h ­ owever, does 36 37

38

39 40

Another citation may serve as an example: “This love lays down no conditions, demands no interest; / It is total union, and knows not change. / ...” (the remainder is excluded in Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 85, 67–8, p. 244). Besides Laud 39, cited above (note 12) see Laud 35, 35–42: “See reflected nobility in the mirror, / The semblance in you / Of the Lord your God: / Rejoice in this likeness. // The infinite reduced to human measure, / The whole of earth and heaven / Compressed into one tiny vase. / O fair vase, held with such nonchalance!” The motifs of the Incarnation and of Christ’s death on the Cross are often considered as a pilgrimage endured by Christ Himself in his search for man. Among numerous passages, see: 40, 2, p. 140; 41, 2, p. 142; 35, 6, p. 129; 23, 11, p. 108. Finally, Laud 65, pp. 196–203, is constructed entirely on the theme of the Incarnation as a pilgrimage undertaken by Christ. See the masterly contribution by Giovanni Pozzi, “Jacopone poeta?,” in Alternatim (Milan: Adelphi, 1996), pp. 73–92. The positive assuming of “historical material” even in its phenomenal concreteness, the humble and sometimes crude sermo of everyday life, the most repulsive physical and mental motifs, contrast with the vacuous and already decadent poetic love theme. Among many passages see: “Amor che stai ad alto / (ch’è modo de parlare), / ma ben te trova a basso / la vera umilitate; / la mente tanto sale / quanto ella descende; / de sotta onne novelle / se trovarà l’Amore” (4b, 197–204, p. 334) (not included in Hughes and Hughes.). Just this note should suffice to refute a persistent view of Iacopone as a hostage to a destructive type of asceticism, opposed to the positive asceticism proposed

334

CACCIOTTI

not do full justice to the statement of the Laudario which dwells, instead, on a reflection that does not allow itself to be reduced to a handbook of suggestions intended for the man who wishes to reach God. It points out, to the contrary, such a presumption in its cultic and mercantile effects,41 refusing it even the justifying function of some “virtuous means”, with which his friars attempted to invoke the paternity of the heredity of Saint ­Francis.42 In the liveliest of the socio-cultural areas of all of Europe at the time one easily ran the risk of making reference to a dualistic mentality, with a propensity for expressing concretely a strong religiosity of a “fidestic” type. The figure of the false saint43 truly is not just the condemnation of a latent hypocrisy that tries to gain God by means of one’s own system or asceticism and knowledge, but also a good occasion to unmask a deception that will not accept – out of religious conviction – the fact that cultural conceptions can include divine r­ evelation deposited in history. In other words, the inaccessible and unspeakable God – the cypher of the human search – meets, in Christianity, both the affirmation of human conceptions as corresponding to the revealed message, and the negation of a notion of a God who is only transcendent, so transcendent as to remain an empty concept, to be shared only in

41

42

43

by Francis of Assisi. The view still remains rather widely held, and among many examples consider: Iacopone e la poesia religiosa del Duecento, ed. Paolo Canettieri (Milan: BUR, 2001), p. 222. The affirmation recurs frequently in the Laudario, and thus is not easy to explain briefly. Within an environment rather psycho-spiritual in nature, there is given a description of a dense network of relationships with ourselves, with others, and with God. Among the many references we may note “To love Me out of a desire for glory is venal; / To look toward My throne/ And think of reward – / That is the love of a mercenary” (85, 55–8, p. 244); “There is no other action at those heights; / What the questing soul once was it has ceased to be” (91, 69–70, p. 267). Finally, see the treatment given throughout the whole of Laud 34, pp. 127–29. The theme of the finding of God on the part of man, defined in man’s effort to reach perfection, is treated often and in varied way in the Lauds. See for example Laud 38, pp. 135–37, entirely dedicated to this theme. We must note that such a doctrinal position can support the judgment by which Iacopone distances himself from the “Spiritual” friars, since they have changed concrete ways of living (for example, poverty) into absolute principles, on which depended a perfection that was observed and produced. For one reference among many see Laud 91, 93–100, p. 268: “Oh, the futility of seeking to convey / with images and feelings / That which surpasses all measure! / The futility of seeking / To make infinite power ours! / Thought cannot come to certainty of belief / And there is no likeness of God / That is not flawed.” It would be useful to read the two Lauds that Iacopone dedicates to the figures of the nun and the friar who, in every way, try to reach holiness. These are Laud 16, pp. 96–98; and Laud 28, p. 120.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

335

an ideological way, if at all.44 Thus, to the contrary, it is proper to the diffused and mixed form of ­religiosity and social culture to base itself on the hardening of a limit, in the maniacal definition of a impassable boundary that assures to the “ego” and its “possessions” security from the other, recognized only as the enemy of one’s own identity and of all that pertains to it. The temptation to defend oneself against the onslaught of the other, not to pass over the boundary, becomes the perfect ­religio-social ascetical practice, since it is able to delimit the other in precise and controllable concepts and confines. Iacopone’s call to “that which passes all measure” (“esmesuranza”)45 is the invitation and firm opposition to remaining, by religious and cultural regression, in schizophrenic measures with the sole outcome – as already noted – of degeneration of the deepest human expectations. Finally, the systematic “constructions” of religious and devotional models themselves should not oppose the encounter and relationship with God. A further proof of this doctrinal approach comes from the very well-known theme of “Franciscan” poverty, which has produced an entire library in the attempt to identify the value of primitive Franciscanism. In Laud 60,46 for example, poverty personifies the one who lives by it in a growing figurative 44

45

46

“Hence, if He should call you, / Let yourself be drawn to Him. / He may lead you to a great truth. / Do not dwell on yourself, nor should you – / A creature subject to multiplicity and change – seek Him; / Rest in tranquility, loftier than action or feeling, / And you will find that as you lose yourself / He will give you strength” (91, 100–8, p. 268). Iacopone’s opposition to an ideological practice that thinks it has the truth is announced right from the outset of the treatment in the same Laud 91, 5–12, p. 265: “I once thought that reason / Had led me to You, / And that through feeling / I sensed Your presence, / Caught a glimpse of You in similitudes, / Knew You in Your perfection. / I know now that I was wrong, / That that truth was flawed.” The thought mentioned is found in passages already present, for example, in the previously cited text, Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, I, 1 in Bernard of Clairvaux, Selected Works (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), 174: “You wish then to hear from me why and how God ought to be loved. I answer: The cause of loving God is God himself. The way to love him is without measure [sine modo diligere].” In full agreement with Iacopone is the thought of the Franciscan woman who was his contemporary, Angela of Foligno, The Memorial, trans. P. Lachance, in Angela of Foligno: Complete Works, (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), p. 214: “... this unspeakable good I experienced infinitely surpasses any I have previously spoke about; and it is mine not only for the twinkling of an eye, but often for a good while and very often in this most efficacious manner; as for the other mode, which is not as efficacious, it is with me almost continually. Even if at times I can still experience outwardly some little sadness and joy, nonetheless there is in my soul a chamber in which no joy, sadness, or enjoyment from any virtue, or delight over anything that can be named, enters. There is where the All Good, which is not any particular good, resides, and it is so much the All Good that there is no other good.” This concerns the Laud “O love of poverty” (60, pp. 184–86). Among the many references in the Laudario to the theme of poverty, attention should be given at least to one other Laud entirely dedicated to this theme: 59, p. 183.

336

CACCIOTTI

l­ ikeness to the three heavens, in their turn a semblance of the divine presence. The poor man, or the one who lives by poverty, faced with the divine heaven (the third heaven, the highest, the empyrean) finds he must undergo a stripping by God that in no way is effected by the virtuous ability of the poor man himself: “We do not understand the source of virtue – / The cause lies outside of us / And all unknown to us, day by day, / It heals us of our infirmities” (60, 53–6). Because of this insurmountable gap between the aspiration to want God and the effective power to possess Him, this heaven that has the name “­Nonbeing – / All affirmations are forbidden” (60, 73–4) effects this union, not according to the expectations of the ego of man, but in another “regime”, “You see that things are not as they seemed to you, / So high a state has been reached. / The proud win Heaven and the humble are damned” (60, 67–8) approaching the gift of union: “Lover and beloved are fused in wondrous union” (60, 82). The paraphrased reference, carried out through the last verses of the Laud, is to the Pauline text of Gal 2: 20,47 and clarifies well particularly the apex expressed in the synecdoche: “Love no longer needs the heart, / Nor knowledge the intelligence – our will is His” (60, 83–4) where, finally, the “stripped” man, rendered poor, by God, and united to Him, becomes, by virtue of divine action, so close to Him as to have nothing but the “possession” of God Himself, such that the latter is ready to carry out the will of his “god”, which is man. The reproposing, especially by a Franciscan, of such a motif which in the stigmatized Francis – as noted earlier – considers, not as alienating but transfiguring the experience of the believer, remains the emblem of a man cared for by the same “Most High, Almighty, good Lord” (Altissimu, onnipotente, bon Signore).48 It would here be superfluous to note the strong textual connection to the writings of Francis, as it is so well known; what still needs to be emphasized is how Iacopone, like much of the literature of his time, will make use of – though not exclusively – the allegory of love in all its forms to enrich the preaching of the faith in the most varied of expressions, not simply of a cultural kind. The Laudario lends itself to an operation that is anything but ingenuous, and its author is much too astute a poet to dwell on tedious moralistic discourses 47

48

Paul’s affirmation: “Vivo autem iam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus,” echoes in this way in Laud 60, 85–8, p. 186: “To live as myself and yet not I, / My being no longer my being, / This is a paradox / We cannot pretend to understand!” Paul’s thought is completed by the citation of 2 Cor 3:17 at the conclusion of the same Laud. This is the beginning of the Canticle of Brother Sun, the Laud best know and loved within Christian vernacular literature, composed by Francis of Assisi between Winter and Spring of 1225: The Canticle of the Creatures, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents I, 113–4. It would be exhausting to attempt even a minimal review of Franciscan bibliography on this topic.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

337

of a misanthropic kind. In the repertory of union-relationship there converge both constant displacements of meaning and the consistent use of stylistic traits to insist abundantly on the loving assertion. Iacopone writes in Laud 91, 148–55: “When you no longer love yourself / But love Goodness, / You and your Beloved will become one. / When you love Him, He must love you in return; / In His charity you are drawn to Him / And the two are made one. / This is a true union / That admits of no divisions.”49 Iacopone’s lyric never remains in line with a theology decorated with lovely forms, that is, a synthesis of lyricism and doctrine, mystical fervor and poetry of the dolce stil novo, not does it even conceive of itself as a simple union of thought, art and nature. The lyric of our poet consciously strives toward a poetic universe in which God and man have become the creators of an event presented in the register of union: “Love smiled on me: / It was he who had borne me there” (89, 61–2); “Love drinks it in, / It is united with Truth, / Its old nature fades away, / It is no longer master of itself” (91, 217–20). Hence the immediate awareness of a transformation for man: “Keep me always in Your embrace, / United with You in true charity, / The supreme realization of unifying love” (90, 262–4). He is united: “Therefore, as that Light cannot abandon itself, / Neither a it abandon you: Love has made you one” (91, 155–6); he is joined: “Charity then approaches, / And makes me one with God, / Joins my unworthiness and His goodness” (71, 36–7); and “clothed” by Him: “This dates from the day I surrendered myself to Love, / Laid aside my old self and put on You / And was drawn – I know not how – to new life. / Now, strong Love, You have undone me; / You have battered down the doors / And I lie with You, Love” (90, 187–92); he then drowns: “O Love of the Lamb, vaster than any sea, / Who can dare to speak of You? / He who has drowned in You, / And no longer knows where he is; / He to whom folly seems the right path, / Who goes about crazed by Love” (83, 31–6); and, finally, is annihilated: “The soul is infused with God’s will, its own annihilated. / Then man acquires eyes with which to see / And begins to understand the pried that was paid; / And what he feels then no tongue can describe” (73, 61–4). 49

The centrality of the love motif and its thematic articulation in reference to the relationship of union between God and man is broadly attested throughout the Laudario. Besides the indications already given, see the further references in the rest of the work. As a partial confirmation, note how the motif of such union ends in unity. See Laud 45, 26, p. 158, “In wondrous fusion transformed into Christ.” For New Testament Biblical motifs, also pertinent to the literature of his contemporaries, see: Alvaro Cacciotti, “Echi di 1 Cor. 6, 17 in autori mistici del tardo Medioevo,” in Atti del VI Simposio di Tarso su S. Paolo apostolo, ed. Luigi Padovese (Rome: Istituto Francescano di Spiritualità Pontificio Ateneo Antoniano, 2000), pp. 273–82.

338

CACCIOTTI

The constant, almost obsessive repetition of the motif of loving union does not prevent Iacopone, as a poet and a Franciscan, from understanding clearly the exclusions – especially of a religious and cultural type – that follow on the unitas spiritus that comes into being between the infinite God and the finite man. As noted earlier, in regard to the counterfeiting of love, here is explained that true love does not abide outward forms of communication, as it remains sealed within incommunicability,50 and also because of its discreet nature, such a love cannot be merited by knowledge or holiness, but only given. There can be no hero or saint described as acquiring a ready-made intimacy; this would be nothing else than the alienated expression of a self-destructive ascetical path.51 Moralism of any kind, ideology of any stripe, all tend to kill life in a depressing search for a way that is affirmed as a sufficient measure, the right response to one’s own needs. The final contradiction opens onto the only human way to face life: a sine modo, “absence of a sense of measure” (87, 2), to which one abandons oneself. Condescending to the divine action52 shows that a meritorious and mortifying asceticism, even the everyday commitment to self-emptying, finds its proper place only if relative and consequent to the encounter with God.53 Among the results of such reflection, two deserve particular emphasis such as to constitute the apex of the mystical-theological reading of the Laudario. These explain, ever more clearly and in virtue of a ministerial mandate, the qualitative character of a loving experience between God and man, in a plausible description. Thus removing from notions of “divine Love”54 and 50

51

52 53

54

In various passages it becomes clear that the theme is treated as a fact oscillating between the necessary discretion that must be used because of the intimate nature of love and the insufficiency of discourse that would explain its occurrence. See Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds: 88, pp. 1–20, p. 247; 81, 82–86, p. 238. The passage is rather detailed in its refusing man any ability to reach God in some way. Union with God is not the result of merit or holiness. See, among many, Lauds 39, 35–78, pp. 108–10 [81, 22–54, pp. 236–37]; 92, 149–164, p. 299 [91, 101–8]; 77, 99–100, p. 227 [88, 87–8, p. 249]; 66, 51–56, p. 194 [34, 51–6]; 82, 40, p. 256 [87, 29, p. 245]; 36, 45, p. 99 [60, 39, p. 185]. For a more precise idea of the framework of spiritual life that follows on union with God, compare the entirety of Lauds: 85, pp. 261–62 [49, pp. 165–66]; 87, pp. 277–78 [84, pp. 241–42]; 89, pp. 280–89 [90, pp. 257–65]. Just the reference to Laud 90, pp. 289–93 [92, pp. 274–78], can offer a sufficient treatment. For a more exhaustive articulation see: Alvaro Cacciotti, “La ‘nichilità’ in Jacopone da Todi,” in Albert Deblaere (1916–1994), Essays on mystical literature, ed. Rob Faesen (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), pp. 389–406. See for example Laud 39, pp. 107–13 [81, pp. 235–39] and Laud 82, pp. 245–48 [87, pp. 244–46], which have the task of discussing the “human manner” of divine love, which moves one to praise and thanksgiving.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

339

of “­intoxicated”55 every devout and desperate component, the first result emerges: God is love, but not every love is God; and the Love that God is lives in man. The Lauds constantly play with translating the motives of human existence in the story of Christ, from the reality of the Incarnation to the consummation of the paschal mystery. The plot of the story is, as can be easily seen, the Christian kerygma borrowed from the pages of the Bible. God’s becoming flesh, to the point of suffering human death, mixes together the categories of the self and depictions of God, and the obvious inequality between divine and human love assumes a theological explanation: God loves man totally, lowering Himself in a condition of insignificance: “I showed you the ‘how’ with My Incarnation; / For you I became a pilgrim and died on the cross” (85, 19–20).56 Iacopone’s lesson, if closely examined, constantly explores the motifs of the reason for and the measure of such great love, due, on God’s part, to absolute dedication to man, following the expression of His extreme love. Thus, while the Love of divine Love flounders in the failing of the self, annihilating itself in death in order to acquire the loving assent of man, there occurs fully the reversal effected by the game of love: there is no longer given just the power of divine Love that attracts and draws man but, inversely, it is man who draws and attracts God. Man is so noble and so much in love that he causes the loving madness of God: “The Wisdom of God is drunk with love” (73, 27). Giving all of Himself in order to gain the loving assent of man, He remains the victim of the love offered to him. This is the full disclosing of the “natural functioning” of love: the one who is stronger in love is the one who is loved more. And here we see the true disparity: in comparison with man, God is the loser because He loves more. The sign of this is the loving madness for man that leads Him to death on the Cross. Man – once annihilated in God – in regard to God, to divine Love, is more powerful guiding a conveyance of Love at his service: “Lofty self-­ annihilation, / Your strength batters down all doors / And opens on infinity. You feed on Truth / And have no fear of death; / You straighten the rooked / And illumine the darkness. You bind the heart / So close to God in friendship that all differences / And obstacles to Love are banished” (91, 229–36).57 This 55 56 57

24, 44, p. 66 [9: 29: “entossecato” not translated here]. But see also Laud 79, 12–15, p. 237: “O Amore attivo, / che non trovi passivo, / che venga a l’amativo / d’amor purificato.” “O active Love, in futile search of the soul / That can reach the fullness of Love” (85: 11–2). The motif recurs frequently and is variously expressed. See among many, at least the following Lauds: 69, pp. 198­–201 [83, pp. 240–41]; 73, pp. 215–18 [26, pp. 116–18]; 79, pp. 236–40 [85, pp. 242–44]; 89, pp. 280–89 [90, pp. 257–65]; 92, pp. 294–309 [91, pp. 265–74]. See also: “O anema diletta, / ben par che tu si’ Amore!” (4b, 147–148, p. 332) [not included in Hughes ed.]; “To you, His Lady, His bride” (91, 268, p. 273); “United with Christ she is almost Christ; / fused with God she becomes divine. / Raised to this summit, possessing

340

CACCIOTTI

is the poetic work carried out by Iacopone in his Laudario, which becomes a theological work of great breadth: the clear affirmation that it is God who praises man, dedicating Himself to his service. Death on the Cross is the concrete, extreme way in which the immeasurable “Love” of God is revealed. It is worth remembering that the Laud of Iacopone thus is not the vademecum of how man ought to give praise to God; rather it tries to describe the praise that God renders to man, in the context of a loving union. God chooses man as His “god,” since He is crazy with love for him. Such devotion is love, strong and weak, for man and his world, consecrated with a high, incomparable dignity. This is a world and an existence that no longer have to undergo the attempt to be shunned, neglected, in order to be lived. The rendering of a glory of God offered to man, placed higher than Himself, proclaimed and acclaimed as the “god of God,” by the same God-Love: such is the spiritual lesson that the poet of Todi will bequeath to Christian reflection. Iacopone – and this is the ­second result to be emphasized – offers to the lexicon of contemplation, and not only that of his own time, a linguistic search, even if marked by deficiencies and anomalies, that has shown itself capable of having the honor of saying what cannot be said. As a true doctor mysticus, of international stature, an original and creative exponent of that profound cultural Renaissance of the 13th century, he is the tender and strong bard of love58 in that mid-Europe that extends from Flanders to Lotharingia, from the Rhine to the Saône-Rhône, to Lombardy and Umbria, offering in new canons the concept of a dispensatio temporalis59 within the grasp of human interiority and not the binding force of norms. The refinement and depth of Iacopone’s work, rooted in the European spirit of his time, will become – in its concrete and scathing compactness – a point of reference especially for the great mystical writers who will become aware of the discovery, the confirmation and the commitment to avoid a way of escape from the urgent need to live. To live: understanding and explaining desire and passion, transforming love and deforming pain, life and death.

