Poets of Divine Love: The Rhetoric of Franciscan Spiritual Poetry 9780823223251

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ADVISO TO READER
INTRODUCTION
1 Theater of Nudity
2 Mysticism of Sexual Union
3 Harmony of the Cosmos
4 Origins of the Canon
5 Theology of Ravishment
6 Ecstasy of Agapic Love
7 Symphony of the Ineffable
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

Poets of Divine Love

FORDHAM SERIES IN MEDIEVAL STUDIES Richard F. Gyug, series editor 1. Richard F. Gyug., ed., Medieval Cultures in Contact. 2.Teodolinda Barolini and H.Wayne Storey, eds., Dante for the New Millennium.

POETS OF DIVINE LOVE Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century ALESSANDRO VETTORI

Fordham University Press New York 2004

Copyright © 2004 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham Series in Medieval Studies, No. 3 ISSN 1542-6378

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vettori,Alessandro. Poets of divine love : Franciscan mystical poetry of the thirteenth century / Alessandro Vettori.—1st ed. p. cm.—(Fordham series in medieval studies ; no. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8232-2325-6 1. Francis, of Assisi, Saint, 1182–1226. I.Title. II. Series. BX4700.F6V43 2004 242—dc22 2003024725

Printed in the United States of America 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

This book is dedicated to Mary Bly, without whose continued support, loving encouragement, and editorial advice, it would not have been accomplished.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments Adviso to Reader Introduction

ix xi xiii Part One

1. Theater of Nudity 2. Mysticism of Sexual Union 3. Harmony of the Cosmos

3 40 59

Part Two 4. 5. 6. 7.

Origins of the Canon Theology of Ravishment Ecstasy of Agapic Love Symphony of the Ineffable

79 112 145 172

Conclusion

193

Appendix Cantico di frate sole The Canticle of the Sun Sources of the “Canticle of Brother Sun” Daniel 3:51–90 Psalm 148

197 197 199

Bibliography Index

205 219

200 203

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am profoundly grateful to Paolo Valesio for guiding me through the initial stages of this work, to H.Wayne Storey for reading and critiquing the manuscript, and to Loren Valterza for proofreading it.

ADVISO TO READER All primary texts by Francis of Assisi and Iacopone da Todi appear in the original Italian as well as in an English translation.Whenever the translations adopted stray too much from the Italian, I have substituted my own literal translation and indicated so.The texts of Francis’s hagiographies appear only in the English translation, while those of Iacopone’s hagiographies, for which no English translation exists, appear in both the original Italian and my English translation. Quotations from the Bible appear only in English, unless a discussion of the Latin terms in the Vulgate (the text with which Francis and Iacopone were familiar) is crucial to my argument.With one exception, secondary literature appears in its original language.The titles of individual documents taken from the Franciscan Legenda are those adopted by the most recent English translation, entitled Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vols. 1–3, edited by Regis J.Armstrong, J.A.Wayne Hellman, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999–2001).

INTRODUCTION Francis of Assisi and Iacopone da Todi stand alone as the only two Franciscan poets in the Italian literary canon.1 Both belong to the beginning period of the Franciscan Order: one at the beginning of the thirteenth century and the dawn of Italian poetry and literature; the other at the end of the thirteenth century, after the canonical tradition of Italian poetry has already been established.They flank the inceptive century of Italian literature and of the Franciscan Order, and mark crucial stages in both. Francis founded the Order and gave it his name. Iacopone fought in favor of a radical understanding of the rule of poverty and witnessed the divisiveness and turmoil of the Order resulting from opposing interpretations of it; he literally battled papal troops to defend his idea of poverty. The two thirteenth-century friars share Franciscanism, Umbrian origin and language, radicalism in the interpretation of the rule of poverty, and literary inclinations.They also write in the same poetic genre of lauda and use similar thematic and rhetorical structures and images; they have common spiritual roots and depend on the same biblical sources for inspiration.2 The two poets diverge in their approach to the material world and in their emphasis on different aspects of the Christian faith.The luminous, positive perspective of Francis of Assisi contrasts the somber, pessimistic theological outlook of Iacopone da Todi.The peaceful, appeased melody of “The Canticle of Brother Sun” opposes the fiery, tormented rhythm of numerous Iacoponian laude.3 The poetic productions of Francis and Iacopone reflect the two opposite sides of the Franciscan theological spectrum and of Christian theology. “Originality” is a term that not only characterizes Francis’s and Iacopone’s poetry but applies as well to their spiritual positions within the Church. Franciscanism as a rejuvenating movement aspired to revive the spirituality of Christian origins; both Francis and Iacopone strove to liberate the Church from the weighty temporal impediments of materiality and corruption, which had obfuscated the freshness of its beginnings.4 The two poets share an awareness of inchoation, which from a consciously theoretical point of view remains unexpressed in their poetry, but

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surfaces through other concepts and images; both are aware of operating at the beginning of the Italian literary tradition. As friars, they mark the initial stages of the Franciscan Order. Franciscanism as such aims to reach back to the apostolic period of Christianity at its beginning steps and imitate its purity and poverty. Poverty itself bespeaks the beginning stages of humanity. It posits the need to eliminate encumbering obstacles and reduce reality to the tabula rasa that originally characterized the primeval world. Such preference for origins is often a trait of converts, persons who turn their lives around and start afresh with new goals and a renovated perspective—and Francis and Iacopone, as mystics, are first of all converts. This obsession with the beauty and purity of inchoation invites in both Franciscans a predilection for the primordial stages of humanity, which the Judeo-Christian tradition identifies with the myth of cosmic creation, and the Christian Church at the beginning of its history emulates and reflects.The new Franciscan beginning in the thirteenth century designated poverty as its pivotal source of renewal. It is the virtue of poverty (neither a cardinal nor a theological virtue, but a necessary Christian virtue for Franciscanism nonetheless) that identifies the mission of both mystics, who experience in themselves the unrelenting tension toward the humble condition of the apostolic community at the dawn of Christianity. Besides implying a return to the “origins” as symbol of a pure, uncontaminated past,“originality” signifies the creative, inventive establishment of a fresh, novel element, such as poetry in the vernacular was in thirteenth-century Italy.The lyrical texts of Francis and Iacopone mark the beginning of literary production in Italian—at least in the realm of religious poetry.5 Writing vernacular poetry about God constitutes that daring endeavor, which the two Franciscan poets introduce in the Italian canon before Dante.6 Francis and Iacopone also share the same literary genre.“The Canticle of Brother Sun,” Francis’s only attributable poetic text in the vernacular, is a lauda. Iacopone wrote the Laude, a collection of more than one hundred poems in the genre of lauda. By Francis’s time, and even more so by Iacopone’s, lauda was a well-established poetic genre and a popular form of prayer.7 The Latin lauda had its roots in liturgy. It derived from the Gospel acclamation, the Hallelujah, during Mass. Lauda also was, and still is, the name assigned to the morning canonical prayer, Lauds, in the divine office.8 Possibly as early as the ninth century, small congregations of Christians gathered to sing religious songs to the Virgin Mary and devote themselves to charitable activities.They came to be known as laudesi

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from the laude they sang.The lauda gradually acquired independence from the liturgical context, but it was only in the thirteenth century that the genre achieved its own literary status, as the vernacular gradually replaced Latin as principal language of the laude.The birthplace of laude in Italian was Umbria, the region of Francis and Iacopone.9 In 1233,“the year of Hallelujah,” numerous groups of penitents crowded the roads of central and northern Italy, drawn by the examples of Giovanni da Vicenza, Benedetto, and other religious leaders, who had issued a call to conversion in view of the symbolic twelve-hundredth anniversary of the death of Christ.These penitents sang very simple laude in the vernacular as they walked the length of the Italian peninsula soliciting others to repent.The name lauda, which originally referred to praiseful songs in Latin or in the vernacular, was also applied to these songs of repentance.A second wave of religious fervor swept across northern and central Italy between 1258 and 1260, following the call to contrition initiated by the Perusian Ranieri Fasani and his Flagellant Movement. Inspired by Joachim of Flora’s apocalyptic calculations regarding the imminent coming of the era of the Spirit, the Flagellants, together with other more or less spontaneous groups known as Disciplinati and Battuti, walked and sang laude along the roads of Italy, while scourging their seminaked bodies as a sign of penance for the remission of sins.Alessandro D’Ancona views the lauda as the popular, proletarian counterpart of the solemn liturgical hymn, and attributes its wide dissemination to the spreading of the Flagellant Movement in the second half of the thirteenth century. For D’Ancona, the Flagellants’ combination of walking, singing, and scourging also represents the seed of theatrical representation in the Italian tradition.10 Some of Iacopone’s laude clearly belong in this dramatic strain, the most renowned of them being “Donna de Paradiso,” which narrates the scene of Christ’s Passion in dialogic form and was intended to instruct illiterate Christians on this fundamental happening in their faith. The vernacular lauda was a rather primitive poetic form.Thanks to its inelegant, rough quality it could occupy a crucial position as a means of spiritual and moral growth among the lower classes.What the mendicant movements did on a sociological level, the lauda did on a catechetical level.The advent of the mendicant movements, later formalized in the two main mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, helped to fill the wide gap that existed between the official ecclesiastical hierarchy and the uneducated, illiterate congregations. Likewise, the lauda provided a form of prayer both accessible and comprehensible to the majority of the people, and, while serving as a penitential chant, was a

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much-needed instrument of spiritual elevation and instruction. In this sense, the limited literary value of the lauda constituted one of its main merits, since simplicity increased its accessibility. The literary value of the approximately two hundred extant laudari in Latin and in the vernacular remains negligible.The laudari are miscellaneous collections of laude, which were put together by anonymous authors or redactors for the moral and spiritual edification of the laudesi and their audience.Thanks to Iacopone’s canzoniere the vernacular lauda rises from its status as simple popular song to an acclaimed poetic genre, with an acknowledged position in the literary and cultural canons.11 In the hands of Iacopone the genre of lauda loses its strictly praising or repentant purposes and becomes a malleable religious poetic medium. Despite the variety of his topics and poetic structures, Iacopone’s collection of Laude ought to be read as an orchestrated canzoniere, a corpus poeticum with an internal progression and development, not simply as a compilation of autonomous texts attributed to a single author and compiled together under a common title.The editio princeps assembled in Florence in 1490 by an anonymous redactor and published by Francesco Bonaccorsi still functions as the authoritative text.12 Given Francis’s and Iacopone’s passion for inchoation, it is the Bible, the book to which they most frequently refer, that can help to identify certain common traits of their poetic work; in particular, for the two poets, the most crucial of biblical texts is the Book of Genesis.According to the JudeoChristian tradition, the Book of Genesis is the biblical book that relates cosmogony to the advent of human beings in the world by giving an account of how God-the-Creator made all existing things, including human beings.13 The text relates in a relatively short narrative how the most fundamental anthropological components of human life manifested themselves: it explains how humans abandoned their original nudity and started wearing clothes; it accounts for mankind’s dialectic and for its sociable nature through the division of humanity into two different but complementary genders; it testifies to the beginning of human linguistic formulation by the naming of created things as an act of possession; it narrates the breaking of a mythical harmony between human beings and nature as a consequence of an act of human independence and freedom; and it explains pain and suffering as a consequence of human disobedience of a divine command. A clear-cut division is evident in the text of creation between “before” and “after” the human act of self-determination.The watershed is temporal as well as topographic and existential.“Before,” humans enjoyed the

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careless otium of Earthly Paradise; their life consisted in a harmonious relation with God, among themselves, as well as between themselves and other created things.14 Nudity metaphorically mirrors the peaceful life of human beings in Eden.“After” their rebellion, they cover themselves and conceal their bodies and themselves from the gaze of God.The separation from God that human beings experience after they are expelled from Eden will be extended to a separation among human beings in the account of the Tower of Babel, when the confusion of tongues will render communication difficult, if not impossible. Linguistic ambiguity and miscommunication in fact began with the act of concealment in Earthly Paradise.When humans discover that they have something to hide, their language becomes obscure and vague.There is no direct correlation between Yahweh’s question:“Where are you?” and Adam’s reply:“I heard the sound of you in the garden. . . . I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” While nakedness stands for straightforwardness and truth, covered bodies signify deliberate concealment. Instead of giving a direct answer that would reveal his mistake,Adam offers the result of his action, from which Yahweh infers his misdeed.Thus the making of loincloths marks the primordial misunderstanding; duplicity of rhetoric originates when humans cover their bodies. Interrupting the immediacy of linguistic communication, which characterized Earthly Paradise before the Fall, corresponds to wearing clothes for the first time. In the dialogue between man and God following the eating of the forbidden fruit, there is a necessity for clarification, a sign that language is duplicitous and not immediately accessible.The clarity and straightforwardness of linguistic communication is lost at the moment of its birth; its myth lives in human imagination only as an archetype. All elements that characterize the myth of biblical creation in the Book of Genesis occur directly or indirectly in the poetry of Francis and Iacopone: the importance of a metaphorical opposition of nakedness and clothing in human anthropology, the concept of human erotic union as symbolic of an inextricable link between human beings and God, and reflection on language, its nature, and its essence.These themes constitute the texture of Franciscan poems of the thirteenth century; they originate in Genesis, the book of biblical origins, and they permeate Franciscan texts of the vernacular origins in Italian.The topoi that Franciscanism borrows from Genesis appear in the poetic production of Francis and Iacopone, and in hagiographic narratives of both mystics’ lives as well. The myth of the origins penetrated Franciscan theology and its mystical thinking to a degree that remains invisible to a macroscopic thematic

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study and begins to surface only when the texts are scrutinized from a rhetorical perspective.Through an analysis of rhetorical microstructures the resemblance with biblical Genesis becomes evident.The harmonious atmosphere of Earthly Paradise transpires through the melodic lyric of these texts and reveals a medieval conception of harmonia as consisting in both melody and universal order. Matrimonial union as representing completion and perfection is a concept that is present in the poetry of both authors. Man and woman are called to form a single entity as it was in the myth of creation; their relation specularly reproduces the link binding God to humans; the togetherness of man and woman reflects God’s image.The opposition of clothing and nakedness metaphorically reveals the sequence of two contrasting conditions in the developing relationship between human beings and God.The language of Iacopone’s poetry is replete with such opposition of clothes and nakedness and highlights a part of Franciscan spirituality that, although not immediately perceptible in “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” is nevertheless a consistent and considerable trait of Francis’s thought and practice.As in the Book of Genesis, in Franciscan rhetoric of the thirteenth century, the opposition of nakedness versus clothedness implies transformation from a pure status to a contaminated one.The regaining of purity requires a reversal of the process, a passing from clothes to nudity. Considerations of nudity, connubial consummation, and harmonious balance in the world, as derived from a reading of Francis’s and Iacopone’s poetic productions in light of Genesis, occupy the first portion of this study. Part One also investigates hagiographic texts in the Franciscan Legenda, as well as accounts of Iacopone’s life, in order to give sufficient proof that the characteristics extrapolated and highlighted in the poetry hold as crucial points also in the lives (legendary and hagiographic though they might be) of the two mystics.The life narratives of Francis and Iacopone cast abundant light on their writings; the thematic trends of biography and poetry intersect and overlap at numerous points. Chapter 1 analyzes nudity as a pivotal concept of Franciscan spirituality at its beginning in the thirteenth century. Chapter 2 considers the metaphorical implications of matrimony viewed from the mystical perspective, offering an analogy with the ineffable relationship of God to human beings.The extensive treatment of ecstatic union in Iacopone’s Laude bears the mark of a long discussion on copulation and matrimony in the mystical realm. Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun” cryptically and obscurely conveys the sense of gender union thanks to the designation of masculine and feminine attributes, but more generally the gender combination structures the accounts

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of Francis’s life in the Legenda as a recurrent paradigm. Chapter 3 examines the role of music in the lyrical texts of the two Franciscan poets by placing it in the perspective of the medieval art known as harmonia, a much more comprehensive and inclusive discipline than the modern acoustic branch of knowledge commonly named “music,” which is produced by voice and instruments. Part Two (chapters 4 to 7) concentrates on textual analyses of Franciscan poetry. Chapter 4 provides a close reading of “The Canticle of Brother Sun” by juxtaposing it to the text of Genesis.The same matrix originates the poetry of Iacopone, whose gloominess and pessimism would at first glance locate his work on the opposite side of the spectrum from Francis’s poetic endeavor.Yet, the Laude projects a similar image of Franciscanism, underscoring the concept of love in all its manifold manifestations. Chapter 5 examines the Laude from the perspective of Iacopone’s banning of erotic love.A recovery of matrimonial union as mirroring the configuration of the mankind-God relation is the subject of chapter 6. The ineffability of ecstatic union and Iacopone’s subsequent attempt to circumvent his own speechlessness make up the greater part of chapter 7. The fact that most of the poetic texts considered are prayers introduces a discussion of their “sacredness” in terms of language as a dialogue that human beings establish with God. Music facilitates the complicated task of communicating verbally with God in prayer.The melody of “The Canticle of Brother Sun” and of Iacopone’s laude that may be classified as prayers poses the question of an understanding of music in medieval terms, as a more comprehensive and extensive philosophical concept of natural and creatural harmony than simply acoustic sound.Through this all-encompassing idea of harmony, Franciscanism evinces the originality of its mission and the novelty of its inspiration. NOTES 1. The traditional spelling “Jacopone” has been replaced in recent criticism by “Iacopone.”This is also the orthographic variation of the poet’s name adopted in this study. 2. The oscillation between the two terms lauda and laude (laude and laudi in the plural) leaves space for a morphological option. In this study the term adopted is lauda (pl. laude), which is more ancient and possibly the one Iacopone himself would have used.This is also the more traditional term critics employ. For reasons of simplicity, Gianfranco Contini’s technical distinction of lauda opposed

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to laude is not followed here. Contini writes:“[t]ecnicamente riceve il nome di lauda (piuttosto che di laude) una canzone a ballo di argomento sacro, con le stanze destinate a un solista o a un gruppo, la ripresa, ovviamente ripetuta dopo ogni stanza, al coro.” Letteratura italiana delle origini (Florence: Sansoni, 1970), 197. 3. Vittore Branca’s edition of “The Canticle of Brother Sun” appeared in Il Cantico di Frate Sole: Studio delle fonti e testo critico (Florence: Olschki, 1950), 82–87. It was published again in Francesco d’Assisi: Gli scritti e la leggenda, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Milan: Rusconi, 1983), 181, and is the text utilized in this study. The English translation of Francis’s poem adopted here is by Joseph Tusiani, The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry (New York: Baroque Press, 1974), 35. Both the original Italian text and the English translation can be found in the appendix. 4. The striking similarities between thirteenth-century Franciscanism and the apostolic stages of Christianity are emphasized by Stanislao da Campagnola in his discussion of Francis as Alter Christus. Stanislao da Campagnola also quotes a renowned aphorism by Niccolò Machiavelli (Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio 3.1) as an explanation of Franciscan radical reform:“quanto rimane, oggi, di spirito cristiano nel mondo, risale per la più gran parte, dopo i Vangeli, al francescanesimo ordinario.” L’angelo del sesto sigillo e l’ “Alter Christus” (Rome: Laurentianum Antonianum, 1971), 50. 5. In his study of the advent of Italian melody, Fernando Liuzzi underlines the role of Francis as the initiator of religious lyric in the vernacular. He writes: “[È] certo che a San Francesco risale il più antico esperimento conosciuto di lirica religiosa volgare: che egli dunque fu il primo in Italia, o dei primissimi, a staccare l’espressione dell’amor sacro dal tronco millenario della lingua e della melodia ecclesiastica.” La lauda e i primordi della melodia italiana, vol. 1(Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1935), 12. 6. Frate Guittone’s poetry may more aptly be classified under the category of moral (if not moralistic) literature. 7. Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun” belongs in the genre, since its principal purpose consisted of “praising God,” which represents the original, etymological meaning of lauda.Although the genre already existed, according to George T. Peck, Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun” is “a landmark in the development of the form.” The Fool of God: Jacopone da Todi (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 64. 8. An excellent introduction to the development of lauda in Italian literature is offered by Giulio Bertoni,“La lirica religiosa,” in Storia della letteratura italiana: Il Duecento, ed. Giulio Bertoni (Milan:Vallardi, 1954), 213–36. Meticulously detailed information on the rise of lauda to a literary genre is provided by Emilio Pasquini, “La lauda,” in Il Duecento: Dalle origini a Dante, vol. 1, ed. Emilio Pasquini and Antonio Enzo Quaglio (Bari: G. Laterza, 1970), 479–548. For the liturgical aspect of lauda, see Mario Righetti, Storia liturgica, vol. 2 (Milan:Ancora, 1955), 407–8.

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9. The Umbrian (in fact, more specifically,Assisian) origin of lauda is theorized by Arnaldo Fortini, who begins his unsurpassed study on the genre of lauda by remarking:“Devono essere rivendicati ad Assisi l’origine e lo sviluppo della lauda italiana.” La lauda in Assisi e le origini del teatro italiano (Assisi: Edizioni Assisi, 1961), 7. 10. Alessandro D’Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, vol. 1 (Turin: Loescher, 1891), 112–16. 11. Natalino Sapegno highlights the profound difference between the tradition of popular hymns and laude, which are often worthless from a literary viewpoint, and the high literary value of Iacopone’s production. Frate Iacopone (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1985), 80–81.The question of studying Iacopone’s collection of laude as a canzoniere will be further addressed in chapter 5. 12. The Italian edition used for the present study is Jacopone da Todi: Le Laudi, ed. Luigi Fallacara (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1976), which by admission of its editor reproduces the Bonaccorsi Edition.The translation is by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes, Jacopone da Todi:The Lauds (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). Despite its lack of poeticity and its frequent liberties in rendering the original texts, the Hughes translation remains the only complete English version of the Laude and has therefore been an unavoidable reference point for this study. 13. The first three chapters of the Book of Genesis narrate the creation of the world and describe all that populates it.The striking characteristic of this text is its repetitiveness, since the story of creation is told twice in two consecutive (and, at times, overtly contradictory) accounts: 1–2:4a and 2:4b–3:24.This narrative combines two versions drawn from documents issued in different periods of Jewish history. One, the first of the two accounts, is the Priestly source, which dates from the time of the Babylonian captivity, and displays strong contamination with Babylonian cosmogony.The other is the Yahwistic source, the older of the two traditions, possibly written in Judah in the tenth century and named after Yahweh, the name it uses to designate God.The juxtaposition of two different sources is evident due to repetitions, contradictions, and discrepancies in the two narratives. In the tradition followed by Francis and Iacopone, the whole of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was believed to have been authored by Moses alone. Unless otherwise specified, the Bible text quoted throughout this study is The New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1990). 14. In this study, the expression “Earthly Paradise” has been chosen to designate the locus amoenus, the peaceful site in which human beings resided for a short time after creation and before the Fall. More than other expressions, such as “Garden of Eden”or “Garden of Paradise,” which commonly designate the biblical place of human happiness, the phrase “Earthly Paradise” stresses a paradisiacal dimension on earth and captures the interpretive slant given to the biblical myth of creation in this study. “Earthly Paradise” is also the expression that refers to Dante’s garden at the top of Mount Purgatory, where it evokes the image of a happy place on earth; as such, it is opposed to “Heavenly Paradise,” the spiritual dimension of the saved souls after death.

Part One

1

Theater of Nudity IN 1205 Francis of Assisi stands in the piazza of his hometown, takes off his clothes, and walks completely naked before his fellow citizens. He stands naked before the people and naked before God. This undressing publicly is a crucial occurrence in the Saint’s life that later becomes a cultural icon of the Franciscan movement. Its defiance of Western social and moral codes has inspired religious and secular commentaries. Fictional renditions and cinematographic versions of Francis’s life, as well as theological and psychological interpretations of Franciscanism, have exploited this episode to stress Francis’s nonconformist attitude and technique. His public nudity in the square of San Rufino marks the beginning of an innovative theological approach. Revaluation of the human body, previously considered more a hindrance than an instrument of spiritual elevation, starts with the ostentatious display of Francis’s nakedness. The cluster of paradoxes and contradictions inherent in human nudity, particularly in the religious context, have transformed this simple episode of Franciscan hagiography into one of the most referenced and critiqued in the history of medieval mysticism.1 Francis’s act of undressing marks a turning point in his dispute with his father, Pietro di Bernardone. In 1205 Francis begins to act peculiarly. He discontinues his mercantile activity in his father’s business, moves outside the city walls to live with the poor, and works to restore dilapidated churches with his bare hands. Enraged at his son’s transformation and critical of his disreputable lifestyle, Pietro di Bernardone disinherits him, demanding restitution of all family property. Francis takes this request literally. He returns everything he owes, including the clothes his father had provided him.This is how Bonaventure’s Legenda maior narrates the undressing scene: [T]he father of the flesh worked on leading the child of grace, now stripped of his money, before the bishop of the city that he might renounce his family possessions into his hands and return everything he had.The true lover of poverty showed himself eager to comply and went before the bishop without delaying or hesitating. He did not wait for any words nor did he speak any, but immediately took off his clothes and gave them back to his

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father. . . . Moreover, drunk with remarkable fervor, he even took off his trousers, and was completely stripped naked before everyone. He said to his father:“Until now I have called you father here on earth, but now I can say without reservation,‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ since I have placed all my treasure and all my hope in him.” The bishop, recognizing and admiring such intense fervor in the man of God, immediately stood up and in tears drew him into his arms, covering him with the mantle that he was wearing.2

Francis demonstrates a literal understanding of the reality around him. Asked to return all properties no longer belonging to him, he responds with neither mitigation nor compromise.As he had previously responded literally to God’s command to “go and repair” the Church by manually restructuring the dilapidated building of San Damiano, so now, after deciding to embrace poverty, he radically renounces all property, including the clothes he wears.3 A metaphorical understanding of both actions will become manifest to him later. Rebuilding the Church will involve becoming the spiritual reformer of the institution, not renovating a building. Poverty, represented literally by nakedness in front of his father, will signify spiritual purity before God, his supernatural father. The stripping action carries strong symbolic connotations.Theologically, it is significant that the naked Francis receive refuge and shelter in the bishop’s open cloak, which stands for the arms of the Church welcoming a convert. On a psychological level, disrobing and returning his clothes to his father signify repudiation of the earthly paternal role of Pietro di Bernardone, in order to accept more fully the paternal role of God, which has a referent in the bishop and in the bishop’s function in the scene.4 But the return of his clothes to his biological father is even more significant, since Pietro di Bernardone was by trade a cloth merchant and had tried to train his unruly son in the same profession. By giving back his clothes, Francis renounces the family business and its source of wealth. Moreover, in the medieval social context, clothes are a powerful indicator of class and financial status; by giving up his elegant, bourgeois outfit, Francis rejects his privileged walk of life and riches, thereby indirectly questioning class distinctions. Occurring at the moment of the public announcement of his conversion, Francis’s nudity poses itself as a radical application of the rule of poverty, the virtue that later characterizes and distinguishes Franciscanism. Francis’s new form of asceticism presupposes a devotion to radical poverty; it imposes a complete rejection of human artifacts and embellishments, as well as all basic properties, including books and clothes, in

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order to achieve spiritual purity as its highest goal. Literally divesting the body corresponds in a metaphorical sense to donning the soul with purity. Francis applies the rule of poverty to his secular life at conversion; he renounces all possessions and rejects clothes as one of them. But if poverty represents the moving force behind Francis’s socially “scandalous” behavior, his action also has important theological and biblical implications. For the newly converted Francis, nudity signifies a return to the pure state of Eden, where not even a layer of clothing was interposed between human beings and God, and human beings showed their true and dispassionate appearance without hiding their bodies behind the false display of garments. By taking off his clothes, Francis not only implements for the first time the rule of poverty, the virtue on which he will later found his innovative and revolutionary religious Order, but also declares his willingness to suppress any form of subterfuge and artifice. Clothing covers the reality of the human body, and its symbolic meaning in Earthly Paradise was to allow human beings to hide their shame behind a defensive screen. In the same way as they hid themselves from God after the Fall, they covered their bodies under a shield of rudimentary garments. This characteristic understanding of clothing as concealment and refuge also emerges from anthropological studies of human nakedness. For example, Jean Brun writes: “Le vêtement a toujours été une protection et une parure, c’est-à-dire ce par quoi l’homme a cherché à se cacher ou à se transformer; toutefois de telles démarches ne sauraient se ramener purement et simplement à des considérations de confort ou de coquetterie: l’homme a cherché un refuge dans le vêtement ou en a attendu une métamorphose de toute son existence.”5 Clothing offers a screen between human beings and the reality around them; it differentiates humans from other animal species and in this way defines humanity, since other creatures wear no garments.6 As it does in Francis’s case, clothing may also serve as an outward token of an existential transformation. Francis’s disrobing, directly or indirectly, diminishes human superiority over other animals in relation to God, whom he regards as the parent of all creatures, human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate. Denuding represents a preliminary indication of Francis’s theology of reconciliation with the world; all creatures were created equal, and no distinction was made on the basis of clothing. Clothing protects human beings and separates them from one another and from the environment by constructing an anthropological and social barrier between body and space.This function of clothing punctuates

