Admired, Cancelled and Rediscovered: The true story of Jacopone da Todi, c1270-2024. Part 1
This is the story of Jacopone, not just in his lifetime but over the seven centuries since his death. We call it the ‘true story’ of Jacopone because it is based on documented facts (nothing invented), including a lot of forgotten or suppressed information. In some ways it’s like reconstructing a jigsaw, having found all the missing pieces.
Our story is divided into three periods titled Admired (c1270-1590), Cancelled (c1590-1900) and Rediscovered (1900-2024).
Admired c1270-1590
This first part of our story is the one that may surprise you most. It may feel very new but in fact it is older – and truer – than most of what we think we know about Jacopone.
Historians and literary scholars, if they pay any attention to Jacopone’s life, concentrate on his part in the dispute between the Franciscan ‘Spirituals’ and Conventuals and above all, on his argument with Pope Boniface VIII. We must understand that this cannot be reduced to a personal conflict between Jacopone and Boniface. His accusers in 1298 highlighted Jacopone’s inexcusable personal offense to the Pope, but his protest was actually far broader and weightier.
Jacopone was deeply concerned about how the Church, in his lifetime, was becoming more concerned with political power, wealth and prestige rather than servanthood, poverty and humility. He saw this as a betrayal of the Gospel of Christ and wrote several heartfelt laudi, both denouncing and expressing pain over the condition of the Church:
Or se parrà chi averà fidanza! (‘Now we'll see who has faith’ no. L)
La Veretate piagne (‘The Truth weeps’, no. LI)
Iesù Cristo se lamenta (‘Jesus Christ laments’, no. LII)
Piagne la Ecclesia (‘The church weeps’, no. LIII)
We’re told Jacopone was excommunicated and imprisoned for his conflict with Boniface VIII and this is true, in part, but another reason – perhaps the most important reason – was his strong criticism of the direction of the Church. Look for instance at these verses from laude L, Or se parrà chi averà fidanza!:
La luna sì è la ecclesia scurata, The moon is the darkened church,
la qual la notte al monno relucìa, which once illuminated the night,
papa e cardenal con lor guidata: guided by the pope and cardinals:
la luce è tornata en tenebrìa; that light has been turned into darkness;
la universitate clericata all the ecclesiastics
è encorsata e pres’ha mala via. gallop madly along an evil path.
O Sire Deo, e chi porrà scampare? Lord God, who can be saved?
Sentiments such as these would not have been well received at the highest levels of the Church and, no doubt, made Jacopone many powerful enemies, of whom Pope Boniface was only one.
Of course, many others in the Church shared Jacopone’s views. Alongside the Church that pursues power and wealth there is always a holy Church that seeks to live by the commandments of Jesus and the ideal of universal love. The support for Jacopone was clearly seen upon the death of Boniface VIII, when his successor, Pope Benedict XI, immediately lifted the excommunication and released the poet from prison. For almost three centuries following his death, in the 1300s, 1400s and 1500s, Jacopone was widely admired and venerated – not just as a poet but as a holy man and a spiritual teacher. During these centuries his mysticism and poetry were considered a precious legacy of the Church.
Sentiments such as these would not have been well received at the highest levels of the Church and, no doubt, made Jacopone many powerful enemies, of whom Pope Boniface was only one.
Image of Jacopone in the initial ‘A’ of the laude ‘Amor de caritate’ in a 15th-century manuscript, Biblioteca Riccardiana Florence Ms 2762 fol 1r (public domain)
Of course, many others in the Church shared Jacopone’s views. Alongside the Church that pursues power and wealth there is always a holy Church that seeks to live by the commandments of Jesus and the ideal of universal love. The support for Jacopone was clearly seen upon the death of Boniface VIII, when his successor, Pope Benedict XI, immediately lifted the excommunication and released the poet from prison. For almost three centuries following his death, in the 1300s, 1400s and 1500s, Jacopone was widely admired and venerated – not just as a poet but as a holy man and a spiritual teacher. During these centuries his mysticism and poetry were considered a precious legacy of the Church.
The strongest evidence of enduring respect for Jacopone are almost 350 surviving manuscripts of the 1300s, 1400s and 1500s that contain some or all of his laudi. Undoubtedly many more manuscripts once existed but those that survive are clear evidence that Jacopone’s poetry and spirituality were widely admired. As we will see, his poetry was adopted as texts of spiritual formation by some of the most notable figures in late medieval Christendom, especially in Italy. Jacopone’s use of the Umbrian vernacular limited his impact outside of Italy, but there is evidence that even before the end of the 1300s, his laudi were circulating in Spain and Portugal and were being translated into Spanish.
In Todi there is even earlier evidence of high esteem – and even devotion – for Jacopone. The church of San Silvestro preserves a little-known fresco, widely accepted as the earliest surviving portrait of Jacopone. Dating from just a few years after his death (c.1315-25), this striking fresco depicts Jacopone at prayer and forms part of a larger arrangement featuring various saints and the Madonna. Significantly, in the lower part of the Jacopone portrait is the image of the pious donor, a common convention in medieval portraits of saints, by which the donor seeks the intercession of the saint. These features leave no doubt that Jacopone was at that time regarded as a holy man, on the verge of sainthood.