58 59

such riches, / The soul is queen of Christ and all His realm” (90, 105–8); “Da poi ch’Amore èi fatta / per grazia divina” (4b, 133–134, p. 332) [not included in Hughes ed.]. It would be useful to read at least the following, noting their variety and thematic breadth: Lauds 77, p. 228; 80, pp. 232–35; 87, pp. 244–46. See Augustine of Hippo, Retractationes I, 13, 1, in PL, 32, 602.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

341

Works Cited Angela da Foligno. “Memoriale.” In Liber Lelle. Il libro di Angela da Foligno, I. Edited by Fortunato Frezza, 1–185. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012. Angela da Foligno. “The Memorial.” Translated by Paul Lachance. In Angela of Foligno: Complete Works, 123–218. Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1993. Armstrong, Regis J., J. A. W. Hellmann, and William Short, eds. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3 vols. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999–2001. Atti del Convegno storico iacoponico. Edited by Enrico Menestò. Spoleto: Cisam, 1992. Augustine of Hippo. De civitate Dei. In PL, 41, 13–804. Augustine of Hippo. Retractationes I. In PL, 32, 583–630. Bernard of Clairvaux. De diligendo Deo, I, 1. In Opere di san Bernardo, I, edited by ­Ferruccio Gastaldelli, 270–331. Milan: Scriptorium Claravallense, 1984. Bernard of Clairvaux. On Loving God. In Bernard of Clairvaux, Selected Works, 173–206. Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1987. Bibliografia iacoponica. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2010. Boccali, Giovanni. La Bibbia e la liturgia nel laudario di Iacopone. In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006. Edited by Enrico Menestò, 311–436. Spoleto: Cisam, 2007. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Leggenda Maggiore. In Fonti Francescane, Scritti e biografie di san Francesco d’Assisi, Cronache e altre testimonianze del primo secolo francescano. Edited by Ernesto Caroli, nuova edizione, 1235–36. Padua: Editrici francescane, 2004. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Legenda maior. In Analecta franciscana, X, 555–626. ­Florence: Ad Claras aquas, 1941. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Major Life of Saint Francis. In Francis of Assisi: Early Documents II. Edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William Short, 585–683. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000. Brufani, Stefano. “Fonti e motivi francescani nelle laude di Iacopone.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi, Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006. E ­ dited by Enrico Menestò, 253–73. Spoleto: Cisam, 2007. Cacciotti, Alvaro. La teologia mistica di Iacopone da Todi, Fonti e ricerche 31, Milano: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2020. Cacciotti, Alvaro. “‘Omo, mittite a ppensare.’ Aspetti di polemica religiosa nel Laudario di Iacopone da Todi.” In “Una strana gioia di vivere.” A Grado Giovanni Merlo. Edited by M. Benedetti e M. L. Betri, 297–313. Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2010. Cacciotti, Alvaro. Amor sacro e profano in Jacopone da Todi. Rome: Antonianum, 1989.

342

CACCIOTTI

Cacciotti, Alvaro. “Echi di 1Cor. 6, 17 in autori mistici del tardo Medioevo.” In Atti del VI Simposio di Tarso su S. Paolo apostolo. Edited by Luigi Padovese, 273–82. Rome: Istituto Francescano di Spiritualità Pontificio Ateneo Antoniano, 2000. Cacciotti, Alvaro. “La ‘nichilità’ in Jacopone da Todi.” In Albert Deblaere (1916–1994), Essays on mystical literature. Edited by R. Faesen, 389–406. Leuven: Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium (CLXXVII), 2004. Cacciotti, Alvaro. “La mistica francescana del Laudario iacoponico.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006. Edited by Enrico Menestò, 275–88. Spoleto: Cisam, 2007. Cacciotti, Alvaro. La teologia mistica di Iacopone da Todi, Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2020. Canettieri, Paolo, ed. Iacopone da Todi e la poesia religiosa del Duecento. Milan: Bur, 2001. Capitani, Ovidio. “Polemica religiosa e polemica pubblicistica nelle Laude di Iacopone da Todi.” In Atti del convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi, Todi 29–30 novembre 1980. Edited by Enrico Menestò, 11–33. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1992. Fonti Francescane. Scritti e biografie di san Francesco d’Assisi, Cronache e altre testimo­ nianze del primo secolo francescano. Nuova edizione. Edited by Ernesto Caroli. Padua: Editrici francescane, 2004. Francis of Assisi. Scritti. Critical edition by C. Paolazzi. Grottaferrata-Roma: ­Spicilegium bonaventurianum XXXVI, Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 2009. Hughes, Serge, and Elizabeth Hughes, trans. Iacopone da Todi: The Lauds. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Franco Mancini. Scrittori d’Italia 257, Bari: Laterza, 1974. Iacopone da Todi. Laude. Edited by Matteo Leonardi. Florence: Olschki, 2010. Iacopone da Todi. Laudi, Trattato e Detti. Edited by Franca Ageno. Florence: Le ­Monnier, 1953. Iacopone da Todi. Tractatus utilissimus, Verba. Critical edition by Enrico Menestò. ­Spoleto: Cisam, 2015. Iacopone e il suo tempo. Convegno del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale I. Todi, 13–15 ottobre 1957. Assisi: Accademia tudertina, 1959. Iuliani de Spira. Vita s. Francisci. In Analecta franciscana X, 333–71. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1941. Lannutti, Maria Sofia. “Il verso di Iacopone.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del convegno di studio, Todi 3–7 dicembre 2006. Edited by Enrico Menestò, 113–34. Spoleto: Cisam, 2007. Laude di frate Jacopone da Todi impresse per me ser Francesco Bonaccorsi in Firenze, a dì ventiotto del mese di Septembre 1490 (ristampa G. Ferri, Rome, 1910, Bari, 1915).

FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND FRANCISCANISM IN THE LAUDARIO

343

Le poesie spirituali del B. Iacopone da Todi accresciute di molti altri suoi cantici nuovamente ritrovati, … con le scolie e le annotazioni di fra Francesco Tresatti da Lugnano, minor osservante della provincia di s. Francesco, in Venetia, appresso Nicolò ­Misserini, 1617. Leonardi, Lino. “Per l’edizione critica del laudario di Iacopone.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006. Edited by Enrico Menestò, 83–112. Spoleto: Cisam, 2007. Menestò, Enrico, ed. La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006. Spoleto: Cisam, 2007. Menestò, Enrico, ed. “‘Che farai, fra Iacopone?’. Conferme e novità nella biografia di Iacopone da Todi.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del convegno di studio, Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006. Edited by Enrico Menestò, 1–37. Spoleto: Cisam, 2007. Merlo, Grado Giovanni. Nel nome di san Francesco. Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del XVI secolo. Milan: Editrici Francescane, 2003. Nessi, Silvestro. Lo stato attuale della critica iacoponica. In Atti del convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi, Todi, 29–30 novembre 1980. Edited by Enrico Menestò, 37–64. Spoleto: Cisam, Prima ristampa 1992. Opuscula sancti patris Francisci Assisiensis. Edited by Kajetan Esser. Grottaferrata: Ad Claras Aquas, 1978. Poeti del Duecento, II/I. Edited by Gianfranco Contini, 61–166. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 19952 (19601). Pozzi, Giovanni. “Jacopone poeta?” In Alternatim, 73–92. Milan: Adelphi, 1996. Pozzi, Giovanni. “L’alfabeto delle sante.” In Scrittrici mistiche italiane, edited by ­Giovanni Pozzi and Claudio Leonardi, 21–42. Genoa: Marietti, 1988. Suitner, Franco, ed. Iacopone poeta. Atti del convegno di studi, Stroncone-Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005. Rome: Bulzoni, 2007. Tartaro, Achille. “Ungaretti e Iacopone. Un momento del francescanesimo novecentesco.” In San Francesco e il francescanesimo nella letteratura italiana del Novecento. Atti del convegno nazionale, Assisi, 13–16 maggio 1982. Edited by Silvio Pasquazi, 245–58. Rome: Bulzoni, 1983. Thomas of Celano. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents II. Edited by R. J. Armstrong, J. A. W. Hellmann, W. Short, 399–468. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000. Thomas of Celano. “Memoriale (Vita seconda).” In Fonti francescane. Scritti e biografie di san Francesco d’Assisi, Cronache e altre testimonianze del primo secolo francescano. Nuova Edizione. Edited by E. Caroli, 578–820. Padua: Editrici francescane, 2004. Thomas of Celano. The Life of Saint Francis. In Francis of Assisi: Early Documents I. Edited by R. J. Armstrong, J. A. W. Hellmann, W. Short, 108–308. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999.

344

CACCIOTTI

Thomas of Celano. The Rediscovered Life of St. Francis of Assisi. Edited by J. Dalarun, translated by T. J. Johnson. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2016. Thomas of Celano. “The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul.” In Francis of Assisi: Early Documents II. Edited by R. J. Armstrong, J. A. W. Hellmann, and W. Short, 239–393. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000. Thomas of Celano. “Tractatus de miraculis.” In Analecta franciscana X, 269–331. ­Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1941. Thomas of Celano. “Trattato dei miracoli.” In Fonti francescane. Scritti e biografie di san Francesco d’Assisi, Cronache e altre testimonianze del primo secolo francescano. Nuova edizione. Edited by E. Caroli, 821–1019. Padua: Editrici francescane, 2004. Thomas of Celano. Vita beati patris nostri Francisci (Vita brevior). Edited by J. Dalarun. In Analecta Bollandiana 133, no. 1 (2015), 23–86. Thomas of Celano. “Vita del beato Francesco (Vita prima).” In Fonti francescane. Scritti e biografie di san Francesco d’Assisi, Cronache e altre testimonianze del primo secolo francescano. Nuova edizione. Edited by E. Caroli, 315–542. Padua: Editrici francescane, 2004. Thomas of Celano. “Vita prima s. Francisci.” In Analecta franciscana X, 1–117. Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1941. William of St. Thierry. La lettera d’oro. Edited by Claudio Leonardi. Florence: Sansoni, 1983. William of St. Thierry. “The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren at Mont Dieu.” In The Works of William of St Thierry, vol. 4. Translated by T. Berkeley. Trappist, KE: Cistercian Publications, 1971.

Chapter 13

Image and Performance in Iacopone’s Laudario: the Case of Lauda 78, “Un arbore è da Deo plantato” Samia Tawwab Iacopone da Todi’s laudario is a compendium of performative strategies of preaching.1 Lauda 78, “Un albero è da Deo plantato” (There is a tree planted by God),2 has a unique place in Iacopone’s laudario as it employs a text and a painting as separate dramatic media to express the same content. In this article, I first discuss the use of imageimage” as a pedagogical and mnemonic preaching strategy for the illiterate at Iacopone’s time and then examine the painting associated with Lauda 78 as well its textual form to assess their different dramatic features. Many studies trace the use of image for religious purposes to the inception of the confraternities, and particularly to the Franciscan order. Rona Goffen, for instance, associates the pictorial development of the sacred conversation of the thirteenth century with pious writings from Franciscan and Dominican literature.3 Although there is no direct documented relationship between the two, it could not have been coincidental that starting from the thirteenth century the use of image, as Goffen asserts, took a different form in the narrative of events through subsequent illustrations, in the form of scenes, increasing 1 Translations of quotations from the Laude are taken from Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes, trans., The Lauds, by Iacopone da Todi (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). In their translation, Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes worked on Franco Mancini’s edition. However, Hughes and Hughes numbered the laude according to Bonaccorsi’s fifteenth-century edition, which remained consistent in Franca Ageno’s critical edition in 1953; Hughes and Hughes, The Lauds, 63. In their analysis of the chronology of Iacopone’s work, Hughes and Hughes strongly believe that “the sequence of the poems in the 1490 edition corresponds rather well to the major stages in Iacopone’s life” (25). I must add that in few instances I found Hughes and Hughes’ translation to be rather an interpretation. Very often they changed the lauda’s structure in terms of number of stanzas, as well as that of the verses in each stanza. In certain quotations, I felt that a literal translation would come closer to Iacopone’s intention, and therefore I added my own translation. 2 In Hughes and Hughes’ translation, this lauda appears under number 89, which they gave the title: “The Tree of Divine Love” (253–57). 3 Rona Goffen, “Nostra Conversatio in Caelis Est: Observations on the Sacra Conversazione in the Trecento,” The Art Bulletin 61, no. 2 (June 1979): p. 201. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_015

346

TAWWAB

the use of image in general in churches.4 It appears that since simplification was a fundamental value of Franciscan evangelization, the use of image was a common vehicle of teaching for the illiterate. In being so, image more than being Franciscan, it is a Christian medium of representation and preaching. In this regard, Fiorella Giacalone stresses the didactic function given to iconography by the Church since the first centuries of Christianity and asserts that the recognition of image as a sign of a represented object has been internalized within the Christian tradition.5 Giacalone emphasizes the significance of the representation function, citing the Church’s assertion, upon the Council of Nicaea: “chi accetta la Scrittura ammette necessariamente anche la rappresentazione, se egli respinge l’una, deve respingere anche l’altra.”6 The purpose here is evident, that of providing an alternative access to knowledge, “affinché anche gli illetterati incontrino ed apprendano mediante la semplice vista ciò che non possono conoscere mediante la lettura e così ricevano una conoscenza più chiara e più abbreviata delle cose.”7 This specific faculty made of image a preaching instrument. Alessandra Gianni, in fact, attests to “la potente capacità di muovere gli animi,” utilized by the Franciscans to replace the symbolic by an image of the truth.8 Evidence of their ideology is verifiable by paintings on the walls of churches, as in the case of the church of St. Francis in Assisi. John Fleming as well cites documented occurrences of “the homiletic exploitation of visual art,” of preachers holding “crosses or crucifixes in the pulpit and in the Lenten missions displayed material emblems of the Passion”.9 It is important to add, however, that centuries before Iacopone and any Franciscan innovations, Gregory the Great had assigned to image the role of teaching the illiterate. Since painting was accessible to all, it was favored over the arbitrary sign system of writing. It seems that with the shift from Latin to the vernacular, the same situation arose again, and this time the linguistic context was more intricate; instead of dealing only with literate versus the illiterate, there was an 4 Goffen, “Nostra Conversatio,” p. 203. 5 Fiorella Giacalone, “Immagini sacre in Umbria tra culto ufficiale e religiosità popolare: l’iconografia di Santa Rita,” in Arte sacra in Umbria e dipinti restaurati nei secoli XIII–XX (Todi: Ediart, 1987), pp. 123–51. 6 Giacalone, “Immagini sacre,” p. 124. 7 Giacalone, “Immagini sacre,” p. 124. 8 Alessandra Gianni, “Iacopone e le immagini: i mutamenti nell’iconografia sacra durante il XIII secolo,” in Iacopone da Todi e l’arte in Umbria nel Duecento, eds Fabio Bisogni and Enrico Menestò (Milan: Skira editore, 2006), p. 117. 9 John Fleming, “Preachers, Teachers, Apostles, and the Jugglers of the Lord,” in An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature of the Middle Ages (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977), p. 128.

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

347

additional language barrier. Therefore, when examining Iacopone’s utilization of image in his laudario, we are not presenting it as his exclusive innovation, however original his prolific application was. Iacopone’s awareness of the need to represent and simplify meaning through mental imagery or actual physical paintings, is an instance of Christian tradition, of Franciscan ideology, and of preaching approach. As Jean-Claude Schmitt explains, in the New Testament the Incarnation brought perfection to the relationship of image between man, God, and Christ.10 As any reader of the Bible would know, man is qualified in the Bible, in its first words, as an image of God,11 and Iacopone explicitly expresses this relationship in different ways. For example, in lauda 3, “L’omo fo creato virtuoso” (Virtuous as he left the hand of the Creator),12 his words repeat the notion explicitly: “Mesere, volunter ne porto signo, / ché eo so reformato a tua figura” (321–22; Lord, gladly will I bear the Mark of the new creation). Similarly, in lauda 66, “O libertà suietta ad onne creatura” (O Freedom, subject to all creatures),13 with a focus on what an erring soul loses, due to its vice, the stress is on the loss of the resemblance to God, “desforma la bellezza che’era simele a dDeo” (7; Mirrored in man becomes twisted and deformed). His most direct statement, of man being an image of God, is clearly expressed in a strategic location in lauda 77, “Omo che pò la sua lengua domare” (He who has mastery over his tongue).14 After a long prologue, this is the beginning of an elaborate treaty: “Pàreme che ll’omo sia creato / a l’emmagen de Deo e ’n somiglianza” (21; Man was created in the image and likeness of God). However, the prominence of image in Christianity is not limited to the resemblance between man and God, even if that concept may have been the foundation of the acceptance of image in its ideology. Assessing sight and memory in Iacopone extends to different notions pertinent to poetic imagery and mental vision, especially in the laude on mysticism. In lauda 28, “Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo / la luce del dì medïante, a me representa denante / cosa corporeata” (With the eyes in my head /by the light of noon, / I see corporeal things),15 Iacopone portrays a full representation of 10 11 12 13 14 15

Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Images,” in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Occident medieval, eds. Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1999), p. 499. Gn 1:27 “So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”. Lauda 43 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 146–56). This is one of the cases where a literal translation like “Man was created virtuous” would have been preferable. Lauda 34 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 127–29). Lauda 88 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 247–53). Lauda 46 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 158–60).