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biblical accounts of early mankind.The dynamic of clothing as coverage and defense is present in the Book of Genesis, as Adam and Eve, pressed by their sense of guilt, shield their bodies behind a layer of garments (3:7b–13). After exercising their free will by eating the forbidden fruit, “they sewed fig-leaves together to make themselves loin-cloths”; then the “man and his wife . . . hid from Yahweh among the trees of the garden” (3:7–8).The ensuing dialogue with Yahweh utilizes projection as a psychological mechanism in order to avoid personal culpability.7 Adam blames Eve, who in turn blames the serpent, thereby hiding behind the transparent and permeable screen of rhetoric. It is significant that the first reported speech of mankind in the biblical tradition plays on the rhetoric of projection: neither Adam nor Eve takes any responsibility for their wrongdoing; instead they find justification for transgressing God’s command by blaming a third party.8 Their hiding behind the screen of rhetoric coincides with their putting on garments for the first time.Their body-covering action metaphorically reproduces their rhetorical circumlocutions, the first astute use of speech by human beings to conceal their wrongful behavior. Complex rhetorical formulations come about when humans start wearing clothes.Thus the two most essentially human characteristics, words and garments, originate at the same moment in the biblical myth.9 In the Bible, a discussion on the topic of nakedness is the first dialogue humans have with God.“I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid,” says Adam. God’s angry reply comes as a surprise: “Who told you that you were naked?” (Gen. 3:10–11).10 It appears that, until this point, communication was a straightforward process in Earthly Paradise, and the necessity for verbal exchange, with all its ambiguity and vagueness, came with mankind’s need to cover up its misdemeanors. In Paolo Valesio’s words:“l’uomo, in quanto ci si presenti come homo loquens, non è mai stato nudo: le prime parole ch’egli ha pronunziato l’hanno subito rivestito della inevitabile armatura del discorso.”11 The acquisition of clothing parallels the ability to articulate rhetorical structures.Words and garments are the shields that hide and protect human beings.The absence of both structures, silence and nakedness (as per the biblical account), slips into the realm of mythological fabrication.12 A symbolic return to the mythical stage of Eden is implicit in Francis’s undressing at the moment of his conversion. After orally manifesting his intention to conduct a different lifestyle, he silently strips off his clothes. His action is surrounded by the silence of the shocked audience.The inevitable theatrics involved in any stripping scene contribute to the effectiveness of

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Francis’s instructing technique. His naked condition can better demonstrate the complete change he has undergone.While shocking his acquaintances and fellow citizens with the scandal of his naked body, Francis symbolically proclaims his conversion and his ambitious goal of returning to the perfect purity of Earthly Paradise.13 If to the bystanders’ impure eyes the unusual action of public stripping should seem scandalous and reprehensible, in the performer’s mind it should bring back the pre-Fall atmosphere of innocence and sinlessness.Theologically speaking, in order to change their iniquitous behavior and return their souls to God, human beings must go back to their primeval essence, which is characterized by nakedness and silence.The human beings’ first action as sinful creatures was getting dressed to cover the shame of their naked bodies, which metonymically represented the truth of their misdeed.Thus conversion demands reversal, as represented by stripping and keeping silent or, at the very least, by changing clothes and practicing silent reflection. In the first dressing scene in the Book of Genesis as well as at the crucial moment of individual conversion, aesthetics reveals the ethics at work in the human soul.14 Francis’s action features a specularly opposed structure and a reversed dynamic if compared with the Fall of Adam and Eve. He aims to surpass humanity’s fallen state and re-create Eden. For Francis the passage is from words and clothes to silence and nudity, whereas Adam and Eve choose the defense of rhetoric and loincloths. By means of this radical act, Francis transmits his desire to reconstruct the peaceful atmosphere of the mythical locus amoenus, in imitating in the medieval cityscape of the Assisan piazza the nakedness of the first human beings. He unites the historicity of his reforming mission with the metahistorical event of undressing.The constant balancing of deep spiritual growth with the practical needs of his historical times inspires this change of landscape.15 By performing the symbolic act in a public square Francis makes manifest the mission statement of his future Order and of the mendicant orders in general, which arose at the beginning of the thirteenth century to fill the spiritual and pastoral needs of the nascent city culture and the bourgeoisie.16 The effectiveness of Francis’s disrobing action depends on its public nature.The “ex-hibition” of one’s body, besides magnifying the event of undressing to the level of public performance, indicates what its accurate etymological sense carries over into the stripping scene, which is a “dismissal of [ex] one’s habit [habitus].”“Ex-hibition” is the public exposure of one’s body by the elimination of clothes, but etymologically it also presupposes the fulfillment of the virtue of poverty, since it is the symbolic (and/or

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literal) elimination of habitus, which has its derivation from habere and means “all possessions.”17 The mythic quality of nakedness is implicit in the uniqueness of Francis’s nude performance. Francis does not, however, persist in his nakedness; for the rest of his converted life he wears the self-designed Franciscan habit, symbolically shaped in the form of a cross to represent his embrace of Christian redemption and salvation.Thomas of Celano gives an account of how Francis designed his tunic:“[H]e made for himself a tunic showing the image of the cross, so that in it he would drive off every fantasy of the demons. He made it very rough, so that in it he might crucify the flesh with its vices and sins. He made it very poor and plain, a thing that the world would never covet.”18 Having abandoned his symbolic Adamic attire, Francis wears a similarly symbolic garment, one that is reminiscent of the New Adam. He shifts from the nakedness of Adam to the cross of Christ.After he wears the symbolic cross-shaped garment during his entire religious life, at the end his body is granted the gift of the stigmata, the five signs of Christ’s Passion.19 The cross has amalgamated with his body and become part of his flesh.The crossshaped tunic has relinquished its place to the signs of the cross engraved on his flesh, the seals that grant Francis the title of Alter Christus.20 Christ was naked at the beginning and at the end of his life, in the manger and on the cross. Nudity also flanks Francis’s converted life.While at the moment of his conversion he performs the stripping act himself in recognition of his willingness to resemble Adam’s and Christ’s nakedness, when he anticipates the moment of his death he requests his fellow friars to undress him.The Legenda maior links Francis’s nakedness at the end of his life to his habitual nakedness: “In all things he wished without hesitation to be conformed to Christ crucified, who hung on the cross poor, suffering, and naked. Naked he lingered before the bishop at the beginning of his conversion; and, for this reason, at the end of his life, he wanted to leave this world naked. And so he charged the brothers assisting him, under the obedience of love, that when they saw he was dead, they should allow him to lie naked on the ground for as long as it takes to walk a leisurely mile.”21 This passage suggests an intentional correlation between Francis’s nudity and that of the crucified Christ, a consciousness of nakedness and its theological significance. Poverty represents the force that inspired him to undress. But since Francis beholds in his mind the crucified body of Christ and attempts to duplicate it, nudity implicitly signifies the debasement and humiliation Christ experienced at the crucifixion.The stigmata, the five referential marks of identification

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with Christ, are already impressed on his body; nakedness at the moment of his death completes the image of Francis as Alter Christus. No other mystic perceived the significance of Christ’s nakedness on the cross with the same intensity and depth as Francis, or attempted to emulate it in his or her own life.22 In other periods of Christian history the phenomenon of nudity is amply documented, but it usually overflows into heretical exaggeration on the part of sects and fanatical groups.23 In medieval culture nakedness was a form of penance and humiliation, so that repentants would display their bodies for purging reasons, in remembrance of the primitive human nakedness of the Book of Genesis.24 Francis’s innovation consists in introducing nakedness as a positive, orthodox addition to Christian theology; he rediscovers it as one of Christ’s virtues linked to poverty and humility; in his hands a naked body becomes a plausible feature of orthodox Christianity, something to be revered and imitated. The crucifix as symbol of Christianity bears the image of a naked man, but it is Francis who unveils and brings new awareness to the concept that worshiping the crucified Christ in reality is veneration of a naked body. While it is stressed by subsequent iconography, Christ’s nakedness appears in Gospel narratives of the Passion only as a cursory mention, and no symbolic interpretation of it is given.The longest passage on Jesus’s garments is found in the Gospel of John:“When the soldiers had finished crucifying Jesus they took his clothing and divided it into four shares, one for each soldier. His undergarment was seamless, woven in one piece from neck to hem; so they said to one another,‘Instead of tearing it, let’s throw dice to decide who is to have it.’ In this way the words of scripture were fulfilled: ‘They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothes’ (Psalm 22:18).That is what the soldiers did” (19:23–24).25 Casting lots for his outfit occurs after the sentence has been carried out; the reader may only infer from this that Jesus now hangs from the cross naked. Rather than highlighting the exposed naked body, this text stresses the violence involved in stealing the crucified’s garments.Taking his clothes and displaying his naked body deprives Jesus of dignity and is intended to add humiliation to his dejected state. Other than this indirect detail, the only other reference to nakedness in the New Testament occurs in the Gospel of Mark; it comes shortly before the crucifixion and refers to a character other than Jesus.26 It is an enigmatic passage, which appears to be more a symbolic detail than a narrative account, almost in the style of a parable.The indecipherable nature of the episode is intensified by the brevity of its narration and the velocity of its occurrence:“And they all

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deserted him and ran away.A young man followed him with nothing on but a linen cloth.They caught hold of him, but he left the cloth in their hands and ran away naked” (14:50–52).This cursory mention of an unidentified young man is both redundant and esoteric. It adds nothing to the narration of Christ’s arrest and crucifixion.27 The young man can be seen as an angelic figure, possibly a figurative alter imago of Christ himself. The sense of liberation conveyed by his wrestling the guards and leaving his garment behind, running away freely, counterbalances Christ’s subjugation and repression at the time of his arrest.28 His nudity serves as anticipation of Christ’s nudity on the cross, a sort of textual prolepsis, which gives the narrative of the crucifixion a circular structure, having nakedness—either metaphorical or literal—at both its ends.29 As Christ’s counterpart, this young man represents an alternative to Christ’s acceptance and passivity, which will lead to his death sentence. A lexical detail appears to substantiate the theory of an anticipation and opposition of the crucifixion in this evasive, fleeing figure.30 The cloth wrapped around the man’s naked body is termed σινδ ων ΄ in the original Greek version, a word - in the Latin vulgate.31 The same term that is simply transliterated as sindon in both Greek and Latin is used for the sheet enveloping Christ’s body at the moment of his entombment.32 Further substantiation of this naked youngster’s metaphorical identification with Christ comes from mystical literature of the late Middle Ages. Meister Eckhart reports a mysterious dialogue he himself had with a “lovely naked boy,” who turned out to be God himself in naked disguise: Meister Eckhart met a lovely naked boy. He asked him whence he came. He said, “I come from God.” “Where hast thou left him?” “In virtuous hearts.” “Whither away?” “To God.” “Where wilt thou find him?” “Leaving all creatures.” “Who art thou?” “A king.” “Where is thy kingdom?” “In my own heart.” “Mind no one shares it with thee.” “So I do.”

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He took him to his cell and said, “Take any coat thou wilt.” “Then I should be no king” (said he), and vanished. It was God himself that he had had with him a little spell.33

The symbolic nakedness of the young man remains the most marked trait of his divinity; the absence of any possessions, including clothes, is the seal of his kingship.The Franciscanism of this theological approach is evident, although the passage belongs to the opposite camp of mendicant orders, Meister Eckhart being a Dominican friar—at times only a marginally orthodox mystic, but nevertheless a Dominican.The naked young man succinctly explains how the consequence of losing his nudity would be the loss of his regal identity—in other words, his godliness.The boy’s naked kingship is reminiscent of the naked Christ reigning over the world from the cross, usually referred to as the throne of his peculiar regal identity. Meister Eckhart’s enigmatic anecdote indirectly reproposes poverty as the crucial virtue of Christianity.The encounter with divinity may happen only after leaving “all creatures” behind.As in Franciscanism at its radically poor beginnings, the quest for God requires detachment from and abandonment of all created things.The admiration of Creation as God’s gift (according to the prototype of Edenic human beings) is a fundamentally different concept from its possession and subjugation. Renouncing all possessions includes renouncing one’s own identity as represented by the outer appearance of clothing. For human beings accustomed to wearing clothes as part of their cultural background and tradition, the idea of removing them appears aberrant and shocking. Clothes constitute so much a part of them as to make up their identity at all levels (social, financial, and even anthropological), since clothes are the mark of their identity as humans as distinguished from other creatures.Thus nakedness indicates the necessity for change and renewal. It marks a return to the ancestral archetypes of humanity at its prehistorical, mythical stage of companionship with divinity, when humans were closer to God precisely because they were undressed and pursued no possessions. Such a radical stand in favor of nakedness characterizes the identity of early Franciscan texts and has its roots in the much-stressed virtue of poverty. Medieval mysticism regulated all basic aspects of human life in order to direct a systematic ascent to God. It scrutinized human behavior and regulated all appetites and desires, so that in curbing physicality the focus of human life might shift to the spiritual realm. Nutrition,

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sexuality, and material possessions were strictly regimented. Rather than being pleasures they were to constitute necessities. In Franciscanism, fasting and chastity were joined by a particular emphasis on poverty. Nudity, in both its literal and its metaphorical sense, was an important portion of Franciscan understanding of poverty. Francis undressed in order to announce his conversion and transformed nudity into an orthodox spiritual quality. Some of his most faithful followers emulated his undressing. George T. Peck views denudation as a typical trait of Franciscanism and establishes a connection between disrobing and the search for radical poverty:“The theme of nakedness is a common one among Franciscans, the act of disrobing being symbolic of the abandonment of earthly possessions and the embracing of poverty.”34 An undressing episode is documented, for example, in The Book of Divine Consolation by the Franciscan Tertiary Angela da Foligno, whose stripping in front of the crucifix must have appeared even more scandalous because of her gender.35 If medieval culture tolerated the display of male nudity, it could not accept the concept of female nudity as a mystical trait. Nudity in Franciscanism represents the semiotic indication of poverty as its crucial and most reputed virtue.Through poverty early Franciscanism intends to return to the purity and innocence that characterized the mythical stage of Earthly Paradise in the Book of Genesis; at the same time it reprises the triumphant nudity of Christ on the cross. Francis’s public denudation intentionally imitates the essential naked state of humanity at these two crucial moments in biblical narratives. Nakedness marks the initial and the final stages of the biblical accounts, in the same way as it punctuates Francis’s converted life, as is thoroughly documented by the hagiographic reports on his life. Although not expressly present in “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” nakedness is evoked vicariously if the poem is read as a Franciscan revisitation of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis.The unadorned structure of the “Canticle” figuratively suggests the lack of any superimposed rhetorical complexity. Indirectly, Francis’s plain poetic style refers to poverty as the Order’s privileged virtue. Nakedness also occupies ample space in hagiographic accounts of Iacopone da Todi’s life and is described as a noteworthy characteristic of his converted years.36 Iacopone’s rigorous implementation of the rule of poverty brought serious consequences, including imprisonment for disobeying papal ordinances on the matter.37 Nakedness also occurs frequently in his poetic collection of Laude, as both a theme and a figure of speech. In Iacopone’s life and work, undressing is a much more complex

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and articulated phenomenon than it was in Francis’s straightforward action of publicly taking off his clothes. In Iacopone the static opposition of clothes versus nudity is complemented by the kinetic transformation implicit in changing outfits.38 Nudity and clothing, dressing and undressing, as well as the changing of outfits, occur frequently in his poetry, and their literal or metaphorical interactions are also documented by hagiographic narratives of his life. Like Francis’s, Iacopone’s conversion manifested itself in the abjuration of his social class, lifestyle, profession, and financial milieu.39 Given the uniformity of the dress code in the Middle Ages, when clothes identified social classes and professions, a change of clothes indicated a significant life-change.40 The Franceschina, Iacopone’s earliest biography, refers to the different stages of his conversion from lawyer to bizocone, and then to Franciscan friar, as subsequent changes of clothes.The account of his life begins when he was still in the “secular habit”:“Quisto, essendo nello habito seculare, fo homo tucto del mundo . . .” (This one, being in the secular habit, was a man all of this world [my translation]).41 The penitent phase of his life (when he was bizocone) is identified by a different outfit:“Diece anni stette frate Iacopone in quillo habito de bisocone. . . . Et in quisto abito fece el suo fondamento de la santa humilità” (For ten years brother Iacopone kept the penitent’s habit. . . .And on this habit he made the foundation of holy humility [my translation]). His final admission into the Franciscan Order is marked by the “vestizione,” the ceremony during which the aspiring friar is dressed in the typical habit of the Order:“Ma nante che li frati lo volessero vestire, lo provaro per diverse vie . . .” (But before the friars were willing to dress him, they tested him in many ways . . . [my translation]).42 Different sets of clothes coincide with incremental steps on the way of conversion. Each stage is characterized by a different outfit. Iacopone’s hagiography appears to have shifted the meaning of µετ΄αγνοια (metanoia), the Greek word for “conversion,” from “a change of mind, or mentality,” to “a change of clothing.”The profound inner transformation initiated by religious conversion manifests itself in external appearance, of which clothes constitute an essential part. Nudity is as crucial a phenomenon in Iacopone’s conversion as it had been in Francis’s.While hagiographic texts insist that he changed clothes as a way of displaying his increased detachment from worldly matters and his commitment to poverty and humility, they also report that his initial decision to transform his life occurred at the moment he uncovered his wife’s body. Monna Vanna died accidentally at a party when the floor on

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which she had been dancing collapsed. Iacopone undressed her corpse for burial and found an instrument of self-mortification, of whose existence he was unaware. Unbeknownst to him,Vanna mortified her flesh while conducting the luxurious lifestyle her husband enjoyed. According to hagiographic sources, this proof of faith constituted the decisive turning point in Iacopone’s conversion.43 Nakedness marks the first public act of Francis’s renewed life on the piazza of Assisi. It also marks the beginning of Iacopone’s converted life. Although the nudity is transposed onto the body of Iacopone’s spouse— the body closest to his own—Franciscan hagiography stresses nudity as a determining factor in his conversion process.The shock for Iacopone comes from seeing the hair shirt on Vanna’s body, but it is the uncovering of her corpse that reveals it; her nakedness is the first essential step toward his transformation. In hagiographic accounts, Iacopone himself often undresses as a sign of debasement and humility.The effectiveness of publicly displaying his naked body guarantees that several beholders are moved to compunction and sympathy. One time Iacopone paralyzes his fellow citizens with shock during a town fair: Unde che, facendose una fiata una certa festa nella sua ciptà de Tode, dove era congregato una grande parte del populo, quisto beato in fervore de spirito et infocato de questa vilità del mondo, se spogliò nudo, et preso un inbasto de asino se lo puse adosso. Et così sellato, se n’andò intra quella gente che facea festa. Per la quale cosa, permettente la divina gratia, die’ tanto terrore, che tucti foro commossi ad compontione de core. . . . So that, while the city of Todi was partying, where the majority of the people had congregated, in the fervor of spirit and inflamed against the despicableness of the world, this blessed undressed completely naked, and took an ass’s packsaddle and put it on himself. Once saddled, he went among the partying people. So it was that, divine grace allowing, he caused such terror, that everyone was moved to compunction of heart . . . [my translation].

The body as ass is a topos of Franciscan mysticism dating back to Francis’s naming his own body “brother ass.”44 Iacopone follows in the steps of the Founder when he puts on a packsaddle, and, as “fool of God,” gives public display of his foolishness.45 Another time, Iacopone performs a rather original skit at his brother’s wedding, in which nudity represents but one stage of his multilayered shocking performance:

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Un’altra fiata lo fratello de ser Iacopone fece certe nozze. Imperò che, quando erano meglio nel ballo et festa, et ser Iacopone se spogliò nudo et involtosse tucto nella tormentina, et così intormentinato se revoltò in una coltrece de piuma de diversi colori, et per questo modo inpiumato, se n’andò a casa del suo fratello, et intrò in quello convito per honorare el suo parentado. La quale cosa vedendo quella gente, foro tucti in grande amaritudine, sì per la vergogna dell’atto et sì per la conpontione che sentivano dentro nell’anima, vedendo quillo homo in tanta vilità et desprezo.46 Another time sir Iacopone’s brother was getting married. But, when the party and feast were at their peak, sir Iacopone stripped naked and rolled around first in turpentine and then in a mantle of feathers of many colors. Then, dressed in feathers, he went to his brother’s house and joined his relatives at the party.Witnessing this, everybody was dismayed, both for his shameful act and for the distress they felt inside their souls, seeing that man in such humiliation and despondency [my translation].

This histrionic performance has its foundations in the protagonist’s nakedness, even though its implications increase because of the chicken feathers he wears as ornamentation.The absence of clothes distinguishes this scene as it did the previous one. Iacopone uses nudity to reduce himself to a less-than-human status and to demonstrate the debasement and dejection he himself and (even more so) his fellow human beings had reached. Stripping always appears to indicate some kind of shocking change, whether as a prelude to dressing in unusual garments or as temporary nakedness. It is a peculiarly Franciscan way of drawing attention to one’s conversion. Iacopone mocks the ridiculous, overly elegant clothes of the wedding party by donning colorful chicken feathers, thereby pointing out sarcastically the superficiality of those involved in such a mundane occasion, as he considers the wedding feast to be. Iacopone’s Laude reveals a corresponding dependence on the dynamic of undressing/dressing and of changing clothes.47 In his work, the genealogical matrix of Earthly Paradise, as the biblical locus of the first “dressing scene,” leaves ample space for the metaphorical Pauline aphorism according to which baptized human beings are “clothed in Christ.”48 Both oppositions, nudity versus garments, and dressing versus undressing, may be literal or metaphorical, depending on the context.49 The frequent use of these metaphors should not induce generalizations on its overall significance in the Laude. The terms of opposition,

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nudity/clothes or undressing/dressing, are not crystallized into a single equation whose meaning never changes.Their referent constantly shifts; it may be intended positively in one poem and negatively in another. The positive qualities of material nudity and undressing, with the subsequent casting of a shadow over clothes and dressing, punctuate the entire collection. Nudity as poverty occurs for example in Lauda 23:“Veniste a noi co pelegrino,—nudo, povero e tapino / menato en questo camino,— pianto fo el primo cantare” (“Poor, naked, and wretched pilgrim, / Your first song was a sob and a wail”).50 But, when spiritual matters are discussed, the metaphorical opposition is overturned. In that case, nudity signifies the absence of divine strength and clothing is its auspicious contrary.While typically highlighting an opposition, each case speaks for itself as to the meaning of nakedness and clothing.51 Nakedness may infer positive connotations when it refers to poverty, but it may also carry negative significance if it implies an absence of God. On the other hand, the covering of clothing may indicate a form of material riches to be avoided, but also the necessary spiritual apparatus of the ascetic. Nudity is an ambiguous phenomenon in Iacopone’s work.While in some cases it indicates liberation from worldly matters and elevation of the spirit, in others it has its origin in hell as the punishment of damnation. In Lauda 26, the shameful and dejected status of the naked sinner is attributed to devils: Le demonia te von pur guatanno—per farte cader en peccato; del ciel te cacciâr con gran danno—ed onte feruto e spogliato; e non voglion ch’arsalghi al stato—lo qual iustamente hai perduto. Demons, too, are watching you to make you fall into sin; They cast you out of the heavens with great loss for you; They wounded and stripped you naked; they are trying to prevent you From rising to a loftier status, which you rightly lost [my translation].

Here nudity becomes a semiotic indicator of humiliation, a crucial factor in the complex interaction of good and evil typical of medieval Christian theology.The demons strip the soul naked in an attempt to conquer her. By so doing they deprive her of all possessions, including pride and haughtiness. By virtue of being humiliating, nakedness also signifies purification. Taking off one’s clothes to humiliate oneself in front of others was a common practice in the Middle Ages. In this context, nudity acquires the ambivalent connotations of the virtue of humility, which invites human beings to debase themselves in order to elevate their spirit; lowering themselves

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helps them to elevate their spiritual dimension. Humility is the highest virtue because it is the lowliest. It must be practiced within rigid parameters, lest it overflow into its much-feared opposite, the vice of pride; the borderline between them is always fine, sometimes hard to distinguish. The ensuing suffering has its outcome in closer proximity to God, even though it originates in devilish enterprise, since evil cannot be associated with divinity. Good and evil appear to interlace and overlap, and the paradox dissipates in the mysterious nature of both. On the literal level of signification, different poetic voices in Iacopone’s work repeatedly urge their interlocutors (usually Anima, the Soul) to take off soft, fine garments and wear rough, painful hair shirts, in order to do penance and achieve purification. In Lauda 3 the poetic voice commands: La camiscia spogliate—e vesti sto cilizo; la penitenza vètate—che non abbi delizo; per guidardone dònote—questo nobel pannizo, ché de coio scrofizo—te pensai d’amantare. Da lo ’nferno recastela—questa veste penosa; tesseala ’l diavolo—de pili de spinosa; omne pelo pareme—una vespa orgogliosa; nulla ce trovo posa,—tanto dura me pare. Take off your shirt. Here, put this one on—it’s a hairshirt. (There’s not much room in penance for pleasure.) Anyway, this is a sumptuous garment if you compare it To the skin of the sow I first thought of giving you. Where did you find it, in Hell? The Devil must have woven it out of porcupine quills. Each and every hair stings like a bee. It’s so stiff I can hardly bear it.

This type of clothing inflicts the physical pain that produces purification. Rough, crude garments are the symptom of a purging process, and fine, smooth habits are representative of a luxurious and indulgent lifestyle. Although unrefined clothes serve the purpose of purging one’s sins through mortification of the flesh, their source cannot be in God.As with all that purports evil, the weaver is the Devil, the origin and cause of suffering. Shabby clothes are a sign of humility and conversion in Lauda 38, “Lo desprezare piaceme—e de gir mal vestito” (“The contempt others have for me gives me joy, / And so does going about in rags”). Stripping the

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soul naked is a cruel affront that humiliates the soul, as for example in Lauda 27:“Crudelemente—m’hanno ferita / ed eschirnita—ed espogliata” (“They cruelly wounded me, / mocked me, and stripped me naked”). If suffering because of climatic hardship, uncomfortable clothing, or other external causes is interiorized, it may lead to an increased closeness with God, provided the soul does not expect the reward of praise. In Lauda 16, rough clothes and nudity are again intended literally as instruments of selfmortification, penance, and humiliation: Cuoi de scrofe toserate,—fun de pelo atortigliate, cerchi e veste desperate—cinquant’anni cruciata. Sostenetti povertate,—freddi, caldi e nuditate; non avi l’umilitate,—però da Dio fui reprovata. For fifty years I tormented myself With prickly skins, knotted ropes, Penitential bands and garments. I cheerfully endured poverty, Cold, heat, ragged clothing. But humility—ah, humility—was lacking And that is why God has cast me off.

In this context, uncomfortable clothing and nudity indicate the mortification of the flesh through misery and cold. Modifying the direct correspondence between distress and asceticism, this lauda calls for a more profound spiritual change than simple outward transformation.52 Enduring grief and mortification is not necessarily a symptom of humility, which is the virtuous disposition to accept and cherish suffering in imitation of Christ’s Passion. Sometimes the literal and metaphorical aspects of clothing merge into a single image that links the practical action of removing refined garments to the figurative image of adorning oneself with chastity, as, for example, in Lauda 4: E lo tatto puniscese—dei suoi delettamente, li panni molli spogliase,—veste panni pognente, de castetate adornase—guardata en argomente, e far de sé presente—a Dio molto è grato. Casting off soft garments, The sense of touch renounces pleasure

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And puts on a prickly robe. The soul adorns itself with chastity And in a fresh awareness gives itself, An acceptable gift, to God.

One may infer that elegant clothes represent a source of lasciviousness, since they must be removed before chastity can inhabit the body and become its only ornament. Literal references to elegant clothes have vanity and high social status as their signifieds; the opposite (expressed or simply implied) is nudity as desirable material poverty. Refined clothes are vain ornamental objects in Lauda 18,“Cecato t’ha questo monno—coi delette e col sogiorno / e col vestimento adorno—e con essere laudato” (“the world has blinded you / With pleasures, luxury, rich garments and praise”); but in Lauda 19 they are positive symbols of the riches God bestowed upon human beings:“Io ve lassai le botte col vino,—lassavi li panni de lana e de lino; / posto m’avete nel canto mancino—de tanta guadagna quant’io congregai” (“I left you barrels of wine, / Cloth of wool and of linen—so much—/ And now you have forgotten me”). In Lauda 29, which thematizes the hypocritical behavior of the ascetic, clothes signify the most obvious sign of deception, the false appearance that conceals the despicable truth within; the mystic’s rough clothes and nudity are symptoms of tough living conditions and poverty, but they do not correspond with the state of his soul: Lassato sì l’ho nel vestire,—de pieco me voglio coprire; ma dentro so, al mio parire,—lupo crudele ed affamato. . . . Comiatato sì mostro l’anvito—che so scalzo e mal vestito; el corpo mostro afrigolito—perché del suo me sia dato. I left the world behind in my way of clothing; I cover my body in sheep’s skin. But within myself, despite my suffering, I feel a cruel and ravenous wolf. . . . If I am cast away, I show my need, since I am barefoot and scantily dressed; I show my freezing body, so that others may offer some of what they have [my translation].

