Course XXV - Teaching 9: Mystical Poetry of Jacopone di Todi

Jacopone di Todi is called ascetic because his spiritual path was a continuous effort to be near God, but because of his inner spirit of sublime sacrifice, he never reached the mystical state of Divine Union.
Usually asceticism is mistaken for mystique; in the candidate, asceticism marks his effort, with practice of purgative and loving exercises and theoretical study of different ways to reach perfection, from its beginning until reaching the contemplation; while in mystique he even penetrates into the Divine Union through volitive practice and ecstatic rapture.
In asceticism there is effort and fight, because there is duality; Being and his Pure Essence; man and God; while in mystique there is calm and tranquility because there is unity; the small flame joined to the great Divine flame; a man is as if melted in God.
Christians ascetics have had as basis of their spiritual lives in the path, the Imitation of Christ, and in particular Franciscans have chosen the Imitation of Christ poor and crucified, to such extent that Saint Francis of Assisi was called: Alter Christus, and he took in his body signals of the Passion.
But Jacopone di Todi, who also was Franciscan, took as centre of his aims and example of love and sorrows –the ascetic life– the Virgin of Sorrows.

Stabat Mater dolorosa The Sorrowful and tearful Mother
Juxta Crucem lachrymosa stayed at the foot of the cross
Dum pendebat Filius. from which his son would hang.

The female image is ever inspiring him: it is his life, muse and sanctity.
Through the image of the idealized woman he learns how to love, is driven to write and create, he moans and despairs, and embraces the perfect life.
In his childhood he loves his mother over all things.
Jacopone di Todi was born in 1228 and his mother is the center of his whole attention and affection. He is educated very carefully, as usual among the Nobles of those times, and instructed in the art of well writing and waging war.
His hard and manly soul rebels at disciplines, so he only would find cal in the love of his sweet mother. His verses indicate so:

Ben veglio che ama el figlio One properly sees the son loving
Lo patre per natura his father by nature
E Matre con dolzura but giving to his mother all
Tutto suo cuor el dona. his heart with sweetness.

His father was steady, with harsh character and his only thought was to give to his son a true education, which was not an easy things in those times when the Italian language was still unfinished and in the peninsula they spoke Latin, Provençal and local idioms; even Jacopone would be a forerunner, along with Brunetto, of the Gentil language that culminated with Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio; also, the division of Italy into small states and always in war among them, required great expertness in the art of war, strategy and jurisprudence. Benedetti did not free his son of punishments and disciplines to kill in him his rebellious impulses, and his trend to current daydreams in childhood and adolescence.
In those moments of inner storm he always would find care and protection in her mother’s arms, and was more and more attached to her by strong ties of love.
He was more and more distant from his father, even to the extent of hating him. He confesses:

Staba a pensare I was thinking
Mío Pater morerse If my father died
eh io piú non staesse I would not be tied any more
a questa brigata. to these duties.

But in spite of all, he could not avoid the influence and authority of his father that forced him to go to schools and to study steadily until his doctorate in laws, in the University of Bolognia. And not for one day, but for forty years he worked as a lawyer and solicitor in his fatherland by devoting himself to his profession with enthusiasm.
Had the rebel died? Did a calm man replace the fiery youngster? Now would not he think of abandoning those things that annoyed him so much?
Seemingly yes.
In 1267, coming now to his forties, Jacopone married Vanna, the daughter of the Counts of Coldimiezzo; and his entire love for his mother passed now to his wife. She was young, beautiful, kind and discreet, and with a promising charm of full happiness.
Jacopone continued revering the Female Image in that of his wife, being near her with entire dedication and tender and honest devotion.
But in 1268, something terrible occurred. The inhabitants of Todi in the main square offered a great feast; on the box for ladies, the young wife of the poet would shine among all of them. Jacopone took part in the jury, and rather admired the beauty of his Vanna than the very tournament.
But soon this vision and feast are interrupted by an infernal noise, followed by great panic.
The box for ladies collapsed and the whimsical destiny has taken only one victim: Jacopone’s wife. Vana is sorely wounded, and he tries to save her by calling her with sweet names, entreating her not to abandon him, and offering his own life for hers. But when serenity and acceptance of death dignify her face, Jacopone feels the darkest despair.