348

TAWWAB

the Eucharist, referring repeatedly to the concept of mental vision. After starting the ripresa with “coll’occhi c’aio nel capo” (With the eyes in my head), he repeats “coll’occhi c’aio nel capo / veio ’l divin sacramento” (3; With the eyes in my head, / I see the Blessed Sacrament), stressing the superiority of mental vision in the perception of God. Many expressions in this lauda have to do with sight: occhi, veio, mustra, vedemento, luce, mustramento, specifying that such sight takes place en mente razïonata, reiterating the reference to mental vision. The remaining of the lauda is devoted to the ability to see the otherwise invisible Divine through reasoning during the Eucharist: “lo preite ’l me mustra a l’altare, / pane sì è en suo vedemento, la luce ch’è de la fede / altro me fa mustramento / a l’occhi mei c’aio drento, en mente razïonata” (4–6; As the priest on the altar raises it high, / in appearance it is bread; to the inner eye, the eye of faith, that bread is something more). Iacopone explicitly places a significant emphasis on the difference between what the eye actually sees, the bread on the altar shown by the priest; and what the light of faith can render visible. The speaker, in the lauda, expresses the miraculous sight of the visible form of Christ, and the formation of love: “so’ queste vesebele forme / Cristo ocultato ce stane” (9; Christ is hidden under this visible form), “como porìa esser questo? / vorrìmolo veder per rasone’” (11; How can this be? / I want reason to account for the change). The subsequent stanzas reiterate how the soul, in general, does not see but feels God, “l’alma no ’l vede, ma sente” (24), followed by an emphasis from the speaker’s perspective: “signor, non te veio, ma veio che m’ai enn alto mutato” (39; The Lord I cannot see has transformed me into another); and later, “te daietore non veio, / ma veio e tocco el tuo dato” (41; You, the Giver, I do not see, / but I see and touch Your gift). Finally, the speaker thanks his faith for the ability to see the invisible God through reasoning: “O fede lucente preclara, per te so’ vinuto a ’sti frutti” (59; O fierce-shining Faith, you led me to this fruit!). The entire lauda chiefly focuses on mental visualization, and reflects familiar Christian metaphors related to sight, such as the blind: he who has not been blessed by faith, and faith as a cane to guide him “a lo ’nvesebel è’ ceco, venim cun baston de credenza” (15; The blind man leans on the cane of faith). Mental visualization of God is a frequent motif, an additional example of which is in lauda 87, through the ascent path to God, “Co la mente ci guardai” (23; I looked at it in my mind’s eye). Although critics have repeatedly referred to Iacopone’s contempt to the human senses, many occurrences in the laude illustrate the opposite.16 In 16

In fact, Carlo Vecce, “Sulla cultura visuale di Iacopone,” in Iacopone poeta: Atti del Convegno di studi (Stroncone - Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005), ed. Franco Suitner. (Rome: Bulzoni

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

349

lauda 1, “La Bontate se lamenta” (Goodness laments),17 the element of marvel at s­ eeing with the eye of intelligence is highlighted in “l’occhi de la Entelligenza ostopesco del vedere” (65–66; and so marvels at what he now can see). Iacopone associates ostopir with sensorial perception. This lauda, by itself, repeatedly reflects the merit of the sense of sight: occhi 65, vedere 70, eo veio 79, vedemento 87, and again me veio 93, vedere 98, vedere 113, and veder 121. References to both hearing and sight abound in the laudario insofar as they are natural human abilities of the perception of God. In lauda 48, “O derrata, esguard’al Prezzo” (Dwell on the price paid for you),18 we see “ostupesco dell’audito (14; marvel that the word of God), and in lauda 59, “L’anema ch’e` viziosa” (The vice-ridden soul),19 again we see “Venite, gente, ad odire / e ostopite del vedere” (31–32; Come people come and marvel at what you see). As was customary in the Middle Ages, Iacopone drew imagery in the mind of his audience by means of similitude, metaphor, and allegory. Iacopone’s figurative demonstrations were in the form of suggested images, a concept that has already been investigated in numerous studies, frequently defined as il visibile parlare.20 Similar to his method of personification, Iacopone resorted to image to represent his abstract teaching by means of the artifice of metaphor. It does not seem that Iacopone’s purpose while composing the laude is the

17 18 19 20

Editore, 2007), pp. 303–40 reiterates the coexistence, and to a certain extent the contradiction, of a distinct negative position towards earthly life and any celebration of the senses and pronounced visual aspects in Iacopone’s laudario. Vecce asserts that it would have made sense for Iacopone not to appreciate the senses, in consistency with the Franciscan hostility of figurative arts (303). Lauda 74 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 223–25). Lauda 73 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 221–23). Lauda 13 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 90–91). Bolzoni’s “Predicazione”, for instance, is an entire chapter that focuses on the relationship between image and preaching. Although her approach considers them to be two means of communication of the learning that integrate each other, she refers to the ability of the word in general to paint “a poco a poco sulla tabula della mente degli ascoltatori” (Bolzoni, “Predicazione,” p. 33). Giovanni Pozzi affirms the presence of many “rappresen� tazioni visive,” from the “allegorie dei vizi e delle virtù” to the “scene della vita di Cristo”. Giovanni Pozzi, “Jacopone poeta?,” in Alternatim (Milan: Adelphi, 1996), p. 83. Carlo Vecce clearly affirmed that many laude suggest “schemi visivi di tipo mnemonico,” which often have to do with philosophical and religious notions, for the purpose of rendering them “evidenti,” and “visibili,” almost concrete, which would be otherwise difficult to comprehend and recall. Among other images, Vecce, “Sulla cultura visuale”, 304, stresses one of the most common medieval images, that of the tree, and especially the Franciscan tree, from the Bonaventurian Lignum vite and the Arbor vite crucifixus by Ubertino da Casale “Sulla cultura visuale”, and Ciociola who examines the intersection between word and image in his influential article. Claudio Ciociola, “Visibile parlare,” Rivista di letteratura italiana 7, no. 1 (1989), pp. 9–77.

350

TAWWAB

poetic glory; he does not deliver remotely allusive metaphors. His picturesque use of metaphor is limited to direct associations that simplify the meaning by way of concrete memorizable images. His style of visibile parlare on the other hand was mostly employed for pedagogical functions. For instance, lauda 65 is an emphasis on the legitimacy of speech. While such an opening, “Omo chi vòl parlare” (You who enjoy talking),21 might befit treatises on rhetoric, the topic is a mystic union. The reflection on legitimacy posits a similitude wherein the human mind can be as orderly as a bed. This lauda is one of the most celebrated allegoric exhibitions of the entire laudario, representing, as Matteo Leonardi explains, the mystic union to take place in a “letto dove l’anima sposa e Dio sposo consumano la propria unione” (Lauda 136). The pedagogical purpose leans on performative means to convey such a sublime theological notion. What is noticeable in Iacopone’s metaphor is his attentive choice of objects, tangible and familiar, so that the average person can visualize a structure, through which the concept of intent would be ­perceived. Not only are the original concepts abstract, but they are also rather complex. And again in lauda 64 what starts as an explicit simile: “La mente sì è ’l letto co l’ordenato affetto” (17–18; The mind with its well-ordered passions, is the bed), develops into an extended metaphor. For instance, the bed’s four legs represent the four cardinal virtues: “Lo primo pè, prudenza; L’altro pè, iustizia; Lo terzo pè, fortezza; Lo quarto è temperanza” (21, 25, 29, 33; The first leg of which represents Prudence; the second leg of the bed is Justice; Fortitude, the third; the last is Temperance); and they naturally symbolize a pious foundation. In addition, in each stanza, he broadens the metaphor to additional concrete objects associated with the main metaphor, without mentioning the abstract concept of mind. Lettèra 37 is rolled up by means of twelve ropes, standing for the twelve articles of faith; while: saccone 41, matarazzo 45, capezzale 49 and lenzola 53 lead to a logical sequence where Speranza 57, the bed cover, reassures the speaker to be “cittadino / en quell’abbergo devino” (59–60; to dwell in that holy place). Love would reach him there, and he would be joined in matrimony with God. The skillful delivery of pictorial details simplifies intricate facts that would have been otherwise too complex to explain. Among many metaphorical concepts, are the necessity to hold tight onto the articles of faith: “l’articul’ l’à legati, / co li pè concatenate” (39–40; the articles of faith are ropes binding the headboard to the legs of the bed), not to mention the most

21

Lauda 71 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 218–220).

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

351

emphatic concept in the laudario, man as an image of God: “specchio i devinitate, / vestito i umanetate” (55–56) mirror of the Divine, humanly dressed). The bed’s extended metaphor is similar to that of the ladder, in lauda 4, which stablishes the process right from the ripresa: “Volendo encomenzare, / a laude del Signore, / una scala segnare, / ornate de vertute” (1–4; if you wish to begin / praising God, / you must indicate ladder, / ornate with virtue)22 and utilizing the ladder’s steps to encounter various virtues each by each. What is characteristic in this metaphor is the benefit from the scala’s structure that places Amore at the top, as the final destination of a mystic ascent,23 while it supplies a sense of rank among the virtues. Furthermore, whereas the parts of the bed only acquire their qualities in the context of this specific metaphor, the linear upright structure of the scala already serves its own real function. These two basic metaphors are some of Iacopone’s various strategies of representing the abstract into concrete indelible images. Similes and metaphors enrich the laudario with an abundance of poetic features, while they simultaneously allow for associations and imagery that facilitate the learning.24 The lengthy accumulated associations seem to suit Iacopone, fitting his elaborate emphasis onto the minute particulars of the material structure to which a complex thought is assimilated. For instance, perception of the laude 77, 78, and 84, is contingent with the notion of the tree, for its prominence in Christianity in general and in Franciscan thought in particular. Lauda 77, “Omo che pò la sua lengua domare” (He who has mastery over his tongue),25 starts with a prologue of twenty verses focusing, again, on legitimacy of speech. Due to the complexity of concepts and their hierarchy, Iacopone resorts to the tree’s familiar structure, so that his listener can imagine, 22 23

24

25

My translation. This lauda, numbered within Mancini’s Appendice (311–241), is not listed in Hughes and Hughes. Lina Bolzoni draws attention to this lauda and to the ladder, its symbol in the Christian tradition, and its iconography, based on Jacob’s vision. In addition to inserting a copy of La Scala del paradiso, disegno a penna in her article, she refers to other iconographic representations that incorporate the ladder intertwined with that of the tree (La rete, pp. 127–29). Bolzoni’s work confirms a tradition of the medieval use of image as an additional medium of expression, on content that is already offered in a textual form. As reiterated before, Iacopone’s purpose is not ostensibly to show his knowledge. M ­ atteo Leonardi, in an essay focusing on the affinity of Iacopone’s lauda with preaching, explains that the laude do not rationally justify any ethics, in the way the Scholastic treatises do, but exhort with the pragmatic purpose of movere rather than docere. In fact, the ripresa always announces the focus of the lauda; the laude do not aim at dimostrare but at ri-mostrare. Matteo Leonardi, “Frate Iacopone: tra laus e predicazione,” Critica Letteraria 35, no. 2 (2007), p. 226. Lauda 88 in Hughes and Hughes’ translation (pp. 247–53).

352

TAWWAB

associate, and divide the categories while following this long and intricate series of classifications. The choice of the tree is clearly not coincidental.26 Not only does the tree provide a vertical structure with various height levels between roots, trunk, and top; it also grows sideways into branches and further divisions, allowing for elements of difficult concepts to be subcategorized in association with the natural dissection of its parts. The structure of the tree is also generally associated with its three main levels, easily corresponding to the infernal, the terrestrial, and the divine. Iacopone assimilates the ideal of the perfect man into the image of the tree: “Aiome veduto en me’ pensato / che ll’om perfetto a l’arbor se figura / che quanto plu profundo e radicato / tanto è plu forte ad onne ria fortuna” (41–44; Perfect man, I now see clearly, / is like a tree; the deeper the roots, / the greater the strength / to resist a violent onslaught). The image of the perfect man is projected on the tree’s figuration, in its unique feature of growing upwards, as well as rooting underground. The poet ascribes humility, clearly a human trait, to the pit hole where the tree is planted: “la fossa, do’ quest’arbore se planta, / pareme la profunda vilitate” (51–52; The hole on which the tree is planted / is perfect humility). The similitude is reciprocated between man who takes the tree’s figure growing roots, and the tree branch acquiring human qualities such as humility. Iacopone’s need for clarification will not suffice with the regular features of the poetic devices in use. Subsequently, the poet starts with a complex classification of the cardinal virtues associating Faith with the roots of the tree (lines 61–70), Hope with the trunk of the tree (lines 71–80), and Love with its branches (lines 81–90). In this doctrinal lauda, already presented in a unique structure as a treatise on the perfect man, the explicit metaphor concerns man and the tree. The categorization continues wherein purification is achieved through nine branches, divided into three, corresponding to the various phases of the ascent process: where branches are considered individually. The first is the order of the angels (lines 91–100); the second is the archangels (lines 111–20); and the third is virtue (lines 125–30). The established relationship between the tree structure and the categorization of this doctrine is a visual mnemonic process. Not only are the concepts abstract, but the additional concern is related to the classification of many ­categories and subcategories throughout many phases of divisions. In absence of the mnemonic visual structure, functioning as a grid, Iacopone’s audience would face a great challenge recalling the intricate concepts and complex precepts. 26

Bolzoni concurs on Iacopone’s utilization of the tree structure to combine motifs and images that facilitate classification and memory (La rete, p. 124).

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

353

Imagery is characteristic of poetry. However, the abundant occurrences27 of such features in Iacopone’s lauda, paired with the scarce conformity with other poetic criteria, attest to the communicative end of these aesthetic devices. In fact, Hughes and Hughes concur that the role of image in Iacopone’s laudario “remains subordinate” (4). When we consider Roman Jacobson’s assertion that “any attempt to reduce the sphere of poetic function to poetry or to confine poetry to the poetic function would be a delusive over-simplification”,28 we can attest to Iacopone’s use of image to endow his language with discursive expressive style and to elevate his lauda to surpass the boundaries of poetry and represent broader attributes of performance. As much as the visual association serves its purpose in aiding knowledge and perception beyond literacy, it seems that Iacopone employed yet another visual aid. Some subtle references allude to a possible incidence of accompanying the laude, or at least some of them, by visual representations. Alessandro Montani briefly mentions a design with the title Arbore di perfetione, of which he does not show an image. He associates it with lauda 77 “L’omo che può la sua lengua domare”.29 The reference seems to point to these verses: “Àiome veduto en me’ pensato / che ll’om perfetto a l’arbor se figura, / che quanto plu profundo è radecato / tanto è plu forte ad onne ria fortura” (41–44; Perfect man, I now see clearly, is like to a tree; the deeper the roots, the greater the strength to resist a violent onslaught). Montani does not document whether the design is available for observation, nor does he mention any other studies in relation to such design. Yet the reference is significant, and the correlation is persuasive. In addition to the mental imagery of the bed metaphor, in lauda 65, Iacopone makes a unique remark, possibly to a concrete reference: “La mente sì è ’l letto / Con l’ordenato affetto; / el letto à quatro pedi, / como en figura el vidi” (17–20), which has been noticed also by Leonardi.30 Unfortunately, Hughes and Hughes’ translation overlooks the reference, and suffices by “the light of 27

Another case worthy of attention is that of lauda 84, “Fede spen e caritate”, where the theme is much more elaborate: instead of one tree, there are three. Iacopone’s system of dividing and enumerating certain notions, and then breaking those into further ­subdivisions, results in numerous complex correlations. Structuring the abstract on a recognizable image, simplifies the understanding and aids the listener to retain the acquired knowledge. 28 Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and poetics,” in Style in language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960), p. 356. 29 Alessandro Montani, “La lauda ‘’Omo che vòl parlare’,” in Iacopone da Todi: Atti del ­Convegno di studi (Stroncone - Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005), ed. Franco Suitner (Rome: ­Bulzoni Editore, 2007), p. 249. 30 Leonardi, Frate Iacopone, p. 325.

354

TAWWAB

intelligence, which makes clear distinction” (218). These last words, “come en figura el vidi”, is essential to my analysis; it may in fact be indicative of the presence of a painting, which the poet denotes. It may very well have been customary to accompany the laude, or some of them, with some form of pictorial representations. This leads us to the case of lauda 78, “Un arbore è da Deo plantato”. Unlike the allusions to potential visual representations of laude 65 and 77, there is a unique case wherein a painting is actually related to lauda 78. Claudio ­Ciociola may have been the first to shed light on such a painting. The painting depicts the theme of a tree, which had been linked to Iacopone’s lauda 78. The ­painting was found in different versions, in different manuscripts, currently kept in two libraries in Italy. Ciociola cites them as follows.31 The first is a copy from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, cod. D 46 sup., c. 121r, under the title “Un arbore è da Deo plantato, disegno di corredo” (Figure 13.2). Its title is indeed the incipit of lauda 78. Ciociola follows the painting with another more complete image, which appears to be related to the first, again under the title “Un arbore è da Deo plantato, disegno di corredo” (Figure 13.2). This version is from the records of the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, cod.2959, c.100v (Figure 13.1). Nicoletta Maraschio and Tina Matarrese publish the text of the manuscript and the Milan version of the painting, citing Ciociola.32 Therefore, these works are from the same manuscripts, but under the title “Un arbore.”33 In Catalogo delle opere (Bisogni) the image, in full color, is the Florentine version (­Figure 13.1).34 Ciociola (24) confirms that the closest version to the original is that of manuscript 2959 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, and it is the one on which I am basing the following analysis (Figure 13.1). In his explanation of the presence of more than one painting for the same content, Ciociola suggests that the design was subject to segmentation over time, and that the presence of the design with the whole image is rare, as it has been erased from the palimpsest. Ciociola attributes the other designs, of what he refers to as “innovazioni iconografiche banalizzanti” (24) to a later version of Iacopone’s laudario. In regard to the source, Ciociola asserts that its

31 32 33 34

The reproductions of the paintings in Ciociola’s article are placed in his text in unnumbered pages, between pages 32 and 33. Nicoletta Maraschio and Tina Matarrese, Le lingue della Chiesa: Testi e documenti dalle Origini ai nostri giorni (Pescara: Libreria dell’Università Editrice, 1998). (Maraschio and Matarrese, Le lingue della Chiesa, pp. 27–28). Fabio Bisogni, “L’immaginario figurative di Iacopone da Todi,” in Iacopone da Todi e l’arte in Umbria nel Duecento, eds. Fabio Bisogni and Enrico Menestò (Milan: Skira editore, 2006), 73.

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

355

figure 13.1 Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, cod. 2959, f. 100v, Iacopone da Todi, Un arbore è da Deo plantato

identification dates back to a Franciscan archetype of similar nature, such as the Bonaventurian Lignum vitae (25). My interest in the painting is meant to prove that rather than being a completion to the text, or an illustration of it, it is another medium, to offer the same content to the illiterate audience. The painting portrays the trunk of the tree in the middle, with its branches spreading to both sides. At the end of

356

TAWWAB

figure 13.2 Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, ms. D 46 sup., f. 121r, Iacopone da Todi, Un arbore è da Deo plantato

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

357

the branches, there are very clear figures of two men, seemingly corresponding to the two characters participating in the dialogue of lauda 78, “Un arbore è da Deo plantato”. On the branches, there is a transcription of a dialogue, which is also reproduced in Ciociola’s article: AMOR SUPERFERVIDUS Defectus Raptus Lo cor mi venne meno, Iaccio sança memoria, tanto d’amor pleno (- 1) lo cor rapito in gloria. AMOR FERVIDUS Liquefactio (L)amgor L’Amor m’à sì scaldato, Lamguisco e disvio che ‘lcor m’à stemperato. perché ‘l Signor non veio. AMOR ACUTUS Contemplatio Conteptus Dilecto la mia mente Et io mi voglo odiare, di sopra ‘l ciel sagliente. perch’io possa più amare. AMOR CALI[DU]S Ardor Lacrime L’Amor sì m’à feruto, Cun lagrime ungho Deo, El suo ardo m’è apparuto. che spande lo cor meo. AMOR INCESSABILIS Continuatio Perseverantia S’io continuo l’amare Se perseve[ra]raio, potrò Dio guadagnare vero amatore saraio. AMOR MOBILIS Risus Suspiria L’amor [mi] fece riso, Suspriami lo core, che ‘n sua pregion m’à miso ché m’à feruto Amore.35 Before any contrastive analysis between the painting and the texttext” , I would like to underscore the variety of performance strategies in this lauda. The first man beseeches advice on the mystical union with God, and the other, being further ahead in his spiritual path, relays his experience. Matteo Leonardi refers to these characters as “un mistico immaturo” or a “potenziale discepolo”, and “un mistico maturo,” (lauda 164). I will refer to them as the disciple and the mystic, respectively. The disciple wonders how the mystic 35

Ciociola, “Visibile parlare.”

