Getting to know the real Jacopone through recommended reading

We begin this column on getting to know the real Jacopone with an introduction to the Jacopone da Todi Bibliographic Research and Database Project and a list of recommended readings on his life, spirituality and poetry.

The Jacopone da Todi Bibliographic Research and Database Project

Below you will find a list of recommended books on Jacopone’s life, spirituality and poetry. Why do we recommend these particular books?  Some years ago we began a systematic search for all publications dedicated to Jacopone produced since the beginning of the 20th century.  By the end of 2020, we had collected more than 1000 references.  These are available in a searchable database here.

The research produced two major surprises: Firstly, there is a very large amount of work on Jacopone by non-Italian writers or published outside of Italy and secondly, there appears to be a discrepancy between Italian and non-Italian research.  The stereotyped and often negative picture of Jacopone, still being presented by much Italian scholarship, contrasts with the more appreciative and positive assessment of international writers.  These widely differing views are the reason for this column on “The Real Jacopone”.  In future editions of our newsletter we hope to continue the process of rediscovering Jacopone – the man, the poet, and the mystic.  We hope you will join us in the journey!

Our research was published in 2022 by the prestigious American periodical, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures in a paper entitled “The International Contribution to the Study of Jacopone da Todi” (Vol. 48, no. 2,  pp 205-242).  Copies of this paper can be obtained via the following websites (both require a subscription):

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/2/article/864845

https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/jmrc/issue/48/2

Here we present the text of the paper.

The text in English

The text in Italian

Recommended readings on Jacopone da Todi’s life, spirituality and poetry.

Estelle Zunino’s Conquêtes littéraires et quete spirituelle – Jacopone da Todi (1230[?]-1306), published in Paris in 2013 by Presse de l’Université Paris Sorbonne.

Evelyn Underhill’s Jacopone da Todi, poet and mystic, 1228-1306:  A spiritual biography, published in London in 1919 by J.M. Dent & Sons.

An Italian translation of Underhill's book, by Claudio and Massimo Peri, was published in Todi in 2019 by Tau Editrice.

Alessandro Vettori’s Poets of Divine Love – Franciscan mystical poetry of the thirteenth century, published in New York in 2004 by Fordham University Press.

Claudio Peri’s Mistico del futuro – la storia vera di Jacopone da Todi, published in Perugia in 2022 by Fabrizio Fabbri Editore.

Alvaro Cacciotti’s La teologia mistica di Jacopone da Todi, published in Milan in 2020 by Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana.

Translations of Jacopone’s Laudi

1. The English translation by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes, Jacopone da Todi: The Lauds, published in New York in 1982 by Paulist Press.

2. The French translation by Maxime Castro, Jacopone da Todi: Laudes, published in Paris in 2013 by Les Belles Lettres.

3. The Italian version by Claudio Peri, Jacopone da Todi: Laudi, published in Perugia in 2020 by Fabrizio Fabbri Editore.

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