Cuis animam gementem That soul that would weep
Contristatam et dolentem in sadness and sorrow
Pertransivit gladius. was pierced by a sword.

He had to remember this painful moment in his life while writing the second stanza of his “Stabat Mater”.
In this painful darkness, Jacopone would feel fatally wounded; but death is life and after this terrible trial he is converted and starts a new life.
His religious conversion awakens at the same time his old personality, which seemingly was annihilated; the poet, the rebel, the saint and, first of all, the ascetic emerges again.
From now on, the man of God never will give up; here his ascetic path starts that only will be over with the end of his life.
The center and end of Jacopone di Todi’s ascetic path is Mary, the Sorrowful.
From the sweet love for his mother and from the fiery love for his wife, he passes to the love for the sweet mother of God. The Divine Mother triumphs over him by giving herself as the goal of his search and of his love for the Image of the Lady whom neither time throws down, nor wind scatters, nor years change, nor death removes.
The strong and manly heart of Jacopone, his stressed manliness, yields before the Mother of God at the moment when she expresses her Great Sorrow.
When people speak of God, he cannot but remember Him as the implacable and righteous judge that measures man with the iron stick, ready to punish the Earth; if it is true that he wrote the “Dies Irae”, as some historian holds, his religious concept can be seen properly; when he speaks of Jesus, he sees in Him the Great King, the incomparable Savior that redeemed men with his blood and death in the Cross.
But when he speaks of Mary, when he songs his sorrow, he is moved and sweetened, sheds tears and his heart experiences an unstoppable wave of compassion and tenderness.
The Lady of Sorrow becomes his center, and he goes toward Jesus Crucified and the perfection through the Mother’s tears.
In Her pursuit, he has strength to abhor the world and his past life, and for Her he does penitence and mortifies himself and destroys the old man.
She inspires his eagerness to leave aside his own will and his intense desire to delete his sins. The repentance bursts.

Qui est homo qui non fleret Which man does nor cry
Matrem Christi si videret If he sees the Mother of Christ
In tanto suplicio? Suffering so much?

Conversion and Holy Love make of him a poet.
In many people’s view, Jacopone began writing poetry only after his conversion; but seemingly even before that time, even when by stealth, he wrote verses. A poet does not make himself, he is born. His Lauds written in Italian and his Hymns written in Latin tell us that so outstanding writer cannot become in only one day.
The “Stabat Mater”, attributed to other authors, now is recognized as his own work.
In the beginning of his conversion, Jacopone intends to live a more perfect life. Initially his ascetic path consists in hating a lot capital sins, and in constant struggle, fear and mortification against temptations, in order to persevere in his purposes. Seemingly he continues to be as before, but a complete change is occurring within.
From 40 to 50 years of age, he goes slowly, as if he feared the great renunciation, but he goes ahead and understands that Forum, comfortable living, friends, his home city of Todi, all of them are ties that impede his total dedication to God.
He reveals his wishes of becoming a friar, but his friends dissuade him time and again: a man in his fifties is not able any more to adapt himself to the austere life of cloisters; also he is in the position of doing much good remaining in secular life, writing poetry, carrying out his duties and being an exemplar of religious life.
He hesitates and does not know what to decide.
He fears that following that way he will waste his time in vain, and at the same time a life of so much sacrifice scares him.
In those days, in the center of Italy there were many comments about the conversion of Margarita of Cortona, who from court life has entered the Third Order of Saint Francis and lived among rigors of penitence, ecstasies and divine revelations. Everywhere people would run to Cortona in order to see this mystic at her humble cell.
Jacopone decides to go and consult her. Perchance did not people say Jesus had conversed with her from a cross, calling her “poor sinner of mine”, and from that day on he had honored her with titles of “Daughter and wife of mine”?
Better than her, who could tell to him an orienting word?
As always it is a woman who guides Jacopone’s steps.
He went to Cortona and from the ecstatic human’s lips he heard the confirmation of his religious vocation.
In 1278, Jacopone di Todi entered the Order of Minor Friars, but just as a lay, for spirit of humility. Wearing Saint Francis’ coarse woolen cloth, always he recognizes himself as the old sinner and he treats himself as such, looking down on himself and desiring to be despised by all.
His ascetic path is dry and hard, without hope of rest and rewards on the Earth.
On this path he has to find only sorrow, penitence, scourges and renunciations; he will deserve only the sadness, chalice, gall and tears of the Passion.