358

TAWWAB

achieved his ascension: “oi tu, omo, che cc’èi salito, / dimme en que forma c’è’ tu gito”, (3–3; You there, you I see up in the branches, show me where I can begin to climb). The mystic replies to the disciple directly without any narrative overriding. This brief exchange of dialogue emphasizes the contrast of the different stages of their spiritual paths, in which the disciple is by the bottom of the tree and the mystic is moving upwards, climbing the tree branches. The detailed description of the movement from one branch to another is certain to imprint a visualisation of physical ascension in the mind of the audience. In “Un arbore è da Deo plantato”, the tree’s favorable structure is not related to its branching and naturally dividable parts, but rather to its vertical structure, as a natural layout representing the ascension to God. The oversized static structure accommodates human movements through its parts, climbing upward. Not surprisingly, the allusion to the arbor amoris (the tree of love) is clear right in the first two verses, “Un arbore è da Deo plantato, / lo quale Amore è nomenato” (1–2). The ripresa expresses the only declarative introduction by the poet, while the entire lauda is in the form of direct speech dialogue between two men. The painting communicates additional information which would not be conveyed by the text alone. The repetition of images of two speakers interacting in a conversation is laid out in the form of scenes rather than a series of pictures. Each of those “scenes”, with an individual subtitle, but with the same background, is arranged in succession of acts in a play, conferring a temporal dimension to the painting and depicting action development. The facial expressions as well as body and hand gestures of the characters represent different stages in the communication, in a progressive plot, following a vertical sequence from the bottom of the painting to the top, coinciding with the ascent process. As the situation unfolds, each scene displays a moment in actual time. In addition, above each figure and to the side, a single word describes an emotional state, risus/suspiria, continuation/perseverantia, ardor/lacrime, contemplatio/conteptus, liquefactio/[l]amgor, defectus/raptus, in ascending order.36 The figure in the top central seems to be that of St. Francis that replaced Jesus Christ’s face in the other versions of the painting (Figure 13.2).

36

There could be a missing part of the painting. In the transcription reproduced in Ciociola’s records, the side titles appear at both ends, while in the painting only the right side is discernible. In addition, the symmetry of the image suggests a clear central comment should appear on each scene. However, the lower part has no such comment preceding the dialogue above. In it, we see the characters closer to each other with a lectern between them, suggesting the beginning of the event.

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

359

Notwithstanding the definite association of the painting with lauda 78, none of the verses in the painting is identical to another in this specific lauda, a fact that is also concurred by Ciociola.37 He also believes that the verse fui a cquest’arbore menato (I was led to this tree) 22 is a reference from the lauda text to the tree in the painting. However, it seems more plausible to regard the articulation in its actual context, recited by the disciple while he is next to the tree. In this case, the demonstrative questo in “cquest’arbore” (this tree) indicates that the speaker is pointing to the tree. Ciociola also draws attention to the term ‘scripto’ on the branch of Contemptus, through the mystic ascent levels, reaching Acutus: “Et io mi voglo odiare, / perch’ io possa più amare” (I want to hate myself so that I can love more): “Pò ch’en quel ramo me alzasse, / scripto c’era che eo me odiasse” (99–100; to rise to that level, I read, / I was to hate myself).38 Ciociola seems to suggest that the lauda’s text refers to the writing on the painting. His analysis seems to give chronological precedence to the painting over the lauda itself. I think it is possible that the painting was created after the lauda, since it provides a simpler way to edify the illiterate of what was denied to them by means of its text. In any case, the painting’s association with the lauda is evident; its sequence of scenes represents a visual dramatization of it. A close reading reveals numerous instances of connection between the transcription in the painting and the verses of the lauda. In this physical depiction of the action of ascension, each scene represents a section from the lauda. It starts by “de suspire ce fui firito” (73), which corresponds to the painting’s “suspirami lo core, che m’à feruto Amore”,39 while verse “e l’Amor me fice riso” (77) corresponds to the painting’s “l’amor mi fece riso”. These are the identical lines of the first scene, described as Suspiria and Risus. Similarly, “l’uno à nome ‘Perseveranno’”, and “l’altro ‘Amore continuato’” (80; 82), correspond clearly to the second scene between Perseverantia and Continuatio, while “le lacreme c’Amor facia”, and “lo ramo de l’ardore” (89; 92) correspond to the third scene between Lacrime and Ardor. In the same fashion, “che eo me odiasse”, and “al contemplar ch’el cor esparto” (100; 105) correspond to Conteptus and Contemplatio. The pattern is evident and consistent, in which “o’ eo languesco” (109) and “êll’ardor pognente, […] l’à estemperato” (113–114), correspond to “[L]amgor: lamguisco e diviso perché 37 38 39

In his analysis of the manuscript, he affirms that the verses written on the branches do not correspond directly to any of Iacopone’s laude, but rather point to the notion of the tree (22). Also here, I would like to reword the translation into ‘to rise to that branch, it is written that I ought to hate myself more’. A full translation of the stanzas in point follows below.

360

TAWWAB

’l Signor non veio”; while “Liquefactio: L’amore m’à si scaldato che lo cor m’à stemperato”. And finally, “fui rapito” (120), “sponso fo aparito” (121), “fui abracciato” (122), together with: “vinni meno” (123) correspond to “Raptus: lo cor rapito and Defectuslo cor me venne meno, tanto d’amor pleno” in the painting. These lexical parallels revolve around the most significant expressions of the topic, and they are indeed revealed in the painting as well as in the text. Rather than their common features, what matters more to this study is the difference between the two compositions, the lauda’s text and its painting. It is significant that the first scene from the bottom of the painting, “Amor mobilis”, corresponds to the lauda starting from verse 71. In the lauda, the first seventy verses announce the topic, describe the set, introduce the characters, convey their relationship to each other, reveal their emotional status, and name and describe the tree for its fundamental importance in the perception of the whole lauda. Naming the arbor amoris is fundamental to the text for understanding the ascension allusion, yet none of that was necessary in the case of the painting. These seventy verses seem to act as the antefatti of a performance, which were perceived right at the first sight of the painting. The image of the tree with its vertical structure represents the ascension path to God, and in fact, in this image, the sense of order develops from bottom to top. The identification of the characters as Franciscan friars40 is evident in different ways: their particular frocks, especially in the characteristic cappuccino style in a brown ashen color; the hairstyle and the ash cross marked on their foreheads as per their penitence practice. The identification is visual, it is not mentioned in the text. The lengthy description of action requires two stanzas. The verses of the first scene, “Amor mobilis: Suspirami lo core, / ché m’à feruto Amore. / L’amor [mi] fece riso, / che ’n sua pregion m’à miso” correspond to the following two stanzas of the lauda: 40

Giacomo Oddi describes the dress code of the Franciscan friars: “Quanto a la materia dicevano che voleva essere de panno vile et grosso; de colore de cenere, o vero palido, o vero de colore de terra, acciò che represente la mortificatione del corpo del nostro Signore Yhesu Christo; et de tanta grossezza che possa tenere alquanto caldo; et che possa al frate sano bastare una tonica dentro et de fore repezata, chi vole, como dice la regola, et de tanta longezza che, essendo cinta senza alcuna piega sopra la corda, non tocche la terra. La longezza de le maniche, comunemente, per fine a la ponta de li deti, et la largezza d’esse maniche sieno per tale modo, che le mane possano entrare et uscire liberamente. Lo cappuccio quadro et de tanta longheza, che copra la faccia. Et così represente la croce: et la sua vilità et desprezzo prediche ad omne humana gloria, et demostre lo frate Menore crocefixo et morto al mondo per amore del nostro Signore Yhesu Christo”. ­Giacomo Oddi, La franceschina: Testo volgare umbro del secolo XV (Florence: Olschki, 1981), 1:183.

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

361

Poi ch’en quell ramo fui salito, che da man ritta eram’ensito, de suspire ce fui firito, luce de lo sponso dato. De l’altra parte volsi el viso e ne l’altro ramo fui asciso e l’Amor me fice riso, però che mm’avìa sì mutato. (71–78) [Once on that branch which grew out to my right, Light from the Spouse fell on me, And I could not but sigh I looked toward the branch on the other side And suddenly found myself there; Love smiled on me: It was he who had borne me there.] The verses from the painting produce direct speech, the exact dialogue of the uttered words. The two stanzas from the lauda perform the following functions. They report the action, using space and time adverbs, such as “poi” (71), “da man ritta” (72), and “de l’altra parte” (75); and they narrate and describe actions: “fui salito” (71), “fui firito” (73), “volsi el viso” (75), and “me fice riso” (77), in the past tense.41 In particular, rather than stating actions in actual time, they report what has already happened. In the third scene, “Amor incessabilis”, the verses on ardor, “L’Amor sì m’à feruto, / el suo ardor m’è apparuto”, are expressed in the lauda, in four stanzas:

41

In comparison to the discursive verb tenses, the past is distinctive of the narrative process. In their segmentation model, Serpieri, Elam and Bubliatti elaborate on the speech act theory from a semiotic viewpoint, articulating specific elements that represent the traces of discourse within the language, the most important of which are the “deictic expressions,” which include “personal pronouns, pronominal or adverbial indicatives, certain tenses such as the present or the present perfect, the demonstratives, and modal verbs”. Serpieri et al., “Toward a Segmentation of the Dramatic Text,” Poetics Today 2, no. 3 (1981), p. 167. Verb tense is an important index of performativity, which even if not observed here, does not compromise the dramatic intention expressed by means of other performative features, such as the frequent demonstrative, self-referential pronouns, and adverbs of space that tie the event to their spatial axis as well as the characters.

362

TAWWAB

Et eo de sopre me aguardanno, dui rami viddi entanno; l’uno à nome ‘Perseveranno’, l’altro ‘Amore continuato’ Salenno su crisi pusare, l’amor me non lassò finare, de sopre me fém’esguardare enn un ramo sopre me fermato. Salenno su, ce resedia; de poma scripte ce pendia: le lacreme c’Amor facìa, ché lo sponso li era celato. De l’altra parte volsi el core, viddi lo ramo de l’ardore. Passanno là, sintit’ho Amore, che mm’avi’ tutto rescaldato. (79–94) [Peering up above me, I saw two branches: One was named Perseverance, The other, Lasting Love. When I had climbed up I meant to rest; But Love did not allow that, He had me move to the branch above. There I rested; from that branch Hung fruit inscribed with the tale Of the tears Love shed For the Spouse who did Himself. My heart turned to the other side: I saw the branch of ardor, And once again Love’s warmth Spread all through me.] again adding adverbs of place, such as “sopre me” (79) “de l’altra parte” (91), and “là” (93), and reporting the action in the past tense: “volsi” (91), “viddi” (92), “sintit’ho” (93), “avì rescaldato” (94). Similarly, the remaining of the stanzas, up to verse 126, reflects the same pattern of frequent use of demonstratives, adverbs of time and space, as well

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

363

as verbs expressed in the past tense to report what took place, rather than presenting it as is the case in the paining. And, finally, as is Iacopone’s custom, the listener is left with a conclusion: the moral of the lauda stays with him, completing the learning experience: A le laude de lo Signore eo ditto t’aio questo tenore. Se vòl’ salire, or ce pun core a tutto quel ch’eo n’ho parlato. Ennell’arbor de contemplare chi vòl salir non dé’ ’n pusare; penser’, parol’ e fatti fare et ita sempre essercetato. (127–34) [To the praise of the Lord I have told you How the tree is ordered; If you wish to climb it, Let your heart follow my words. He who would climb the tree of contemplation Must never think of resting, But continue to push on With thoughts and words and deeds.] Another performative feature in lauda 78 is clarified through an older version of the same painting, in which the character on the right side is clearly discerned while the one on the left side only appears in the bottom scene. At first sight, one would assume that the figure in the painting has faded. However, an attentive reading reveals that it is indeed reasonable not to have any figure on the left side at all. In the lauda, that is, in the verbal composition, the speakers interact and exchange stanzas only up to the end of the fourth stanza; from there on, only one of the characters, the mystic, continues his recitation. Yet the complete painting in color shows two characters, as if two people are engaged in a dialogue. The illusion of a dialogue, through one-character act, places major emphasis on the speaker either through the explicit use of the subject pronoun, or, more frequently, through the inferred reference to the speaker through the use of the first-person singular verb form, in occurrences such as the following: “te dico” (19), “ci aguardai” (23), “m’enflammai” (24), “fui … mirai” (25), “pòzzo dir” (28), “ce vedia” (31), “cce potia” (32). In these examples, the spatial and temporal references are introduced from the

364

TAWWAB

speaker’s perspective. The layout alludes to two characters throughout the entire ­dialogue, while in fact the speaker is one. The scene is expressed by only one character. The only explanation for this layout seems to be the deliberate intent of the painter to give the impression of an active life-like interaction between two people experiencing different phases of ascent. The performative nature of conversation between two characters is employed to represent the contrary emotional states. Rather than reporting an individual experience in an expository fashion, the illusion of a situational dialogue seems to be much more persuasive, much more emotive. A careful examination of the painting reveals that the figure comes from behind, in a circular motion, moving upward. The illustrated elements of performance in the painting, the gestures, the upward climbing movement, and the development of actions through scenes denote the upward ascent of the mystic and enrich the spatial axis and the progression of action in actual time, in the here and now. Examining the painting associated with lauda 87 has indicated a conscious intention of employing performance to communicate the intensity of the mystic encounter. While perceiving the dramatic dimension of an image can be intuitive and verifiable by means of layout, succession of scenes, development of action, movement of characters against a fixed background, and face and body expression, the situation is much more intricate when we attempt to deem a text as dramatic. Manfred Pfister distinguishes the dramatic work as one that “lacks the fictional narrator as an overriding point of orientation”. He also emphasizes, “it is the time-space continuum of the plot alone that determines the progress of the text within the individual scenic units”.42 Even if the painting is consistent with these conditions, its text is not sufficiently dramatic. Serpieri et al.’s semiotic approach of segmentation proposes that a dramatic text is distinguished from the non-dramatic insofar as it reflects axes of theatrical language, namely anaphoric axis, narrative or dynamic axis, and deictic axis.43 The use of self-referential pronouns in the first four stanzas reflects a conversation between two characters and emphasizes the alternation of the “I” and “you” during the initial dialogue between the mystic and the disciple. At each shift of turns, the speaker uses the “I” as a self-referential pronoun and “you” to refer to the interlocutor, such as “oi tu” (3), “eo sto” (6), “te dico” (7), “eo non aio” (9), “che tu per arte” (14), “se per te” (17), and “eo ’l mirai” (25). This is a deictic feature that reflects one aspect of the referential axis meant by Seriperi, 42 43

Manfred Pfister, The Theory and Analysis of Drama, trans. John Halliday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 5. Serpieri et al., “Toward a Segmentation,” 168–69.

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

365

Elam, and Publiatti. Another aspect is the frequent use of adverbs, temporal and special adverbs, as shown above. As has been illustrated, lauda 78 is rich of deictic references, but in lack of essential dramatic features they remain only discursive strategies. For instance, the interlocutors in the textual dialogue do not conform to the parameters of the dramatic personae; who could be seen and heard is a fundamental aspect of performance semiotics.44 The notion of impersonation, a decisive determining factor of aesthetic drama, represents a cornerstone in a lengthy debate among modern thinkers and earlier authorities in the dramatic aspects of liturgy. Karl Young and the generations that followed his scholarship stress the notion of impersonation as essential to drama. Young defines it as a physical imitation, without which an enactment is not necessarily dramatic, “the actor must pretend to be the person whose words he is speaking, and whose actions he is imitating”.45 On the contrary, O. B. Hardison dissents from this approach, viewing impersonation as a modern concept, “which is in marked contrast to medieval and Renaissance attitudes”.46 Yet, even in modern approaches, regardless of any conventional rigid terminology, Richard Schechner underscores the same concept in what he describes as “twice-behaved behavior,” or “restored behavior,” to refer to an action that is previously known, rehearsed, not belonging to the performer, and separate from his real identity.47 However that notion may be referred to, “impersonation”, “restored behavior,” or “consciousness of doubleness,” which is affirmed by Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs as central to performance aesthetics,48 the consensus is crucial to my analysis. According to this principle, the performers must intend to perform and be aware of their action as performance. Lauda 87 does not present characters, but mostly undetermined individuals, of which the lauda is only concerned with their opposite states of being on the mystic path. Dramatizing the interaction offers an additional level of communication, a performative strategy far from the multimodal parameters of aesthetic drama. It is easy to infer from the variety of his discursive, linguistic, mnemonic, and dramatic strategies that Iacopone resorts to every possible means of 44 45 46

Serpieri et al., “Toward a Segmentation,” p. 102. Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 80. O. B. Jr. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1965), p. 32. 47 Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction (New York and London: ­Routledge, 2006), p. 36. 48 Richard Bauman, and Charles L. Briggs, “Poetics and Performance as critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life,” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990), p. 87.

366

TAWWAB

evangelization to reach a larger audience. His laudario seems to originate from a vast perspective that takes into consideration the final end of his preaching and the Order’s ideology, while rendering the content compatible to his audience. The painting borrows dramatic features, consistent with Pfister’s definition of drama: lack of narrator, actual focal orientation between the characters, unity of space, and the lapse of time through which the plot progresses. It does, however, fall short when analyzed according to Paul Zumthor’s definition of performance, as “the complex action by which a poetic message is simultaneously transmitted and perceived in the here and now”.49 Zumthor’s assertion that “performance embraces transmission and reception” underscores two main poles of performance: orality and audience as essential components of performance, while the stress on the “here and now” entails the direct contact between the performer and the listener in one place at the same time. It is evident that this painting lacks the simultaneous contact with the audience, the performative “here and now”. It is however a performance, whose temporal contact begins with the presence of a spectator. In this case, the simultaneity of transmission and audience’s perception is individually actuated. Being a painting, it is accessible to audience, as often as desired; it acquires a quality of a text that can be consulted upon request, for the illiterate. As proposed above, in this particular lauda, the painting and the text are two media of performance of the same work. While this painting may seem like a mere illustration of the text of the lauda, it becomes increasingly evident that in this case, the painting is an independent medium of performance. My analysis demonstrated that the lengthy textual form of the lauda provided all the necessary information required to present the lively dialogue between characters as a performance, which only begins in verse 71, making of the lauda a performance text. On the contrary, the painting presents the characters with their face expressions and body language, the plot in sequential scenes, and conveys the entire message intended by the author, all of which can be perceived by a spectator without necessarily reading the lauda’s text, making of the painting an autonomous performance.