The opposition between a sheepish appearance and a lupine character echoes the Gospel aphorism in which meekness in the exterior hides aggressiveness inside.53

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A close investigation of the themes of nudity versus clothes and dressing versus undressing reveals a development in the collection of Laude taken as a whole.There is a gradual shift from literal references to taking off elegant, rich garments and dressing in shabby, torn clothing or simply going about naked as a sign of humiliation and dejection, to a metaphorical adaptation of the realm of clothing/nudity and dressing/undressing.The literal approach in the first half of the collection (the first forty poems or so) gives way to the figurative presence of this theme in the second half, in which clothing and nakedness are increasingly present.While the references in the first part of the Laude are to poverty as signified by scanty clothing and nakedness, in the second part the insistence is on the importance of stripping off all encumbering obstacles that prevent increased closeness to God.The call to nakedness is no longer related to the body.The invitation is now figuratively addressed to the soul, inciting it to take off all vices and put on virtues. In Iacopone’s Manichaean theology, the world itself is the most obstructive garment forbidding direct contact with God, a thick material layer interposed between human beings and pure spirituality. In the middle of the collection there is an overlap of references to literal and metaphorical types of clothing; they transfuse one into the other until the literalness tapers off and the metaphorical sense takes over. The topos of clothing versus nakedness and dressing versus undressing proceeds by pairs of poems in the Laude, thereby reflecting the twofold nature of the concept itself; Lauda 36 and Lauda 37, then Lauda 42 and Lauda 43 are examples of this characteristic imagery. Lauda 36 and Lauda 37 introduce the new emphasis on metaphorical clothing as related to the concept of Anima, an allegorical entity presenting herself as Christ’s bride, who will wear all virtues and adorn herself with her best spiritual qualities and ascetic characteristics in order to be united in marriage with Christthe-bridegroom.The wish to reach the much-awaited encounter while wearing the right kind of clothes becomes a topical theme of the second half of the collection.The whole of Lauda 36 strongly voices the need for Anima to beautify herself before she can hope for a mystical marriage with Christ. Anima is the bride who adorns herself with the three theological and the four cardinal virtues in order to seduce her divine spouse. Within the context of this allegorical discourse, Anima’s glorification in heaven will occur only if she can reach the proper level of purity and worthiness.The apotheosis of metaphorical clothes in this lauda leaves no space for nudity, which would signify the soul’s death:“Se nuda gissece,—siri’ morta e confusa” (“Come to the gate naked and forlorn / And only death

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and confusion will greet you”). Beautiful, rich clothes and ornaments ensure successful entrance into paradise, to which Anima will be escorted by the Church Fathers, the Prophets, the Apostles, Church Doctors, Martyrs, Confessors,Virgins, Prelates; such an honorable escort of dignitaries causes Anima to resemble a royal bride who travels to meet her husband-to-be in the company of courtiers and high-ranking citizens.The metaphor continues in Lauda 37, in which the poet states that, in Anima’s journey to meet her bridegroom, all her virtues and spiritual qualities must be united to chastity, the most important of all. Given the symbiotic dynamic between the two spouses, Christ’s nudity is the price he paid for adorning Anima with such beautiful garments and jewels: Alma, per te vestire—Cristo ne fo spogliato, per tuoi piaghe guarire—esso fo vulnerato, lo cor se fe’ aprire—per renderte vigore. To adorn you Christ was stripped of all, He was wounded to heal your wounds;

To give you strength His heart was pierced. Christ must be stripped and wounded so that Anima can be dressed and healed. Lauda 41 continues this same line of thought, as Christ dresses Anima with the four cardinal virtues:“A ciò ch’ella sapesse—como sé essercire, / de le quattro virtute—sí la volsi vestire” (So she might know how to conduct herself, / I draped her in a mantle of four virtues [my translation]). In the second half of the Laude literalness reappears to indicate Christ’s nakedness as poverty. In Lauda 62, Iacopone describes the Devil’s (the Enemy’s) fear at perceiving Francis, whom he mistakes for Christ, because they seem identical in their crucified nakedness:“Lo Nemico s’atremio,— vedendo lui s’empaurío, parvegli Cristo de Dio—che en croce avea spogliato” (“The sight of Francis struck fear into the Enemy, / For he much resembled Christ, who with His cross / Had once before stripped him of his prize”). In Lauda 69, the poet agrees to follow the example of poverty set by Christ, who stripped naked on the cross: “[P]over fusse, s’io volisse;—allor me vòlsi spogliare” (If I wanted to be poor, / then I should undress myself [my translation]). Likewise, in Lauda 73, the poet establishes a contrast between Christ’s nakedness on the cross and his own opulent clothing; his sense of guilt erupts into an apostrophe: “O Signor mio, tu stai nudo—ed io abondo nel vestire / non par bello questo ludo:—io satollo e tu enfamire” (“O my Lord, this is not right: / I am

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richly clothed and You are naked”).The nakedness of Christ on the cross becomes a symbol of his ransom for humanity. In order to offer human beings the gift of freedom from sin Christ remained bereft of all possessions, material and spiritual, and even of physical life. Here, as often, Christ’s nudity symbolizes the crucifixion. Lauda 42 is a pivotal text for the theme of nakedness and clothing in Iacopone’s poetry.As suggested indirectly by its editorial title,“Como l’anima priega li angeli che l’insegnino ad trovar Iesù Cristo” (“The Soul Begs the Angels to Help Her Find Christ”),Anima’s search for Christ obligates her to leave the world behind. Her itinerary is a purging process that imposes an abandonment of worldly possessions and the secular mentality. In the harsh dialogue between angels and Anima that shapes the text, the interlocutors agree that Anima must “take off ” her mundane habits (“abiti” [“habits”] is a useful, ambiguous term referring at once to her clothes and to her habitual ways), her lurid and smelly clothes, before she can approach her bridegroom.The emphasis is on removing unsuitable garments, on stripping naked, rather than on wearing appropriate garments for the encounter. Such is the insistence on the topos of clothing and unclothing that words indicating this theme occur eleven times in the central nineteen lines of the poem: Non te lassamo entrare;—iurato l’avem presente che nullo ce può transire—ch’aia veste splacente; e tu hai veste fetente,—l’odore n’ha conturbato. Qual è ’l vestir ch’i’ aggio—el qual me fa putigliosa? ch’io lo voglio gettare—per esser a Dio graziosa, e como deventi formosa—lo core n’ho ’nanemato. Ora te spoglia del mondo—e d’onne fatto mondano; tu n’èi molto encarcata,—el cor non porti sano; par che l’aggi sí vano—del mondo ove se’ conversato. Del mondo ch’agio ’l vestire—vegente voi, me ne spoglio; e nul encarco mondano—portare meco più voglio; ed omne creato ne toglio—ch’io en core avesse albergato. You may not enter.We have sworn to open Only to those with spotless robes; Yours are lurid and smell to the heavens. If they do, then off with them! O heart of mine, sustain me, That I might see Him again.

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Strip yourself of the world, And of every worldly love; A dead weight they are, an illness, a vanity. Here in your sight I strip myself, And put aside the love of all created things— May they no longer have a place in my heart.

The lines that follow insist on the necessity for the Soul to strip off the world: Non me pari spogliata—como si converría; del mondo non se’ desperata,—spene ci hai falsa e ria; spògliate e gettala via—ché ’l cor non sia reprovato. Ed io me voglio spogliare—d’onne speranza ch’avesse, e vogliomene fugire—da om che me sovenesse; megli’ è se en fame moresse—che ’l mondo me tenga legato. Non me pari spogliata—che glie ne sia ’n piacemento, de spirital amistanza—grande n’hai vestimento; usat’è che getta gran vento—e molti sì ci on tralipato. You must do more.You have yet to despair of the world. You still hope in it with a false and evil hope: Strip that away too; let your heart be beyond reproach. I will strip myself of all hope, And flee all who would succor me. Better to die of starvation than be bound to the world. There is still more to be done: You are richly robed in spiritual friendships— A mighty wind that has shipwrecked many.

Being unprepared for the crucial encounter with Christ because of inappropriate garments recalls the parable of the wedding feast and the guests invited to partake in it in the Gospel of Matthew, a possible genealogical matrix for Lauda 42: “[T]he wedding hall was filled with guests.When the king came in to look at the guests he noticed one man who was not wearing a wedding garment, and said to him,‘How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?’ And the man was silent.Then the king said to the attendants,‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.’ For many are invited but not all are chosen” (22:1–14).Appearing at the encounter with inelegant clothes leads to merciless punishment.To

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avoid rejection, Anima must find suitable attire for the encounter.The metaphorical implications of both texts are quite clear.The shabby vestment the protagonists are encouraged to leave behind is their soiled worldliness; the elegant garment they must wear is the white tunic of purity and innocence. Iacopone’s allegorization of Anima fits the metaphor particularly well. She is the protagonist of the wedding, rather than simply an invited guest who happens to be inappropriately dressed. While dealing with the theme of mercy and justice in Lauda 43, Iacopone employs the clothing/unclothing metaphor to signify both elimination and addition: la Iustizia tanto s’endegnao, che lo spogliao de tutto suo onore. . . . me co l’omo ha ferito a morte de tutto mio onor sí m’ha spogliato. . . . ed ecco, nudo iace nella via e nul è che de lui aggia pietanza! . . . li frutti ve daragio poi nel regno, possederete tutto el mio vestaro. . . . Justice, outraged, stripped him of honor. . . . “. . . . Justice has mortally wounded me as well as man, And stripped me of my honor. . . .” And look—He lies naked under the sky, With no one at all to take pity on Him. . . . “. . . In my Kingdom, where you will be draped in robes of My Court . . .”

The metaphor indicating dressing/undressing and clothes/nudity is applied to a variety of contexts; the only consistency is that nudity conveys a sense of necessity or elimination.The connotation of such absence varies; it may be the figuratively positive, humbling absence of honor, or the literally but equally humiliating removal of clothes in the street; the positive outcome of such humiliation will be wearing God’s clothing once access to his kingdom is granted.54 The pattern formed by Iacopone’s developing figure of nudity/clothes unravels throughout the collection, but thickens in its last portion, where its use is specifically metaphorical and becomes almost obsessive in its repetitiveness.The poet returns to it again and again in order to account for a great variety of situations and concepts. Having discovered a fitting metaphor and having proved its effectiveness, Iacopone uses and abuses it, applying it to a number of diverse concepts.

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Between Lauda 60 and Lauda 91, references to stripping and clothing abound.The emphasis here is on the necessity to clothe the spirit, while nudity signifies unpreparedness to encounter God. Occasionally, Iacopone refers to a positive outlook on material nudity (more typical of the first half of the collection), so that the reader must constantly reevaluate the metaphor in light of its context in order to understand its meaning. Lauda 60 highlights this double entendre of the metaphor: El primo ciel è ’l fermamento,—d’onne onore spogliamento. . . . La richeza el tempo tolle,—la scienza tacire la fama alberga ed acolle—l’ipocresia d’onne contrate. Pareme cielo stellato—chi da queste tre è spogliato. . . . Queste quattro spogliature—più che le prime so dure. . . . Se son nude le virtute—e le vizia son vestute. . . . Da onne ben sì t’ha spogliato—e de virtute spropriato. The first heaven is the starry firmament Where we must strip ourselves of honor—. . . . The accumulation of riches is a poor use of time, Knowledge leads to vainglory, And hypocrisy likes to lodge in the man reputed as holy. The man who strips himself of all three is a starry heaven. . . . To strip oneself of these four is more demanding. . . . If virtues are naked and vices are dressed. . . .55 It has stripped you of every good and every virtue.

Divesting signifies poverty of sins as the necessary condition to access heaven. But the opposition is overturned in the case of naked virtues and dressed vices.The nakedness of virtues indicates their vulnerability and weakness; the garments of vices, on the other hand, stand for their strength and resistance. In subsequent laude Iacopone employs similarly ambiguous usage of the metaphor, referring to clothes as positive accouterments of the spirit, rather than considering them negative encumbrances of the body.The song on the birth of Christ, Lauda 64, extols the crucial event of the Incarnation as the outcome of those “robed in faith”:“Loco se canta—chi ben se n’amanta / de fede formata. . . . .” (In this place one sings, / When one is robed in firm faith [my translation]). In Lauda 65,“Cantico secondo de la Natività de Cristo” (“Second Canticle of the Nativity”), Anima-thebride is stripped of all her soiled clothes before she can put on her designated luminous attire, which she can wear as a wedding gown:

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de luce te vestire—più che sole sí voglio, però prima te spoglio—de colpa e de fetore. . . . de margarite e perle—serà la veste ornata. . . . You shall be robed in radiance brighter than the sun, But first I must cleanse you of guilt and stench. . . . Your robe will be resplendent with pearls and gems. . . .

The radiance of Anima’s gown, which is “brighter than the sun,” echoes a famous passage in the Book of Revelation regarding a mysterious female figure: “Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, robed with the sun, standing on the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1).The allegorical luminosity linking both women’s gowns returns in Lauda 70, in which the starry gems of Anima’s robe confer upon her a glorious, queenly character: “anima ch’amantase—questo nobel mantile, / puòse chiamar gentile,—d’onne gioia adornato” (“Adorned with this glorious robe, / The soul is noble, bedecked with gems”).The gems are the cardinal virtues that Anima wears in order to appear worthy of her divine spouse; in general, her regal robes help to emphasize, on a metaphorical level, what she needs in order to be admitted into the divine presence. Here the beauty and the preciousness of garments stand for purity within. Sinlessness in life transforms the flesh into a glorious body in the afterlife.Thus body and habit are as tightly joined together in Iacopone da Todi’s work as they are in Francis of Assisi’s thought.The crossshaped tunic Francis chose for his Franciscan Order is a metonymic anticipation of the real signs of the Passion he bears on his own body in the stigmata at the end of his life. Iacopone’s Lauda 61 summarizes the concept of Francis’s union with Christ in love, which becomes visible in the form of a wearable garment: L’amore ha questo ufficio,—unir dui en una forma; Francesco nel supplicio—de Cristo lo trasforma, emprese quella norma—de Cristo ch’avea en core, la mostra fe’ l’amore—vestito d’un vergato. This is the mission of love, to make two one; It united Francis with the suffering Christ. It was Christ in his heart that taught him the way, And that love shone forth in his robe streaked with color.

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Lauda 61 is the song of “St. Francis and the Seven Visions of the Cross” (according to the editorial title); it describes the stigmata as the accomplishment of Francis’s assimilation to the Passion and crucifixion.The visible signs of Christ’s wounds on Francis’s body are his permanent garment.They are at once a semiotic indication of Francis’s spirituality and an aesthetic parallel to Christ’s body.This peculiar garment is shared by Christ and Francis.The display of the body, inherent in it, reestablishes a link with the cosmos and other creatures by hinting at human nakedness at Creation. It also recovers a connection with divinity through nakedness itself, as well as through Christ’s wounds at the time of the crucifixion.The mysterious transformation spreads from within Francis’s heart to a visible appearance of the five wounds of Christ’s Passion on his body. Francis chose Adam’s nakedness at his conversion and was granted Christ’s nakedness at the end of his life.The interlude between the two crucial life-events, one at the beginning and one at the end, is occupied by the cross-shaped tunic. Iacopone’s Lauda 61 addresses the intricate connection of nakedness and “cross-as-garment” in the form of the stigmata.The cross is also associated with a metaphorical garment in Lauda 75: “Frate, io sì trovo la croce fiorita, / de soi pensieri me so vestita” (Brother, I find the cross flowering / I am wearing thoughts of her [my translation]).The cross blossoms and bears fruit when it envelops human thoughts.The oxymoron “flowering cross” hides the mysterious nature of this instrument of torture, which is venerated as a symbol of salvation and rebirth.The same mortal wound bears a different connotation in Lauda 81. It is inflicted by acquired knowledge, one of Iacopone’s constant anathemas. Acquired knowledge causes a mortal wound to its possessor unless it is dressed in a humble heart:“Scienza acquisita—mortal sì dà ferita, / s’ella non è vestita—de core umiliato” (Acquired knowledge inflicts a mortal wound / if it is not dressed and wrapped in a humbled heart [my translation]). As the collection of laude draws to an end, in Lauda 91 the image of new garments as transformation reaches an unprecedented climax. Iacopone introduces a parallel with the iron mail as the strongest and safest medieval garment, which then becomes protection for the soul: De sé non può pensare—né dir come è formato, però che, trasformato,—altro sì ha vestire. . . . La mente è renovata,—vestita a tal entaglia, de tal ferro è la maglia,—feruta no l’offende.

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It no longer knows how to think of itself Or to speak of the wondrous change. It knows only that it finds itself Clothed in new garments. . . . The soul is reborn, Clad in such mail as need fear no blow.

The iron mail protects Anima as it protects the body of medieval knights in battle. Anima need no longer fear any harm. The mail she wears forms a second skin; it is a part of her and cannot be removed, since it has been made permanent and immutable by the crucified body of Christ. The paradox of Lauda 91 arises out of the nature of this metaphorical mail, for this is the lauda on nichilitate, the process that eliminates all cumbersome materiality.The journey to the third heaven follows the path of nichilitate and metaphorical nudity as the absence of all material obstacles punctuates it. Nichilitate is the mystical process of self-annihilation that Iacopone derives from the Neoplatonic tradition, especially Dionysius the Aeropagite. It eventually brings the mystic to ecstatic union with God by progressively suppressing all obstacles (material as well as spiritual) that would impede the mystical wedding. At the end of Lauda 91, Anima’s transformation is signified by the new, strong armor she is wearing. Lauda 92 and Lauda 95 elaborate on the concept of nichilitate and describe the steps leading to it.After numerous references to the importance of clothing the soul, in a number of the laude between Lauda 60 and Lauda 91, there is a return to the positive exaltation of nudity as representing the process of nichilitate. Lauda 92 and Lauda 95 are the last two laude of the collection to refer to this topos. In Lauda 92: E per fortuna scampai malamente; non vadano a pescare ne l’alto de lo mare ché fa follia se d’onne cosa emprìa—non se vole spogliare. Spogliare se vol l’om d’ognecovelle. . . . Let no man in folly Launch out into great sea Without first stripping himself of all. He must strip his soul of all thought.

and in Lauda 95:

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Passa fede e speranza—la credenza del certo, la caritate unisce,—spogliase ne l’affetto. . . . Faith and hope and every belief in certitude pass. Charity brings everything together. It strips and becomes affection. . . .

The metaphorical use of nakedness versus clothing is an indispensable topos in Iacopone’s poetic work. It depicts an ascetic opposition and describes a theological concept that would otherwise require long-winded theoretical treatments. Its usage in the Laude is paralleled only by the other typically Iacoponian opposition of light and darkness. But while the contrast of light versus darkness pervades the Judeo-Christian tradition as a reference to the presence and absence of God, the duality of nakedness and clothing (at least when it is formulated in these terms) appears to be specifically Franciscan.The repeated recourse to it in the Laude transforms it from a simple metaphor into a catachresis, the figure of speech for an absence.When words fail, the image of nakedness and clothing occupies the poetic blank space.As with darkness and light in the ascetic via negativa, the opposition is not clear-cut and immutable.The positive connotation of bodily nakedness changes into the negative nuance of a naked soul as synonym for unpreparedness to be united with God.The catachrestic nature of this Iacoponian topos makes it the locus for an otherwise ineffable concept.As Francis’s histrionic naked performance did in the square of San Rufino, Iacopone’s imagery fills the empty space of wordlessness.The textile metaphor inevitably suggests a mise-en-abîme, an intratextual reference by the poet to his own textual production, given the common etymology of textual and textile products.The construction of the text serves the same ambiguous purpose as clothing; hence the Franciscans’ ambivalent attitude toward books and knowledge.They consider texts a source of increased spirituality, but also a danger, a prideful enriching of one’s intellect that may bring a distancing from God in the name of acquired scholarly power. The use of clothes to signify conversion bears the mark of Saint Paul’s command to “put on Christ,” which implies disrobing of one’s old ways, or habits, to acquire new ones. Francis’s literal application of this command becomes a metaphorical structure in Iacopone’s poetry, although the nakedness of Christ at the crucifixion is taken literally by both. Nudity represents the new nature and the new essence that human beings assumed thanks to redemption, the event that reestablished their

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closeness to God.What was lost at the moment of the Fall, when humans abandoned their purely naked status and put on clothes to symbolize their shameful detachment from God, is regained at redemption, when they can tear off the old garments of a sinful status and wear the cross, the symbolic sign of salvation.This is the parable that Francis follows and Iacopone uses in his poetry. Enacting nudity or employing it as a literary topos is the Franciscan attempt to reach back to the pure state of humanity as portrayed in the Book of Genesis and to join the initial Fall with the advent of redemption on the cross. Nudity stands as the protagonist of both occurrences. Naked bodies are their common elements.

NOTES 1. All hagiographies make more or less specific reference to this episode as marking the public declaration of Francis’s conversion. Given its theatrical quality, filmic renditions of Francis’s life stress the cinematographic importance of the scene, which hinges on vision. Franco Zeffirelli, in Fratello Sole, Sorella Luna, changes the shocking tone of the undressing scene into an idyllic, Edenic episode, in which the naked Francis leaves the town community and walks outside the city walls, where he blends into the countryside and is transformed into a New Adam, completely reconciled with nature and the world. Liliana Cavani’s more dramatic version of the scene in Francesco insists on the inevitable embarrassment of the bystanders, Francis’s father’s rage and humiliation, and the apathetic attitude of the protagonist, who remains unperturbed throughout the episode. 2. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, The Major Legend of Saint Francis 2.4, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 2, The Founder, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 2000), 538. 3. This is the episode as reported by Bonaventure’s Legenda minor: “One day . . . [Francis] walked near the church of San Damiano, which was threatening to collapse because of age. . . .When his tear-filled eyes were gazing at the Lord’s cross he heard . . . a voice coming from that cross, telling him three times: ‘Francis, go, rebuild my house which, as you can see, is all being destroyed!’ . . . [H]e arose immediately to carry out the command of repairing the material church; although the principal intention of the voice referred to that Church which Christ had purchased by precious exchange with his own blood.” The Minor Legend of Saint Francis 1.5, in ibid., 2:686. Iacopone da Todi’s Lauda 61 also refers to the episode of Francis at San Damiano: “[P]er nome clamò el doce—Francesco tre fiata: /—La chiesa è sviata,—repara lo suo stato” (“He called you thrice by name / And then, ‘My Church has lost its way—/ Set it once more on the right path.’ ”

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4. For an analysis of this crucial episode in Francis’s life and the economic and psychological implications of it, see Richard C.Trexler, Naked before the Father: The Renunciation of Assisi (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), particularly 42–52. 5. Jean Brun, La nudité humaine (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 12. 6. Most studies on this subject emphasize the concept of separation achieved by garments. Clothes separate human beings from animals and identify them as their own species; they characterize different social classes and constitute a screen between the human body and the surrounding reality. See the following studies on clothing: Lawrence Langner, The Importance of Wearing Clothes (New York: Hastings House, 1959), 10, which insists on the inferiority complex as the reason why human beings differentiate themselves through clothes; Paul Abelman, Anatomy of Nakedness (London: Orbis, 1982), 14–15, which establishes a connection between nakedness and familiarity with the environment; Prudence Glynn, Skin to Skin: Eroticism in Dress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 19, which notes the unique inclination of human beings to change the look of their bodies through clothing; Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a “True” Image (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 183–84, which insists on the symbolic significance of clothing as separation between human beings and God in Genesis, in which garment-wearing marks “the birthexile into the world—the beginning of reflection.” 7. Margaret R. Miles’s comments on the importance of clothing in the first book of the Bible seem particularly pertinent to the argument developed here: “Nakedness and clothing play a crucial role . . . in the Genesis account. . . .The clothing of Adam and Eve—their own effort to cover themselves with leaves, and then God’s clothing of them in the skins of dead animals—marks their existence in a newly sinful condition. Clothing is also the evidence that Adam and Eve’s descendants continue to live in a state of deceit and concealment both in relation to one another and in relation to God.” Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon, 1989), 93. 8. Verena Andermatt Conley establishes a connection between the exclusion of human beings from paradise and their disguising themselves with clothing: “L’exclusion du paradis est toujours liée à la honte, à la culpabilité et au déguisement par le vêtement, la parure.”“Le goût du nu,” Lendemains 51 (1988): 96. 9. J. Donald Adams connects the nature of both phenomena and assumes the Genesis account as proof of their similarly mysterious origins: “Like the history of [man’s] speech, a capacity largely denied to his intellectual inferiors in the animal world—and which has transformed his history as against theirs— the oddities and compulsions that have accompanied his choice of apparel are among the most fascinating things about him.There is an arresting similarity between the origin and development of clothing and those of speech. Both are shrouded in mystery.” Previously, the author establishes a connection between man’s defenseless nudity at birth and his ability to speak, when he begins his book

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with this lapidary aphorism:“Man enters the world naked and protesting.” Naked We Came: A More or Less Lighthearted Look at the Past, Present, and Future of Clothes (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967), 17, 12. 10. The value of nakedness in Earthly Paradise is a crucial theological and moral notion, which has its roots in human anthropology as well as in human psychological development. Abelman explains the transition from nakedness to wearing a loincloth in Earthly Paradise as an acquisition of awareness. As Adam and Eve become aware of good and evil, they distance themselves from the natural world, and the clothes they wear are a symbol of that distance. Anatomy of Nakedness, 12–14. From a more theological perspective, Stephen E. Smallman insists that “[n]akedness represented the most beautiful thing about the Garden— openness and freedom,” but “[w]ith the coming of sin, nakedness took on a totally different meaning. Originally it meant openness and freedom; now it meant shame.” Regarding the concept of clothing as a way of hiding, Smallman writes: “Although clothing cannot hide one from God, clothing did at that point become a part of human existence.”“Nudity in Biblical Perspective,” Christianity Today, 13, no. 23 (August 22, 1969): 7. 11. Paolo Valesio, Ascoltare il silenzio: La retorica come teoria (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986), 336.The concept of human nakedness as an impossibility outside the realm of mythology is stressed by James Laver, in the introduction to The Importance of Wearing Clothes, by Lawrence Langner (New York: Hastings House, 1959), 4. 12. On a theoretical level, Conley views nudity as tightly connected to silence. “Le goût du nu,” 93. In the same study, language is regarded as a screen that conceals the reality it attempts to describe: “[le] déguisement verbal, . . . un language qui fait écran, qui cache la source et la scène génératrice de la pulsion esthétique” (95). 13. In Chiara Frugoni’s formulation,“Il sogno smisurato, così tipico della cavalleresca megalomania di Francesco, è quello di riportare non solo gli uomini ma anche gli animali all’armonia dei primi giorni del paradiso terrestre.” Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate: Una storia per parole e immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), 243. 14. In the wake of St. Anselm’s theological concept, Franciscanism views the Fall of mankind as a praiseworthy occurrence, since it had the Incarnation as its consequence.“If Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned, there would have been no need for the greatest of human glories, the Virgin birth. Christ’s human nature . . . becomes intrinsic to the life of Francis and the spiritual style of his followers.” David L. Jeffrey,“Franciscan Spirituality and the Growth of Vernacular Culture,” in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), 149. 15. Giorgio Petrocchi remarks on this specific aspect of Francis’s mission and on his deliberate choice to become poor:“La povertà del Cristo era stata nativa; in una società cittadina e borghese in cui opera il momento iniziale dell’apostolato di