Eia Mater, fons amoris Oh Mother, fountain of love
Me sentiri nimis doloris may I feel much your sorrows
Fac, ut tecum lugeam. make me cry with you.

When Jacopone gets a truce in his terrible struggles and trials, he consents only one rest, only one good: the bleeding love of the Cross, to be able to reproduce in his mind, heart and flesh the swords of the Lady of Sorrow, and the sores of Christ.

Sancta Matter, istud agas, Saint Mother, make
Crucifixi fige plagas the sores of the crucified one
Corde Meo valide. be fixed in my heart forever.

External and internal pleasures are over. He rejects the delight of any eventual quiet, because he wants to be concentrated on his ascetic sorrow until his death: “Donec ego vixero”.
For him his whole delight will be in Heaven, with his Divine Mother, after Death, if God Judge absolves him from his sins.
In the convent, he wishes to live as a simple lay by carrying out the humblest tasks.
This is not enough for him.
He wants to be vilified, despised and taken for a lunatic.
He wants to stay with the few, with the most humble and with the strictest.
His ascetic path is desolation, and he joins to the “Spirituals”. These “Spirituals” were certain Franciscans who wished to live the rules and primitive costumes of the Order: To live a rigorous life and to possess absolutely nothing. It was led by the venerable Pedro de Juan de Oliva, and Jacopone di Todi joined to them. But we wished to live a most austere and detached life, so he joined the Franciscans, called Coelestini Franciscans, named like that because, by forming an independent group of the Conventual Order, were approved by the Pope Coelestinus V in 1294.
But this group was dissolved by Boniface VIII when the latter became Pope.
Some of them came back to the Franciscans with the Blessed Conrado di Offida; but others rebelled openly against it, Friar Jacopone among them.
Jacopone’s path is already defined; this rebel must live wandering, being always persecuted, always relentlessly harried, always escaping; with no hope of rest.
He was not an enemy of Boniface VIII as Pope but as alleged usurper of Papacy; seemingly more for spirit of companionship with those men belonging to his Order of Eremites that was abolished because they believed the Pope’s election had been truly invalidated.
Obviously even he did not expect much of Coelestinus V as the Pope, since one of his poems said:

Che farni, Pier da Marrone What will you do, Pier da Marrone
Sei Venuto al paragone? Now that you have been tested?

And in 1297, he participates in the meeting of Lunghezza with the Colonnas and their followers, Deodato Ricci and Benedicte di Perussa, by signing the manifesto in opposition to Boniface VIII.
In 1298, the Papal militia occupies Palestine, Colonnas’ stronghold, where the opponents are, and Jacopone is taken prisoner.
He stays in prison for five long years and is liberated on Christmas of 1303, by Benedict XI.
Three years are left, for he will end his days on Christmas of 1306.
He died at the Convent of the Clarissas of Calazzone.
Again the good sisters assisted him at his last hour, being his only shelter in this poor world. His biographers say his heart burst because of his intense desire of Heaven. This path could not end but with a fire, a fire of love, which would open him the doors of Heaven, of the Divine Union.