49

Paul Zumthor, Oral Poetry, trans. Kathryn Murphy-Judy (Minneapolis: University of ­ innesota, 1990), p. 22. M

IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN IACOPONE’S LAUDARIO

367

Works Cited Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs. “Poetics and PerformancePerformance” as critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990): 59–88. Bisogni, Fabio. “L’immaginario figurativo di IacoponeIacopone” da Todi.” In Iacopone da Todi e l’arte in Umbria nel Duecento, edited by Fabio Bisogni and Enrico Menestò, 101–7. Milan: Skira editore, 2006. Bolzoni, Lina. La rete delle immagini. 2009. Turin: Einaudi, 2002. Bolzoni, Lina. “Predicazione in volgare e uso delle immagini, da Giordano da Pisa a san Bernardino da Siena.” In Letteratura in forma di sermone: i rapporti tra predicazione e letteratura nei secoli XIII–XVI, 29–52. Firenze: Olschki, 2003. Ciociola, Claudio. “Visibile parlare.” Rivista di letteratura italiana 7, no. 1 (1989): 9–77. Delcorno, Carlo. La predicazione nell’età comunale. Florence: Sansoni, 1974. Fleming, John. “Preachers, Teachers, Apostles, and the Jugglers of the Lord.” In An Introduction to the FranciscanFranciscan” Literature of the Middle Ages, 110–89. ­Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977. Getto, Giovanni. “Il realismo di IacoponeIacopone” .” In Letteratura religiosa dal Due al Novecento, 84–142. Florence: Sansoni, 1967. Giacalone, Fiorella. “Immagini sacre in Umbria tra culto ufficiale e religiosità popolare: l’iconografia di Santa Rita.” In Arte sacra in Umbria e dipinti restaurati nei secoli XIII–XX, 123–51. Todi: Ediart, 1987. Gianni, Alessandra. “IacoponeIacopone” e le immagini: i mutamenti nell’iconografia sacra durante il XIII secolo.” In Iacopone da Todi e l’arte in Umbria nel Duecento, edited by Fabio Bisogni and Enrico Menestò, 109–20. Milan: Skira editore, 2006. Goffen, Rona. “Nostra Conversatio in Caelis Est: Observations on the Sacra Conversazione in the Trecento.” The Art Bulletin 61, no. 2 (June 1979): 198–222. Hardison, O. B. Jr., Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1965. Hughes, Elizabet, and Serge Hughes, trans. IacoponeIacopone” da Todi: The Lauds. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Jakobson, Roman. “Linguistics and poetics.” In Style in language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok, 350–77. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960. Leonardi, Matteo. Laude, IacoponeIacopone” da Todi. Florence: Olschki, 2010. Leonardi, Matteo. “Frate IacoponeIacopone” : tra laus e predicazione.” Critica Letteraria 35, no. 2 (2007): 211–39. Maraschio, Nicoletta and Tina Matarrese. Le lingue della Chiesa: Testi e documenti dalle Origini ai nostri giorni. Pescara: Libreria dell’Università Editrice, 1998. Marcelli, Fabio. “Introduzione all’arte in Umbria al tempo di IacoponeIacopone” da Todi.” In Iacopone da Todi e l’arte in Umbria nel Duecento, edited by Fabio Bisogni and Enrico Menestò, 127–30. Milan: Skira editore, 2006.

368

TAWWAB

Moleta, Vincent. “Il senso del tempo nel laudario di IacoponeIacopone” .” In Atti del Convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di ­Iacopone da Todi (Todi 29–30 novembre 1980), edited by Enrico Menestò, 93–128. ­Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1981. Montani, Alessandro. “La lauda ‘’Omo che vòl parlare’.” In IacoponeIacopone” da Todi: Atti del Convegno di studi (Stroncone - Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005), edited by Franco Suitner, 247–57. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2007. Oddi, Giacomo. La franceschina: Testo volgare umbro del secolo XV, edited by Nicola Cavanna. Vol. 1. Florence: Olschki, 1981. First published 1931. Pfister, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Translated by John Halliday. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Originally published as Das Drama (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1977). Pozzi, Giovanni. “Jacopone poeta?” In Alternatim, 73–92. Milan: Adelphi, 1996. Scaffai, Niccolò. “Elementi drammatici nelle ‘’Laude’ di IacoponeIacopone” da Todi.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 4, no. 2 (1999): 451–71. Scarpellini, Pietro. “Figuratività di IacoponeIacopone” .” In Atti del Convegno storico iacoponico in occasione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi (Todi 29–30 novembre 1980), edited by Enrico Menestò, 65–92. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1981. Schechner, Richard. PerformancePerformance” Studies: An Introduction. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “Images.” In Dictionnaire raisonné de L’Occident medieval, edited by Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt, 497–511. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1999. Serpieri, Alessandro, Keir Elam, Paola Gullì Publiatti, Tomaso Kemeny, Romana Rutelli. “Toward a Segmentation of the Dramatic Text.” Poetics Today 2, no. 3 (1981): 163–200. Drama, Theatre, PerformancePerformance” : A Semiotic Perspective. Soriani Innocenti, Marina. “IacoponeIacopone” nella predicazione Francescana.” In La vita e l’opera di Iacopone da Todi. Atti del Convegno di Studio (Todi, 3–7 dicembre 2006), edited by Enrico Menestò, 705–24. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2008. The Holy Bible. King James Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002. Vecce, Carlo. “Sulla cultura visuale di IacoponeIacopone” .” In Iacopone poeta: Atti del Convegno di studi (Stroncone - Todi, 10–11 settembre 2005), edited by Franco Suitner, 303–40. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2007. Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Zumthor, Paul. Oral Poetry. Translated by Kathryn Murphy-Judy. Minneapolis: ­University of Minnesota, 1990.

Chapter 14

In Sickness and in Health: Iacopone’s Mystical Marriage through Malady Alessandro Vettori Franciscan poverty takes many forms. At the beginning of his conversion trajectory, Francis of Assisi took off his clothes in the Piazza San Rufino of his hometown; he wanted to show his rejection of his father’s wealth and his desire to seek God in the simplicity of a life reduced to essentials. Since that moment, the issue of what poverty was, how radically friars should apply it to their religious life, and what property exactly consisted of were all relevant issues to the life of the Franciscan Order. Bringing the church back to its evangelical poverty was the mission of the first mendicant orders, particularly the Franciscans and Dominicans, and it was intended as a need to abolish its material opulence, which had presented itself as a new problem starting in the late Middle Ages.1 Within the Franciscan Order poverty acquired specific qualities that grew to become a divisive issue among the friars. What exactly did Francis mean when he preached radical poverty? Did he intend for friars to possess nothing at all, not even a prayer book or the habit they were wearing, as some of the more radical brothers proclaimed? Or was he in favor of simply limiting possessions, with a less stringent rule that would allow the brothers of the order to own few things and enjoy the use of others, as the relaxed faction seemed to indicate? Or did he want to forbid personal properties but allow institutional possessions? Was there space for negotiation, even if some texts insisted that he had meant the rule to be “sine glossa”?2 Poverty pervades Franciscan life, but the Franciscans were not the first to present church riches as an ethical problem and propose a return to the 1 For a comprehensive perspective of poverty in the late Middle Ages, see Enrico Menestò, ed., La conversione alla povertà nell’Italia dei secoli XII–XIV: Atti del XXVII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi 14–17 ottobre 1990 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1991). 2 The text of The Assisi Compilation reports the words Christ himself spoke to Francis when he gave him the Rule of the Order and specified that it ought to be followed to the letter: “I want the Rule observed in this way: to the letter, to the letter, to the letter, and without a gloss, without a gloss, without a gloss.” Francis of Assisi, “The Assisi Compilation,” in Early Documents, ed. Regis Armstrong, Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short, vol. 2, The Founder (New York: New City Press, 2000), p. 132. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004682986_016

370

VETTORI

Gospel, for others had tried (unsuccessfully) to introduce this item in the ecclesiastical debate. In the twelfth century, Valdesio’s preaching against excessive accumulation of money resulted in cruel persecutions and the formation of a new church in northern Italy, where the Valdensians split from Rome and de facto organized a proto-protestant church.3 The desire for poverty and simplicity also inspired internal reform within religious orders, when the Cistercians revised the Benedictine lifestyle, which over the years had become excessively opulent with the accumulation of wealth, land, and power. By creating a new foundation that was still part of the Benedictine family but put more emphasis on manual labor and agricultural work for their daily needs, the Cistercians aimed to return to one of the basic tenets of Saint Benedict’s Rule that imposed poverty and hard work on every monk. The Cistercian Order flourished thanks to Saint Bernard Clairvaux, one of its most active and convinced proponents.4 Shortly thereafter the lively disputes on poverty among Franciscans of different persuasions animated the life of the Franciscan Order and of the church. Over subsequent centuries, the rift that the issue of poverty created between the two factions, the Spirituals and the Relaxed, could no longer be appeased and eventually the Order split between Friars Minor and Conventuals. In fact, the tension quickly expanded outside the Order and created heretical groups, such as those led by Gherardo Segalelli and Fra Dolcino, that were repressed for their convictions and practices, and considered heretical.5 The debate on poverty shakes the church from its foundations and casts doubts on its basic principles, with ramifications in many different realms and directions. Iacopone’s poetic assessment of poverty is present in numerous texts, where he invariably takes a radical stand and rejects wealth and the worldly power that comes with it. Two laude are focused specifically on poverty as a Franciscan virtue signifying absence of wealth, “Povertat’ennamorata” (Lauda 47) and “O amor de povertate” (Lauda 36). However, his passionate 3 Regarding Valdesio (in recent times this is the preferred name for the reformer who used to be known as Peter Waldo) and the formation of the Valdensian Church, see Gioacchino Volpe, Movimenti religiosi e sette ereticali nella società medievale italiana. Secoli XI–XIV (­Florence: Sansoni, 1977), 51–61 and also the more recent study by Irene Bueno, Le eresie medievali (Rome: Ediesse, 2013), pp. 60–78; more specifically on the comparison between Francis of Assisi and Valdesio, see Roberto Rusconi, “Valdesio di Lione e Francesco d’Assisi, valdesi e francescani,” in Studi francescani (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2021), 431–65. 4 Elizabeth Rapley, The Lord As Their Portion: The Story of the Religious Orders and How They Shaped Our World (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), pp. 23–28. 5 Volpe, Movimenti religiosi, 115–25.

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

371

temperament leads him to consider poverty as a wide-ranging notion that does not simply involve a frugal lifestyle or lack of money but also encompasses the elimination of human attributes and endowments that mainstream mentality tends to consider positively. One such quality is health, which in Lauda 81 “O Signor, per cortesia, manname la malsanìa!” he rejects as an extravagant amenity, a superfluous accretion to the human body, a useless impediment to loving God; it is a wealthy item in his earthly existence that he prefers to get rid of. Not only does the poet shy away from a request for good health, which is the typical prayer of the faithful supplicants, who realize they cannot do much, let alone serve God, without a sound body. In an unexpected reversal of petitions, the poetic voice actually requests to be sent diseases, which are listed in a long sequence occupying the entire poem. Disease is viewed as absence of health, an expendable condition whose elimination is invoked as a necessary step to achieve an increased closeness to God. In this parallel, disease is equated to poverty as elimination of those riches, which in Iacopone’s eccentric perspective correspond to health, the wealth of the body. A diseased body is desirable because it is deprived of its bountiful endowment, health. There is an interesting formal connection between Lauda 81 and the two laude on poverty (Laude 47 and 36), and especially Lauda 47, where Iacopone lists all the geographic places a poor person paradoxically possesses, while owning none of them. Because the faithful believers dominate nothing, they will actually feel that they possess the whole created world. In the same reversal of commonsensical attitudes, those who are bodily sick gain spiritual health exactly because they possess no physical wellbeing. Both texts (Lauda 47 and 81) are predicated upon an opposition between what is commonly and reasonably desired and what Iacopone’s spirituality demands. While the world desires healthy bodies and material possessions, the poet requests illness and poverty for the benefit of the soul. In Lauda 81, the typically Franciscan concept of poverty is no longer applied to wealth but health, which is considered a human asset, a commodity that prevents full communion with divinity. The poet-mystic desires to be freed of his health in the same way that he is eager to be liberated of all impediments separating him from God, whether they be riches, material possessions, or even (in the style of Francis himself) his clothes. Going a step further, Iacopone regards health as a surplus, an appendage he would prefer to dispense with; it is not an essential asset for the wellbeing of believers and their service to God. Highlighting the beneficial side of disease is part of a more negative attitude toward the beauty of the created world and contradicts Francis’s own vision of Edenic harmony in the “Canticle of Brother Sun,” where the natural world and, implicitly, the human body are celebrated as “a manifestation of God’s

372

VETTORI

goodness, greatness and providential care for humanity.”6 The temporal distance from Francis and the influence of late-medieval devotional sentiment turned the solar outlook of the first generation of the Order, that regarded all created things, including the body, as brothers and sisters of human beings, into obstacles on the path toward God. While Francis knew and practiced the mortification of the body, he would not have requested malady as a spiritual asset. The concept of sickness as privation that purifies and brings the believer closer to God parallels the deprivation of food as a practice for spiritual ­edification, especially among women mystics at the time. Margherita of Cortona and Angela of Foligno are two Franciscan Tertiaries of Iacopone’s time who offer perfect examples of what has been defined by a recent historian as “holy anorexia,” the idea that food deprivation might enhance one’s spiritual strength and bring the soul closer to God.7 Lack of food, which borders on starvation in cases where the mystic simply ingests the consecrated host, would weaken the body and, in a peculiar balancing act, strengthen one’s spiritual power and closeness to God. But, even within the framework of mystical thinking, accustomed as mystics might be to extreme penitential practices, Iacopone’s request to be granted sickness appears to be excessive—a token of his esmesuranza style. When the soul fights the senses, the battle occurs between two material entities, the soul behaving like an empowered soldier devoted to destroying its enemy, the body, because it is perceived as an obstacle to the spiritual fulfillment of the soul. The litany of supplications in Lauda 81 reveals the poet’s antipathy for his body as the chief impediment to a complete union with the divine. In the battle waged by the mystic to achieve the ecstatic union of humanity and godliness, body and soul are called to combat each other to the death. In this paradoxical framework, health becomes sickness or damnation and, on the contrary, malady is salus, at once good physical well-being and spiritual salvation. In Iacopone’s inverted logic, rather than a hindrance, disease becomes a vehicle for the elevation of the soul to God, it aligns with, or rather adds to and completes Christ’s suffering during his Passion and death. Even though Saint Paul’s pronouncement in Colossians 1:24 remains a difficult 6 Marlin E. Blaine, trans. “Lauda 48,” Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature 34, no. 1 (Spring 2019), pp. 28–38, https://doi:10.5744/delos.2019.1006. For an analysis of Lauda 47 and its Franciscan spirituality of poverty, also see Alessandro Vettori, Poets of Divine Love: Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), pp. 59–78. 7 These are two of the mystics Bell considers in his book on eating disorders of women ­religious. Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1985).

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

373

textual conundrum for theologians, it solicits a believers’ reaction that is similar to Iacopone’s Lauda 81; suffering is part of the experience of faith and, in extreme cases of mystical achievements, it is even invoked as a necessity for the soul’s salvation. The complex dynamic at work in the laude about sickness and health involves physiology, theology, and prayer. The text of Lauda 81 develops from a series of requests for bodily sicknesses that redeem the soul (approximately the initial 38 lines) to a total hatred and disgust for the body, which the poet wishes to punish with hellish tortures (lines 48–54). The subtext in the last portion is the idea that hellish punishment already happens in the world of the living, so that suffering on this earth now will protect from hell later; bodily suffering is a form of expiation for one’s sins. Extreme pain also causes dereliction and solitude, because no one wants to endure the unbearable smell of a decaying body: Tanto sia ’l fetor fetente che non sia null’om vivente, che non fuga da me dolente, posto en tanta enfermaria. En terrebele fossato, che Riguerci è nomenato, loco sia abandonato da onne bona compagnia. (39–46) [May the stench keep everyone at a distance, With no hope to help in my misery: Let them abandon me in the horrible gulch of Rigoverci.] The requested sickness and pain cause an inevitable general decay of the body, which in turn results in abandonment and loneliness, before the sinner is condemned to suffer a terrible death and is thrown into the belly of a wolf, to be evacuated as excrements into a thorny bush (lines 56–62). Even those who will go searching for his remains will be rewarded with punishments instead of miracles and all those who hear his name mentioned ought to do the sign of the cross to protect themselves from the curse. This additional notion regarding the consequences of chance encounters with the remains of the deceased is a brilliant inversion of the devotion of saints’ relics in medieval times; instead of causing sanctification, contact with this deceased body will bring about “evil spirits,” “howling terror,” and “doomsday visions”. The poet is warning off possible devout visitors to his sacrilegious

374

VETTORI

tomb; if they come expecting to receive a miracle, they will be met with hellish visions instead. The conclusion of the poem illuminates on the real motives for the poet’s requests: Signor meo, non n’è vendetta tutta la pena ch’e’ aio ditta, ché me creasti en tua diletta et eo t’ho morto a villania. (71–74) [All this I call down on myself, O Lord, is not adequate vengeance, For You created me as Your beloved, And I, ungrateful wretch, put You to death.] The penalties the poet wants to suffer are not sufficient revenge for his sins, because God created him out of an act of love, so he could love God back, but he has killed God instead. In a total reversal of commonsensical prayerful petitions, the sinner compiles a list of requests that conventional supplicants usually try to eschew in their prayers, from ailments and undignified death to hell’s punishments. Iacopone’s iconoclastic request to be afflicted by numerous sicknesses originates in the concept that physical malady is an instrument of mortification aligning the faithful with Christ’s Passion and making them complete the sufferings of Christ, to paraphrase Paul’s expression. In Colossians 1:24, Paul reflects on the participation of the faithful in Christ’s suffering, when he explains his relation to Christ and writes that “It makes me happy to be suffering for you now, and in my own body to make up all the hardships that still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church”. These lines are theologically very controversial because they unleash a series of complex issues connected to the role of suffering in salvation and in the history of the church. For the most part, the debate arises from the presumed assumption (or presumption) that Christians are capable of adding something to Christ’s suffering, as if Christ needed any assistance to complete his saving mission. The most accredited and widespread explanation is that Christ’s suffering is unique and sacrificial, while Paul’s suffering is part of his service to the church and should also serve as model for others to follow. The most recent interpretation points in the direction of a mystical union between Christ and his church, that are so tightly conjoined as to share everything, even their suffering; as Jerry L. Sumney explains: “This view posits so close an identification of the church

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

375

with Christ that the suffering of the members can reasonably be called the suffering of Christ.”8 The theological discussion of this passage highlights, however, the importance of suffering in Christian spirituality, which derives from Christ’s cross, an immolation originated in self-sacrifice which Christian followers are called to conform to. While Christ’s Crucifixion happened once for the salvation of all souls, the suffering of Christian members of the church is an intrinsic quality of church life, so that the church that the Nicaean Creed proclaimed as “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic,” is also “suffering.”9 Suffering is a characteristic of all creatures, but it is also, more specifically, an important feature of Christian theological thinking. Bodily suffering is a prelude to death, which is a necessary passage toward the resurrection. The suffering body will eventually die of its ailments, allowing the soul to be saved in heaven, in the same fashion as Christ’s death on the cross provided salvation. Jerry Spivey summarizes this crucial principle thus: “The body of Christ is always (within history) a suffering body.”10 Hannah Settler establishes the correct semantic and grammatical parameters to analyze this concept theologically and concludes that “The apostle Paul is filling up the lack of Christ’s (or Christ-like) sufferings to their fulness … by his bodily or physical suffering. He does so on behalf of the church which, as a consequence, has to suffer less.”11 She further explains how “Paul actually viewed the tribulation he experienced as the eschatological one which inaugurates the end”12 and she quotes numerous other studies that regard Paul’s tribulations as the necessary evil to fill the gap between the resurrection and Christ’s new coming, which Paul’s contemporaries believed to be very imminent. This idea of the necessary afflictions in anticipation of Christ’s second coming was inherited by the Judaic tradition that believed a troubled time would announce the Messiah.13 In Paul’s view, adversities and misfortunes were an indication of Christ’s imminent return, 8 9 10 11 12 13

Jerry L. Sumney, “I Fill up What is Lacking in the Afflictions of Christ: Paul’s Vicarious Suffering in Colossians,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 68, no. 4 (2006), p. 667. Steven W. Spivey, “‘Colossians’ 1:24 and the Suffering Church,” Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care 4, no. 1 (2011), p. 43. Spivey, “Suffering Church,” p. 48. Hannah Settler, “An Interpretation of ‘’Colossians’ 1:24 in the Framework of Paul’s ­Mission Theology.” In The Mission of the Early Church to Jews and Gentiles, (Tübingen: Mohr-­ Siebeck, 2000), p. 191. Settler, “An Interpretation,” p. 197. Settler, “An Interpretation,” pp. 203–4. See also Richard J. Bauckham, “‘Colossians’ 1:24 Again: The Apocalyptic Motif,” The Evangelical Quarterly 47 (1975), pp. 168–70.