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Francesco, l’atto di liberazione dai beni personali deve essere oggetto di precisa norma.” San Francesco scrittore (e altri studi francescani) (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1991), 12. 16. This is how Vito Cutro explains the social transformation in Francis’s time: “In un momento in cui la ricchezza usciva dalla stretta cerchia dei pochi signori e cominciava a dilatarsi ad una larga fascia di strati sociali; in un momento in cui la chiesa viveva situazioni particolari di ricchezza, dominio e piena contestazione, Francesco ripropone in umiltà, ma imperitura, l’idea dell’uso dei beni e non della loro proprietà, un ritorno non tanto all’ideale delle prime comunità cristiane, quanto all’origine evangelica, una forte dose di amore e fratellanza. Madonna Povertà e Francesco d’Assisi (Rome: Il Ventaglio, 1993), 106–7. Similarly, Salvatore Nicolosi places Francis’s rejection of family riches in a historical perspective:“Nato in un’epoca di grande ripresa demografica ed economica, cresciuto in un ambiente di borghesia benestante, vissuto in un contesto sociale con forte tendenza all’urbanesimo, Francesco d’Assisi sceglie un genere di vita che è in chiara contrapposizione con quello dei suoi concittadini.” Medioevo francescano: S. Francesco d’Assisi, S. Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, S. Bernardino da Siena (Rome: Edizioni Borla, 1984), 54. 17. According to The Oxford English Dictionary the verb “to exhibit” has its root in the Latin exhibere and derives from ex- “out” + habere “to hold.” 18. Thomas of Celano, The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano 1.9.22, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, The Saint, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 202. 19. The episode of the stigmata is reported in Bonaventure’s The Major Legend of Saint Francis 13, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 2:630–39. 20. The following statements refer to the representation of the ecstatic Theresa of Avila by Gianlorenzo Bernini, but they also apply to the stigmatized body of Francis:“the passage of St.Theresa’s natural body into the glorious body of her tunic is a transit from same to same that recalls the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. In Catholicism the experience par excellence of Christ’s body and blood does not occur in the contemplation of the Cross, but in Holy Communion. Christ is present in the Host, just as St.Theresa’s body is present in her tunic. It makes no sense to seek anything beneath the fabric:‘Theresa lives essentially in her tunic.’ ” See Mario Perniola,“Between Clothing and Nudity,” trans. Robert Friedman, in Fragments for a History of the Human Body: Part Two, ed. Michael Feher (New York: Urzone, 1989), 255. The last sentence is quoted from Rudolph Kuhn,“Die Unio mystica der hl.Therese von Avila von Lorenzo Bernini in der Cornarokapelle in Rom,” Alte und moderne Kunst 12, no. 94 (1967): 5. 21. This passage is taken from Bonaventure’s The Major Legend of Saint Francis 14.4, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 2:642–43.The episode of Francis’s naked body lying on the ground after his death is also told by Thomas of Celano, whose account refers only to Francis’s nakedness at death, without establishing a

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direct correlation between Christ and Francis:“As he was wasted by that grave illness which ended all his sufferings, he had himself placed naked on the naked ground, so that in that final hour, when the Enemy could still rage, he might wrestle naked with the naked.” The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul by Thomas of Celano (The Second Life of Saint Francis) 2.162.214, in ibid., 2:386.The same episode is related in Bonaventure’s The Minor Legend 2.3, in ibid., 2:715. 22. The abundant use of metaphors regarding nudity and clothing in the Franciscan Legenda still awaits a satisfactory investigation as a peculiarly Franciscan characteristic. 23. In this regard, see, for example, Abelman, Anatomy of Nakedness, 40:“In the fifteenth century, the Picards in Flanders worshiped naked and revered the body and before them, the Adamites in Bohemia, considered heretics and exterminated by John Zizka in 1421, not only went about naked to symbolize the innocence of Adam but practiced free love in order to liberate the flesh.They taught that nakedness was essential to real purity and to the restoration of the innocence that had existed before the Fall.” 24. While typical of the Christian Middle Ages, the concept of nakedness as humiliation was widespread among other cultures and historical eras:“the adjectives denuded, stripped and divested describe a person who is deprived of something he or she ought to have.Within the sphere of this concept—which extended broadly through the Near Eastern populations (Egyptian, Babylonian and Hebrew)—being unclothed meant finding oneself in a degraded and shamed position, typical of prisoners, slaves or prostitutes, of those who are demented, cursed or profaned.” Perniola,“Between Clothing and Nudity,” 237. 25. The episode is also narrated in the synoptic Gospels: Matt. 27:55–56, Mark 15:40–41, Luke 23:49. 26. Nakedness here is intended as a positive attitude signifying purity. In the biblical canon, nakedness as indecency occurs in the episode of Ham, who beholds the nakedness of his inebriated father, Noah (Gen. 9:22).The gravity of this action will result in his father’s curse. 27. The possible identity of this young man, whom the Gospel text leaves anonymous, has been amply speculated upon in exegetical studies. Some suggest that this might be a concealed portrait of Mark himself; others conjecture Christ’s own alter ego. For a comprehensive summary of these theories and a satisfactory bibliography, see Frank Kermode,“The Man in the Macintosh, the Boy in the Shirt,” in The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 49–73. 28. Numerous scholars opt for a symbolic, or spiritual, reading of this enigmatic episode. Michael R. Cosby interprets the young naked man as a symbol of the disciples’ defection.The Gospel narrative up to this point indicated a disagreement between Jesus and his disciples regarding his messiahship, and the youngster’s flight is the figurative climax of the conflict. Cosby writes:“[T]he story line

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reveals a consistently developed portrait of conflict in understanding between Jesus and the disciples, with 14:51–52 providing a symbolic climax to the viewpoint of the disciples. . . .The naked youth symbolizes the flight of the disciples.”“Mark 14:51–52 and the Problem of Gospel Narrative,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 11 no. 3 (fall 1984): 230–31. 29. On the topic of nudity in relation to this episode in the biblical text Cosby remarks:“The youth escapes through the humiliating condition of nakedness, but this humiliation is turned back upon his adversaries. Nudity is actually a condition of liberation (cf. the original condition of nudity in Genesis 2:25), and as the youth escaped, so Jesus escapes and his humiliation becomes a great victory.” Ibid., 223–24. 30. J. Knox perceives the proleptic nature of this episode and reads it as “an anticipation of the empty tomb.”“A Note on Mark 14:51–52,” in The Joy of Study: Papers on New Testament and Related Subjects Presented to Honor Frederick Clifton Grant, ed. Sherman Elbridge Johnson (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 29; quoted by Cosby,“Mark 14:51–52 and the Problem of Gospel Narrative,” 223. 31. The youngster’s safety, achieved by wiggling out of the loose sheet covering his body, and his flight to salvation bring to mind the more “realistic” and less enigmatic narration of Joseph’s running away from his master’s wife, who is trying to seduce him in Gen. 39:12. No mention is made of Joseph’s running away naked; the parallel with the youngster’s story is limited to wiggling out of his garment when he is caught. 32. See Mark 15:44–46:“Ioseph autem mercatus sindonem et deponens eum involvit sindone et posuit eum in monumento, quod erat excisum de petra, et advolvit lapidem ad ostium monumenti” (“Joseph . . . bought a shroud, took Jesus down from the cross, and wrapped him in the shroud and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb”). 33. Meister Eckhart, Works, vol. 2, trans. C. de B. Evans (London: John M. Watkins, 1931), 438. For an analysis of this episode, see Ernesto Buonaiuti, Il misticismo medioevale (Pinerolo: Casa Sociale, 1928), 159–60. 34. Peck, The Fool of God, 52. 35. Il libro della Beata Angela da Foligno: Edizione critica, ed. Ludger Thier and Abele Calufetti (Grottaferrata, Rome: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1985), 136–39. Angela da Foligno interestingly offers a metaphorical interpretation for her undressing action in front of the crucifix. She interprets the removal of all clothes from her body as a liberating action, which reflects a desire to be freed from all practical impediments, familial and otherwise, in order to accomplish her religious mission.When her entire family dies shortly thereafter, she understands the implications of the wish she had expressed while undressing. 36. Mario Casella establishes a connection between Francis and Iacopone on the basis of their public denudation:“tutt’e due (Francesco e Jacopone) si spogliano

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nudi dinanzi a Dio per far rinunzia completa del mondo e delle cose sue.”“Jacopone da Todi,” Archivum Romanicum 4, no. 3 (1920): 308. 37. Iacopone’s strenuous defense of the radical application of the rule of poverty and his siding with the Spiritual faction represented only one portion of his antagonistic attitude toward Boniface VIII, a stance that eventually led to the friar’s imprisonment. A thorough investigation of the feud must take contemporary politics into consideration. 38. Although he was writing from a different perspective and achieved very different results, a similar metaphorical opposition of clothing versus nudity is created by Montaigne in his Essais. In the essay devoted to clothing and nudity, “De l’usage de se vestir,” nudity is viewed as the original and intended condition of human beings, since they were naked in the Book of Genesis. So important is Montaigne’s concept of nudity and clothing that “[t]oute la pensée politique, sociale et morale des Essais pourrait se comprendre à partir de la réflexion de Montaigne sur le vêtement et sur la nudité.” Géralde Nakam,“Le corps dans les Essais: Études du nu,” Bulletin de la société des amis de Montaigne, 7th ser., nos. 7–8 (1987): 37–38. In general, in the rhetoric of his Essais, Montaigne favors the deceptive quality of clothing as an image for artistic creation. For a study of this figure of speech in Montaigne, see Emily Jo Struncks,“The Metaphors of Clothing and Nudity in the Essais of Montaigne,” Romance Notes 19, no. 1 (1978): 83–89. 39. According to Danielle Régnier-Bohler, nudity in the Middle Ages corresponds to the loss of social demarcations, even to the point of self-destruction:“A l’abandon du vêtement, au corps mis à nu, correspond la perte des marques sociales de l’identité, de lois d’un comportement codé, allant jusqu’au désir de la destruction de soi.”“Le corps mis à nu: Perception et valeur symbolique de la nudité dans les récits du Moyen Age,” Europe-Revue Litteraire Mensuelle 654 (1983): 55. 40. The uniformity of clothes in various social classes and professions throughout the Middle Ages is documented in numerous studies. For my research, the most useful were: Christian de Mérindol,“Signes de hiérarchie sociale à la fin du Moyen Age d’après les vêtements: Méthodes et recherches,” in Le vêtement: Histoire, archéologie, et symbolique vestimentaires au Moyen Age, ed. Michel Pastoureau (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1989), 181–224; Blanche Payne, History of Costume: From the Ancient Egyptians to the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Rosanna Pistolese,“I primi due secoli dopo il Mille,” in La moda nella storia del costume (Bologna: Cappelli, 1979), 97–105. For the relationship of clothing to social and class systems, the most useful study is by Penny Storm,“Social Class,” in Functions of Dress: Tool of Culture and the Individual (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1987), 170–87. 41. Del beato Frate Jacopone da Tode: Vita e Laude contenute nella “Franceschina” del P. Giacomo Oddi, Codice inedito del secolo XV (Assisi: Porziuncola, 1926); reprinted in Le vite antiche di Jacopone da Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977), 36.

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42. Le vite antiche di Jacopone da Todi, ed. Menestò, 39–41. 43. This is the episode as it is reported in the Franceschina, one of the most widespread chronicles of Jacopone’s life:“Unde che, avendo lui preso lo stato del matrimonio, vivea con molta vanità, et tanto avea piacere et diletto, quanto quella sua moglie andava bene adornata; et a ciò contra sua volgia molto la inducia. Ma quella che veramente temeva Dio, demostrava nell’occhi del marito et anche del mondo ogne vanità che podeva, tanto nelli vestimenti, quanto nell’altre curiosità et adornamente, et dentro de sé, intrinsicamente, facea aspera penitentia. Unde che, essendo andata questa iovene de volontà de ser Jacopone suo marito ad un certo convito, secondo la usanza de quella patria, adornata quanto seppe per honorare quilli che l’avevano invitata, et anche per honore del suo marito, occurse un caso molto stranio. Imperò che, staendo quisti in festa et balli, subitamente et insperatamente cascò quello solaio, sopra lo quale quilli faceano quella tale festa; per modo che tutti ruinaro de socto insieme con lo ditto solaro. Et bene che tutti fossero percossi, chi de capo, chi de corpo et chi de altri membri, pure non fo niuno in caso de morte, se non sola la moglie de ser Jacopone, la quale, come piacque al meraviglioso Dio, fo sì et per tale modo amaccata, che quasi subito passò de questa vita. Et essendo questa cosa denuntiata ad ser Jacopone suo marito, subito corse ad quello loco, et con molta amaritudine, perché l’amava teneramente, la fece portare ad casa sua. Et como foro in casa, la fece spogliare de quilli vani vestimenti per ordinarla che fosse seppellita. Finalmente li trovò sopra le nude carne uno aspero celitio, lo quale vedendo ser Jacopone suo marito, fo molto de ciò meravigliato et stupefatto, considerando la vita vana che quella mostrava in apparenza; et anche de tale cosa non s’era mai acorto de uno minimo atto. Unde che, sì per lo caso occurso de quella strania et repentina morte, et sì per la occulta et virtuosa vita che quella sua donpna tenea, fo per tale modo ser Jacopone stupefatto nella mente et conponto nel core et alienato de tutti li sentimenti, che mai più da quella hora in poi parse veramente homo ragionevole como prima, ma como insensato et attonito andava intra la gente. El quale sentendose nell’anima et nel core tanta tramutazione de se medesimo, tutto se recolse in sé. Et tornato al core, comenzò per uno merabele modo et lume divino a pandere l’occhi, et considerare la passata sua vita tanto fuore de la via de Dio et de la salute; ante ciecha et paza et insensata et fuorte de ogne ragione, la quale lo precipitava senza alcuno freno alli orrendi baratri de lo eternale inferno” (Since he had married, he lived in much vanity, and had much pleasure and delight when his wife went around well attired; and he induced her to go around well dressed against her will. But since she much feared God, she displayed in the eyes of her husband and the world as much vanity as she could, both in her clothes and in other frivolities and adornments, but in herself, inside, she did harsh penance. So that, having to go to a party, according to her husband’s [sir Iacopone’s] desire, this young woman adorned herself as much as she could, in accordance with the custom of her country, in order to honor her hosts as well as her husband. At the

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party a strange incident occurred.While the guests were partying and dancing, suddenly and unexpectedly, the floor on which they were standing collapsed, so that they all fell down together with the floor.And although everyone was injured, some in the head, some in the body, some in the limbs, no one died, with the sole exception of sir Iacopone’s wife. According to wonderful God’s will, she was so badly injured that she immediately passed from this life.When the news was announced to sir Iacopone, her husband, he immediately rushed to the scene and, because he loved her dearly, with much sorrow, had her brought back home. When they were at home, he had her undressed of those vain clothes to prepare her for burial. At the end he found on her naked flesh a harsh hair shirt. When he saw it, her husband, sir Iacopone, was very surprised and stupefied, thinking of his wife’s apparent show of vanity, and also because he had never realized that she had a hair shirt. So, therefore, both because of the strange incident of her sudden death and the hidden, virtuous life his wife had led, sir Iacopone was so shocked in his mind and so touched in his heart, and so estranged in all his faculties, that ever after he no longer seemed sensible as he had been before. He began wandering around as a crazy and insane man. Having undergone a great change in his soul and in his heart, he withdrew into himself completely. Having returned to his heart, thanks to the light of God, he began to shed tears in an admirable way. He now considered his past existence as having been outside God’s path and outside salvation. It had been so blind, crazy, insane, and unreasonable that it would have thrown him without any restraint into the horrible depths of eternal hell [my translation]). Le vite antiche di Jacopone da Todi, ed. Menestò, 36–37. I am aware of the possibly legendary tone of this story, which may be a hagiographic rendering of the death of Iacopone’s wife. Its quotation serves the purpose, nevertheless, of showing the strong connections between undressing and metanoia in the context of Franciscan literature taken in a broad sense. 44. Francis’s use of “brother ass” to refer to his own body occurs, for example, in the Vita secunda by Thomas of Celano; see The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul 2.82, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 2:325. It occurs as well in the Legenda maior by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio; see his The Major Legend of Saint Francis 5.6, in ibid., 2:564. 45. “Fool of God” is an expression critics have frequently used to refer to Iacopone’s predilection for clownish attitudes in the name of God’s love.The term was first applied to Iacopone by Alessandro D’Ancona,“Jacopone da Todi, il giullare di Dio del secolo XIII,” in Studi sulla letteratura italiana dei primi secoli (Milan: Fratelli Trèves, 1891), 3–101. 46. Le vite antiche di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Menestò, 38. 47. Given the paucity of critical references to the phenomenon of nudity in Franciscanism, I found inspiration for an analysis of this topos in both Francis and Iacopone in studies dealing with other texts, such as Alastair J. Minnis, Lifting

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the Veil: Sexual/Textual Nakedness in the “Roman de la Rose” (Exeter, England: Short Run Press, 1993). 48. The expression is taken from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians:“every one of you that has been baptised has been clothed in Christ” (3:27). See chapter 6, note 9. 49. In the words of a theorist of religious language, the metaphor of clothing appears to describe the Christian dogma of the Incarnation:“If the ‘Word’ is eternal . . . , but words only become clothed in different languages at different times, in different places, which word in which language is god? . . . Perhaps all scriptural words are in fact a linguistic clothing of eternal Words, irrespective of the languages of encapsulation.” John B. Alphonso-Karbala,“Mythic and Symbolic Verbal Structures and Literal Meaning in Literature,” in Language in Religion, ed. Humphrey Tonkin and Allison Armstrong Keef (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989), 55. 50. The Bonaccorsi Edition of 1490 was intended to include a symbolic 100 laude, but a numbering mistake resulted in the inclusion of two extra laude (two laude were numbered 47 and two 77), so that this edition in fact contains 102 laude. See Brian Richardson,“The First Edition of Iacopone’s Laude (Florence, 1490) and the Development of Vernacular Philology,” Italian Studies: An Annual Review 47 (1992): 30. 51. Franco Mancini comments in the following fashion on the theme of nudity in the famous Lauda 103,“Donna de Paradiso”:“Iacopone fonde nudità e sangue in un unico tema e lo risolve in un moto di ansia materna.”“Tradizione e innovazione in ‘Donna de Paradiso,’ ” in Atti del Convegno storico-Iacoponico: In occasione del 750 anniversario della nascita di Iacopone da Todi, ed. Enrico Menestò (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1981), 168. 52. For an interpretation of Lauda 16, see Lilia Sebastiani, Il terzo cielo: L’ultimo anno di Iacopone da Todi (Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 2000), 188–98. Il terzo cielo is a fictional rendition of Iacopone’s last year and contains insightful interpretations of the poet’s life and some of his laude. 53. See Matt. 7:15:“Beware of false prophets who come to you disguised as sheep but underneath are ravenous wolves.” 54. Such insistence on the metaphor of clothing, dressing, and their opposites may come to Iacopone from Saint Ephrem the Syrian, a fourth-century mystic,“the founding father of Syriac literature and the forerunner of medieval mysticism,” who “was obsessed with cloth[ing], both as a symbol of incarnation and as real dress.” Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth, 188. The same metaphorical idea of nakedness and clothing is developed in the secular context by Macrobius to refer to the concealment of allegorical narrative; see his In somnium Scipionis, ed. J.Willis, 2d ed. (Leipzig:Teubner, 1970), 1.2.17–18. 55. This line only is my translation.

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Mysticism of Sexual Union READING THIRTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCISCAN TEXTS through the lens of the Edenic myth in the Book of Genesis reveals that adoption of nudity as a chief human trait is complemented by matrimonial union as a theological and poetic topos. Franciscan mysticism considers humanity in its twogendered typology and portrays it as a binomial entity. Francis emphasizes the fraternal/sororal relation between the sexes as accompanying spousal ties; Iacopone repeatedly evokes matrimonial consummation as the image of the otherwise inexpressible bond between human beings and God. In the Book of Genesis, the two narratives accounting for the origins, the Priestly source and the Yahwist source, emphasize that humanity consists of two genders and that the union linking them together is unseverable.The Yahwist account of creation views the female side of humanity as deriving from the male side; one male rib gives birth to the body of the first woman, a much-desired companion for the first man and flesh of his own flesh:“Yahweh God fashioned the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man” (2:22).1 The derivative nature of the female component of humanity, taken from the male side, while hinging on the patriarchal notion of man’s primary role, underscores the interaction between the two genders necessary to form a single entity.The more egalitarian Priestly account attributes the same origin to both sexes, a union created in the image of God. It is their togetherness that likens them to divinity; their dynamic interaction evokes the harmonious multiplicity of the single God, to whom even the Jewish tradition referred as Elohim, a plural noun identifying the plurality of divinity as a dynamic, interactive being.2 In the Christian tradition, the three Persons forming the triune Godhead emphasize the concept of a dialogic divinity.The three Persons constituting the Godhead witness such interactive structure thanks to the love relation uniting them. The Father and the Son, the First and Second Persons, are bound in love, the Spirit, who is the Third Person of the Trinity.The same loving relation joins together human beings and God and human beings among themselves. In the words of H. S. Benjamins:“Love brings together the divided

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halves of the original androgynous man, created ‘after the image,’ and sets up a desire for fellowship.”3 Thus, although mankind distinguishes itself from all other creatures because of its likeness with divinity, it is not one or the other sex that resembles God, but their union.This likeness with divinity is explained in the Book of Genesis: “God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created Him, male and female He created them” (1.27). The name Adam comes from ’adamah, the word for “ground,” or “earth,” while the name Eve, hawwah, has its root in hayah, “to live.”Thus Adam and Eve together, as procreators of the human species, are “living earth.” Human beings bear in themselves the two components of life, both possessing physicality and drawing the spirit of life from God; in their binomial interaction, they combine heaven and earth, according to their etymology.The Yahwist tradition complements this concept of the inextricable human combination of man and woman by sanctioning that “man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and they become one flesh” (2:24).4 Created in the image of divinity, humanity consists in an amalgam of two individuals in one single entity, with love as a medium binding them together.This dialogic dynamism of their union surpasses the static individualism of singleness. It is the interactive, kinetic nature of God that originates the unique doctrine of a Trinitarian divinity in Christianity. God is one, but the single essence mysteriously comprises three Persons to form a unique triune God. The interactive structure of the two genders mirrors the love uniting mankind to divinity.The love relation of two human beings can be seen as the best icon for the more ethereal, profound, and encompassing type of love binding human beings to God. Medieval theology adopts the biblical topos of love between man and woman to portray God’s love for humanity.The privileged moment of such loving union is sexual consummation; the ecstatic giving to each other by two human beings represents the most profound act of love. No other action can be more intimate and unifying to the human mind.When transferred to the spiritual level, such intimacy and reciprocal knowledge create an adequate image for the otherwise incomprehensible concept of God’s love for humanity. References to ravishment and intercourse occur in the biblical tradition either to indicate divine presence in human life or in terms of Israel’s “apostasy with prostitution,” when the Jews stray from the path marked out for them by God and copulate with foreign deities.5 The rhetoric of consummation appears in Exodus (34:15) and Numbers (15:39), but “[s]uch

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a view becomes explicit in the prophets, as the witness of Hosea (1:2–3:5), Isaiah (1:21, 50:1, 54:4–10, 62:4–5), Jeremiah (2:2, 3:1–13), and Ezekiel (16:1–63, 23:1–49) shows.”6 With patristic exegesis the erotic metaphor becomes the most appropriate image to describe the beauty and the totalizing nature of divine love.7 The flourishing of commentaries on the Song of Songs (also known as the Song of Solomon) testifies to the importance of the metaphor of human love for the understanding of divine love in the Christian Middle Ages.The possible epithalamic origin of the poem explains its erotic content, which was occasioned by Solomon’s wedding to the queen of Sheba. Jewish and Christian exegetical glosses interpret it as an allegory of God’s burning love for humanity.8 Bernard of Clairvaux’s metaphorical interpretation of the Song of Songs follows a long tradition of Christian exegesis and commentary, which began with Origen in the third century.The theme of the ι‘ερ`ος γ`αµος (hieros gamos), the sacred marriage between a god and a human, inevitably turns eroticism into a literary device to express the love relation between human beings and the Christian God.The ties binding the bride and the bridegroom in the Song of Songs, the most sensual book of the biblical canon, appear in Bernard’s interpretation as a plausible rendering of mystical love. The crescendo of sexual innuendos is interpreted in the text as God’s insistent attempts to capture (or recapture) the love of human beings. Seduction is God’s technique to unite with them. Since the correspondence equates the bride with the Soul, Anima, and the bridegroom with God, the binary structure of two separate genders is maintained, although some ambiguity is created by the masculinity of most mystics, who identify themselves with the female Soul. In the medieval context one can follow two strains of thought acknowledging the essential role played by love. One is a mystical, theological line originating in the biblical vision of love as a dynamic force binding two entities.The other is an unprecedented intellectual and poetic consideration of love as a purely human and secular sensation that propagates under the name of “courtly love.” Christian love and courtly love coincide in a variety of manifestations and have similar phenomenologies.The interaction between them and the possible derivation of one form of love from the other are the subjects of animated debates among scholars. So far, such interaction and derivation, in the absence of definitive evidence, remain hypothetical. The abundance of treatises on love and the proliferation of commentaries on the Song of Songs testify to the increased importance of love in the Christian doctrine of the late Middle Ages. Christianity is revamped

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as a religion of love, a creed that emphasizes the pivotal role of love in its theology. All the major theologians and mystics between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries wrote about love. Hugh of St.Victor, Alain of Lille, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bruno of Segni, Honorius of Auton, PseudoRichard of St.Victor, Richard Rolle, Rupert of Deutz, and William of St. Thierry made use of erotic imagery or commented on the Song of Songs in order to address the issue of God’s relation to humanity.Their meditations stress a specular reflection of divine love for humans in the love of man and woman. Marital consummation stands as the privileged metaphorical rendering of this form of love, the only image that can in some way account for God’s intimate relation to human beings. In an attempt to give a metaphorical explanation of divine commitment to loving humans, theologians use the specular image of matrimonial consummation and apply it to mysticism. Mystical marriage as a figurative rendering of the love relation between human beings and God can be found, for example, in Hugh of St.Victor’s De arrhâ animae (The Soul’s Betrothal-Gift), a dialogue between Man and Soul, Anima, on the ineffable nature of God’s love for her. Significantly, the author terms his treatise a “soliloquy,” manifesting his intention to consider the two interlocutors as a single entity engaged in a dialogue; the two converse and express their ideas with one united voice, their successive speeches interlacing harmoniously.9 As if the dialogic structure would not suffice to convey the idea of love’s comradeship and its composite nature, Anima formulates the following thoughts:“love can never endure to be solitary, and therein ceases in some measure to be love, if it does not pour its force of loving into a sharer of its comradeship.”10 In their dialogue Man and Anima offer a characterization of the love God-the-bridegroom feels for Soul-the-bride. Man criticizes Anima’s misbehavior and blames her for the Bridegroom’s abandonment. He displays all the gifts and beautiful things that the bridegroom has bestowed upon her. She assents and acknowledges her good fortune, and eventually confesses her faults and promises to be thankful and deferent. Some of Hugh of St.Victor’s topoi are shared by Iacopone, such as the disfigurement and ugliness of Anima during her sinful time and her attractiveness and appeal when in a state of grace. This renewed interest in love at the mystical, doctrinal, and theological levels parallels the unprecedented intellectual and poetic discussions about secular love occurring at the time.The expression religio amoris, generally employed to identify the devotion of the lover to his beloved in courtly love, is variously used to refer to Christianity and to medieval

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secular love in the courtly form.After all, Christianity is a religion of love, because all its theological investigations and dogmas may be reduced to an understanding of God’s love for human beings as the guiding force in history. But religio amoris is a terminus technicus identifying a specific quality of courtly love and its development in the poetry of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Such veneration of the beloved knows no precedents in intellectual history.The woman becomes an object of admiration, the love for her a powerful feeling and almost a cult.The cultural change effected in the Western tradition by the diffusion of courtly love thanks to the troubadours is highlighted by C. S. Lewis: Many of the features of this sentiment, as it was known to the troubadours, have indeed disappeared; but this must not blind us to the fact that the most momentous and the most revolutionary elements in it have made the background of European literature for eight hundred years. . . .They effected a change which has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched, and they erected impassable barriers between us and the classical past or the Oriental present. Compared with this revolution the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.11

Lewis attempts an explanation of this phenomenon by applying Ovid’s fascination with and worshiping of love, the Ovidian religio amoris, to the Christian context of the feudal Middle Ages. Love for woman becomes a religio amoris, a Frauendienst, a gallant service to the lady, in which all the dynamics at work in the vassal-lord relation are applied to the subservient attitude of the lover toward his beloved woman, so that humility and courtesy are two of the qualities the lover must possess if he truly loves his lady.12 An intricate dance of diametrically opposed concepts structures medieval culture.The exaltation of monastic chastity in religion runs parallel to the glorification of matrimonial consummation as unsurpassed image for divine love; extreme Christian devotion survives alongside the adulterous nature of courtly love; asceticism proposes allegorical expositions of epithalamia, such as the Song of Songs, by claiming the sacredness of its figurative language; large religious groups considered heretical, such as the Cathars, promote total abstinence and sexual excesses as equally acceptable practices. The contradictory nature of love in medieval mentality and poetry is summarized in Denis de Rougemont’s seminal study Love in the Western World: An entirely new kind of poetry sprang up in the South of France, the birthplace of Catharism. It extolled the Lady of Thoughts, the Platonic Idea

