The Italian word Pasqua – indicating the founding mystery of Christianity, the event of Christ’s death and resurrection – derives from the Hebrew Pesakh. This in turn refers to the “passing over” of Israelite homes by the Lord’s angel of death, when inflicting the final curse on their Egyptian captors. The result was Pharaoh’s release of the Israelites, who passed through the Red Sea, led by Moses, on their way towards the ‘Promised Land’.

For the first time, Jacopone was remembered at Christmas in the city of Todi and in a convent of Franciscan Friars Minor. On Christmas night in 1306 (716 years ago) Jacopone died in the small Convent of the Poor Clares of Collazzone. This meeting was dedicated to two laudi that celebrate the coming of Christ into this world and to one laude that recalls Jacopone's passage from this world to life beyond life. As the title suggests, the evening was intended to be a rediscovery of the Christian Christmas.