Podcast
Claudio Peri has produced a podcast series reviewing various aspects of the life, work and mysticism of Jacopone da Todi. In each issue of this newsletter we will present two episodes of this podcast, recorded both in Italian and in English.
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Episode 8
Sopr’onne lengua Amore. Love beyond all telling. The final years of Jacopone's life, after his release from prison, were characterised by peace and joy, founded on the love of Jesus - a "love beyond all telling", as he described it. From this came some of his most beautiful poetry.
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Love beyond all telling
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Episode 7
The Last Battle: Jacopone’s indignation at unfaithfulness within the Church led to excommunication and harsh imprisonment, yet in that dark place he managed to achieve a complete change of mindset. His identification with the crucified Jesus brought him peace, love and an ability to transcend and forgive the injustices done to him.
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The Final Battle
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Episode 6
The Great Mystic. In 2017, I had the opportunity to meet the real Jacopone in the Biography written by Evelyn Underhill and published in London in 1919. I was struck by the title of this book, presenting Jacopone as a ‘Poet and Mystic’. As far as I knew from the stories about him that circulated in the church and at school in Todi, this was the first time he was described as a ‘Mystic’ – and yet it is the most essential element for understanding the Poet. If one tries to understand Jacopone's poetry without regard to his identity as a mystic, one loses the most important key to understanding and, in the end, loses contact both with the man and with the Poet. Listen here
The Great Mystic
In 2017, I had the opportunity to meet the real Jacopone in the Biography written by Evelyn Underhill and published in London in 1919. I was struck by the title of this book, presenting Jacopone as a ‘Poet and Mystic’. As far as I knew from the stories about him that circulated in the church and at school in Todi, this was the first time he was described as a ‘Mystic’ – and yet it is the most essential element for understanding the Poet. If one tries to understand Jacopone's poetry without regard to his identity as a mystic, one loses the most important key to understanding and, in the end, loses contact both with the man and with the Poet.
Listen to the full podcast below.
Episode 5
A Troublesome Friar. Our fifth podcast concerns the period beginning in 1278, when Jacopone is 48 years old and has been a lay tertiary for 10 years. He likes his new life. He likes poverty. He likes chastity. He likes being an itinerant missionary among poor people. He likes praying. He likes doing penance. He likes writing poetry.
Listen here
A Troublesome Friar
Our fifth podcast concerns the period beginning in 1278, when Jacopone is 48 years old and has been a lay tertiary for 10 years. He likes his new life. He likes poverty. He likes chastity. He likes being an itinerant missionary among poor people. He likes praying. He likes doing penance. He likes writing poetry. Sometimes, it’s true, he gets discouraged because he isn’t able to be as perfect as he would like: and furthermore, people’s selfishness depresses him; hypocrisy outrages him; Franciscanism is taking a turn that he doesn’t like; and so is the Catholic Church. But at this moment he has a particular problem: he needs to give himself a more orderly rhythm of life. For this reason he’s keen to be admitted into a friary of Friars Minor where it would be possible to separate and coordinate times for prayer, for meditation and study, for missionary action, for poetry.
Listen to the full podcast below.
Episode 4
Having discussed the years spent as a Franciscan tertiary, now is a good time to say something about Jacopone’s hagiography – that is, the biography written for devotional purposes almost three centuries after his death. It contains a lot of invention, describing a Jacopone engaged in such extreme and ridiculous self-abasement as to look almost crazy. Dressing in chicken feathers or a donkey’s pelt, filling his chamber with rotting meat, subjecting his body to extreme, humiliating austerities...
In reality Jacopone was by no means extreme in penitence; in fact, he explicitly criticised others whose displays of devotion bordered on fanaticism.
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Episode 3
In this third podcast we’ll look at the ten years after Jacopone’s conversion, spent as a Franciscan tertiary – that is, a member of the ‘Third Order’ who followed a special rule of life, written for lay people by St. Francis. Jacopone took on the role of an itinerant missionary in Todi and the surrounding countryside. He shared the Gospel and the doctrines of the Church in the Italian vernacular – not in Latin, which was the language of formal religious celebrations but was incomprehensible to poor people.
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Episode 2
Jacopone 's conversion followed the model set by St. Francis and repeated in Italy and around the world by hundreds and then thousands of people, young and older, male and female. This involved responding to the recommendation Jesus gave to a rich young man: “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have, give it to the poor ... then come and follow me”.
Jacopone was not a man of half measures:
One fine day in the year 1268, …
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Episode 1
The information Jacopone gives us about his life before conversion is summarized very effectively in two autobiographical poems. The first, ‘O me lascio dolente (O unhappy and sorrowful, I)’ refers to the period of youth including when he studied law in some university of the time, perhaps Bologna. Jacopone is aged between 20 and 30 years and has all the characteristics of a young man from a good family: joyful, conceited and vain. He can write about poetry and music, he participates in parties, courts women, gives expensive gifts and squanders the modest economic resources of the family.
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