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of a feminine principle, and the encouragement of love contrary to marriage, and at the same time of chastity. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux undertook a campaign against Catharism, founded an orthodox ascetic order to match that of the Goodmen or Perfect, and then set up in opposition to cortezia the first really effectual form of emotional mysticism in the West— that of the Divine Love.13

Denis de Rougemont establishes a sharp separation between erotic love, a prerogative of the classical world, and agapic love, a quality of Christianity.The passionate secular love of antiquity persists through the Christian Middle Ages, until it evolves into the much-debated form of courtly love. De Rougemont even fixes a date for the birth of passionate love in our era:“The earliest passionate lovers whose story has reached us are Abélard and Héloïse, who met for the first time in 1118! And it is in the middle of this same century that love was first recognized and encouraged as a passion worth cultivating. Passionate love was then given a name which has since become familiar. It was called cortezia, or courtly love.”14 The contemporaneous development of courtly love and Provençal poetics, thanks to which this new form of love was popularized, remains a unique occurrence in the Western tradition.The origins of courtly love, a form of love that is so peculiarly different from other types of love, is still quite mysterious for critics and historians alike.15 Late medieval society sought to overcome the rift between cupiditas and caritas. Neither represented the interaction of men and women as intended in Earthly Paradise, when God lay the foundations of marriage as the unseverable union of two human beings who, according to a literal translation of the Vulgate,“will be two in one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Cupiditas was the type of love known to classical antiquity. It was the fulfillment of carnal necessity. It required no psychological involvement or exertion of emotion. It equaled a lustful need.The sensations related to passion, later defined as suffering and desire for the beloved, were considered a mental disease. Caritas was spiritual love for God and neighbor. Its features were so completely different from lust as to suggest that lust was a misdirected and abused form of caritas, a caritas gone astray.The two types of love appeared to have separate origins and separate natures. Courtly love bridged the gap between cupiditas and caritas, mediating and compromising between them. It preserved lustfulness as unquenchable desire for the body of the beloved, without attempting to achieve complete carnal fulfillment, since it commanded sublimation of fleshy

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instincts—and this quality distances it from the not-always-celibate Provençal lyric. At the same time, passion constituted one of its chief components and was expressed in suffering and desire. Courtly love also imposed subordination to the loved one, according to a rigidly fixed code of vassalage, in which the woman occupied the position of midons, the ruling lord in feudal hierarchy. Midons is usually the title given to the beloved woman in Provençal poetry, and the name frequently creates gender-ambiguous expressions, since midons is a male lord and the beloved evoked or invoked in the poems is generally female. Courtly love bore no connection to marriage. It posed, in fact, as a replacement of it. Marriage at the time was a legal, social contract and a religious, sacramental institution, but it had no relation to love. It stood as a legitimation of carnal union, effected in order to produce offspring and safeguard familial property.Although sanctioned by ecclesiastical approval, marital consummation remained tinted with sinful nuances, reminiscent of the Fall from Earthly Paradise.The new form of courtly love brought the innovation of purity, since it was adulterous only in the lover’s imagination.The desire to be fully united with the beloved never achieved lustful practice and betrayal of the marriage bed. But the chief revolutionary trait of courtly love was adulation of the woman, which was a new phenomenon in the historiography of human love.16 Thirteenth-century Franciscanism highlighted this renewed interest in womanhood and joined it to the mystical tradition of human love as specular image of divine love.The novelty of this combination manifests itself in a variety of ways in Franciscan texts, both hagiographic and poetic. Francis of Assisi, celibate by vow in his religious life, knew the Provençal tradition, whether through his mother’s (partly legendary) Provençal roots, or (what is more likely) by being sensitive to poetic issues and being exposed through geographic vicinity and cultural milieu to Provençal lyric, the most influential poetic trend of his time. His devotion to Lady Poverty, his allegorical spouse in religious life, displays numerous traits of the courtly notion of love.While the whole structure of Franciscanism depends on an understanding of poverty as the primary virtue for Christianity, to Francis, Lady Poverty is a real presence, a woman he addresses respectfully as Lady, Madonna in the Italian vernacular. He characterizes the pursuit of poverty as using the same strategies as those used to seek a betrothed and aiming similarly at matrimony as its ultimate goal.The strong union linking the members of the Order to the virtue of poverty is portrayed in the mystical marriage with Lady Poverty in the Sacrum commercium Sancti

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Francisci cum Domina Paupertate, an allegorical treatise that stresses the importance of poverty in the life of the Order.Although the short text had the purpose of calling back and exhorting the Order to the exercise of absolute poverty after it had strayed from it in the course of time, its literary form raises other interesting issues.17 The Sacrum commercium narrates how the friars (Francis being one of them) search for Poverty, the woman they have selected as their bride.The peculiar mission of Franciscanism as an Order entirely devoted to absolute poverty is made clear in allegorical form.18 The friars’ passion for Poverty leads them to a desire to share their lives with her and to devote all their time and energy to loving her, honoring her, and respecting her as their spouse. Poverty for Franciscans represents a surrogate for the gift of Wisdom, and for the Church.19 The friars’ devotion to her resembles the love relation of male lover to female beloved in courtly love, in which subordination and service were absolute prerequisites for participating in the new way of loving. In the Sacrum commercium the friars embark on a quest for Lady Poverty, endure many trials before encountering her on the top of the mountain, and must entreat her to be united with them in matrimony.They climb a high mountain to signify their strenuous effort to reach her; they court and woo her, displaying total admiration and passion for what she is and what she represents; then they all celebrate their wedding union with her in the course of a peculiar banquet with no libations, no guests, and no festivities, since poverty rules as sovereign over them and the reality around them. Although earlier orders had viewed celibacy as a spiritual marriage to the Church or to Christ, Franciscanism revises the concept by introducing the intermediary virtue of poverty and allegorizing her as a Lady, a woman who preserves features and characteristics of distant and aloof courtly love ladies.The woman whom the Franciscan friars aspire to conquer is famished, gaunt, and dressed in rags, because she impersonates Poverty; therefore, the ceaseless pursuit of her love may be interpreted from a literary point of view as a parodic remake of similar love chases in courtly love literature.The parody emerges from the reversal of certain topoi of the courtly tradition.The adorned riches and refined aesthetic attributes characterizing the Lady of many lovers’ dreams change into the aesthetically unappealing Lady Poverty, who wears dingy clothes and no ornaments, but is spiritually charged and influential.The bride’s name, Lady Poverty, is in itself a provocative oxymoron. “Courtesy” is a concept that recurs frequently in the Sacrum commercium, but here, rather than designating the genteel quality of the Lady’s heart, it embodies a

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spiritual characteristic. Moreover, the title Sacrum commercium implies matrimonial consummation (“commercium” being a Latin term for “intercourse” as well as “trade”), and suggests a reversal of an amorous relation as intended in the courtly tradition, in which love was limited to the servile ritual of courting and wooing.The Franciscan treatise connects the amorous relation between the friars and Lady Poverty to the indivisible love union of man and woman as formulated in the Book of Genesis. The word “commercium” resonates with erotic and juridical, as well as biblical and liturgical implications.“Commercium” indicates the complex and multifaceted relation binding Francis to Poverty. On a theological level, it echoes God’s covenant with Israel, since the encounter of Francis and his friars with Lady Poverty takes place on the top of a mountain and, in that respect, is similar to Moses’ vision of God on Mount Horeb in the Old Testament or Christ’s crucifixion on Mount Calvary in the New Testament. Exactly as in a binding and solemn agreement, the two sides exchange gifts and commit themselves to love and faithfulness. On a purely symbolic level, the text mocks a matrimonial celebration, because the union, which in essence resembles a wedding ritual, reverses all the typical elements of a wedding.The whole ceremony symbolizes the importance of a return to the purity of nature and to the essential constituents of human life at its initial stages in Earthly Paradise. Marrying Poverty brings Francis back to a nude and crude lifestyle: Lady Poverty lies down “naked upon the naked earth,” after eating a wedding meal of bread and water out of a cracked dish placed on the earth.20 Francis remains dressed at the moment of his wedding with Lady Poverty in the Sacrum commercium, but references to his nakedness occur elsewhere in the text.While ascending the mountain where Poverty abides, two old men remind Francis of the importance of nakedness, with all the complexities of its metaphorical implications.They recommend:“take off your clothes of rejoicing, and put aside every burden and sin clinging to you for, unless you are naked, you will not be able to climb to her who lives in so high a place.”21 The naked marriage of Francis to Poverty is an essential component of salvation in Franciscanism, proposing the unification of male and female as its basis; it came to identify Francis’s mission in life, to the point of summarizing, together with few other facts (the public naked conversion and the stigmata), his whole converted existence in art and literature.22 But the marriage to Lady Poverty is only one of numerous instances in Franciscanism in which the unification of male and female occurs as a theological symbol of completion and the dynamics of Christian love.

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Francis’s relation to Clare stands as a unique example of a religious couple embracing the same spirituality and the same mission, although with different applications according to their respective genders.The love and harmony uniting Francis to Clare remain unmatched in the history of religious orders in Christianity.The partnership of Benedict and Scholastica at the foundation of monasticism in the sixth century or the comradery binding Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul in their seventeenth-century innovative charitable work for women outside the cloister does not match the intricate dynamics of communion and companionship enjoyed by Francis and Clare.23 The founders of the First and Second Franciscan Orders shared the same spirituality and the same aspiration for reform and poverty. Francis inspired the creation of both Orders, but Clare opened the way for the sisters at San Damiano and wrote the first rule for the Poor Clares. Instead of initiating a single order with male and female subdivisions, Francis put Clare at the head of her own religious foundation, which partook of the Franciscan family, but had an original and unprecedented independence and autonomy, its own rule, and its own mission.The harmonious cooperation of a man and a woman gave rise to the two branches of Franciscanism, which reproduces in religious, ascetic life the integration and completion of marriage, a unity that is not static and monolithic, but dynamic and interactive.24 One episode of the Little Flowers depicts, in the typically metaphorical, mythological form that characterizes most Franciscan hagiography, the mystical love uniting the two founders, and explains how their love echoes fundamental elements of matrimony, albeit a spiritual matrimony. In chapter 15, the anonymous redactor tells the anecdote of Francis and Clare’s lunch encounter, and the account immediately acquires the connotations of a symbolic, hyperbolic parable. Upon the insistence of his brothers in the Order, Francis invites Clare to eat lunch with him at Saint Mary of the Angels, and the narrative details their peculiar banquet: Saint Francis had the table prepared on the bare ground, as he usually did.When it was time to eat they sat down together . . . [a]nd as a first course Saint Francis began to speak of God so sweetly, so deeply, and so wonderfully that the abundance of divine grace descended upon them, and all were rapt into God.And while they were enraptured this way, their eyes and hands lifted up to heaven, the people of Assisi and Bettona and those of the surrounding area saw Saint Mary of the Angels burning brightly, along with the whole place and the forest, which was next to the place. It seemed that a great fire was consuming the church, the place and the

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forest together. For this reason the Assisians in a great hurry ran down there to put out the fire, believing that everything really was burning. But on arriving at the place, not finding anything burning, they went inside and found Saint Francis with Saint Clare and all their companions sitting around that humble table, rapt into God through contemplation. From this they clearly understood that that was divine, not material fire, which God had made appear miraculously, to demonstrate and signify the fire of divine love, burning in the souls of these holy brothers and holy nuns.Then they departed with great consolation in their hearts and with holy edification.Then, after a long time, Saint Francis and Saint Clare together with the others returned to themselves; and feeling themselves well comforted by spiritual food, they had little concern for bodily food.And thus finishing that blessed meal, Saint Clare, well accompanied, returned to San Damiano.25

The material paucity of this parodic feast resembles the sparse meal Francis and his companions enjoy with Lady Poverty in the Sacrum commercium. The absence of material food is replaced by an overflowing abundance of spiritual gifts.The meal they share becomes the sacramental ceremony of their love, in itself a mirror image of divine love, symbolized by the burning forest around them.The love uniting Francis and Clare ignites the forest in the hyperbolic rendering of this account, which employs metaphorical devices typical of mystical writing to convey the two mystics’ insatiable love. Having gathered for a lunch appointment (a very human, mundane occasion), the two protagonists experience ecstasy and feel “comforted”; the outcome is a feeling of utter satisfaction; they experience satiation as they would after taking edible food. Material poverty governs Franciscan asceticism, inspires all Franciscan actions, and results in spiritual riches.The lack of edible food changes Francis and Clare’s meal into a mystical banquet, at which all participants experience spiritual renewal.As with the scarce meal with Lady Poverty, the lunch encounter with Clare becomes a surrogate for the Eucharistic supper. The rhetoric of matrimonial love forges Franciscan theology, which perceives the unification of male and female elements in humanity as destined to accomplish a harmonious and balanced form of love.The love manifesting itself in the form of burning fire originates at the moment Francis and Clare come together in a ceremony that bears all the tones of a wedding banquet. But its peculiarly parodic tone changes the usual opulence of wedding feasts into a scanty meal eaten on the ground and expresses the mystical nature of this connubial ceremony. Divine love is bestowed upon human beings in the form of a dialogic exchange between the two

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genders, so that the original union of two bodies in one flesh, as prescribed by the Book of Genesis, acquires full significance. God is the real spouse of both protagonists.The union between them reproduces and mirrors the fidelity and bond they independently promised God at the moment of their religious initiation.26 Another episode confirms the tight bond of interdependency existing between Francis and Clare and stresses the sensual tones of their relation. It is in the form of a dream: The Lady Clare also told that once she had seen St. Francis in a vision and she was bringing him a jug of hot water and with this she was ascending a long stairway, but so easily that it was as though she walked on the level earth.When she reached Saint Francis, he bared his breast saying:“Come and drink.”And having sucked the Saint exhorted her to do so again: which doing what she sucked was so sweet and delightful that she could in no way describe it. And having sucked, that roundness, or the mouth of the pap from which the milk flowed, remained in the mouth of the blessed Clare; and if taken in the hand what had remained in her mouth seemed something bright and shining in which all could be seen as in a mirror, in which she saw her own reflection.27

The passage is dense. Spiritual and sensual rhetoric mixes with oneiric and symbolic narrative.The crucial point consists in the interdependence between the two saints: Clare brings Francis a jug of water to drink, but walks away from the encounter after drinking a much more substantial drink emanating from his breast.As in the parable of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of John (4:7–30), the roles become inverted: in both episodes the woman materially brings the man some water to drink and is given a spiritual drink in return; she is the one who comes away from the encounter after quenching her own thirst for knowledge or wisdom. In the case of Francis and Clare the interdependence of one and the other is much more graphic and physical. Francis suckles and nourishes Clare to symbolize her dependency on his rule of poverty and on his spirituality.28 While the implications of the physical description range from filial love to erotic union, its symbolism stresses the unseverable ties of Francis to Clare and the connection between the First and Second Franciscan Orders. Thus mystical marriage metaphorically signifies the union and communion between Francis and Clare, between the two separate sexes, and between the two complementary Franciscan Orders.The dynamics of two

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separate Orders joined under the aegis of a single spirituality is uniquely Franciscan. Poverty acts as the matrix of both, while each Order operates within the specificity of its own mission: mendicant active life for the male Order in the form of preaching, and enclosed contemplative life for the female Order, which is devoted to prayer. The interaction of two different, separate components as the foundation of the Franciscan Family finds further explication and justification at the moment of the creation of the Third Franciscan Order, an original invention of Francis’s and an unprecedented religious institution, the first of its kind in the history of Christianity.The Third Order joins men and women under the heading of Franciscan spirituality. Its establishment is narrated in an interesting metaphorical context, in which the combination of the two genders plays a definitive role. Chapter 16 of the Little Flowers relates the creation of the Third Order of Saint Francis. It is worth noting that this episode is reported immediately after the lunch meeting of Francis and Clare at Saint Mary of the Angels.The narration takes its shape from a dynamic interaction of men and women, of the First (male) Order and the Second (female) Order, and of preaching and contemplation as the specific missions of each existing branch of Franciscanism. Undecided whether to lead an active life or give himself entirely to contemplation, Francis requests the advice of Sylvester and Clare, the two most distinguished representatives of the First and Second Orders. After much praying, both saintly advisers sanction the continuation of Francis’s preaching activity. Francis wastes no time; he sets out on his preaching mission immediately and delivers such an effective sermon at Cannara that his congregation is enflamed to the point that “in their devotion all the men and women of that town wanted to follow him and abandon town.” Surprisingly, Francis rejects their admission into the two existing Orders and cryptically announces a forthcoming third option: “Don’t be in a hurry, and don’t leave: I’ll arrange what you must do for the salvation of your souls.”The lapidary conclusion to this section of chapter 16 serves as a clarification of the protagonist’s intentions: “And then he got the idea of starting the Third Order for the universal salvation of all.”29 Francis’s humble request for advice from the two branches of the existing Franciscan Family brings about the sermon, which in turn inspires the creation of a new Third Order of Franciscans. Chapter 16 then elucidates the pastoral and spiritual significance of Francis’s new foundation by introducing the famous “Sermon to the Birds.” Besides giving further demonstration of Francis’s preaching abilities, which

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enable him to capture miraculously the attention of every audience member, including animals, the well-known parable may be interpreted as a strikingly metatextual rendition of Francis’s recent creation of the Third Franciscan Order.30 The key novelty and the chief quality of this new foundation is the coexistence of men and women within the same Order and its acceptance of all walks of life and social classes. The “Sermon to the Birds” constitutes a symbolic rendering of the creation of the Third Franciscan Order—and significantly, the two episodes follow one another consecutively. A symbolic reading of the “Sermon” should begin with the baffling expression “sister birds” (“sirocchie uccelli”), with which Francis addresses his congregation in the canonical Italian translation.The creation of the Third Order of men and women climaxes with the combination of the two grammatical genders, male and female, in the paradoxical expression “sirocchie uccelli.” In English, “sister birds” sounds slightly peculiar, but it preserves grammatical correctness. In Italian, it is an unequivocally morphological aberration, the expression consisting of “uccelli,” a masculine noun, and “sirocchie,” a feminine attribute.This anomaly may have originated as a translating device in order to carry over into the Italian the original Latin “sorores aves.” What makes grammatical sense in Latin, since the gender of “avis” is feminine, finds no plausible grammatical explanation in Italian, in which “uccelli” is a masculine noun.Yet, philology fails to explain the reason for the fourteenth-century translator’s decision to retain the feminine gender of “sirocchie,” rather than opting for the perfectly plausible “frati uccelli,” which would be an acceptable signifier for Francis’s winged, feathered congregation and indubitably a fitting translation of “sorores aves.” Changing the gender of words from one language to another has never constituted mistranslation or inaccurate rendering of the original.The mixing of grammatical genders is perplexing (as well as ungrammatical) in a gendered language such as Italian.The masculine noun “uccelli” becomes feminized by the attribute “sirocchie,” which is an archaic, suffixed form of endearment for “sorelle,” sisters.The translator clearly attempts to transfer more than simply the literal level of signification.The interaction of the two sexes in the episode penetrates the translated text even in its grammatical folds with the combination of male and female in a single expression designating Francis’s symbolic congregation. If the reader connects this gender combination in the same chapter of the Little Flowers with the creation of the Third Order of Francis, an Order open to men and women for the first time in Church history, the

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two sections of chapter 16 acquire coherence and uniformity.31 Having proclaimed the creation of a new Order—for which Francis had so far had only the inspiration—the narrator attempts a poetic, symbolic version of such future creation.The tenor and content of Francis’s “Sermon to the Birds” show numerous common traits with the goals and purposes of the still-to-be-founded Order.The “Sermon to the Birds” becomes the poetic, symbolic inauguration of the Third Franciscan Order.The flock of birds in the woods at Bevagna supplants the congregation of men and women at Cannara, who has inspired Francis to initiate the Third Order open to both sexes.They equally display the same gender combination of female and male, as shown by the expression “sirocchie uccelli.” The text itself defines the metaphorical significance of the birds by declaring that they are poor Franciscans “who . . . possess nothing of their own in this world, and entrust their life only to the providence of God.”32 They embody the Franciscan ideal of evangelical poverty and purity. By being creatures of the air, the most ethereal of cosmic elements, they enjoy the freedom and lightness that human beings strive so much to gain in existential, spiritual terms; also, they instinctively and naturally move upward, in the direction of the heavens, the designated dwelling of God in religious topography.All the characteristics that Francis attributes to his flying flock match those of perfect Franciscans, who can be identified here as the men and women of the Third Order. Francis urges them to pray and preach, since this is the command he gives the birds at Bevagna, and since prayer and preaching are the respective missions of the two existing branches of the Franciscan Family. The gender combination emerging from the episodes of the Franciscan Legenda just discussed occurs in a more condensed, poetic fashion in Francis’s poem “The Canticle of Brother Sun.” By means of the frequent attributes “brother” and “sister” referred to creatures mentioned in the poem, Francis evokes gender differences as well as the fraternity and sorority binding all human beings and all creatures as God’s offspring.The idea of a dynamic relation of genders as structuring all creation was so deeply engrained in Franciscan mentality that it may have been intended to be seen as informing nature from within and acting dynamically even inside the same creature.This perception would be astonishingly innovative. It has been suggested, almost from a Jungian point of view, that “Francis was aware of a possible perfection of the other-sexual in both men and women.”33 Whether or not Francis believed that a gender combination informed humans from within, it is clear that creation as presented in the

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“Canticle” displays the two genders as not solely human. By gendering cosmology, Francis appears to adopt a philosophical view akin to “the ‘cosmologizing’ of sexuality among the Gnostics,” who described “cosmogony in terms of male-female relations and sexual intercourse.”34 In Francis’s poem, all natural elements, whether animate or inanimate, are masculine and feminine; the gender attribution of all creatures overlaps, with the substantive designating their brotherhood and sisterhood according to their grammatical gender in the Italian vernacular.The matrimonial union of two genders coincides with the inextricable bond of fraternity and sorority uniting all creation. All creatures are at the same time siblings and spouses, they are the sons and daughters of the same divinity, and they form a single entity through the bond of marital love.The bridegroom in the Song of Songs addresses his bride as “my spouse, my sister,” thereby summarizing this crucial concept of the JudeoChristian tradition. NOTES 1. Much debate has arisen from the discriminating slant of creation in Genesis. For a satisfactory analysis of all possible implications in the three monotheistic religions that derive the concept of creating human beings from that text, see Kristen E. Kvam, Linda S. Schearing, and Valerie H. Ziegler, eds., Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 2. Elohim is a plural noun in Hebrew and means “gods.” Regarding the concept of God as a compound entity who creates nature and human beings in his own image, see Alicia Suskin Ostriker, The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 30, who writes:“An androgynous creator is suggested by the Hebrew term elohim, plural in form, signifying divine being(s). Elohim is always translated ‘God’ in English, and scholars typically insist that it is not (and presumably never was) a true plural.” On the androgynous nature of the archetypal human being as reflection of divinity, see S. D. Fohr, Adam and Eve: The Spiritual Symbolism of Genesis and Exodus (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1986), 115. 3. H. S. Benjamins,“Keeping Marriage out of Paradise:The Creation of Man and Woman in Patristic Literature,” in The Creation of Man and Woman: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 95. In the passage just quoted, Benjamins comments on Philo’s De opificio mundi. For important clarifications concerning the two-gendered nature of mankind and God’s matching bisexuality in the Jewish-

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Christian tradition, see also Ed Noort,“The Creation of Man and Woman in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Traditions,” in ibid., 1–18, especially 15. 4. The literal translation of the Latin Vulgate erunt duo in carne una is “they will be two in one flesh.” 5. On the language of marital symbolism in Christian and Jewish mysticism, see Bernard McGinn, “The Language of Love in Christian and Jewish Mysticism,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 206. 6. Ibid. 7. There is a blurred dividing line between the metaphorical rendering of consummation in ancient patristics (and later exegesis) and the literal understanding of sexual intercourse in Gnosticism. Gnosticism also cosmologized sexuality by describing the creation of the cosmos in terms of “male-female relations and sexual intercourse.” See ibid., 208. 8. The metaphor of human lovemaking as image of divine love for humans in the Jewish tradition is explained by John B. Alphonso-Karbala as follows:“[At] the Rabbinical Synod of Jamia, south of Joppa, in first-century Palestine . . . [Rabbi Akiba] extols ecstatic spirituality embodied in the imagery of biological lovemaking indulged in by the country girl Shulammite and her kingly lover Solomon in a Jerusalem garden.”“Mythic and Symbolic Verbal Structures and Literal Meaning in Literature,” 54. 9. Hugh of St.Victor, the author of the treatise, addresses his work to his “brother G.” and “to the other servants of Christ abiding at Hamerleve”; he writes in the prologue:“I have sent for your charity a soliloquy on love.”The translator and editor of this treatise, which in the original Latin is known as Soliloquium de arrhâ animae, comments in a footnote:“We should call the work a dialogue, but since the two speakers, Man and his Soul, form but one person, Hugh rightly terms it a soliloquy.” Hugh of St.Victor, The Soul’s Betrothal-Gift, trans. F. Sherwood Taylor (Westminster, England: Dacre Press, 1945), 6, note 1. In the next footnote (page 6, note 2), the translator and editor explains the meaning of arrhâ in medieval Latin: “The word arrhâ in medieval Latin meant gifts presented by the bridegroom to the prospective bride at the betrothal, just as an engagement ring is given to-day.” 10. Ibid., 10. 11. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936; repr. 1953), 4. 12. The concept of Frauendienst as springing from the nascent Marian veneration is rejected by Lewis. See ibid., 8. 13. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery Belgion (New York: Pantheon, 1956), 110. 14. Ibid., 74–75. 15. Rougemont writes on this subject:“Within no more than about twenty years there were established together, on the one hand, a vision of woman entirely

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at variance with traditional manners—woman was set above man, and became his nostalgic ideal—and on the other hand, a new but fully developed poetry of an extremely complex and refined character—a poetry equally unknown to Antiquity, and to the few centuries of Romanic literary vigor that had followed the Carolingian Renaissance.” Ibid., 76. 16. For these concepts, and especially for the idea of courtly love as midway between carnal and spiritual love, see Joan Mowat Erikson, Saint Francis and His Four Ladies (New York:W.W. Norton, 1970), 59–61. In particular, the following passage (60) applies to the explanation given in this study:“Courtly love, then, and the adulation of a woman as ‘a lady,’ which found its form in ceremonial behavior both in daily life and in literature, was an innovation midway between carnal (cupiditas) and spiritual (caritas) love. It found its highest expression in the veneration of the Holy Virgin—even as it could also serve as a cover for simple adultery.” 17. The dating of the composition of the Sacrum commercium is still the subject of much debate, as is its author, who has not yet been identified with any certainty. As far as the dating is concerned, most scholars have rejected 1227, the date given in some of the manuscripts, and now opt for the more plausible period of time between 1237 and 1239. 18. As regards the literary form of the Sacrum commercium and the mark it left in future spiritual writing, John V. Fleming considers the treatise “the single most brilliant example of the simple but lapidary allegory which was to become a major mode of spiritual writing in the later Middle Ages.” An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature of the Middle Ages (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977), 78. 19. For this relation of Franciscan Poverty to biblical Wisdom and the Christian Church, see the introduction to The Sacred Exchange Between Saint Francis and Lady Poverty (1237–1239): “the central figure of the work is Lady Poverty, the personification of the biblical Wisdom and, at times, of the Church.” In Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, The Saint, ed. Regis J.Armstrong, J.A.Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 523. 20. Ibid., 1:552. 21. Ibid., 1:532. 22. Examples that come to mind are Giotto’s frescoes in the Basilica in Assisi and Dante’s portrayal of Francis in Paradiso 11, in which the episode of the Saint’s marriage with Lady Poverty is considered crucial to his life and to the Order he founded. 23. A connection of the Francis-Clare duo with the Benedict-Scholastica bond is created by Erikson, Saint Francis and His Four Ladies, 88:“But why, we may ask in retrospect, had Saint Francis persuaded Clare in the first place that he needed her to carry out his particular mission to the world? Saint Benedict had created an order of women, a sister organization to his monastic order. But Benedict may well have been motivated to do so because of his devotion to his own

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sister, Scholastica. Saint Francis knew the Benedictine nuns near Assisi and committed Clare to their charge after she had made her vows in his presence.The involvement of women in his work seems to have been of great importance to him, and Clare may have sensed this need.” 24. The two human relations Francis appears to value most highly, both literally and symbolically, are marriage and brotherhood/sisterhood.To this regard Petrocchi notes:“ ‘Fratelli’ e ‘sposi’: questi sono i legami familiari che Francesco avverte, esprime, predica.” San Francesco scrittore, 16. 25. The Little Flowers of Saint Francis 15, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 3, The Prophet, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A.Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 2001), 590–91. 26. In chapter 15 there is an interesting reference to Clare’s initiation, which overlaps with the creation of the Second Franciscan Order, the Poor Clares.The initiation is identified as Clare’s wedding to Christ: at the moment of the preparation for their meeting, Francis wants “this meal to be held at Saint Mary of the Angels, since [Clare] has been enclosed for a long time in San Damiano, and it will do her good to see the place of Saint Mary, where she was tonsured and became the spouse of Jesus Christ.” The Little Flowers of Saint Francis 15, ibid., 3:590. 27. Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. and trans. Regis J. Armstrong (St. Bonaventure, N.Y: Franciscan Institute, 1993), 152.Also quoted by Erikson, Saint Francis and His Four Ladies, 90. 28. Erikson quotes a related episode in Saint Bernard’s life. The Virgin Mary “placed three drops of milk right from her breast into his mouth.” Saint Francis and His Four Ladies, 90–91. 29. Little Flowers 16, in The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3:593. 30. In Paolo Valesio’s formulation: “la predica di San Francesco agli uccelli contiene tra l’altro una légende des origines del movimento terziario francescano.”“La traduzione come strategia spirituale: Il caso dei ‘Fioretti francescani,’ ” in Atti della Fiera Internazionale della Traduzione, Riccione 10–12 dicembre 1990, ed. Michèle A. Lorgnet (Forlì:Ateneo Editrice, 1992), 83. 31. The existence of mixed monasteries in which occasionally an abbess, rather than an abbot, was called to rule over male monks, was a frequent occurrence in the low Middle Ages; this type of monastery, however, no longer existed in Francis’s time.The originality of the Third Order of Francis concerns more the active role assigned to it. 32. Little Flowers 16, in The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3:594. 33. Erikson, Saint Francis and His Four Ladies, 85. 34. McGinn, “The Language of Love in Christian and Jewish Mysticism,” 208.