Frescoes featuring Jacopone in San Silvestro church, Todi. Photo by Andy Halpin.
The same can be said about the much more famous portrait of Jacopone in the cathedral of Prato in Tuscany. It was painted in 1436 by the great Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello and is almost certainly related to the preaching of Saint Bernardino of Siena in Prato, shortly after Jacopone’s remains had been rediscovered in Todi in 1433. As we will see, Bernardino was a great admirer of Jacopone. Uccello’s painting is titled “Beato [i.e. Blessed] Jacopo da Todi” – again, clearly indicating that Jacopone was regarded as holy and close to sainthood.
Bartolomeo of Pisa was one of the earliest historians of the Franciscan movement. In his great work, De Conformitate Vitae… (c1385) Bartolomeo devotes a lot of space to Jacopone, whom he described as “a man of wonderful sanctity, burning with the love of God”. He quotes Jacopone’s teaching on love, humility, reason, conscience, patience and various other moral and spiritual issues, and clearly regards Jacopone as a trusted and valuable source of instruction. Bartolomeo tells us that Jacopone “suffered much” under Pope Boniface but seeks to explain this in terms of the Pope being “badly informed”. Finally, he informs us that, at the time of writing, Jacopone’s body lay “not in the place of the friars [i.e. San Fortunato], but in the monastery of the Clarisse sisters of Montesanto”.
The Franciscan Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) was one of the most important figures in late medieval Italy. A hugely influential preacher and reformer, he traveled throughout Italy, drawing huge crowds to his sermons. Bernardino visited Todi in 1426 and stayed for two months. This was an unusually long stay for a preacher in such high demand and was almost certainly related to his well-known admiration for Jacopone.
Paolo Uccello: ‘Beato Iacopo da Todi’, Prato cathedral. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Bernardino frequently quoted Jacopone in his sermons “to the point of reciting entire lauds from the pulpit”, according to Franciscan historian Marino Bigaroni. Fr Bigaroni also tells us that Bernardino “showed such interest in the figure and writings of Jacopone that he copied out in his own hand perhaps the entire laudario in one of those books in which he had collected the sources dearest to him and most necessary to use ... The manuscript today preserves only 28 laudi, but the mutilation of 78 leaves, after the twenty-eighth laude, leads us to believe that Bernardino originally copied the entire laudario”.
Saint Bernardino of Siena Preaching by Lo Scheggia. Birmingham Museum of Art. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The first printed edition of Jacopone's laudario, by the Florentine priest and printer Francesco Bonaccorsi in 1490, is another major landmark in our story. The publication itself is hugely important – without it, we would probably know nothing certain about Jacopone's poetry today. Bonaccorsi went to extraordinary lengths to research and publish a reliable text of the laudi, excluding material that had wrongly been attributed to Jacopone and establishing what became the accepted sequence and numbering of the laudi. His work is regarded as the editio princeps, the definitive version of the laudi. The fact that such an important figure as Bonaccorsi (the first printer of some of Dante’s work, as well as the sermons of Savonarola) would devote so much time and energy to this project is, itself, a strong indication of the respect in which Jacopone was held in Renaissance Florence.
Remains of Pammatone, Genoa’s oldest hospital, which Catherine managed for many years. Photo by Stefano15, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510), a lay woman, was a mystic, visionary and author of important texts of Christian doctrine that have become classics. She lived an intense contemplative life, while remaining immersed in charity and care for the sick and the poor. Catherine had a deep love for Jacopone’s laudi and used them as one of the main sources of spiritual formation for herself and her followers. As we will see later, Catherine later became an important piece of our jigsaw, the story we are reconstructing.
St Philip Neri, by Carlo Dolci, c.1645. Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0, via Wikimedia Common
Saint Philip Neri (1515-95) is a popular saint who was also a very influential figure in his lifetime. Born in Florence, he lived most of his life in Rome, where he made such an impact that he is often referred to as the ‘Apostle of Rome’. Philip had a great passion for Jacopone’s Laudi , which played an important role both in his own spiritual life and in the spiritual exercises of the congregation he founded, the Oratory. Philip had Jacopone’s Laudi set to music by his friend, the composer Giovanni Animuccia. Philip was probably also the driving force behind the publication, in Rome in 1558, of a new edition of the entire Laudario of Jacopone, by one of his followers, Giovanni Battista Modio.
Federico Cesi. Wellcome Library, London. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Federico Cesi (1585-1630), Duke of Aquasparta and a cousin of bishop Angelo Cesi of Todi, was an important early natural scientist who founded Europe’s first scientific academy, the Accademia dei Lincei. Galileo was an early member of the Accademia, which published some of his works and supported him in his disputes with the Church. Far from being opposed to faith, however, Cesi was a deeply spiritual man and the Accademia operated on a quasi-religious basis, combining prayer with scientific activity. Cesi was profoundly influenced by the spirituality of St Francis and of Jacopone, in particular.
An interesting thing to note about many of these later persons (Bonnacorso, Philip Neri, Modio, Cesi) is that none of them were Franciscans or even particularly close to the Franciscan movement. It’s clear that by the late 1400s and 1500s, Jacopone’s spirituality was appreciated and valued far beyond his own Franciscan world.
But this was about to change.