Iacopone da Todi : The Power of Mysticism and the Originality of Franciscan Poetry
We are pleased to present in this issue of the Newsletter an extraordinary book, published in English this year (2024) by Brill Publishers of Leiden and Boston. The book is edited by two eminent scholars, Matteo Leonardi, Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Turin and Alessandro Vettori, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, who conclude their Introduction as follows:
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’abbraccia, sempre plu t’abrama!”, “Love, Love, you are so deep, / that whoever embraces you desires you all the more”.
The extraordinary fact is that this book contains 14 chapters written by 14 scholars, constituting in the words of Leonardi and Vettori, a “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 …. scholars at different stages of their career, with diverse expertise and originating from the most various linguistic, geographic and intellectual backgrounds…
This quote – and this book – bring to mind the stanza with which Iacopone ends his prison laude, Che farai, fra Jacovone?:
Carta mia, va', mitte banna: Go, letter (poem) of mine, spread this news,
Iacovon prescion te manna Jacopone the prisoner sends you
'n corte i Roma, che se spanna To the Curia of Rome to disseminate it
en tribù, lengua e nazione., To every nation, tribe, and people
This new book is, surely, the most authoritative validation of the prophecy that Jacopone made from prison on the future of his poetry!
The various papers in the book examine Jacopone’s work as poetry and literature, as prayer, as rhetoric, as music, as Franciscan spirituality and, not least, as mystical texts. We note that at least seven of the fourteen contributors to the book are, judging by their surnames, of Italian origin. Italians who have rediscovered a great of Italian Poetry by going to study and do research in other countries – this is the kind of globalisation that we like!
Finally, we are pleased that the book authoritatively resolves the debate on the international contribution to the study of Jacopone da Todi that we raised in our paper “The International Contribution to the study of Jacopone da Todi”, published in 2022 in the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures (vol.3, no 2, pp. 205-242) of Pennsylvania State University. In an interview published elsewhere, Matteo Leonardi stated that the decision to publish the book in English “testifies to the intention to re-establish dialogue between Italian scholars and colleagues working abroad, around the work of an author whose interest goes beyond national borders”.