3

Harmony of the Cosmos THE INTERACTIVE UNION of male and female as specular reflection of God’s love for human beings inspires and animates Franciscanism and its theology according to the matrix of the Book of Genesis. Francis founded the First and Second Orders as two manifestations of the same spirituality in men and women respectively, and the foundation of the Franciscan Third Order cemented and confirmed a theological emphasis on the union and cooperation of the two human genders as forming the most perfect image of divine love in the created world. Nudity and the dynamics of two genders in one unit are complemented by a consonant interdependence of human beings and their living environment.The recovery of the harmony governing the universe at creation, which the Book of Genesis identifies with the specific locus of Earthly Paradise, represents one of the most significant spiritual goals for Franciscanism in its beginning stages. Franciscan emphasis on nature and the relation of human beings to creation as an earthly mirror of heavenly beauty confirms the binary structure of medieval philosophy, according to which the multiplicity of the physical world bears a mysterious correspondence to the oneness of divinity.1 Nature stands as the Second Book of God’s manifestation after the Bible: natural elements can be read and interpreted as testifying to God’s presence in the world, and the harmony that governs their interrelations, their cycles, and their beauty features as God’s tangible sign and sacrament, his stamp on the universe.2 Harmony distinguishes creation at its beginning and characterizes the biblical Earthly Paradise before the human Fall. In the post-Edenic world harmony may be perceived by human beings only after they purify their perception.The music of the spheres, the melody of the universe in motion, cannot be heard by human beings because of their involvement in worldly occupations, but it is audible to the attentive listener of godly matters. In medieval philosophy the concept of harmony occupies the space of music. Music and harmony are one and the same discipline, although they are articulated in a complex structure comprising numerous ramifications.

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In the Middle Ages, musica is a much more comprehensive discipline than present-day music. It is subdivided into various branches, one of which is melodic acoustic sound produced by musical instruments and voice, the others being more theoretical and philosophical conceptualizations linking musica to cosmic melodic harmony and human spiritual appeasement. According to Roger Dragonetti, in the Middle Ages musica signifies a transcendental order reachable through theoretical speculation; it is a theoria in the true, strong sense of “contemplation.”3 Musica is a combination of different elements. It refers to the balanced interaction of divinity with nature and human beings, as well as to the realm of music as acoustic, melic sound.The name musica identifies one of the disciplines of the curriculum as it was established by the tradition of learning transmitted by Martianus Capella in his De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Harmony, or music, is the last of the seven artes. The three disciplines of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) constitute the “allegory of words”; the four of the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and harmony) allow a perspective of the created world as paralleling the divine world and constitute an “allegory of things.”4 Music as a quadrivium subject was not simply acoustic melody and enjoyable sound; it was primarily a mathematical science based on numbers and numerical correspondences.5 But as a medieval science, harmony so defined had no aspiration to literal exactness. It hinged on philosophical speculation and elaborate hypotheses, which were intended to establish symmetries between the physical and the meta-physical realms, physis and meta-physis, the world below and divinity above.The two realms specularly reflect each other, since God originated creation after impressing his mark on it.6 The oneness of God mirrors the multiplicity of creation.The Latin term uni-versus reproduces in its etymology the returning movement of all creation toward that single goal, the unicity from which it originated.7 One divinity created the multiplicity of the cosmos, which, in its turn, moves back to it. The ascending path of learning in the quadrivium leads from geometry, through the science of numbers (arithmetic), to the application of mathematical calculations to stars, planets, and celestial spheres (astronomy), and finally reaches the most celestial and cosmic of all sciences (harmony), a true match for divine perfection.8 Harmony occupies the last position in the quadrivium, as septima ars in the ascending order established by Martianus Capella.The echelon reproduces a gradual distancing from physis in order to approach the less physical and more celestial realm of

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harmony.The “allegory of things” in the quadrivium departs from the most terrestrial of the arts, geometry, and detaches itself incrementally as it passes from the study of the physical world to the study of the more ethereal and rarified atmosphere of the heavens. Martianus’s harmony governs the movements of the entire universe from within and every relation among celestial bodies themselves. In his mythological creation, Harmonia, being the daughter of Venus, is herself a love goddess, the divinity of reconciliation and pervasive order, the basis for accomplishing unity in a polymorphous cosmos.The role of harmony surpasses in importance that of all other arts in his De nuptiis. It represents the end point of the quadrivium and occupies the ninth and last book of his work, the section that summarizes his treatise of the arts, a fundamental milestone for medieval learning. Music as melodic sound occupies only a small section of the discipline known as harmony. The idea that harmony finds its foundation in mathematics and in the ordered structure of the universe comes to medieval thinkers from classical antiquity.9 Music represents the order of things and consists of numbers. Pythagoras claimed to have “discovered” music by sheer mathematical calculation:“Given the concept of a totally interrelated cosmos, Pythagoras and his followers could seize on . . . numerical ratios as a revelation of universal order.”10 To the medieval mind, music is “a mathematically determined acoustical theory,” directly related to the system of nature.11 It stood in the curriculum as the study of numbers in their relation to each other and to the cosmos; its main concern was the demonstration of a divinely inspired order in the cosmos. Such order was the grain of perfection transmitted by God to the universe at the moment of creation. The two main treatises on music in ancient Christianity confirm the theological and philosophical nature of the discipline, which finds itself on the cusp of the physical and the metaphysical dimensions. In his De musica, Saint Augustine summarizes music as scientia bene modulandi, “the science of modulating well.” His definition emphasizes the scientific nature (scientia) of music, its ethical imprint deriving directly from God (bene), and the measured, balanced, and consonant movement inherent to it, since modulandi comes from modus, measure. Unification of earthly and heavenly elements creates a harmonious melody, which is succinctly accounted for in Augustine’s De musica: “terrestrial things are subject to celestial, and their time-circuits join together in harmonious (numerosa) succession for the song of the universe (quasi carmini universitatis)” (6.11.29).12 The “song

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of the universe” refers to the harmonious kinesis of the cosmos.The constant movement of the universe produces a melodic sound, which remains imperceptible to unworthy humans.The selected ascetic few who are granted the gift of hearing it may reproduce its melody and rhythm by emulating it in song and poetry. Mystics, especially those who also compose poetry, possess special skills allowing them a more immediate imitation of the harmonic sounds of the universe in motion. Severinus Boethius’s De institutione musica explains more rationally and systematically the Platonic idea of music as a mirror of cosmic order.13 His treatise “became the standard medieval authority” on music and a reference text for philosophers and theologians.14 Its influence overflowed from the philosophical into the literary realm. Boethius distinguishes three types of music, which combine speculative notions with acoustic elements: The first type is the music of the universe (musica mundana), the second type, that of the human being (musica humana), and the third type is that which is created by certain instruments (musica instrumentalis constituta), such as the kithara, or tibia or other instruments which produce melodies.The first type, that is the music of the universe, is best observed in those things which one perceives in heaven itself, or in the structure of the elements, or in the diversity of the seasons. How could it possibly be that such a swift heavenly machine should move silently in its course? And although we ourselves hear no sound—and indeed there are many causes for this phenomenon—it is nevertheless impossible that such a fast motion should produce absolutely no sound, especially since the orbits of the stars drift higher, others lower, and they are all moved with such an equal amount of energy that a fixed order of their courses is reckoned through their diverse inequalities.Thus there must be some fixed order of musical modulation in this celestial motion. Moreover if a certain harmony does not join together the diversities and contrary qualities of the four elements, how is it possible for them to unite in one body machine? But all this diversity produces a variety of both seasons and fruits, so that the year in the final analysis achieves a coherent unity. Now if you would imagine one of these things that gives such a diversity to everything taken away, then they would all seem to fall apart and preserve none of their “consonance.” Moreover, just as the lower strings are not tuned too low, lest they descend to a pitch that would be inaudible, and the higher strings are not tuned too high, lest they break under the excessive tension, but rather all the strings are coherently and harmoniously tuned, so we discern in the universal music that nothing can be excessive; for if it were, it would destroy something else. Everything either bears its own fruit or aids other things in

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bearing theirs. . . . Now one comes to understand the music of the human being by examining his own being. For what unites the incorporeal existence of the reason with the body except a certain harmony (coaptatio) and, as it were, a careful tuning of low and high pitches in such a way that they produce one consonance? What unites the parts of man’s soul, which, according to Aristotle, is composed of a rational and irrational part? In what way are the elements of man’s body related to each other or what holds together the various parts of his body in an established order? . . . Now the third type of music is that which is said to be found in various instruments. The governing element in this music is either tension, as in strings, or breath, as in the tibia or those instruments which are activated by water, or a certain percussion, as in those instruments consisting of concave brass which one beats and thus produces various pitches.15

Boethius’s broad understanding of music as universal harmony encompasses parallel correspondences that in themselves are harmonious. Musica mundana describes the “music of the spheres, the rhythm of the season, the harmonious combination of elements.”16 It is the music of the cosmos, the perfect alternation of seasons and the agreement of compounded elements. Musica humana refers to “the harmony of body and soul, the accord of rational and irrational within the soul and of the diverse elements within the body.”17 This type of music derives from the perception of a correspondence between the external order of the cosmos and mankind’s internal harmony, both in the soul and in the body.The balance and measure of things within match those of things without; the natural rules governing the outside world apply to the inside world. Musica instrumentalis, a human artifact, emulates the harmony of the first two types; voice and instruments take the consonance of the universe and creatures as their models. In the Middle Ages, humanly created music was believed to possess the power to soothe and even heal; it was seen as medicine for the soul and the spirit and, given the traditional interconnections of body and soul, also served as therapeutic instrument for the body. Although “there is very little record of the practical use of music in therapy in the Middle Ages . . . there is a great deal of evidence for its prescriptions in the writings of medical authors.”18 Medieval theories about the therapeutic effects of music derive from classical antiquity (particularly Plato and the Pythagoreans), but they also have roots in the biblical tradition.19 The most frequently quoted example in commentaries and treatises comes from the First Book of Samuel (16:14–23) and concerns an affliction King Saul

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suffered because of “an evil spirit.” At his servants’ suggestion, Saul sends for a skilled harpist, the future King David, who cures his malady with the soothing sound of his musical instrument. Exegetical commentaries on this passage oscillate between interpreting Saul’s ailment as a spiritual malady and interpreting it as a physical disease; whatever the type of illness, the remedy is the same.20 Instrumental and vocal music functions as a medicament administered to ailing monks and nuns in monasteries and to lay men and women in confession. A thirteenth-century bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne, includes a chapter on the therapeutic powers of music in his De universo, and the Franciscan John of Erfurt writes the Summa de penitentia for the use of confessors,“acknowledging that music can help the weak and sick but giving no indication that any metaphysical process might be involved.”21 The Boethian concept of music applies to the Franciscan theological paradigm.The notion of music as an audible perception of a transcendental order of nature, of human spirituality, and of instrumental or vocal sound, agrees precisely with the Franciscan idea of creation in relation to God.To a greater extent than other Christian movements and orders, Franciscanism at its beginning shows a particular sensitivity to the natural world and attempts a rediscovery of its harmony and beauty. Francis believes that the perfection of nature reflects the flawlessness of God. Such perfection, marred by the human Fall in Earthly Paradise, is reinstated by redemption. Harmonious musical sound is a reminder and demonstration of the renewed state of perfection in nature and mankind.The Franciscan revisitation of the Edenic account involves the reestablishment of such equilibrium. Music, with all its medieval implications and ramifications, permeated Francis’s converted life. His sense of nature as emanating from and returning to God, his spiritual askesis as moving toward cosmic harmony, and his love for instrumental and vocal music emerge in hagiographic accounts as crucial elements of his personality and sainthood. Francis’s passion for singing and his enjoyment of acoustic melody can be extrapolated from numerous passages in the Legenda.22 An episode reported by Thomas of Celano demonstrates Francis’s instinctive, almost archetypal, inclination to vocal and instrumental music: “Other times—as I saw him with my own eyes—he would pick up a stick from the ground and put it over his left arm, while holding a bow bent with a string in his right hand, drawing it over the stick as if it were a viola, performing all the right movements, and in French would sing about the Lord.”23 Such spontaneous,

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almost infantile, action expresses Francis’s uncontainable joy, which he can manifest only through the musical medium—although simply as an imitation of the action of playing an instrument.24 Francis’s best-known poetic work,“The Canticle of Brother Sun,” is a song. In the tradition of lyrical poetry, this poem had a melody accompanying its words. Despite the lack of historically reliable information regarding the circumstances of its composition, numerous hagiographic sources attest to the melic nature of the poem and stress the author’s intent to have it circulate as a song of consolation and comfort for its listeners, as well as a praiseful song to God.25 The following passage from the Mirror of Perfection narrates the circumstances of the composition of the “Canticle” and Francis’s instruction to his friars on how to use it: Sitting down, he began to meditate a short while, and then he said: “Most High, all-powerful, good Lord.” He composed a melody for these words and taught it to his companions so they could recite and sing it. For his spirit was then in such sweetness and consolation, that he wanted to send for Brother Pacifico, who in the world was called “The King of Verses,” and was a very courtly master of singers. He wanted to give him a few good and spiritual brothers who, together with him, would go through the world preaching and singing the Praises of the Lord. He said that he wanted that one among them who best knew how to preach, to preach first to the people and, after the sermon, all were to sing together the Praises of the Lord as minstrels of the Lord. After the praises, he wanted the preacher to tell the people:“We are minstrels of the Lord, and this is what we want as payment: that you live in true penance.” And he said:“What are the servants of God if not His minstrels, who must lift people’s hearts and move them up to spiritual joy?”And he said this especially to the Lesser Brothers, who have been given to the people of God for their salvation.26

The “Praises of the Lord” is another title for “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” and, according to this account of its author’s intentions, it was to be a therapeutic song for the soul and an incitement to repent and acquire “spiritual joy.” In the hagiographic source just cited, Francis seeks the help of the “master of singers,” Brother Pacifico, and “a few good and spiritual brothers” who will perform the song as accompaniment to a sermon. In Franciscanism, singing and preaching are complementary activities.The “Singing of the Canticle” constitutes an element of the preaching mission; it comes at the end of the sermon and serves as an invitation to the bystanders to repent.The musicality of the “Canticle” is instrumental to

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the fulfillment of its purpose and function as “consolatory song.” If the contents of the poem testify to the Franciscan reconciliation of human beings among themselves and with the natural realm, its melic quality aims at the effective reconciliation of those who enjoy it—listeners, singers, and spectators—with themselves as well as with the world around them. The conciliatory purpose of the “Canticle” is further attested to in a chapter of the Mirror of Perfection that narrates how, during a dispute between the bishop and the podestà of Assisi, Francis succeeded in reconciling the two contenders by sending his friars to them, who were to sing the “Canticle”:“Go and sing the ‘Canticle of Brother Sun’ before the bishop, the podestà, and the others who are with them. And I trust in the Lord that He will immediately humble their hearts and they will return to their earlier friendship and love.”27 His song has the status of a consolatory, conciliatory action. Rather than using articulate, convoluted arguments to settle the disagreement, Francis uses the peaceful tone of the “Canticle.” More effectively than speech, music overcomes the obstacle of divine ineffability. In any attempt to speak of or to God, music surpasses the rationality of language and functions as more efficacious communication than words.The melody of a song attains to transcendental values better than speech does. Francis commands his friars to use this precious medium to pacify and convert, because music emanates directly out of the jubilant friars and reaches the hearts of the bystanders. In Saint Augustine’s formulation, the joyful heart produces festive sounds, not sensible, comprehensible words; inarticulate melodic sounds procure an image of God and circumvent his ineffability. 28 The Boethian classification of music applies to the uncontaminated mythical world of Earthly Paradise in the Book of Genesis. In that mythical dimension, humanity enjoyed a harmonious Sitz im Leben with the surrounding environment, and the perfection of silence created a channel of communication that was more effective than verbal rhetoric. Francis’s passion for music naturally overflows into his poetic production.“The Canticle of Brother Sun” is a song that embraces all three types of Boethian music. It exalts the beauty of cosmic harmony as a chief quality of Franciscan theology; it displays the poet’s internal equilibrium of body and soul, which Francis strove to achieve from the beginning of his spiritual ascent, with his public denudation in the square of San Rufino; and, finally, it features a musical quality with an internal rhythm and a refrain, since it was conceived as a song in the tradition of lyrical poetry.Thus the correspondence with the Boethian musical pattern is accomplished.29

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Although from the opposite perspective and by means of a distant approach from Francis’s, Iacopone also identifies closeness to divinity with harmonious melody.The image of Iacopone as “fool” or “jongleur” of God, a strolling minstrel and author of his own songs, has been dismissed by recent criticism, because Iacopone has been delivered of the stigma of being an uncultivated, natural, and instinctive poet associated with the definition of “jongleur.” He has been reevaluated as a knowledgeable and skillful creator of poetic artifacts.30 However, a critical consensus regarding Iacopone’s lyrical and musical abilities and the musicality of his laude still stands.31 As the author of the most accomplished collection of lyrical laude in the Italian vernacular, his relation to music presupposes, first of all, a practical application of melody to words.32 In the tradition of the genre of lauda, which originated as musical religious poetry, some of his poems were intended for singing, although by the end of the thirteenth century the lyrical origins of poetry had already given way to written texts detached from their melic quality, and poetry was mostly read rather than sung or performed. But Iacopone also reflects speculatively on music and its function in his poetry. In the section of the Laude that introduces the topos of matrimonial consummation between God and Anima, the reader is confronted with some typically Franciscan themes. Poverty joins music to achieve the climax of Iacopone’s poetic enterprise, as represented by his mystical ecstasy and assimilation with God.33 Lauda 59 and Lauda 64 thematically constitute a poetic duo that investigates first cosmic creation (Lauda 59) and then the moment of re-creation through the Incarnation (Lauda 64). Lauda 59 takes inspiration from the characteristic Franciscan virtue, revealing that the choice of utter poverty means, in fact, possessing the entire world and the harmony governing it. Lauda 64 highlights the importance of singing and music to celebrate Christ’s birth and metaphorizes the Nativity as a “new song,” or song of the Good News.The first lauda dedicated to the virtue of poverty and the first lauda dedicated to the Incarnation are joined together by a speculation on music as universal order and melodious harmony at a crucial stage of Iacopone’s collection, when the theme of matrimonial love is introduced as an image of mystical love. In Lauda 59, abandoning greedy possessiveness allows the poet a sacramental perception of all creation. In a geographic, topographic, and cosmological crescendo, Iacopone lists regions, countries, earthly elements, and even heavenly bodies belonging to the kingdom of the poor. By materially renouncing all possessions, the poor inherit the spiritual property of

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universal riches.As George Peck notes in his monographic commentary on Iacopone’s life and poetry,“the great paradox [is] that wealth and poverty, the two extremes, are one in the joy of God.”34 Creation is perceived as the tangible sign and perceptible sacrament of divine presence; its harmony is a symptom of God’s order and the perfection that originated it. The melody comes from beyond the world, from God himself.The poet’s melodic skills draw their inspiration from beyond the sun, the moon, the stars, and the heavens; they come to him directly from God: Luna, sole, cielo e stelle—fra miei tesor non son covelle, de sopra cielo sì son quelle—che tengon la mia melodia. Poi che Dio ha ’l mio velle,—possessor d’ognecovelle, le mie ale on tante penne—de terra en cielo non m’è via. Poi el mio voler a Dio è dato,—possessor so d’ogne stato, en lor amor so trasformato,—ennamorata cortesia. Moon and sun, sky and stars, are but minor treasures: The treasures that make me burst into song Lie beyond the sky that you can see. Since my will is centered in God, who possesses all, I wing with ease from earth to heaven. Since I gave my will to God All things are mine and I am one with them In love, in ardent charity.

Poverty helps one understand materiality as a gift and its harmony as a token of divine presence. Possessing poverty bestows on the poet the lightness and freedom that allow his flight toward the heavens and God, while his poetic flight has already taken him high, thanks to a melodious song inspired by God himself. Poetic musicality becomes an image for the beauty and harmony of the universe. The metapoetic and metamusical references to the harmony of Iacopone’s own poetry and the theme of poverty as preparing the way for the Incarnation connect Lauda 59 to Lauda 64, a poem that takes its inspiration from the Hallelujah, the joyous cry at the birth of Christ.The melic element permeates Lauda 64, the first of two texts on the Nativity (the other is Lauda 65), although music remains a metapoetic feature, a theme, not a quality that transforms the lauda into a singable text. In Peck’s words, “[i]t becomes evident that Jacopone is writing about a song, rather than writing one.”35 Iacopone writes of his own poetic art and inspiration,

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about music and song, while composing an artifact that recalls an originally musical genre.The song for the Nativity plays metatextually on the explosion of singing joy in the Hallelujah the angels sang at the birth of Christ.The piercing high note at the beginning of the song is followed by a drop on the scale of octaves, which is meant as melic emulation of Christ’s descent to earth, the Incarnation. Its melodious sound remains perfectly pitched throughout. Iacopone writes:“[c]otal desciso—non fo mai viso / sì ben concordato” (“[n]ever was heard / a descending scale of such exquisite melody!”). Specific metatextual and self-reflective references to the writing of musical scores and to the singing of this joyful song begin in the fourth stanza. Iacopone describes how the song of joy was put on paper. Each writing instrument is coupled with a symbolic element participating in the Incarnation.The notes are inscribed on parchment, the skin of Christthe-Lamb.The connection was, of course, fitting at a time when pages were made of animal skin, usually sheep.The entire song is written on this parchment, whether it is addressed to God or to human beings: singing is indirectly named a divine art, and, by extension, music itself becomes divine. It is God’s hand that wrote the notes on the staff. He is the sole teacher of music and song. He opened his merciful hand to teach fallen humans the art of music, an art that bears unsurpassed healing, harmonizing qualities and brings humans back to him.The music he teaches them is written on the skin of his Son, the Incarnate Word, who then becomes a musical score. In the heavenly choir the Christian martyrs are the first to intone the song.They are conducted by Stephen, the first of the martyrs, and they sing matins, the office of the morning.The confessors chant the second sequence, with John the Evangelist in their lead.The Holy Innocents follow with the third sequence.The Nativity is the holiday of the Infant Jesus, and the Holy Innocents enjoy the privilege of being for all time in his company.The remaining part of Lauda 64 is an invitation to all mankind to come and sing; everyone can be reconciled, thanks to the sacrifice of the musical parchment made of lambskin. Lauda 64 is a metaphorical rendering of the mystery of the Incarnation through the medium of music. Singing and melody restore the harmony that was lost because of sin.This is the theological function of the Incarnation, and music is the lens through which the Incarnation is viewed. Its transitive function resembles the redemptive mediation inherent in the Incarnation. While rooted in the materiality of instruments and human voice, music transcends materiality itself and becomes ethereal

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and transcendental; it moves from physicality to metaphysics, as notes rise from the parchment staff to the sublimity of melic harmony.Thus Iacopone can state that all singing is godly, even purely human singing, and that chant makes a fitting metaphor for the mediative function of the Incarnation.The poet’s self-reflective attitude points to his own poetry as representative of the reconciliation brought by the Incarnation; after all, Iacopone writes in the genre of lauda, a musical form of poetry. In this case it is a type of mise-en-abîme, thanks to which Iacopone, while issuing an invitation to song, performs an act of melodic creation. In a collection containing 102 laude, Iacopone’s reflection on music, being placed between Lauda 59 and Lauda 64, occupies the crucial section of the Laude that introduces the theme of ecstasy and divine love. When the theoretical speculation typical of these laude transforms into practical application, the musicality of Iacopone’s poetry becomes an indispensable factor to express ineffable closeness to God. As the end of the collection approaches, Iacopone’s poetry increasingly becomes a means to elevate poetic language to the level of ineffability.The tone of the Laude opens the way to the melodious “song of the heart” in Lauda 73 and to a sublime form of litanic prayer in Laude 67, 72, 82 and in the last portion of Lauda 90. In Lauda 73 Iacopone is “possessed” by divine love and cannot resist the singing impulse of his jubilant heart.The poet is so filled with loving passion that he finds no other way to express it than in “parlando smisurato” (“outstretched speech”). Rhetoric paradoxically overflows into two extremes, stammering or singing.This particular reflection on singing combines metatextual elements with the musicality inherent in the text. This is the lauda on love, in which Iacopone “rushes out to his fellow men in ecstatic euphoria.”36 The music within the poet becomes the music on the page.37 The term “consonance” summarizes in its etymology the two elements of mystical harmony and music. But, contrary to Francis’s Incarnational theology, which conceives of creation as the privileged medium between humans and God, Iacopone perceives harmony and lyrical inspiration to come directly from God, not through materiality. He reports the following concept of order as measure of the world as it was conveyed directly to him by Christ himself. In Lauda 90 there is an exchange of ideas between Christ and Anima regarding order and disorganization. Anima requests that Christ settle her disorderly love, and Christ’s answer confirms the order imprinted in all things at creation:

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Tutte le cose qual aggio create, sì son fatte con numero e mesura, ed al lor fine son tutte ordenate conservanse per orden tal valura, e molto più ancora caritate si è ordenata nella sua natura. My creation is patterned in number and measure, Each thing according to its purpose. Order maintains and sustains Each particular function; And this, by its very nature, Is even more true of charity.