376

VETTORI

since, “from a Christian point of view, the time of suffering has already begun with the suffering of Jesus.”14 There is a certain amount of suffering to be experienced before Christ’s return and a denser concentration of trials will assure a faster second advent. Paul believes that his suffering during his ministry as apostle to the gentiles will shorten the troubled times before the new coming of Christ—and that is what he means by “completing the suffering of Christ.” Other exegetes ground their arguments in a linguistic analysis of the Greek verb “to complete” in the specific context and believe that it is Paul’s mission as the apostle to the gentiles that originates his desire to make up the hardships of Christ.15 In Iacopone’s time, some Franciscan friars, belonging (like Iacopone himself) to the Spiritual faction of the Order, placed a strong emphasis on an apocalyptic interpretation of scripture and their thinking may have had an impact on the poet’s point of view on the role of suffering as expressed in Lauda 81. Theologians such as Peter of John Olivi and Ubertino of Casale proposed theories on the end of times that linked them strongly to the apocalyptic methods of Joachim of Flora, who connected the understanding of history to biblical exegesis and read the signs of his times in eschatological terms. Suffering, expiation, and death are the main ingredients of Lauda 81, whose excessively pessimistic outlook gets rescued meta-poetically by the reader’s understanding that the poet may hope, by means of his request for afflictions, to purge his sins and eventually be saved—but the poem itself remains negative and makes no assumptions about that. As Marlin E. Blaine remarks, Iacopone’s readers only understand the poet’s intentionality concerning his peculiar request once they reach the last stanza of the poem: “Lauda 48 (81 in Mancini) is a striking prayer that God will afflict the speaker with a long catalogue of diseases and other misfortunes in both life and death. The rationale for this counterintuitive petition is revealed only in the concluding quatrain, where he says that he deserves all this and more for having caused the death of Christ by being a sinner.”16 The mystic’s condemnation of himself and his fellow believers for killing Jesus is a convention of Christian piety, continues Blaine, which Iacopone takes to an extreme by not simply accepting the evils of life on earth, but by petitioning for them. The underlying motivation of the poem is that, if Christ’s suffering redeemed the world from sin, it is the obligation of the faithful to follow in the same path 14 15 16

Settler, “An Interpretation,” p. 204. Joel White, “Paul Completes the Servant’s Sufferings (Colossians 1:24),” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 6, no. 2 (Fall 2016), pp. 181–98, particularly 192. Marlin E. Blaine, trans. Lauda 48, pp. 35–36.

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

377

of affliction and hardship, since pain possesses redeeming effects. Requesting additional physical and spiritual pain is demonstration of the poet’s determination to purge himself of his sins and the believer’s strong adherence to the theology of the cross. Iacopone seems to have adopted this idea and to have rendered it in personalized, poetic terms, when he requests physical pain for himself. By Iacopone’s time, suffering had a consolidated tradition and was considered a necessary experience for redemption, the mandatory passage to acquire remission of sins, but also an imitation of Christ’s Passion and death. The poet acknowledges the necessity of Christ’s suffering for humanity’s redemption in Lauda 73 when Christ’s own monologue reminds the poet/sinner of his mission and of the injuries suffered on the cross: Fatt’aio ’l peregrinaio per téne crudele et amaro et vi’ le man’ quigne l’aio e como te comparai caro! Frate, non m’essar sì avaro, cà molto caro me costi – per eo volerte ariccare. Aguard’a lo meo lato, como per te me fo afflitto! De lancia me ce fo alanciato e ’l ferro a lo cor fo deritto; dentro ce t’atrov’escripto, che te ce escripse l’Amore, – che non me deviss’escordare. (45–56) [Long and bitter was the pilgrimage I made for you. Look here at My hands: see the price I paid for you. Let the ice in you begin to thaw, And your heart rejoice in your newfound riches. Look here at My side: see the price I paid for you. Here the spear tore through My flesh, Here the iron pierced the heart. Your name is writ therein, writ by Love.] The very succinct summary highlights the cost of redemption for Christ the Savior by referring to two of the wounds on his crucified body, the hands pierced by the nails and the side stabbed by the lance; interestingly, the pierced feet are not mentioned and no reason is given for this omission.

378

VETTORI

This is the premise for many of the laude, at least those where Iacopone establishes a tension between what the worldly portion of himself desires and the spiritual side of him ought to covet. Lauda 81 is where all these tensions converge and become a single voice requesting what is good for the soul while eschewing the pleasures of the world. Although he intends his suffering to be reparation for the killing of Christ, and the perspective is therefore from the present to the past, there is nevertheless in the entire poem a sense of expectation for the future, that suffering will bring a positive outcome, if nothing else the individual salvation of the supplicant. A lot of the laude in Iacopone’s canzoniere are about the Crucifixion and Lauda 81, with its insistence on the importance of suffering, leads up to the theme of the cross as redemption but also aligns Iacopone to Saint Paul’s theology of suffering as a medium. The word “ferita,” “wound,” is particularly significant as a term indicating the physical suffering the poet invokes and also the spiritual ailment caused to him by his separation from the church when he was excommunicated. In Lauda 55 the request to the pope to cancel his excommunication and readmit him into the church is punctuated by the word “ferita,” which becomes the center of Iacopone’s idea of redemption through pain and suffering, while being connected to a wide-ranging notion of poverty as deprivation, a scarring that deprives his body and his soul of salus, well-being and salvation, because of being excluded from the church. In the poem, “ferita” is repeated five times (the highest number of occurrences in a single poem, together with Lauda 26), but the word punctuates the whole collection and occurs a total of sixty-six times throughout the book (between once and five times in the laude where the word occurs), to signify how a wound is the painful metaphorical reminder of the separation between human and divine, but it also serves to highlight the healing power of God; the wound is the weakness that acknowledges the necessity for a spiritual cure, while being also in alignment with Christ’s suffering on the cross. Even when describing the dangers posed to the soul by women’s embellishments in Lauda 45, the poet keeps using medical language and he refers to sin as an injury to the soul suffered during the battle between temptation and virtue. Iacopone thinks in material terms and reduces even the most spiritual concepts to concrete points, mostly by means of comparisons. For him the soul is an entity that can be assimilated to the body for the way it operates and, similarly to the body, it is affected by the reality around it. When a believer commits a sin, they cause their soul an injury, in the same way the body is hurt when it is injured in a fall or an illness takes hold of it. The poet deliberately uses medical vocabulary to account for spiritual conditions or when he refers to purging sins and doing penance. In Lauda 11, sin causes three different types of injury on the

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

379

soul, so contrition “adorns itself with three medications” (31), aiming at curing those wounds. The parallel between health of the body and health of the soul is confirmed in Lauda 31 by a reference to Galen, Avicenna, and Hippocrates, who wrongly concentrated on the body and ignored the condition of the soul: “Unquanque Galïeno, Avicenna, Ypocrate non sàpper lo conveno de me’ infirmitate;” (45–48) [Galieno, Avicenna, Hippocrates Never understood how the ills of the body Are linked to those of the soul.] In this perspective, Christ’s sacrifice becomes a cure while physical pain is the medicine, the remedy for the sickness of the soul. According to Jean Lacroix, the body and the flesh represent an essential component of Iacopone’s collection: “Le corps et la chair constituent à cet égard, à l’évidence, l’axe porteur de la pensée iacoponienne tout au long de ces quatre-vingt-douze laudes.”17 While it is true that the body is central to the poet’s thought, his reflection on the physical element of existence serves to increase his understanding of divine intervention into human life and how Christian incarnation and salvation operate. Starting from Lauda 13 Iacopone uses a language of the body to make sense of his sin; the medical terms of a sick body in need of repair and of a cure are applied to the soul that is affected by sinful attitudes that may end up destroying and killing it; sin has “wounded his heart” (line 2) to the point that it reeks with putrefaction; hence the poet’s request to the Virgin Mary to come to his rescue and heal him. The poem is divided in two sections, the sinner’s petition in the first half and Mary’s reply in the second portion, where she explains how suffering is the necessary cure (line 20: “sì t’opport’è a suffrire,” ‘you need to suffer’ my translation), while she will use the “art” of medicine in order to restore

17

“Quite clearly, body and flesh represent in this respect the carrier axis of Iacopone’s thought throughout his ninety-two laude.” Jean Lacroix, “Beautés et laideurs de la chair: La passion du corps selon Iacopone da Todi,” in Le beau et le laid au Moyen Âge (Aix-­en-Provence, France: Université de Provence, 2000), p. 281 (my English translation).

380

VETTORI

him to a salutary condition.18 Her speech is entirely predicated upon healing and curing thanks to an association of medical practices to spiritual principles that will help forgive his sins and set him on the good path. The sinner will have to follow a three-step treatment, starting with a diet (line 21: “fa’ la dieta,” ‘be on a diet’) that will allow him to shed his sinful attitudes and control his senses (line 22: “guard’a sensi de parte,” ‘control your senses’), then take an oxymel consisting of fear of death (line 24: “ossemello, – lo temor del morire;” ‘oxymel, / fear of death’), and finally she repeats the important practice of swallowing the crucial remedy, a concoction made of fear of hell (line 27: “decuzione, – lo temor de l’onferno;” “concoction, / fear of hell”). These antidotes, she reassures him, will lead him to vomiting the poison of sin and be reconciled with God. The poem sets the tone for a poetics of corporeality in the collection, which continues in other poems and creates a pattern of associations between body and soul, corporeality and spirituality, matter and spirit, which will help to clarify theological concepts by means of concrete, material images. The overarching idea is that the soul is a very sick patient that needs healing; penance, sacrifices, and suffering are the medications the sinner needs in order to be forgiven and become closer to God. Being the communication between the external world and the body, the five senses are an important portion of the complex relationship between body and soul, the latter of which needs to be nursed to health by changing the way the senses perceive things. When discussing the necessity for the five senses to do reparation, it is said that smell needs to go to the infirmary to carry out its penance. In Lauda 20 the five senses pose grave danger to salvation and the list of terms related to physical health and malady includes injuries to vision (line 8: “cà ’l coraio n’è feruto,” “because courage is wounded [by sight]”), hearing (lines: 11–13 “Non odir le vanetate, / che te trag’ a su’ amistate; / plu ca bresc’apicciarate,” “close your ears to vanities / that cling to you / and ensnare you”), taste (line 15: “Puni a lo tuo gusto un freno,” “keep watch over the joys of taste”), smell (lines 19–20: “Guàrdate da l’odorato, / lo qual ène esciordenato,” “on guard against the disorderly appetite / of the sense of smell”) and touch (lines 23–25: “Guàrdate dal toccamento / lo qual a Deo è ’n splacemento, / e al tuo corpo è strugemento,” “on guard against the sense of touch / not acceptable to God / your body’s doom”). Mixed in and added on to the list of the five canonical bodily senses are other items the poet relates to the senses, such as lust, but also family and friends, who may deter him from his real goal of salvation—and the 18

Because the translation of this poem in Hughes and Hughes is not very close to the letter of the text, I am translating the relevant lines myself.

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

381

refrain, “guarda” and “guàrdate,” “watch out” (in the singular and in the plural), insists on the importance of keeping watch against the dangers of a wrongful use of the senses. Lauda 34 depicts a similar scenario of a diseased vision damaging the soul with its “wounds” (line 2), unless the “frate” the “friar” (line 1), the poem is addressed to (presumably Iacopone himself) protects it from sin by being vigilant. Lauda 33 is structured entirely on the battle between the soul requesting God’s help and the five senses representing the body, which is portrayed as a deceitful enemy shooting arrows in an attempt to wound the soul: Ora m’adiuta – ad me liberare, ch’eo pòzza campare – del falso Nimico; fàise da longa – a balestrare et assegnare – al cor ch’è podico; la man che me fère – non pòzzo vedere; tal’ cose a patere – me dòne gravanza. Gravame forte – lo balistreri, lo qual vòl firire – êll’alma polita; fatt’à balestro – del mondo averseri, lo qual en bellire – me mustra sua vita; per l’occhi me mette – al cor le saiette, l’oreche so’ aperte – a ’ricarme turbanza. Turbame el naso, – che vòl odorato, la vocca, asaiato, – per dar conforto; en lo peiore – ch’en me sia stato, lo qual m’à aguidato – ad uno mal porto; se i dò ben magnare, – me sta a ’ncalciare; de l’amensurare – sì fa lamentanza! Lamentase el tatto – e dice: ‘ Eo so uso d’aver reposo – en me’ delettare; or lo m’ài tolto, – sirò rampognoso e corroccioso – en mea vivitate ’. Se alento lo freno – al corpo taupino, so’ preso a l’oncino – de la tristanza. (33–56) [Help me escape from the deceitful Enemy, O Lord: His arrows, shot from afar, are aimed at the cleanest heart. I cannot see the hand that wounds me; To suffer thus is more than I can bear.

382

VETTORI

Making a bow of this world’s delights, The Devil sends arrows winging toward me. The eye and the ear and all the senses, Reel from his insidious assaults. The nose seeks pleasure in scent, the palate something good to taste; And all the senses seek to make me subject to them. Nor are they satisfied when I grant them what they want; They complain bitterly at the skimpiness of the portion! The sense of touch complains it has a right to certain satisfactions: “All your life I’ll nag you!” But what choice have I? If I release the brake that keeps my miserable body in check, The anguish of remorse overwhelms and crushes me.] The material world becomes a wounding arrow that is thrown with a crossbow (“balestra”), a weapon that wounds the pure heart.19 All five senses are called to fight against the worldly sensations that corrupt them. Rather than being the channels that convey the beauty and wonder of creation to the soul, the senses are conduits for contamination and impurity. Iacopone’s negative attitude toward the materiality of the flesh is summarized in a single stanza of Lauda 3, where, in a dialogue with the personification of Justice, he openly declares the importance of opposing the flesh, for he equates corporeality with concupiscence and lust: Mesere, la mea carn’è vizïosa, esforzarònla en tutte mee valute, cà la sua amistate m’è dannosa e molte gente so’ per lei perdute. (373–376) [Lord, though my flesh is inclined to sin, I will use all my strength to bend it to my will; For flesh is a friend to be kept at a distance, A friend that causes the fall of many.]

19

An analysis of this lauda in relation to the threat of sin and divine love can be found in Vettori, Poets, pp. 116–19.

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

383

The flesh appears to be friendly but entertaining relations with it can be dangerous; it is filled with vice and many people have lost themselves because of it. This unfavorable idea of the flesh leads directly to a request to punish the culpable body in Lauda 81. The request to afflict the faithful with multiple diseases—as many as he can mention—finds its collocation in a more generalized disdain for the body, which is one of Iacopone’s hallmarks and has its roots in the origins themselves of his (most likely legendary) conversion. According to hagiographic texts, the poet would have converted after a joyous but dissipate life of feasting and partying at the moment his wife passed away when the floor collapsed under her feet during a party she was attending with her husband. When Iacopone discovered a cilice on her body, which Vanna wore in order to mortify the flesh while continuing to lead the joyful lifestyle her husband had chosen for her, he underwent a radical mental and spiritual transformation that led to his subsequent conversion.20 Although the source is hard to verify and the episode may have originated from spurious accounts developing around the later mystical life of the friar, the emphasis on corporeal pain and the intentionality of causing oneself bodily suffering bring us back to the underlying theme of Lauda 81. Without ever bordering on the excessive demonization of the material world in Manichaeism, the opposition between body and soul is real and remains a fundamental tenet of Iacopone’s poetics, which renders both entities concrete speakers that argue with each other, in typically medieval f­ashion.21 Iacopone structures three animated dialogues between body and soul in three separate texts; one in the first tenzo of the collection in Lauda 7 (“Audite un ’ntenzone, – ch’è ’nfra l’anema e ’l corpo”), one in Lauda 31 ( “O corpo enfracedato, / eo so’ l’alma dolente”), and one in Lauda 61 (“Quando t’alegri, – omo d’altura, / va’ puni mente – a la seppultura;”). Even at the height of Christian mystical expression throughout the Middle Ages, the body in Christianity continues to be a testimony of divine incarnation and a conduit for human salvation, although it needs to be punished in order for the soul to progress in its path toward union with divinity. Iacopone espouses the excessive attitude of blaming the body for all human evils, while elevating the power of the soul for saving the faithful only when it opposes materiality. He appeals to the theology 20 21

The episode is reported in Enrico Menestò, Vite antiche di Jacopone da Todi (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977), pp. 36–37. On this concept, see Alfredo Troiano, “‘Sozzo, malvascio corpo, lussurïoso e ’ngordo’: la visione del corpo nel ‘De contemptu mundi’ di Jacopone da Todi,” Italian Poetry Review 1 (2006), p. 265.

