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 to the full podcast below.