Order governs nature, thanks to number and measure. Being based on order, caritas functions according to similar numerological patterns; in fact, it inspires such rhythmic sequence. Harmony is God’s own imprint on nature, which becomes perceptible to human beings through rhythm and order. The number One is the measure of all creation and the essence that structures multiplicity according to “a-rhythmetic,” the art of negating the rhythm of number One. At the same time, arithmetic keeps the vestiges of number One in the multiplicity of things, since the passage from oneness to multiplicity inevitably dissipates the perfection of unicity. In this movement of becoming, when the ethereal encounters the material, One measures plurality as silence measures melodious sounds in music.38 The alternation of voices and structures, which characterizes litany, typifies Iacopone’s attempt to circumvent ineffability and bridge the gap between the human realm and the divine realm. Litany alternates between repetition of a word or phrase and the mutation of the other part of the line: repetition and change alternate to form the structure of litany.While maintaining the duality of his theological outlook, as represented by the binary verse structure of litany, Iacopone posits the function of musical litany as a solution.The mutable, constantly changing world of humans encounters the immutable, static realm of the divine. Litany reproduces in its composition the amalgamation of the two in one. While less apparent than in Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun,” Iacopone’s insistence on love as reconciliation aims to achieve the same goal. Human love appears to Iacopone first as an aberration of divine love, then as its metaphor, finally as its sacramental sign.The union of Christ and Anima may be symbolized only by the inseparable ties of bridegroom

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and bride. Matrimony is the sole image at human beings’ disposal through which to glimpse again the unfathomable union binding God to humans after the event of redemption. Copulation, first rejected as “false love” and a deviant experience, later in the collection acquires the connotation of a redemptive symbol, when intended as matrimonial consummation. It is by following this Iacoponian parable of love that the reinstatement of harmony becomes perceptible in the Laude. The Boethian paradigm of pervasive harmony in nature, human beings, and acoustic sound applies to Iacopone’s poetry as it applies to Francis and his poem. Music as harmony brings together the poetic production of these two very different Franciscan authors and mystics. Music so understood implies a philosophical interpretation of nature in its relation to God. But even when music is taken in its modern significance, as acoustic melody of voice, words, and sound, Francis and Iacopone come together under the aegis of litany.The litanic structure of “The Canticle of Brother Sun” is evident in the consistent repetition of the refrain “Laudato si” (“Praised be”) from beginning to end.The heterogeneous contents of the “Canticle” juxtapose an enthusiastic elevation of the natural world in the first section and a somber evocation of death and punishment in the second half, so that the only balancing element of the poem remains its litanic rhythm.39 Iacopone also offers conspicuous examples of litanic scansion in his laude on love in the second half of the collection.40 In Lauda 67 the word “Amor” or “amore” occurs at the beginning and at the end of each verse in the first half of the poem and at the end of each verse in the second half, thereby giving shape to an unusual figure of speech that rhetoric defines as epanadiplosis, an elaborate type of anaphora.41 The obsessive repetition of the word “love” in many different morphological endings of verb tenses and persons in Lauda 72 (thirteen times in nineteen lines) creates a monotonous rhythm comparable to litany, given that the rhyming pattern hinges on the word “ama,” so that “amore” reappears in the signifier of such words as “fama,”“sciama,” or “trama,” whose referents bear no connection with “love,” but simply reiterate the importance of the signified “love” by means of repeating its Italian signifier “ama” in different lexical contexts. Lauda 82 features the anaphora “Se io esco per . . . ,”“If I come out through . . .”; and Lauda 90 relentlessly repeats “Amor, amor” at the beginning of each line in the last portion of the poem.42 Litany is a powerful form of prayer, whose structure combines musical, philosophical, and spiritual foundations. It alternates novelty and repetition, the unknown and the known. It is at once a mnemonic exercise

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and an automatic activity.Textually it is articulated in a binary scheme, consisting of two separate, consecutive parts in each line. One phrase is original, one repeated, so that litany alternates between introduction of new concepts or ideas and reiteration of the most important thought or expression.The repetitive part in it quiets down human faculties; it hypnotizes the mind and liberates it from the noisy and busy atmosphere of secular life, preparing it for a higher degree of prayer. Litany elevates oral prayer to contemplative prayer, or to at least to an approximation of it.The variation on a theme in the other section of litany attracts all the attention, which is refreshed by the somnolent effects of repetition.The variation serves as a liberating element.The alternation is from the constriction of repetitiveness to the liberation of innovation. Albert Béguin offers an explanation of litany in an elegant formulation: l’essence de la litanie semble bien être dans ce mouvement de l’esprit que le même mot répété met dans un état particulier, plongeant dans une sorte de sommeil une part de son attention, pour attiser davantage et libérer l’autre part. . . . la répétition opère ici deux effects en apparence contradictoires: tantôt elle immobilise sous la contemplation le contenu d’un terme sans cesse redit avec amour . . . ; et tantôt elle fait défiler sous le regard tout ce que suggèrent les variantes ajoutées à ce premier thème permanent . . .; la répétition des mêmes syllabes endort cette vigilance que nous sommes bien forcés d’accorder aux choses de notre univers sensible; à la faveur du “sommeil” ainsi provoqué, une autre concentration s’opère: concentration de tous les pouvoirs sur l’objet propre de l’intuition spirituelle et des appétences de l’âme . . . ; contrainte et délivrance; stricte signification de chaque mot, mais en même temps action suggestive de sa forme sonore; concentration de toutes les facultés sur un point unique et rayonnement jusq’aux limites du possible: telle semble bien être, en ses contrastes, l’efficacité subjective de la litanie.43

Litany, with its repetitive element, challenges the limits of temporality, breaks the boundaries of rationality, and overflows into the realm of eternity. Its rhythmic scansion creates an interruption in the pattern of temporal sequence and transforms the text into atemporal circularity. Francis’s return to the atmosphere of Earthly Paradise began with his public denudation at the initial stages of his conversion and was accomplished by the gift of the stigmata in the final part of his life. His renewed state earned him the title of Alter Christus and allowed him a view of nature and his fellow humans that had the characteristics of a pre-Fall perception.

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The harmony governing the world, which Francis felt he glimpsed, is reproduced in the poem that best portrays his theology and poetics.“The Canticle of Brother Sun” is a song of reconciliation and solace that revisits and describes that initial, primordial harmony, the music of the world, of purified human beings, and of acoustic sound. According to Leo Spitzer, the poetic unity and artistic value of the “Canticle” reside in its litanic scheme. The “Canticle” appears homogeneous only because of “the sweet tyranny” of litany.44 The automatic rhythm of litany and its repetitive, monotonous structure symbolize the mysterious entrance of the divine realm into the human dimension, and, conversely, litany marks an admission of human beings into the divine dimension. Litany breaks open the barriers of time and drowns the supplicant in the flux of extratemporal divinity. Iacopone completes the portrayal of a recovered state of grace thanks to his concept of love and by means of the long and articulate parable from secular to divine love he draws in the course of his collection of laude. Rather than emphasizing the natural aspect of a regained Earthly Paradise, Iacopone focuses on the human element of matrimonial union. Matrimony as one flesh in two bodies, as formulated in the Book of Genesis, becomes the arrival point of his discourse on love in the Laude. In mystical askesis, God and Anima are united as two humans in matrimonial consummation.The harmony of their interchange bespeaks the harmonious, sublime equilibrium of the world at large; they symbolize the espousal union of heaven and earth, of divinity and mankind.45 Two such extremely different, contrasting poetic voices as Francis of Assisi and Iacopone da Todi find a common denominator in their respective recovery of an Earthly Paradise as it is found in the Book of Genesis.The Franciscanism they share as Founder and friar of the Order, respectively, imposes a renewal from within, which manifests itself as a theological and existential return to a primordial stage. Nudity, matrimonial union of man and woman, and harmony as music according to a medieval concept constitute the fundamental elements of their poetic work and may be traced in the genetics of their poetic endeavor.

NOTES 1. “For one of the fundamental beliefs of the Middle Ages, derived from Plato, was that man and the universe correspond in nature and structure:‘as above, so below’—in other words the macrocosm or universe is repeated in the

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microcosm or smaller universe of each individual.” Marjorie Rowling, Life in Medieval Times (New York: Berkeley, 1973), 200. 2. This is the thought behind John Scotus Eriugena’s concept of the diverse universe as manifestation of divine oneness. John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon: The Division of Nature, trans. I. P. Sheldon-Williams (Montreal: Éditions Bellarmin, 1987). For the concept of nature as a readable book, see Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans.Willard R.Trask (New York: Pantheon, 1953), 319ff. 3. This is how Roger Dragonetti defines music:“le mot musica n’a pas désigné d’abord la pratique de l’art musical, mais un ordre transcendant qu’on approche par la spéculation théorique, à savoir par la theoria au sens fort de ‘contemplation.’”“Le mariage des arts au Moyen Age,” in La musique et les lettres: Études de littérature médiévale (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1986), 59. 4. This perspective on the trivium and the quadrivium as an “allegory of words” and an “allegory of things,” respectively, has been proposed by D.W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962), 297. 5. Music and mathematics are defined as “sister disciplines” in Kay Brainerd Slocum,“Speculum Musicae: Jacques de Liège and the Art of Musical Number,” in Medieval Numerology: A Book of Essays, ed. Robert Surles (New York: Garland, 1993), 11. 6. For the concept of liberal arts in the Middle Ages and their relation to the spiritual and religious realm, see Russell A. Peck,“Number as Cosmic Language,” in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), 65. 7. Dragonetti explains the complex relation of singularity to multiplicity as a mirror of the rapport linking divinity to creation in “Le mariage des arts au Moyen Age,” 61–62. 8. This is the sequence of the arts of the quadrivium as it appears in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis. Other philosophers change the order and begin the sequence with arithmetic, since numbers are considered the basis and foundation of everything else, and geometry a consequence of numerical order. 9. The text by Matila Ghyka, Philosophie et mystique du nombre (Paris: Payot, 1952), particularly chapter 3, is invaluable on the subject. 10. Bruce R. Smith,“The Contest of Apollo and Marsyas: Ideas about Music in the Middle Ages,” in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), 85–86. 11. Ibid., 89. 12. For these concepts, as well as the translations of Augustinian terms and expressions, see ibid., 90–92. 13. Hans Urs von Balthasar describes Boethius’s concept of music as harmony in the following manner:“the Platonic music becomes the redeeming mediator

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leading disordered pleasure to ethically-harmonious joy.” The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 4, The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, trans. Brian McNeil, Andrew Louth, John Saward, Rowan Williams, and Oliver Davies, ed. Joseph Fessio and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 331. 14. Smith,“The Contest of Apollo and Marsyas,” 92. 15. Severinus Boethius, The Principles of Music: An Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, ed. and trans. Calvin Martin Bower (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, Inc., 1967), 44–47. 16. Smith,“The Contest of Apollo and Marsyas,” 92. 17. Ibid. 18. Peter Murray Jones, “Music Therapy in the Later Middle Ages:The Case of Hugo van der Goes,” in Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity, ed. Peregrine Horden (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000), 120. 19. Vincent Foster Hopper offers an excellent introduction to the influence Pythagorean philosophy and mathematics had on Christian symbolism. See his Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, Meaning, and Influence on Thought and Expression (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), 33–49. 20. Jones,“Music Therapy in the Later Middle Ages,” 121, 124. 21. Christopher Page,“Music and Medicine in the Thirteenth Century,” in Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity, ed. Peregrine Horden (Aldershot, England:Ashgate, 2000), 115. 22. The following passages refer to Francis’s love for singing: The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano 2.2.93, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 1:263; The Assisi Compilation 7, in ibid., 2:120–21; A Mirror of Perfection of the Status of a Lesser Brother (The Sabatier Edition) 9.101, in ibid., 3:349–50. Music played on a musical instrument occurs in Thomas of Celano, The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul 2.89, in ibid., 2:330; The Assisi Compilation 66, in ibid., 2:168–69; Bonaventure’s The Major Legend of Saint Francis 11, in ibid., 2:567–68. It is evident from these passages of the Legenda that music in all its possible variations, including the internal melody that springs from a joyful heart, is a privileged medium of expression to Francis, particularly in regard to his relationship with God. 23. Thomas of Celano, The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul 2. 90, in ibid., 2:331.The “French” language this text reports is likely confused with “Provençal,” which Francis probably knew. 24. Among his critics,Antoine Frédéric Ozanam insists the most on Francis’s passion for music and singing, calling him “l’Orfeo del Medio evo.” Poeti francescani in Italia nel secolo decimoterzo, trans. Pietro Fanfani (Prato: F. Alberghetti, 1854), 48. References to Francis and music also occur on pages 40, 41, and 49. 25. According to Petrocchi, Francis intended to supply his fellow friars with a praiseful song they could use on their missions: “L’intento che si proponeva Francesco nel dettare il Cantico era anche di natura pratica: offrire ai suoi frati

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un testo da cantare a lode del Signore e da insegnare alla gente devota.” San Francesco scrittore, 26. 26. A Mirror of Perfection of the Status of a Lesser Brother 8.100, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3:348. 27. Ibid. 9.101, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3:349. The consolatory purpose of the “Canticle” is confirmed by other passages of the Franciscan Legenda, such as the following from The Assisi Compilation: “during his illness, blessed Francis composed some ‘Praises of the Lord’ which he had his companions recite sometimes for the praise of God, the consolation of his spirit, and also for the edification of his neighbor.” The Assisi Compilation 66, in ibid., 2:169. 28. Psalm 97 4–5:“You already know what it means to shout for joy. Rejoice, and speak of what makes you happy, if you can. But if you cannot find words for it, shout for joy. Let your shouting express your gladness if speech cannot; but one or another, do not let your joy be dumb. Let your heart not be silent about its God, or silent about his gifts.” Expositions of the Psalms 73–98, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the Twenty-First Century, trans. Maria Boulding, ed. John E. Rotelle (New York: New City Press, 2002), 461. Fernando Liuzzi also quotes In Psalm. 99 IV 32.1:“Chi giubila non forma parole, ma un suono festoso: voce dello spirito immerso nella gioia, che la esprime con tutte le sue forze, senza tuttavia giungere a definirne il senso. . . . E a chi conviene codesto giubilare, se non al Dio ineffabile?” “Profilo musicale di Iacopone (con melodie inedite),” Nuova antologia: Rivista di lettere, scienze, e arti 279, no. 357 (1931): 192. 29. More detailed considerations of those qualities that adhere to the Boethian concept of music will be made in chapter 4 of this study. 30. For general information concerning the importance of jongleurs in medieval culture, see Ramon Menéndez Pidal, Poesía juglaresca y juglares (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Historicos, 1924), 433–42. 31. While investigating Iacopone’s opus in search of musical elements linking it to singing and textually demonstrating the melic nature of most laude, Liuzzi speculates on Iacopone’s probable musical skills:“è ovvio che una certa pratica del canto e del suono di strumenti, o viella o cetra o ribeca, non poté mancargli.”“Profilo musicale di Iacopone,” 172. 32. Fortini refers to Iacopone as the most famous and most refined author of laude in the vernacular. La lauda in Assisi e le origini del teatro italiano, 158. 33. The notion of Iacopone’s Laude as canzoniere, in which poems are to be read in sequence, will be explained and justified in chapter 5. 34. Peck, The Fool of God, 97. 35. Ibid., 136. 36. Ibid., 160. 37. Peck writes about Lauda 73:“If a musician were to select just one of Jacopone’s laude to set to music, this would be it.The melodious verses seem to clamor for that heightened sense of passion conveyed by music.” Ibid.

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38. The mysterious coincidence of a letter, a name, and a number on the same sign “I” that indicates God in Dante’s work is explored by Guglielmo Gorni, Lettera, nome, numero: L’ordine delle cose in Dante (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), 12–14. 39. This concept is convincingly theorized by Leo Spitzer,“Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di frate sole,’ ” in Studi italiani, ed. Claudio Scarpati (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1976), 55–57, 62–63. 40. According to Liuzzi, lauda as a liturgical and literary genre was intrinsically shaped and structured in the fashion of litany. He describes laude at the time of the switch from Latin to the vernacular:“il carattere invocante e propiziatorio, la melodia, per quanto è lecito arguire, [era] impostata su brevi periodi ripetuti ad uno ad uno, come nella litania, o di due in due come nella sequenza.” La lauda e i primordi della melodia italiana, 9. 41. For the definition of epanadiplosis, see Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik: Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 1 (Munich: Max Hueber, 1960). 42. The rhyming scheme of Lauda 90 is in fact more complicated than this. For a more detailed illustration see chapter 7. 43. Albert Béguin, La prière de Péguy, Les cahiers du Rhône, no. 3 (Neuchâtel: Éditions de la Baconnière, 1942), 98; also quoted by Spitzer, “Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di frate sole,’ ” 62. 44. Spitzer speaks of “spirito di ‘dolce tirannia’ caratteristico della litania.” “Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di frate sole,’ ” 61. 45. In medieval philosophy such harmony, which takes inspiration from the myth of Earthly Paradise, is also reflected in numerological symbolism, since numbers are given genders: odd numbers are male and even numbers are female; their combination mirrors the harmonious unity of mythical origins. For this concept, see Christopher Butler, Number Symbolism (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970), 22–46.

Part Two

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Origins of the Canon THE STRUCTURAL SYMBOLISM of “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” combined with its unembellished rhetoric, epitomizes Francis of Assisi’s desire to return to the uncontaminated first stage of creation.Theologically, a return to the beginning implies the radical idea of bringing back the state of humanity depicted in the biblical myth of creation, when man and woman were nude and had not yet undergone temptation and Fall; their relation to each other and to nature remained harmonious and flawless.The poetics of the “Canticle” proposes a view of pre-Fall creation as depicted in the Book of Genesis.1 More than a utopian recovery of uncorrupted nature, the poem urges perception of a natural world re-created through the fundamental salvation achieved by redemption.The Franciscan Psalm recovers the purity of nature, not in its mythical stage, but within the history of salvation.2 In the “Canticle,” Francis revisits nature, describing its beauty, its sacramentality, and its harmony. In his purified vision, creation speaks of God as it spoke to human beings at the initial stages of salvation history in Genesis—or, rather, before salvation was even a necessity.The “Canticle” can be interpreted not only thematically but also rhetorically as a revisiting of the natural world in light of Christian redemption. Despite the numerous critical perspectives from which the poem can be viewed (as prayer, as first poem of the Italian literary canon, as song of thankfulness), its thematic stress remains on nature and on nature’s status as God’s creation.The pervasive presence of nature is a reminder of the creation myth in the Book of Genesis, the biblical text that centers on cosmogony. Creatures punctuate “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” also known as the “Canticum creaturarum” (“The Canticle of Creatures”).3 The text insists on their origin in and dependence on God.All creatures owe their existence to God, regardless of their material, ethereal, or simply conceptual presence in the world: sun, moon, wind, earth, fire, water, death, and the people-who-forgive are the creatures evoked.Their subordination to God represents the creature-Creator relationship that shapes the poem’s

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theological background.The all-encompassing structure of the “Canticle” attempts to include every substantial element that exists in the universe, thereby bringing to mind the cosmogonic account in the first few chapters of Genesis.The parallel with Genesis includes both the thematization of nature and the concept of origins. Francis revisits the mythical account of universal origins at the beginning of Genesis with his own praiseful rendering, in the lyrical genre, of the created world after redemption.4 At times the Franciscan poem appears simply to gloss the Bible. In some sense, any text of the Judeo-Christian tradition that revisits creation makes direct or indirect reference to the Book of Genesis (1–2:4a and 2:4b–3:24).The intertextual link to Genesis makes the “Canticle” a derivative piece that must be read in conjunction with the biblical hypertext.5 The “Canticle” mentions a few selected creatures in order to magnify the aesthetic beauty and crucial function of all creation.Although in synthetic, concise form, the cosmogony of Genesis is all there; the “Canticle” glosses it to highlight the goodness and beauty of all creatures. The general tone of the Franciscan Psalm is that of a commentary on the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. If Francis’s inspirational, or simply genealogical, source is the first portion of Genesis, the canonical, philologically accredited sources of the Franciscan Psalm are found in two other biblical texts, Psalm 148 and the Psalm of the Three Young Men in the Furnace, also known as the Psalm of Daniel (Dan. 3:52–90).6 Both texts are lyrical, prayerful, praising compositions, and both have a litanic scansion obtained through frequent repetition of a refrain:“Praise” in Psalm 148 and “Bless” in the Psalm of Daniel. A textual comparison of the “Canticle” with its two canonical sources indicates several fundamental stylistic and thematic differences and highlights the peculiarly Franciscan characteristics of Francis’s poem—the first poem of the Italian poetic canon and the first hymn of the liturgical canon in the Italian vernacular.7 The first striking quality of the “Canticle” in comparison to its two canonical sources is its concisiveness. Briefer in the number of its lines in comparison to the Psalm of Daniel (thirty-three lines, or fourteen verses, are but a fraction of the eighty-seven lines, or thirty-eight verses, making up the Psalm of Daniel), the “Canticle” is comparable to the length of Psalm 148 in its number of lines and verses (thirty lines, or fourteen verses).8 Despite the difference in length, both biblical sources mention more creatures than the “Canticle” does : their simple rhetorical pattern, structured on an alternation of the creatures’ names with an invitation

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to praise and bless God, allows for a much longer list of them. Such a repetitive structure, though typical of traditional litanic prayers, detracts from poetic aesthetics and enjoyment. The “Canticle” drastically reduces the number of creatures to eight, but displays a more varied poetic structure. It calls each creature by a familial name of “brother” or “sister,” and lists each creature’s function and beauty, specifying its qualities and characteristics. Fewer creatures make their appearance in the Franciscan poem, but each occupies more space and gains more attention. Significantly, the comments pertaining to the sun occupy more poetic space than those of other creatures.The sun is the first creature in the list. The mention of the sun at the beginning of the poem,“messer lo frate sole,” matches God’s first utterance,“Let there be light,” on the first day of creation (Gen. 1:3).The sun rightfully deserves a privileged position, since it mirrors the role of God; the sun’s function in nature resembles that of God in creation, as origin and sustenance of all creatures. Francis pays particular reverence to the sun, granting it the title of “messer” (“sir”), before applying to it the customary fraternal predicate “brother.” Given its more elevated status in the echelon of universal hierarchy, special praise is owed the sun (“spezialmente”) in comparison to other, less essential creatures.The subsequent lines elucidate these “special” qualities and constitute the longest gloss devoted to a single creature in the Franciscan text: Laudato sie, mi Signore, cun tutte le sue creature, spezialmente messer lo frate Sole, lo quale è iorno, e allumini noi per lui. Ed ello è bello e radiante cun grande splendore: de te,Altissimo, porta significazione. Praised, O my Lord, with all your creatures be, most especially master brother sun, who dawns for us, and You through him give light: and fair is he and shining with mighty luminescence, and carries, O most High, a glimpse of what You are.

Genesis echoes throughout these lines. For God’s utterance “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3) Francis’s text substitutes an affirmation of the sun’s beauty and importance as a creature of divine power.The unmediated correspondence of word and work in Genesis, when the various elements spring out of nothingness at God’s utterance, finds no matching

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equivalent in the Franciscan text, where creation is taken in its existing status, not in its originating process. Francis’s text thus shifts from the biblical act of creation to admiration and thankfulness for the creature sun.The relative clause referring to the sun,“lo quale è iorno” (which is the day), appears to hint at the impositio nominis, the imposition of light’s name in Genesis (1:5), “God called the light ‘day.’ ”9 The following explanatory gloss diverges from the strict efficiency of the biblical text in order to underline aesthetic characteristics of the sun, namely, its beauty, its radiance, and its splendor. While the cosmogonic account of the Bible insistently and consistently opposes day-and-light to night-and-darkness in the alternation of the seven days of creation, the “Canticle” discards night as one of God’s creatures, making only an indirect reference to it by mentioning the moon and the stars as nocturnal sources of light.The refrain of the biblical text at the end of each day reads:“Evening came and morning came: the first . . . the second . . . the third . . . the sixth day” (Gen. 1:5). Francis’s thankfulness limits itself to those creatures that make the night less dark:“Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna e le Stelle: / in cielo l’hai formate clarite e preziose e belle” (“Praised be, my Lord, for sister moon and every star: / in heaven You have made them precious and clear and fair”). In contrast with Psalm 148 and the Psalm of Daniel, which list sun and moon together and reserve a subsequent, isolated position for the stars, the “Canticle” extracts the sun from the binomial nomenclature “sun-moon” in order to stress both its vital and its symbolic importance.The direct reference to God’s creative work, which brought about the heavenly creatures just mentioned,“in cielo l’hai formate clarite e preziose e belle” (“in heaven You have made them precious and clear and fair”) confirms the strong textual connection with the Book of Genesis, and the theory according to which the “Canticle” is a post-Incarnation rewriting of the creation myth. Francis does not challenge the uniqueness of the event of creation. He reconsiders the beauty and importance of creation that, by virtue of the Incarnation, enjoys a renewed, renovated state. It is a praiseful song that runs through all created things and an invitation to marvel at the beauty of nature.10 The Franciscan poem can be read as an outburst of joy for the poet’s consciousness of his own salvation, and a hymn to the rescued, healed state of nature as it now appears to him. The solar outlook on the brightness of all created things allows no reference to creation’s dark side as represented by night. Francis’s stress on the beauty of the sun, the moon, and the stars and his omission of the

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darkness of the night inevitably acquire a moral connotation. If darkness symbolically represents sinfulness, it inspires no gratitude to God, since this kind of darkness is not his work.The inextricable moral implications of the contrast between light and darkness give rise to that figure of speech that rhetoric defines as catachresis: darkness and light stand for sinfulness and grace, respectively. But since catachresis is not simply a metaphor and stands as well for the absence of an ineffable concept, the two terms opposed here are archetypically irreplaceable: sun is salvation; darkness is sin.11 Francis’s heliocentric theology finds further explanation in his rhetorical comment at the end of the gloss on the sun.Without dropping the poetic rhetoric of the “Canticle,” Francis allows himself a metapoetic comment, which redefines, in poetic terms, metaphor as a figure of speech. The sun becomes a trope for God himself. Francis addresses God directly and writes that the sun,“de te, Altissimo, porta significazione” (“carries, O most High, a glimpse of what You are”).The expression “porta significazione”—literally,“it carries significance”—accurately matches the etymology of the word “metaphor,” which can be paraphrased as a “carrying over or transferring of meaning.”12 This identification of the sun with God points in the direction of a religious and anthropological archetype surpassing cultural and temporal divisions.13 The sun rules as undisputed god over all other gods in numerous religious hierarchies. The superimposition of sun and god in Indo-European religions left its imprint in language, given that the Sanskrit term “div” is the common morpheme of both light and divinity.14 Francis’s formulation carefully distances itself from any possible pantheistic identity sun = god.The “Canticle” specifies that the sun is a trope; it is an image of God, not God himself.As such, it enjoys a privileged status among creatures: while God’s creation, it is at the same time God’s own image, a symbol commonly adopted to clarify both human beings’ and other creatures’ desire and necessity for God and the significance of God in their existence. The specification that Francis’s sun is solely an image of divinity is confirmed by the editorial title, in which the sun acquires a distinctly ambiguous connotation.“Canticle of Brother Sun” refers literally to the largest and most radiant star in the solar system, but figuratively points to God himself.Within the context of the poem, when the sun is addressed as “messer lo frate Sole” (“master brother Sun”), the two substantives referring to him in the same laudative expression—which appear to be oxymoronically at odds with each other—suggest a Christological reading of

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this image. In such a reading the sun then acquires perfect metaphorical correspondence with Christ, who is venerated at the same time as Lord and as a special brother to humanity. The term “messere” (“sir” or “master”) elevates the sun to a higher rank than the other creatures. In the medieval class system “messere” was the title commonly given to judges and jurists. 15 In the atmosphere of democratic and harmonious fraternization of this Franciscan poem, in which all creatures, human beings and inanimate elements alike, are placed on the same level as God’s sons and daughters, the preeminent position assigned to that unique creature invokes a metaphorical interpretation. The honorific title “messer” implies respect and devotion; the familial, or fraternal/monastic, attribute “frate” suggests a relationship on a par with other creatures, as belonging to the same family or community. Such alternation of awe and friendship is reiterated by means of other, similar rhetorical devices throughout the poem.The initial apostrophe invokes God with names underscoring his eminence, his power, and his goodness: Altissimo, onnipotente, bon Signore, tue so le laude, la gloria e l’onore e onne benedizione A te solo,Altissimo, se confano e nullo omo è digno te mentovare. Most high, omnipotent, and kindly Lord, yours are the praise, the glory, all blessings and all fame. To You alone, most High, do they belong as there is here no man worthy to speak your name.

This high-sounding beginning marks the distance of the worshiper from God—who is here addressed as Lord,“Signore,” a term hierarchically higher than “messer” in medieval society. God is unreachable and omnipotent; he alone is worthy of praise, glory, honor, and blessing.The unbridgeable abyss separating human beings from God deepens further because of the sense of ineffability surrounding God’s name.While God alone deserves honor and praise, his name is unutterable, since no human being is worthy to pronounce it. If the negation of mankind’s worthiness to utter the name of God appears to contradict the prayerful act performed through the “Canticle” itself, which addresses God directly by his name several times in the refrain, the invitation to respect the awe and silence that characterize the name of God may bring to mind the much-debated theory of Francis’s

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Jewish ancestry, in whose tradition the Tetragrammaton, the four letters of the name of God (YHWH), is too sacred to be ever articulated.16 However, the lines on the sun, which follow immediately thereafter, serve to reestablish a strong connection between human beings and divinity, because the sun functions as a symbol of the Incarnation, the new possibility for communication between mankind and God in Christianity.The brotherhood of the sun,“frate Sole,” is a reminder that the sun, like all other creatures, is God’s son, but it is a special creature. Its indispensable function in our cosmic system raises it to a higher rank. In this sense, the sun is an image and metaphor of Christ. Like Christ, the Son of God according to Christian theology, the sun is a brother to humanity, but a forerunner and a superior sibling to the rest.17 In Franciscan hagiography, the sun becomes an image of Francis himself. Having displayed resemblance to Christ, to the extent of having borne the physical signs of his Passion in the stigmata, Francis gains the right to the same appellation by metonymy. The tradition of a “solar” Francis begins with the first texts of the Legenda. Thomas of Celano reports the canonization speech by Pope Gregory IX, which offers the following suggestive, inspired description of Francis: “Like the morning star in the midst of clouds, like the full moon, like the shining sun, so in his days did he shine in the temple of God.”18 Dante adopts the same metaphor and adds the pun on the name of Francis’s birthplace as Orient, the locus of the rising sun: nacque al mondo un sole . . . Però chi d’esso loco fa parole, non dica Ascesi, ché direbbe corto, ma Oriente, se proprio dir vuole.19 a sun was born into the world . . . Therefore let him who names this site not say Ascesi, which would be to say too little, but Orient, if he would name it rightly.20

If Francis is the rising sun, then his place of birth, Assisi, or Ascesi, indicates the very action of ascending.21 As such, it is both the metaphorical Orient, the cardinal point at which the sun first appears, and the privileged place of askesis, the mystical ascent to divinity. Dante takes the opportunity to emphasize the meaningful name of Francis’s birthplace as matching the ascetic quality of the Saint’s life.