384

VETTORI

of the cross, which perceives the body as instrument of salvation only when it is martyred and maimed, suffering and afflicted. Lauda 7 contains the same despising attitude towards the materiality of the body and has much in common with Lauda 81. It is a dialogue between body and soul, in which the soul insists that the body needs to do penance in order to gain salvation; the soul imposes a series of penances in succession, from denying the senses any pleasures to scourging, inflicting a hair shirt, an uncomfortable bed, rising early in the morning for prayer, raw food, no wine, and no warm winter clothes. To each demand the body rebuffs and resists by making a counterargument, but in the final commentary of the last few lines, the poetic voice—a third and more objective speaker—intervenes to offer an assessment and a brief summary; human beings are condemned to fight many battles during their lives and what he narrated is just one of them. In line with the poetic voice in Lauda 81, the two interlocutors of Lauda 7 express the internal tug-of-war that happens within all sinners, torn as they are between the pleasures the body desires and the punishments the soul imposes on it in order to accomplish salvation. In Lauda 61, the dialogue is between a living man and a dead man, who exchange opinions about what appears to be important in earthly life and what is actually important for the eternal life of the soul; starting from clothes and hair, which give the impression of being crucial assets during life on earth, but are easily disintegrated after a little time underground, the list moves to the different parts of the body representing the five senses and how all the beautiful organs and the beautiful things they experienced have disappeared and dissipated in death; the living man enquires about the eyes, the nose, the tongue, the lips, arms, and bones; where have they gone after death? When the dead man replies that those parts of the body were futile and simply caused him to sin, the poem turns into a reminder of the uselessness of external beauty and the importance of focusing on the virtues of the soul, in line with the tradition of memento mori.22 In Lauda 31, the body and soul are once again joined together for the Last Judgment and the body is blamed for their mutual destiny of damnation, for which Iacopone even accuses the masters of the medical profession for not understanding how the soul is inextricably connected to the body and one depends on the other. Alfredo Troiano identifies this particular attitude as contemptus mundi and places it in line with the tradition of via negativa, which the poet calls nichilitate in his Umbrian vernacular and which reaches back to Dionysius the Areopagite. At the basis of Iacopone’s mystical experience is the realization 22

Troiano, “Sozzo, malvascio corpo,” p. 267.

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

385

that nothing human beings can do will compensate for Christ’s sacrifice, no amount of punishments or nullification can ever be enough to reach those heights of self-donation and abnegation.23 The body is for Iacopone the seat of sins and therefore the cause of evil and an impediment to the elevation of the soul; that is why petitions to afflict it with many diseases will render it powerless, thereby allowing the soul to be united with God in mystical marriage after death; Lauda 81 can therefore be interpreted as a request for death and the culmination of the via negativa.24 Lauda 81 is in line with many other poems structured in the form of debates, verbal fights, and altercations, most of which are tenzos between two opposing entities, two friends discussing how to return to God (Lauda 24, “Consiglio de l’amico a l’altro amico che voglia tornare a Dio”), the contrast between real and false love (Lauda 66, “De la differenza intra el vero e falso amore, ed intra la scienza acquisita ed infusa”), the battle against the Enemy (Lauda 56, “De la battaglia del Nemico”), against the Anti-Christ (Lauda 6, “De la grande battaglia de Anticristo”), or Christ’s lamentation for the condition of the Roman Church (Lauda 29, “Come Cristo se lamenta de la Chiesa romana”).25 Many of Iacopone’s texts are dialogues opposing two disputing enemies, one representing immediate gratification, gratuitous pleasure, the way of the world, while the other typifies the spiritual connection with divinity and struggles to protect the salvation of the soul. In the tense exchange, the two interlocutors are always at odds with each other, in disagreement on what to do and how to do it. Even when the texts are not dialogic in nature, do not oppose two disputing enemies, are not preaching and sermon-like, and do not assume the presence of an audience to instruct, evangelize or educate, there is often a debate subtending their rhetoric. These poems are “relational,” they express a tension, an exchange between two or more entities. An adequate example of this is Lauda 81, which is stylistically a monologue the poetic voice addresses to God in the form of prayerful petitions, but it also debates the strong opinions voiced by the poet with an imaginary interlocutor, the reader; the speaker chastises himself for not fulfilling God’s command and attempts to find new ways of getting closer to God, but in effect creates a dialogue with silent, unresponsive interlocutors, since it aims at their conversion. This subtle poetic device has 23

24 25

On the connection between Iacopone and Dionysius the Areopagite, also see Paolo ­ alesio, “‘O entenebrata luce ch ’en me luce’: La letteratura del silenzio,” in Del silenzio: V percorsi, suggestioni, interpretazioni, ed. Giovannella Fusco Girard and Anna Maria Tango (Salerno-Roma: Ripostes, 1992), 15–44. Troiano, “Sozzo, malvascio corpo,” pp. 265–70. These titles are in the Bonaccorsi edition reproduced by Luigi Fallacara, ed., Le Laude. Jacopone da Todi (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1976).

386

VETTORI

much larger edifying implications, because the tension actually displays the identity itself of the Christian faith that gets its life from the interaction of three Persons in the Holy Trinity. In many instances Iacopone’s style is trinitarian in nature, two elements interacting dialogically and one observing and accounting. It is the dialogue that is at the foundation of most prayerful texts in general, which are conceived as an exchange between the active voice of the supplicant and (what appears to be) the silent passivity of divinity that the supplicant attempts to solicit and stimulate. Lauda 81 preserves all the rhetorical qualities of a prayer; it is a supplicant’s monologue, a series of petitions addressed to God, which is one of the most common forms of prayer, expressed in musical cadence and attempting to be as exhaustive as possible by covering all items falling under its specific realm and semantics. Its monologic style presupposes the presence of a silent divine listener that will grant what is requested, while as poem it also presupposes the attention of readers to be edified and converted. The typical Iacoponian esmesuranza, as referred to the infinite love of God, also applies to the exaggerated rhetoric aimed at shocking and repenting. The hyperbolic tone contributes to the creation of a theatrical quality of the whole text, which is memorable for its outrageous contents but likewise for reversing the terms of any traditional prayer in its semantics. Prayers don’t normally refer to body parts and defecation, nor do they ask God for the pains of hell. It is this theatrical language that makes the poem a unique text. Works Cited Bauckham, Richard J. “‘Colossians’ 1:24 Again: The Apocalyptic Motif.” The Evangelical Quarterly 47 (1975): 168–70. Bell, Rudolph M. Holy Anorexia. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985. Blaine, Marlin E., trans. Lauda 48. By Iacopone da Todi. Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature 34, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 28–38, https://doi:10.5744 /delos.2019.1006. Bueno, Irene. Le eresie medievali (Rome: Ediesse, 2013). Fallacara, Luigi, ed. Le Laude. By Jacopone da Todi. Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1976. Francis of Assisi. “The Assisi Compilation.” In The Founder, edited by Regis Armstrong, Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short, chap. 17. Vol. 2 of Early Documents. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000.

IACOPONE’S MYSTICAL MARRIAGE THROUGH MALADY

387

Lacroix, Jean. “Beautés et laideurs de la chair: La passion du corps selon Iacopone da Todi.” In Le beau et le laid au Moyen Âge, 279–98. Aix-en-Provence, France: Université de Provence, 2000. Menestò, Enrico. Vite antiche di Jacopone da Todi. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977. Menestò, Enrico. La conversione alla povertà nell’Italia dei secoli XII–XIV: Atti del XXVII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi 14–17 ottobre 1990 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1991). Rapley, Elizabeth. The Lord As Their Portion: The Story of the Religious Orders and How They Shaped Our World. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. ­Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011. Rusconi, Roberto. “Valdesio di Lione e Francesco d’Assisi, valdesi e francescani,” in Studi francescani (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2021), 431–65. Spivey, Steven W. “‘Colossians’ 1:24 and the Suffering Church.” Journal of Spiritual ­Formation and Soul Care 4, no. 1 (2011): 43–62. Stettler, Hanna. “An Interpretation of ‘’Colossians’ 1:24 in the Framework of Paul’s Mission Theology.” In The Mission of the Early Church to Jews and Gentiles, 185–208. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2000. Sumney, Jerry L. “I Fill up What Is Lacking in the Afflictions of Christ: Paul’s Vicarious Suffering in Colossians.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 68, no. 4 (2006): 664–80. Troiano, Alfredo. “‘Sozzo, malvascio corpo, lussurïoso e ’ngordo’: la visione del corpo nel ‘’De contemptu mundi’ di Jacopone da Todi.” Italian Poetry Review 1 (2006): 255–72. Valesio, Paolo. “‘O entenebrata luce ch ’en me luce’: La letteratura del silenzio.” In Del silenzio: percorsi, suggestioni, interpretazioni, edited by Giovannella Fusco Girard and Anna Maria Tango, 15–44. Salerno-Roma: Ripostes, 1992. Vettori, Alessandro. Poets of Divine Love: Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Volpe, Gioacchino. Movimenti religiosi e sette ereticali nella società medievale italiana. Secoli XI–XIV. Florence, Sansoni, 1977. White, Joel. “Paul Completes the Servant’s Sufferings (Colossians 1:24).” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 6, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 181–98.

Index Abbiati, Franco 64–65 Abbruzzetti, Veronique 3 activity (in God) 209–13 adnichilatio see annihilation Adnotationes in Ioelem 286n Aelred of Rievaulx 149–51, 162, 166, 179, 207, 233, 299n affect 44, 56 affection 15, 17, 20–21, 23, 91–2, 153, 160–61, 166, 179n125, 209, 224, 231–32, 241, 244, 306 affective piety 239–40 Ageno, Franca 11n, 73, 81, 99n31, 135, 237n, 293n, 319–22, 342 Albert the Great 150n, 169n Alexander of Hales 303 Alighieri, Dante 14, 40–57, 189, 331 Commedia 42, 46, 149, 153n, 159n, 161n, 180n Inferno 186 Inferno 1 54 Purgatorio 10 153n Purgatorio 13 49n Purgatorio 27 49n Purgatorio 29 47 Purgatorio 30 43n, 44 Paradiso 10 159n Paradiso 11 46–47 Paradiso 14 159n Paradiso 17 46 Paradiso 20 159n Paradiso 25 48–50 Paradiso 28 180n Paradiso 30 161n Convivio 1 44–46, 53–54, 56–57, 148n, 151n, 153–54 Epistles 43, 49n Vita Nova 149n Ambrose of Milan 156n, 166n, 169n Ancilli, Ermanno 13n Andreas Capellanus 152 Angela of Foligno 326, 335n45, 341, 372 annihilation 154, 156, 163, 166, 169, 271, 303–06 antidote 156–58 Antoni, Gérard 14n Apollonio, Mario 81n4

apostrophe 15, 93–7 apotheosis 213–28 Aquinas, Thomas 149n, 228, 254 arbor amoris 272–79, 282–83, 287–91, 294, 298–99 arbore 345, 352–59 archaisms 136 Aristotle 193–94 Armstrong, Regis J. 323n17, 341–44, 369n2 ars orandi 14 asceticism 147–48, 180 Ascoli, Albert Russell 42 Aste, Mario 31n Augustine 44, 53, 56–7, 61, 74, 78, 149–58, 161n, 165n, 172n, 174n, 176n, 188, 323n18, 340n59, 341 Austin, J. L. 49 authority 42–44, 46–48, 50–53, 56–57 authorship 42–3 autobiography 41–44, 46, 53 Aversano, Mario 30n Avicenna 379 balada (genre) 141 see also ballata Baldassarri, Guido 11n ballata (also lauda-ballata) 62–63, 65–66, 66n22, 68 Barr, Cyrilla 61, 63 Barré, Henri 245n, 257n Bassetti, Massimiliano 3, 12n, 16n, 20n Battail, Marie-Hélène 3 Bauckman, Richard J. 375n13 Beckman, Patricia 14n Bell, Rudolph M. 372n6 Benedetti, Marina 332n35, 341 Benedictine rule 370 Benoît de Saint-Maur 189 Benson, B. Ellis 14n Bériou, Nicole 14n, 19n Berkeley, Theodore 326n24, 344 Berlioz, Jacques 14n, 19n Berlioz, Jacques 105 Bernard of Clairvaux 82, 82n6, 89, 151–152, 154–156, 159, 162–63, 166–69, 172–73, 175n, 187, 207n14, 209, 222–23, 233, 246–47, 250, 326, 331, 335n45, 341, 370

390 Bernardino of Siena 2 Betri, Maria Luisa 332n35, 341 Bettarini, Rosanna 89n17, 90n18, 236n, 239n, 242n, 258, 260–62, 274n biography 41–42, 47–48, 51–57 bitterness 147–48, 157, 166, 168 bizzocone 47–8, 51–2 Blaine, Marlin E. 372n6, 376 Blake, A.A. 272, 286 Boccali, Giovanni 326n21, 341 Boccignone, Manuela 98n26 body 15, 202–08 Boer, Bertillo de 14n Boethius 44, 56, 178n Bologna, Corrado 300 Bolzoni 98–99, 349n, 351–52 Bonaccorsi edition 385n25 Bonaccorsi, Francesco 54 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio 47, 51, 100n32, 103, 147n, 149n, 159n, 169n, 173n, 174, 203, 208, 218n35, 220–21, 232–33, 286–87, 295–98, 303, 305n, 306, 322–24, 328, 341 Boniface VIII (pope) 50, 276, 134, 189, 318, 332n34 Bonvesin da la Riva 153n, 156n, 159n, 161n, 166n, 173n Bougerol, Jacques Guy 104n37 Brambilla, Franca 1 Brufani, Stefano 19n, 85n12, 329, 341 Bruni, Francesco 11n Bueno, Irene 370n3 Bultot, Robert 16n Buonarroti, Michelangelo 331n32 Buxtehude, Dietrich 326n23 Cacciotti, Alvaro 20n, 72- 73, 98n26, 319n3, 321n11, 325n20, 332n35, 337–38, 341–42 Caetani, Benedetto see Boniface VIII (pope) Calvillo, Carlo 31n Canettieri, Paolo 20n, 22n, 24n, 74n51, 76n57, 78n62, 82, 100n32, 103n33, 319n4, 334n40, 342 canto 64, 69–73 Capitani, Ovidio 2, 321n6, 342 Cappadocians 186 caritas 157–60, 169, 172 see also love Caroli, Ernesto 341–44 Carruthers, Mary 87n14, 147n, 151–52

index Casamassima, Emanuele 275 Casella, Mario 2 Castro, Maxime 3 Cattin, Giulio 11n Cavalcanti, Guido 149, 153n, 331n32 Celestine V (pope) 317–18 Charterhouse of Senales 277 Chiavacci Leonardi, Anna Maria 153n Chrétien de Troyes 189 Cino da Pistoia 149, 152n Ciociola, Claudio 98n27, 272–73, 276, 349n, 354, 357–59 Cistercians 370 Clare of Assisi (saint) 321, 324 Clement 186 clothing 47–49 Collationes in Hexaemeron 296 Colonna, Giacomo 318 Colonna, Pietro 318 Contini, Gianfranco 42n, 53, 135, 320n5, 343 conversion 47–48, 51–57, 147–48, 154, 161, 165, 168, 383 Coolman, Boyd T. 283n Cottier, Jean-François 14n d’El Molar, Nolasc 3 d’Olot, Xavier 3 D’Onofrio, Giulio 14n da Campagnola, Stanislao 103n34 Dalarun, Jacques 329n28, 344 dance 63, 68, 70 Daniélou, Jean 206n13, 233 Dardano, Maurizio 20n Davanzati, Chiaro 165n David of Augsburg 275n David 179 De archa Noe 286 De laude caritatis 294n de Lubac, Henri 103n34 De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis  270–71, 298–303 De Romilly, Jacqueline 147n, 161n De septem itineraribus aeternitatis  298–301, 306n De Simone, Giuseppina 204n10, 233 De substantia dilectionis 294n De theologia mystica 283, 295 De vanitate rerum mundanarum 286n

index

391

Deblaere, Albert 338n53, 342 decasyllables in Romanian translation 137 Déchanet, Jean-Marie 207n15, 233 Del Popolo, Concetto 26n, 31n, 238n Delcorno, Carlo 30n deprivation 154, 156, 168 Dessì, Rosa Maria 11n diachronic characteristics 140 Diadochos of Photiki 206 dialogue 383–86 diaphasic peculiarities 139–40 diatopic marks 137 Dick, Bradley B. 3 Didi-Huberman, Georges 97n23 Dionysius Areopagita (pseudo) 100n32, 279–82, 285, 293n, 297 distorted lexical forms 136 dolcezza 149–50, 154–55, 160, 164, 167–68, 179 Dolcino, Fra 370 dominicans 187, 190 Dondaine, Hyacinthe-François 287n drama 12, 30–31 dramatic 345, 364–66 dress 158–59, 161 dualism 192–94 dulcedo 147–48, 154, 156n, 158–66, 168–69, 170, 173, 175,

Flagellanti (or Disciplinati) and Laudesi 62–63, 65–66 flavor 162, 170–74, 176, 180 flower 170–71, 177 Fonck A. 13n food 46–47 fool of God 41, 51 Forte, Bruno 232–33 Francesco Tresatti 270, 274n Francis of Assisi (saint) 14, 46–48, 51–52, 85n12, 240, 296n, 189–91, 202–03, 207, 228, 230, 303, 317–19, 321–32, 334, 336, 341–44, 369–72 Canticle of the Creatures (also Laudes creaturarum and Cantico delle creature) 62, 70, 72, 190 Franciscan 187, 189–91, 345–49, 351, 355, 360 Poverty 369–71 Regula 134 Frescobaldi, Dino 153n Frezza, Fortunato 341 Frugoni, Arsenio 322 fruition 163, 170, 174 Fulton Brown, Rachel 14n, 20n Fumagalli, Vito 16n Furioli, Antonio 20n Fusco Girard, Giovannella 23n fusion 169, 174

ecstatic love 280 editorial history 53–54, 57 embody, embodiment 184–85, 188, 192, 198 Emmaus, disciples 281–82 Esser, Kajetan 343 Evagrius Ponticus 206 excommunication 50, 52 exemplarity 44, 47, 52–53 exile 44–46, 48–49

Gabriel, angel 30, 32 Gagliardi, Isabella 22n Galen 379 Galli, Giuseppe 80–81 Galvanus de Levanto 276, 288n Gastaldelli, Ferruccio 341 Gentili, Antonio 204n10, 233 Getto, Giovanni 109n40 Ghisalberti, Alessandro 103n34 Giacalone 346 Giovanni da Fermo 95–96 Giraud, Cédric 296n Giudici, Giovanni 14 Gniecki, Czeslaw 16n Gottardi, Agide 286 Gottardi, Agide 2 Gottardi, Agide 98n26 grace 148, 153–54, 165n, 167, 169n, 171n, 173, 177–79 Greenblatt, Stephen 42

Faesen, Rob 338n53, 342 Fallacara, Luigi 385n25 Fasting 372 Federmann, Herta 3 ferita see wound Ferri, Giovanni 135, 291n, 320n5, 342 figures of speech (also paradoxes, oxymorons, anaphora) 62, 76, 78 fire, image of virginity and of love  248–50

392 Gregorian chant 62–64 Gregory of Nyssa 186, 206 Gregory the Great 172n, 178–79n Grossateste, Robert (of Lincoln) 298 Guelluy, Robert 13n Guillaume of Auvergne 14 Guinizelli, Guido 153n Guittone d’Arezzo 154n, 156–57, 172n Gunther of Paris 14 hagiography 42, 47, 51–52, 54 Hail, Mary 32 halleluiatic psalms 63 Hammerling, Roy 14n, 15n Havely, Nick 46, 50 Hellmann, J. A. Wayne 323n17, 341, 343–44 Hellmann, Wayne 369n2 hendecasyllables in Romanian translation 137 Henriet, Patrick 14n Higuera Aguirre, Edison 228n49, 234 Hippocrates 379 Hohenstaufen Court 190 Hollywood, Amy 14n host 228–33 Hudde, Hinrich 24n Hugh of Balma 283, 295 Hugh of Saint Victor 103, 150n, 151n, 172n, 179n, 270–71, 278–307 Hughes, Elisabeth 15n, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25–32, 319n2, 321n, 324, 332–33, 338–40, 342 Hughes, Elizabeth and Serge 3, 240–42, 244n Hughes, Serge 15n, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25–32 Hughes, Serge 319n2, 321n, 324, 332n34, 333n, 338n50, 339–40, 342 humility 46–7, 51 hymnology 12 Iacopone da Todi Laude Laude 1 87, 91–93, 173n Laude 2 134, 142 Laude 3 30–32, 87, 160, 178, 382–83 Laude 4 159 Laude 4a, 4b, 4c 294n Laude 6 18, 82, 161n, 385 Laude 7 70, 84, 96, 173n, 383–84

index Laude 8 134 Laude 9 56n, 72, 74–75, 134, 174–75 Laude 10 87 Laude 11 85, 378–79 Laude 12 15–17, 134 Laude 13 31, 94, 134, 140, 379–380 Laude 14 87 Laude 15 87, 161n Laude 16 87, 155 Laude 17 18–19, 83 Laude 18 154–155, 304 Laude 19 69 Laude 20 380 Laude 22 86, 87, 161n Laude 23 85, 86 Laude 24 158, 165n, 385 Laude 25 84, 86–87, 165n, 170n, 299 Laude 27 85, 87, 166n Laude 28 19, 55–56, 87, 304n, 160–61 Laude 29 83, 134, 385 Laude 31 85, 87, 94, 379, 383–84 Laude 32  32, 78 Laude 33 381 Laude 34 173, 381 Laude 35 105, 134 Laude 36 87, 106, 134, 138, 370–71 Laude 39 20–23, 75–76, 89–90, 152–53 Laude 40 84, 87, 96 Laude 41 94 Laude 42 90 Laude 43 87, 89 Laude 45 165n, 166 Laude 46 87, 90, 158n Laude 47 71, 87, 89, 94, 370–71 Laude 48 157n Laude 49 165n Laude 50 87, 90 Laude 51 87, 89 Laude 51 17–18, 162, 165n Laude 52 89, 165n Laude 53 43n, 46–48, 50, 52, 70, 82, 89, 109 Laude 54 83 Laude 55 50, 82, 87, 95, 134, 109, 161n Laude 56 84, 304n, 385 Laude 57 96 Laude 58 69, 110 Laude 60 90, 174n

393

index Laude 61 70, 70n37, 83, 97, 383–84 Laude 62 31–32, 69n34, 70n35, 134, 165n Laude 63 69, 94 Laude 64 26–28, 62, 69, 72–74, 87, 94, 176 Laude 65 84, 87 Laude 66 87, 94, 385 Laude 67 49n, 50n, 82, 109, 134, 142 Laude 68 82, 95, 171n Laude 69 156 Laude 70 41–42, 90, 98, 254, 270 Laude 71 87, 96 Laude 72 94, 134, 138, 139, 164n, 170–71, 304n, 377 Laude 74 70, 82 Laude 75 105–08, 134 Laude 76 83, 96, 154n, 172–73 Laude 77 83, 87, 99, 172, 286, 293, 295–97 Laude 78 87, 99, 101, 108, 271–75, 278, 286–92, 294, 301 Laude 79 306 Laude 80 84, 104, 106 Laude 81 77, 140–41, 371–73, 376, 378, 383–86 Laude 82 87 Laude 83 50n, 70, 82, 95, 109, 134 Laude 84 83, 87, 99–102, 286, 288, 303 Laude 86 28–30, 70, 71–72, 157, 164–65, 168, 173–74, 304–05 Laude 88 82, 96 Laude 89 24–26, 66, 76, 87, 94, 156, 158, 165n, 167, 168n, 270, 299, 301–03 Laude 90 87 Laude 91 134 Laude 92 87, 159, 161–62, 164n, 168n, 173, 293–94, 303, 306–07 Laude 99 167n, 169n Laude 139 154n style 41 structure 41 variation in length 141 variation in verse meter 141 Iammarrone G. 16n Iannace, Florinda 31n image 345–47, 349, 351–54, 358, 360, 364 imagery 347, 349, 351, 353

imago Dei 159, 172 Immaculate Conception 245, 252–54 imprisonment 46–47, 50, 52 In Ecclesiasten 286n Isidore of Seville 177n Italian monophonic melody (or lyric)  62, 65 Iuliani de Spira 329n28, 342 Ivo, brother 207 Jacobus da Fusignano 104n35 Jaye, Barbara H. 14n Joachim of Flora 100n32, 103, 376 John (apostle) 326 John XXII (pope) 204 John of the Cross, saint 14 Johnson, Timothy J. 344 Jongleur of God 2 Joseph, saint 29 joy 153, 155–56, 159–61, 163–64, 167, 174–75, 179–80 Jungmann, Andreas 13n Kafel, Salezy 3 Kamber, Urs 272, 275–76, 278, 298–99 Katainen, Louise 3, 22n Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane 99n29 Lachance, Paul 335n45, 341 Lacroix, Jean 3, 379 Lafon, Guy 13n Landoni, Elena 16n, 20n, 149n language 21–24 Lannutti, Maria Sofia 177n, 319n4, 342 Lateran Council 187 Latin hymns (also Latin structure) 62–63, 65, 68n32, 77 Latin-like forms 136 laud (genre) 42n, 43, 50 Laudario di Cortona (Ms 91) 63–64, 69, 72n46, 239n, 241–42, 244–45, 247n Laudario di Urbino 235n, 258, 260–61 Laudario Magliabechiano 63–64 Le Goff, Jacques 16n Lehener, F.C. 13n Leonardi, Claudio 207–08, 234, 326n25, 343–44 Leonardi, Lino 1, 11n, 12, 40, 82n8, 154n, 274, 320n4, 343

394 Leonardi, Matteo 11n, 15n, 17n, 20n, 25n, 28, 30n, 32, 135, 147n, 153–56, 159n, 163n, 173, 177, 203n6, 209n21, 211n27, 226n47, 234, 236n, 271n, 292n, 295, 317n1, 319n4, 322n13, 324, 341–42, 350–51, 353–54, 357 Leopardi, Giacomo 331n32 Lerner E. Robert 103n34 Levasti, Arrigo 95–96 Liber de amando Deum 276–77 Lignum Vitae 286 litany (litanies) 13, 63, 65 liturgical repertoire (also liturgical tradition or liturgical sequences) 63–65 Liuzzi, Fernando 63–65, 69–72 L’omo fo creato virtuoso 251–54 Longères, Jean 14n love 189, 194–98 love ladder 161 Luzi, Mario 14 lydian mode 178 Maggi, Armando 294 Mancini, Franco 1, 82, 82n7, 96n22, 135, 202n1, 234, 291n, 319n2, 342, 238n, 240n, 244n, 253n, 255n, 259n, 261n, 263–64 Manselli, Raoul 103n34 Manuscript from Assisi (codice 338 di Assisi) 62 Manzoni, Alessandro 14 Maraschio 354 Margherita of Cortona 372 Marian plaints, development of 255–59 Marie de France 189 Marino, Giovanni Battista 14 Mary, Virgin 29–32, 160, 164–66, 173, 178, 236–264 medicine 241–42, 244 queenship 241 virginity 245–48 Matthew of Aquasparta 271n, 293n, 305n Maximus the Confessor 257, 260n, 262–63 McGinn, Bernard 20n medicine 158–169 Menapace Brisca, Lidia 12 Menendez-Pidal, Ramon 67 Menestò, Enrico 3, 11n, 15n, 17n, 19–20, 24n, 30n, 85n12, 203n6, 211n27, 234,

index 236–38, 317, 319–21, 341–43, 369n1, 383n20 Menichetti, Aldo 16n Merlo, Grado Giovanni 329n30, 332n35, 341, 343 Misserini, Nicolò 320n5, 343 mixtum linguisticum 136–37 Mocan, Mira 24n, 270–71 Moleta, Vincent 3 Monaldo (friar) 323n17 Montanari, Antonio 204n10, 234 Montani, Alessandro 16n Montefusco, Antonio 11n, 16n, 148n, 270n, 299n, 306n Monteverdi, Angelo 65n19 Morghen, Raffaello 322 ms, Olomouc, Universitätsbibliothek, M I`305.7 272, 279n, 288–89 ms. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz germ. 4° (1522) 279n ms. Bolzano, Franziskanerkloster, I 73 (1476) 276, 278, 288n ms. Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, 1075–1078 (Van den Gheyn 919) 279n ms. Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, 972 278n ms. Innsbruck, Universitätsbibliothek, 705 (II 3 F 11) 275–76, 288 ms. Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek, 293 279n ms. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosian, D 46 sup. 272–73, 275, 288 ms. München, Staatsbibliothek, cgm 132 275 ms. Padova, Biblioteca civica, C.M. 50 (1426–1475) 275n ms. Paris, BNF, Latin 3181 276n, 288n ms. Roma, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Frammenti I, busta 5, n. 6  276–77, 288n ms. Subiaco, B. S. M. N. M. Santa Scolastica, 289 (CCLXXXIII) 276n, 278n, 288, 290 ms. Todi, Biblioteca Comunale Lorenzo Leonj, 74 305n ms. Vatican City, B.A.V., Chigi B. V. 87 271n ms. Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 900 279n music 161, 179–80 mystery 184

395

index mysticism 20–25, 184–87, 196, 198 names 43–44, 46, 49–50 narrative 51–57 Nessi, Silvestro 322, 343 new lexical creations 136 noun gender in translation 139 Novati, Francesco 2 Novati, Francesco 80–81 O Regina cortese 240–44 O Vergen plu ca femena 244–51 Occhialini, Umberto 206n12, 234 Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie 93n19 Olphe-Galliard, Michel 204n10, 234 Onesto da Bologna 149 Orbicciani, Bonagiunta 153n, 163n Origen 186 Origen Adamantius 206, 234 Orthodox liturgical vocabulary 140 ottava rima 196 Our Father 32–33 Pacifico (friar) 323n17 Padovese, Luigi 337n49, 342 painting 345–47, 354–55, 357–61, 363–64, 366 Paolazzi, Carlo 342 Paoli, Emore 12n Parodi, Ernesto Giacomo 2 Pasquazi, Silvio 331n32, 343 Pasquini, Emilio 11n passivity (in God) 209–13 Paul of Tarso (saint) 323, 326, 336–37, 342 Colossians 1:24 372–76, 378 Peck, George T. 3, 11n, 61n1, 63–64, 73–74, 77–78 Peguy, Charles 14 Perelman, Chaïm 93n19 performance 47, 51, 345, 353, 357, 360, 364–66 performativity 49–50 personality 40–47, 51–53, 55–57 Perugi, Maurizio 16n Peter of John Olivi 303, 376 Petrarch, Francis 54, 331n32 Petrocchi, Giorgio 97n23, 322 Pézard, André 3 pharmacological 158 Piron, Sylvain 304n

Pisarra, Pietro 204n10, 234 Plaint (also planctus) 255–58, 260n, 262–63 Plato 188 pleasure 147–49, 152–56, 161 Plotinus 188 Poirel, Dominique 283n Poli, Marco 11n, 30n popular songs 66 poverty 45–47, 50, 189, 193–94 Pozzi, Giovanni 12n, 20n, 81n3, 81n4, 326, 333n39, 343 Praloran, Marco 20n preaching 345–47, 349n, 351n, 365 precarity 42, 46 Pricoco, Salvatore 14n prose paraphrased translation 134 Provençal borrowings 136 Pseudo-Macarius 206 Rahner, Karl 206n12, 208n20, 234 Ramazani, Ian 14n Ranaldo Massei da Todi 96n22 Rapley, Elizabeth 370n4 Ravesi, Marcello 297 Reale, Luigi 135 realism 45–47 Reboul, Olivier 93n20 Reeves, Marjorie 103n34 remedy 151, 155, 158 reputation 44–47, 50, 56–57 Reynolds, Brian 31n, 237–38, 249–50, 253–55, 261n rhetoric 14 rhythm 184–88, 191–99 Richard of Saint Victor 155–56, 160n, 169n, 172–73, 180n Richard of Saint Victor 207–10, 234, 270, 279n, 298–303, 326 rima zagialesca 142 Romanos the Melodist 256, 262n Roncaglia, Aurelio 66n26, 68 Rorem, Paul R. 279–80, 282 Rudolf from Biberach 285n, 298–301, 306n Ruh, Kurt 275n, 298 Rupert of Deutz 187 Rusconi, Roberto 370n3 Russo, Francesco 103n34 Salisteanu, Oana 3

396 Salvaneschi, Enrica 221n38, 235 San Fortunato in Todi (Biblioteca di) 271n, 299, 305n Santi, Francesco 20n, 148n, 162–63, 170n, 180n, 296n Sapegno, Natalino 2, 12n, 40–41 Savonarola, Girolamo 204 schola caritatis 166, 177 Scrittore, Liliana 135 Segalelli, Gherardo 370 sensation 148, 161–64, 167, 174, senses 202–08, 380–82 sensoriality 156, 158 sensuality 202–08 septenaries 137 sermon 12 Settler, Hannah 375 shame 56 Shoemaker, Stephen 257 Short, Wiliam J. 317n1, 323n17, 341, 343–44, 369n2 Sicilian School 190–91 Silesius, Angelus 14 similitude (also similitudo) 158, 167, 179–80 Simonetti, Manlio 14n six feet lines in Romanian translation 137 smell 171, 173 Solére, Jean-Luc 13n Soliloquium de arrha animae 304–07 Song of Songs 186–87, 281 sonnet (genre) 141 Spivey, Steven W. 375n Stabat Mater 1, 236 Stephen, saint 28n Sticca, Sandro 256–58 suavitas 147, 149, 151, 154n Suitner, Franco 11n, 19–20, 30n, 40, 46, 63, 65–66, 68n, 319n4, 343 Surian, Elvidio 63n Sumney, Jerry L. 374–75 Super Ierarchiam Dionisii 271, 279–301 Sylvester (friar) 323n17 Symeon the New Theologian 206 synesthetic 161, 171 synonyms series of synonyms 139 synonymous derivatives 136 Slavic old synonyms in Romanian translation 140

index Tango, Anna Maria 23n Tappa, Carlo Felice 16n Tartaro, Achille 331n32, 343 Tasso, Torquato 14, 331n32 taste 153, 156, 162–63, 167, 173–74, 180 Teboldi, Fabio Massimo 208n20, 235 tenson 191–93, 195 Terrusi, Leonardo 44n text 345, 354–55, 357, 359–60, 364–66 therapeutic 154 Thomas Gallus 283, 285, 295–98, 303 Thomas of Celano 203n, 235, 323n17, 328, 343–44 Tomasin, Lorenzo 20n Torkington, David 20n Toschi, Paolo 65–66, 68n32 transcendence 187, 194, 196–97 transfiguration 213, 222, 225n, 228 transformatio 306–07 translator’s notes 134 trees 99–104 Tresatti, Francesco 320n5, 322n14, 343 Troiano, Alfredo 16n, 383–85 Truong, Nicolas 16n typological imagery 237 Ubertino da Casale 103, 376 Ulanov, Ann Belford 13n Ulanov, Barry 13n Underhill, Evelyn 2, 3 Ungaretti, Giuseppe 14, 331, 343 Valdensian Church 370 Valdesio 370 Valesio, Paolo 23n, 385n23 Varanini, Giorgio 11n, 65–66, 68, 241n, 242, 245n, 249n, 259n variants dialectal variants 136 graphic variants 135 old fashioned syntactical structures 141 vernacular phonetic evolutions 136 vernacular 184–90, 192, 198 Vettori, Alessandro 12–13, 20, 65, 70n41, 72, 76n56, 237n, 382n19 Victorines 89, 103 Villemain, Abel François 41 visio beatifica 287n

index vitis mystica 297n Volpe, Gioacchino 370n White, Joel 376n15 William of Saint Thierry 81, 162, 164n, 170n, 175n, 187, 207, 207n15, 234, 326, 331, 344 Wirzba, Norman 14n wound (also ferita) 154–56, 168, 378–79

397 Zacchetti, Carlo 271n Zaleski, Carol 14n Zaleski, Philip 14n Zambon, Francesco 150n, 154n, 162n, 170n, 176n, 179n, 207n14, 235 Zavalloni, Roberto 16n, 204n10, 235 zéjel 62, 66–68 Ziegler, Joseph 207n16, 235 Zunino, Estelle 3, 84n11

31 mm

TMF 23

Matteo Leonardi, Ph.D, (2005), Università di Torino & Università di Trento, is a specialist of medieval literature. He published the ��rst complete edition of Iacopone’s Laude (2010), the Bibliogra��a iacoponica (2010), Bonvesin da la Riva’s Libro delle tre scritture (2014) and Storia della Lauda, secoli XIII-XVI (2021). Alessandro Vettori, Ph.D. (1995), Yale, is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. He specializes in medieval Franciscan writers (Poets of Divine Love, 2004), the rewriting of scripture (Giuseppe Berto, La passione della scrittura, 2013), and Dante (Dante’s Prayerful Pilgrimage, 2019).

THE MEDIEVAL FRANCISCANS 23 9 789004 512313

ISSN 1572-6991 brill.com/tmf

Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori (Eds.)

Contributors are Erminia Ardissino, Alvaro Cacciotti, Nicolò Crisa��, Anne-Gaëlle Cuif, Federica Franzè, Alexander J.B. Hampton, Magdalena Maria Kubas, Matteo Leonardi, Brian K. Reynolds, Oana Sălișteanu, Samia Tawwab, Alessandro Vettori, Carlo Zacchetti, and Estelle Zunino.

Iacopone da Todi

The ��rst ever collection of essays in English on Iacopone da Todi by a diverse group of international scholars, this book o�fers a contemporary critical assessment on this medieval Franciscan poet of the thirteenth century. Combining philological analyses with thematic studies and philosophical and theological interpretations of the original contents and style of Iacopone’s poetry, the collection considers a wide range of topics, from music to prayer and performance, mysticism, asceticism, ine�fability, Mariology, art, poverty, and the challenges of translation. It is a major contribution to the understanding of Iacopone’s laude in the 21st century.

The Medieval Franciscans • Volume 23

Iacopone da Todi The Power of Mysticism and the Originality of Franciscan Poetry

Edited by

Matteo Leonardi and Alessandro Vettori