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As is to be expected in a revisitation of the biblical myth of creation in light of the Incarnation, Francis’s text moves smoothly from sources of light to other basic elements of life on earth.The common trait of this poem is the brightness of renovation and rejuvenation, which illuminates the description of every element or creature.After the four-line explanatory note on the practical and aesthetic qualities of the sun, and the verse on the moon and stars, the “Canticle” continues with glosses on other creatures.22 After celestial creatures come terrestrial elements. In Francis’s concise reference to the whole of creation only the four fundamental elements constituting matter in traditional natural philosophy are mentioned: air, water, fire, and earth. Each is accompanied by explanatory notes and glosses on their goodness and beauty: Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Vento, e per Aere e Nubilo e Sereno e onne tempo, per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor Aqua, la quale è molto utile e umile e preziosa e casta. Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Foco, per lo quale enn’allumini la nocte: ed è bello e iocondo e robustoso e forte. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre Terra, la quale ne sostenta e governa, e produce diversi fructi con coloriti fiori ed erba. Praised be, my Lord, for brother wind, for the air and clouds and every kind of weather by which you give your creatures nourishment. Praised be, my Lord, for sister water, which is so very useful, humble and precious and pure. Praised be, my Lord, for brother fire, through which You lend us luster through the night, and he is fair and merry, and vigorous and strong. Praised be, my Lord, for our sister, mother earth, which does sustain and govern us, and brings forth diverse fruits with colored buds and grass.

The lines concerning the sun, the moon, and the stars are schematic in their structure; each verse consists of similar poetic material, arranged in the same order, with the only variation being the length of some lines.All verses are praising in tone and, therefore, prayerful. Each includes at least

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one cosmic element, and each devotes the second half of the verse to enumerating positive characteristics of that particular element, or elements. In synthesis, two different sets of poetic material characterize each verse: one is praise of God for having created the element mentioned; the other is annotation on the qualities and beauty of that particular element. 23 The structure is simple and effective, similar to the division present in litanic prayers, which traditionally consist of one original section, followed or preceded by a refrain.24 Their straightforward, repetitive structure makes them easy to remember, so that mnemonic recitation can be accomplished without much difficulty—as is the case for numerous traditional canonical prayers. The commenting device, which does not exist in the two canonical sources of the “Canticle,” is borrowed, although in a different format, from the text of biblical cosmogony. At the moment of the birth of the universe it may have sufficed to state the goodness of all created things; however, beginning with humanity’s historical dimension after struggling through Fall and redemption, more elaborate and detailed comments are necessary to confirm the amended, restored quality of nature. In Genesis, the only gloss that accompanies the creation of each new element is God’s observation “that it was good.”The reiteration of the goodness of nature (“God saw that it was good”) occurs six times, at the end of each day of the creation cycle.25 The “Canticle” adopts more varied, diversified comments; the author’s urge to underline the beauty and importance of each creature leads to an accumulation of substantives, predicates, and (especially) adjectives, aimed at describing that particular creature.The commenting device represents the chief reason for the poem’s redundancy; the positiveness of nature in the first (and most substantial) portion of the poem is underscored by the enumeration of the various positive traits of each particular creature immediately after its signifier. Stylistically and syntactically, Francis’s zeal to explain the role of each creature appears through the reiterated employment of the conjunction “e” (“and”), which shows the poet’s desire for completeness, his effort to include all possible characteristics. For example, for “sister water” he lists four adjectives,“utile e umile e preziosa e casta” (“useful and humble and precious and pure”); likewise,“brother fire” is presented as “bello e iocondo e robustoso e forte” (“fair and merry, and vigorous and strong”).An identical syntactic structure occurs in the presentation of “brother wind,” but here the list mentions the other atmospheric conditions through which life is sustained, rather than its specific qualities:“frate Vento / . . . Aere e Nubilo e Sereno

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e onne tempo” (“brother wind, . . . the air and clouds and every other kind of weather”).26 The desire for completion and exhaustiveness leads the author to add qualities compulsively as they come to his mind—or, at least, this is the resulting textual effect. Hence the iteration of “e,” which creates a peculiar polysyndeton, a list of adjectives linked together by the conjunction “and.”The signifier identifying each element is surrounded, almost enveloped, in glosses and annotations pointing to its beauty, its goodness, its usefulness, and its strength.The grouping of adjectives, or predicates, or substantives around each signifier gives the “Canticle” the appearance of a glossed text, somewhat akin to medieval commentaries, in which each key word almost disappears beneath the critical apparatus of clarifying, interpretive notes carefully placed all around it. For example, the necessity to underline the amended state of “sister water” requires four consecutive adjectives listed in a row, joined by the conjunction “and”:“sister water, / which is so very useful and humble and precious and pure.”27 Francis’s reaffirmation of the beauty and importance of nature as a sign of divine manifestation contrasts and counteracts the tendency to Gnostic duality engendered by Catharism. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a renewed Manichaeism emerged, thanks to the Cathar movement, which proposed in its theology much of the doctrine that had been developed by Gnosticism in the early centuries of Christianity.The definite separation between two primordial principles, one positive, one negative, left little space for the Christian dogma of the Incarnation.The positive principle originated the soul; the negative one gave rise to the material world. Likewise, each human being was perceived as having two contrasting parts, one good, corresponding to the soul, and one bad, manifesting itself through the body.The religious community was constructed according to the same dualistic principle; it was divided between the simple credentes and the chosen caste of perfecti. The dichotomy between good and bad extended to separating Scripture into two contrasting sections: the Old Testament was considered to be the product of the Devil, and the New Testament was God’s creation. Since Catharism reached its peak in the final years of the twelfth century and the early years of the thirteenth, before being eradicated by the Albigensian Crusade in 1215, the influence and the dangers of its heretical doctrine were manifest to Franciscanism in its initial years.28 Francis’s insistence on the positiveness of nature may be read as an attempt to counteract the strength of these unorthodox theological concepts.The

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hymn to nature in the “Canticle” seems to suggest that, if matter was worthy of hosting divinity in the mystery of the Incarnation, it certainly deserves human admiration and devotion in its natural manifestation.The explanatory glosses accompanying each creature testify to the crucial wish to expound and clarify an important theological point. In addition to the critical commentary contained in the glosses, another remarkable alteration of the “Canticle” in comparison with its two sources occurs through the addition of the familial substantives “brother” or “sister” before each creature mentioned.29 After references to the sun as “brother” and to the moon as “sister,” the attributes of brother and sister are abundantly applied to the earthly elements that follow and, finally, to death.The apposition with the signifiers indicating these creatures always occurs according to the Italian grammatical genders:“brother wind,”“sister water,”“brother fire,”“sister earth,” and “sister death.”The atmosphere of fraternity and sorority kindled by this innovation attests to the level of reconciliation with the created world achieved by Francis, whose outlook on reality has reached the purification of a newly Edenic being, since he can view the world with the eye of humanity prior to the Fall. It is the same ability to eliminate unnecessary structures governing secular life that allows him to undress in public at the moment of the announcement of his conversion.30 Besides having metahistorical significance and reproposing the mythical purity of Eden, when all creatures were equal and siblings to one another, the terms “brother” and “sister” reach back in Christian history and give new life to the fraternal spirit of Church origins. Of course, they also look at the tradition of monks’ and nuns’ addressing each other as brothers and sisters throughout the Middle Ages. Nonetheless their presence in the “Canticle” remains surprising, because of the peculiarity of applying them to inanimate elements.The sun, moon, air, fire, earth, and death do not customarily enjoy the same privileged status as humanity; and if it may be acceptable to call other human beings brothers and sisters, the same does not hold for celestial or earthly elements, and certainly not for death.With a (possibly unintentional) ironic undertone, Francis omits the fraternal or sororal attribute in front of expressions or phrases indicating human beings. Men and women are, in fact, mentioned only with the deictic form of the demonstrative pronoun “quelli”: “beati quelli,”“guai a quelli,”“laudato si per quelli” (“blessèd are those,” “woe to all those,” “praised be for those”); this may be taken almost as an insult or, at least, as a rather inelegant, unflattering way of addressing

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one’s fellow humans. In two instances the poet makes a more direct reference to humanity by using the word “omo,” but he preserves, or even intensifies, the disrespectful manner he adopted above: instead of being preceded by the typical familial term “brother,”“omo” twice is accompanied by the adjective “nullo.”“Nullo” underscores the worthlessness and insignificance of mankind, or, at least, this is the effect the expression “nullo omo” creates when it is extrapolated from the text. Reminding human beings of their negligibleness, their nothingness in comparison to God, helps to undercut their pride and haughtiness, which may constitute a deviant by-product of their (doctrinally orthodox) similarity with God. But, taken in context, in both instances the adjective “nullo” serves the purpose of constructing a negative sentence, thereby remaining a meaningful device to interpret the poet’s persistence on his via negativa. This negative expression occurs for the first time in “nullo omo è digno te mentovare” (“as there is here no man worthy to speak your name”), in order to negate the possibility that any human being could utter God’s name, as was pointed out earlier.The second “nullo” is a reminder of human mortality,“nostra Morte corporale, / da la quale nullo omo vivente po’ scampare” (“our bodily death, / from which no living man can ever flee”). God is thanked for corporeal death, from which no man can escape. Thus the ineffability of the name of God and the mortality of the body are the two most important attributes associated with humanity in the “Canticle.”The three deictic expressions addressed to human beings in the poem—“beati quelli,”“guai a quelli,” and “laudato si per quelli”—are an indirect quotation of the Beatitudes (the first two) and an invitation to praise God (the last one).The implicit, rather cryptic message to be drawn from the treatment of human beings in the “Canticle” speaks to the necessity for purification and penance. Before being able to recognize a brother or a sister in their fellow humans, human beings must undergo the difficult path of being cleansed of their guilt, chiefly through humility. Only then will the harmony of the universe manifest itself, so that even other nonhuman creatures may be addressed as brothers and sisters. Because all created things draw their existence from the same divine source, they may be addressed with terms indicating fraternal or sororal relation to the human speaker.As such, they all possess equal dignity and value and deserve identical treatment.The Franciscan Legenda offers abundant documentation of Francis’s custom of addressing all creatures, animate and inanimate, with the attributes “brother” and “sister.” Most of these episodes are well known: the taming of “frate lupo” (“brother wolf ”),

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the sermon to “sirocchie uccelli” (“sister birds”), and the (supposedly) curative ocular cauterization thanks to “frate foco” (“brother fire”).31 Francis’s sense of humility regarding the relation of human beings to nature overrides the biblical command that gives mankind dominion over every living thing on earth.32 The virtues of humility and obedience, as exemplified by Christ, subjugate humans to the service and respect of all other creatures.The text of A Salutation of the Virtues explains Francis’s theology of nature as a doctrine of accepting impassiveness:“Holy Obedience confounds every corporal and carnal wish, binds its mortified body to obedience of the Spirit and obedience to one’s brother, so that it is subject and submissive to everyone in the world, not only to people but to every beast and wild animal as well that they may do whatever they want with it insofar as it has been given to them from above by the Lord.”33 It may be inferred from this text that it is the human beings’ consciousness of their sinfulness and need of purification that inspires their voluntary subjugation to other created things. If the God-Man humbled himself to the point of becoming a servant, humans must show a similar attitude with respect to other creatures. As discussed above, the definition of “creature” in the “Canticle” is quite loose. It includes celestial bodies (“brother sun,”“sister moon,” and “every star”), terrestrial elements (“brother wind,”“sister water,“brother fire,” and “our sister, mother earth”), and existential events, such as physical death (“sister our bodily death”).The elevation of all creatures above human beings in a hypothetical spiritual hierarchy raises the issue of pantheism, especially since most of the creatures mentioned belong to the natural kingdom. But in the “Canticle” nature always retains its mediative function; it is never the end of the admirer’s love, and the objects of such admiration and love are never deified. Nature is the means through which divinity manifests itself, and the instrument through which God makes his presence felt and known.Thus pantheistic deification of the natural world does not constitute a threat to Christian orthodoxy in the “Canticle.” Rather, its theological approach resembles John Scotus Eriugena’s theory of nature as a manifestation of divinity. 34 Eriugena viewed nature as the Second Book of God’s manifestation to the world after the Bible. It is a text that, like any other text, needs interpretation and exegesis, and Francis pays it all the love and dedication it deserves, studying it and striving to see the invisible God behind the visible signs of the natural world.35 His love for and devotion to creation as a book of divine manifestation are reminiscent of the passionate care with which Francis

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kept books and written materials in general. His obsessive reverence for any written word was motivated by the fear that the letters therein contained might spell God’s name if arranged differently. In Francis’s world view, creatures too are a sort of divine alphabet, a constant reminder of God’s presence and power.36 If the deification of nature does not represent a threat to Francis’s orthodoxy, his consideration of all created things, combined with the peculiar attributes of “brother” and “sister,” may be perceived as an anthropomorphizing of creatures.Viewing all created things as men and women of the human species, Francis points out the salvation of all matter accomplished by Christ’s redemption.All things created are saved, as humans are saved. Francis’s achieved purity allows him to go a step further and elevate nature to the status of divine sacrament. As such, nature is the tangible appearance of divinity, as is everything else “worldly.”This mysterious process, through which all created things reveal the image of the Creator by virtue of the Incarnation, becomes clear in the words of the twentieth-century theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who expresses, in more theoretical terms than Francis’s poetic forms—but still in a highly prayerful fashion—the mystery of what he defines as the “sacrament of the world”: Mysteriously and in very truth, at the touch of the supersubstantial Word the immense host which is the universe is made flesh.Through your own incarnation, my God, all matter is henceforth incarnate. . . . Like the pagan I worship a God who can be touched; and I do indeed touch him—this God— over the whole surface and in the depths of that world of matter which confines me. . . . If I firmly believe that everything around me is the body and blood of the Word, then for me is brought about that marvelous “diaphany” which causes the luminous warmth of a single life to be objectively discernible in and to shine forth from the depths of every event, every element.37

Events and elements, together with heavenly bodies, appear throughout the “Canticle” to testify to the rebirth of creation because of the Incarnation, as the locus at which the “old” creation is revitalized with a “new” energy and a “new” spirit, according to which they share the same restored destiny as siblings. The familial terms “brother” and “sister” also bring forth the issue of gender differentiation.The alternation of words of opposite grammatical gender in the Italian vernacular conveys a sense of sexual completeness, whereby masculine and feminine are assigned equal roles and equal importance. Francis’s anthropomorphizing results in the sexual differentiation

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of all created things.The theoretical subtext to this sexual differentiation seems again to be one of identity of nature and mankind. If nature shares in the destiny of humankind, it must of necessity be likewise split into two genders. Male and female complete each other and constitute a unit.They are strongly represented in the “Canticle” by means of the two attributes,“brother” and “sister,” that precede each substantive according to the grammatical gender in the Italian vernacular. Male and female create a poetic unity in the text, thanks to the employment of the masculine and feminine signifiers for “sibling.”38 That unity of brother and sister in the “Canticle” strongly echoes the unity of the human sexes in the myth of creation. After the creation of man and woman, God stated that the two “become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). In the lyrical language of the “Canticle,” the harmony of creation is evoked by the balanced presence of the two genders, which are joined in fraternal as well as marital relationships. Rather than sounding like an aberration, the combination of fraternal and marital union brings to mind another relevant biblical text, which was much read and debated in the Middle Ages. In the Song of Songs, the male voice repeatedly addresses his beloved as “my sister, my promised bride” (4:10, 12; 5:1).The complex gender dynamics of the “Canticle,” in which male and female creatures are united as siblings, as well as by virtue of their sexual differences, echoes the apostrophe of the bridegroom in the Song of Songs, who addresses his beloved with combined fraternal and marital titles.The apostrophe “my sister, my promised bride” finds a theological explanation in the Christian mandate of fraternal/sororal love for everyone, including one’s spouse. The poem’s gender differentiation also retrieves an important element of Franciscan spirituality.The issue of gender was rooted in the matrix of Francis’s thought. Rather than founding two branches of the same religious order—one male, one female—as was customary, Francis founded two separate Orders, the Franciscan Friars, the male order, and the Poor Clares, the female order.The foundation of two Orders responds to a desire to give equal, independent status to both sexes in religious life, under the aegis of a common spirituality and a common mission. Since humanity consists of two sexes and any religious congregation must reflect the essence of mankind, a clear separation of the two Orders was, to Francis, an incontrovertible necessity, even though the two sides have common goals and common intents. The issue of gender appears to have permeated Franciscanism from the dawn of its history almost as much as Francis’s fascination for the animal

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world, which constitutes a peculiarly folkloric trait of Franciscan theology and hagiography. It surprises readers to discover that animals are not represented in the “Canticle.” Even more striking than the lack of fraternal and sororal attributes in front of signifiers indicating human beings is the manifest gap in the natural chain caused by the absence of animals.This lack of animals is unexpected especially in consideration of Francis’s love and respect for them, as recorded in numerous episodes reported in the Franciscan Legenda, in which animals are Francis’s constant companions in his search for God.The omission immediately draws the readers’ attention as possibly incoherent. It may be explained in part by the poem’s brevity and concisiveness. By making reference to the four fundamental elements that constitute cosmic matter, and then by skipping ahead to humans, Francis indirectly incorporates all created things, including animals small and large. But even so, the poem’s silence with regard to the animal kingdom is puzzling and has given rise to endless, more or less plausible theories. It should be pointed out, however, that their presence is felt indirectly through the all-inclusive expression “cun tutte le tue creature” (“with all your creatures”). But further clarification concerning this peculiarity of the “Canticle” comes from the Book of Genesis, which, if read as Francis’s genealogical source for the composition of his poem, shows a somewhat surprising paucity of creatures representing the animal kingdom. Four of the six active days of God’s creative efforts concentrate on heaven, earth, and the waters, in all their various manifestations, such as the separation of light and darkness, the creation of seeds and grass, and the division of waters under the firmament from waters above the firmament.The fifth day witnesses the creation of “living creatures,” which are simply identified as “birds that wing their way above the earth across the vault of heaven,” the “great sea-monsters,” and “all the creatures that glide and teem in the waters.”After a brief account of the creation of “wild animals in their own species, and cattle in theirs, and every creature that crawls along the earth in its own species” (Gen. 1:20), the sixth day is dedicated to the making of humankind. Birds are Francis’s audience in his famous speech reported in chapter 16 of the Little Flowers. Together with sea monsters, birds were God’s first animal creation.Their flying ability and their ethereal nature makes them closer, both in space and in essence, to heavenly divinity. But the text of Genesis simply mentions only two categories of animals and avoids the long, detailed lists of animals big and small, marine, terrestrial, and airy,

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which are the striking stylistic quality of the two sources of the “Canticle.” Assuming the Book of Genesis as a reference text for the “Canticle” would explain Francis’s omission of any direct allusion to animals. After the heavenly creatures, the sun, the moon, and the stars, earthly creatures appear in the “Canticle” only through reference to air, water, fire, and earth. Francis concentrates on the essential elements: the four earthly creatures to which he refers have been regarded since pre-Socratic philosophy as the four fundamental elements constituting matter.39 Without neglecting the symbolic numerology of a cosmos accounted for by means of seven elements, three celestial and four terrestrial, the thematic (and cosmological) vertical descent of the poem continues in the third section, which concentrates on human beings.40 Symbolic numbers accompany the division of the poem as well: three verses (number three, four, and five) mention the heavens; four verses (number six, seven, eight, and nine) make brief references to earthly creatures; and the four final verses (ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen) concentrate on human beings; the poem concludes with a doxological verse (number fourteen), as it had begun with a two-verse doxology (one and two).41 Such division bears no exact correspondence to the three-stage composition of the “Canticle” as reported by the Legenda. The three sections are arranged in an orderly sequence—the first on heaven and earth, the second on forgiveness, and the third on “sister” death—according to the succession in which they were reportedly written. But the number of verses put together in the three successive writing episodes varies from the lengthy first part—nine verses on heaven and earth—to the synthetic two verses on forgiveness at the end.A comparable discrepancy and a similar asymmetry appear in the text of the Book of Genesis, in which four days, or twenty verses, focus on the creation of light and darkness, firmament and earth, and waters above and below, while only the last two days remain for the creation of all animals and human beings, with a total of twelve verses. The truthfulness of the hagiographic account of the composition of the “Canticle” remains in dispute, but it is noteworthy that the account makes no attempt to explain the three sections of the poem as corresponding to the three stages of the writing process. It limits itself to creating a numerological parallel between three successive themes in the poem (heavenly creatures, earthly elements, and human beings) and an equal number of events in the author’s life.The three-stage composition of the “Canticle” follows a pattern that bears no correspondence to those three successive

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thematic sections. According to the Legenda, Francis wrote the first nine verses (those on the heavens and the earth) at the end of a night of tribulations at San Damiano; and this substantial section of the poem can be regarded as having originated as a song of consolation for God’s reassurance to Francis concerning his salvation.42 The two “verses on forgiveness” (ten and eleven) were written on the occasion of Francis’s conciliatory mediation between the bishop and the podestà of Assisi.The last portion of the “Canticle” (verses twelve, thirteen, and fourteen) focuses on death and reportedly was written before the moment of his transitus, as his physical death came to be known among Franciscans and Franciscanists. In line with the thematic (and cosmological) vertical scheme of the “Canticle,” which seems to orient itself from the unreachable height of God to the low spiritual condition of human beings, the opening and the ending of the poem align themselves on a vertical coordinate, from top to bottom, from the highest to the lowest point.The initial word of the poem is “Altissimo,” an apostrophe to the Highest; the last word of the poem is “umilitate,” which emphasizes the need for human beings to be lowly.The “Canticle” begins and ends with a doxology; the opening one is addressed to God: Altissimo, onnipotente, bon Signore, tue so le laude, la gloria e l’onore e onne benedizione. A te solo,Altissimo, se confano e nullo omo è digno te mentovare. Most high, omnipotent, and kindly Lord, yours are the praise, the glory, all blessings and all fame. To You alone, most high, do they belong as there is here no man worthy to speak your name.

This high-sounding apostrophe, which twice stresses God’s unreachability, also points—paradoxically, perhaps—toward the ineffability of God, whose name human beings may not even pronounce. God’s unreachable position and mankind’s unworthiness to speak his name evince the wide gap existing in the relationship between human beings and divinity.Yet the rest of the poem appears to contradict the unattainableness of a contact with God.The created world, evoked throughout the text, establishes a connection with God through the mediation of redemption, and, by virtue of being a prayerful text, the “Canticle” emphasizes a potential dialogue with him.

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The last verse solicits human beings to honor God “with great humility”; for the passive diathesis, which is typical of the poem’s refrain,“Laudato si, mi Signore” (“Praised be, my Lord”), it substitutes a direct invitation, by means of an active imperative verb, to human beings to praise and bless God: “Laudate e benedicite mi Signore, / e rengraziate e serviteli cun grande umilitate” (“So praise and bless and thank my Lord, and be / subject to Him with great humility”).The last word suggests the route to reconciliation with God.Together with the mediatory function of nature and of prayer, humility is a way to be reunited with God. The switch in allocutive form, from the direct second person singular addressed to God, the chief interlocutor of Francis’s prayerful discourse in the “Canticle,” to the second person plural addressed to human beings, places the Franciscan poem in the prayerful rhetorical tradition. Beginning with the biblical psalms, the change in allocutive pronouns appears to be quite common in prayer: God and fellow human beings alternate as the two main addressees of prayerful discourse. The two doxologies, one addressed directly to God, the other inviting human beings to honor him, seal the beginning and the end of the poem. The central body of the “Canticle,” contained between those two more direct formulations, praises God through the mediation of various creatures. In the thematic tripartition proposed earlier, the creatures mentioned are disposed on a vertical axis, in which the heavenly bodies occupy the highest position and human beings the lowest, passing through the intermediate spatial position of earthly natural elements. By virtue of their mediatory function, the four earthly elements figure as the Incarnation, as the mediation between the height of the heavens and the lowly position of humans. From this perspective, it is a very small leap to reconsider the tripartite division, not on a vertical axis, but on a horizontal paradigm, and see the three different sections of the “Canticle” as representing the three Persons of the Christian Trinity.The movement would then be from the reverent ineffability of the first portion indicating an image of the Father, to the central part mirroring the Incarnation of the Son, and to the final verses on forgiveness and reconciliation through love, which constitute a fitting metaphor for the Spirit.43 The only occurrence of the word “love” in the “Canticle” is in the third section, in connection with the evocation of forgiveness and reconciliation. Love is the sole source of reconciliation and forgiveness; to Francis it is the basis for the final judgment and the only discriminant between salvation and damnation.44

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Laudato si, mi Signore, per quelli che perdonano per lo tuo amore e sostengo infirmitate e tribulazione. Beati quelli che ’l sosterranno in pace, ca da te,Altissimo, sirano incoronati. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale, da la quale nullo omo vivente po’ scampare. Guai a quelli che morranno ne le peccata mortali! Beati quelli che troverà ne le sue sanctissime voluntati, ca la morte seconda no li farrà male. Praised be, my Lord, for those who for your love forgive, and every trouble, every illness bear. Blessèd are those who meekly all endure, for You, most High, will crown them finally. Praised be, my Lord, for sister our bodily death, from which no living man can ever flee. Woe to all those who die in mortal sin, and blessèd they who in your holy will are found, for in no way will they by their second death be wronged.

Love appears to be the structuring element of the final section of the “Canticle,” which centers on forgiveness and death. It is love that originates the gift of forgiveness.The formulation of the poem leaves no room for any other kind of pardon, since forgiveness only happens in connection with divine love.Verse ten—“Laudato si, mi Signore, per quelli che perdonano per lo tuo amore / e sostengo infirmitate e tribulazione” (“Praised be, my Lord, for those who for your love forgive, / and every trouble, every illness bear”)—bespeaks the concept of love in connection with that of forgiveness. Despite the syntactical intricacies set up by the possibly polysemic preposition “per,” love remains the unique source of forgiveness. The phrase “per lo tuo amore” (“for your love”) initiates most of the following verses, since it is in the name of divine love that those who will be crowned with the final prize of eternity meekly endure every trouble and tribulation. More than an echo of the Dies Irae, the subsequent section on death elucidates the doctrine of the final judgment.45 The biblical reference to the Beatitudes remains only a rhetorical echoing, established by means of the two key words “Guai” and “Beati” (“Alas” and “Blessed”), which—as in the text they evoke—designate a warning and a reward, respectively.46 This evocation of the Gospel passage on the Beatitudes is limited to the initial words of those verses listing the warnings

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and the rewards; there is no substantial borrowing of any other material from that passage.The echoing of the Beatitudes remains aesthetic, and in a certain sense only cosmetic.The common dynamic of a before and an after in the Gospel and in the “Canticle” does not translate into a common objective in the two texts.The Gospel Beatitudes remain vague as to the materialization of the predicted occurrence (whether it will happen in this life or in the afterlife), and its general tone simply conveys a sense of justice to be achieved.The Beatitudes of the “Canticle,” however, stress the judicial and discriminating power of death, which is taken to be the moment in which the Great Judge will separate human beings into two distinct groups. Neither text imparts any behavioral instruction: the Beatitudes are not commandments; they simply articulate and confirm an accomplished state of affairs. Likewise, in Francis’s poem the distinction is made between “peccata mortali” (“mortal sins”) and “sanctissime voluntati” (“holy wills”).The dichotomy set up by the two opposing groups of people, the saved and the damned, recalls the chapter on the final judgment in Matthew 25:31–46.47 Having separated two flocks, one at his right, the other at his left, God-the-Judge assigns each person his or her destiny according to his or her comportment in life.The idea of behavior is reintegrated in Matthew according to the theology of doing good works, which merits a reward, as opposed to the lack of good works, which merits damnation. Love stands unnamed as the silent inspiration for all good works.The striking element of this judgment is the total oblivion of both groups, which seem to be utterly unaware of the quality of their past actions.They have no recollection of having done good actions or having denied assistance to the helpless and needy, an element that unequivocally attenuates their responsibility in the matter. Love was the silent guide of their actions. Now the souls are being judged as saved or damned according to the way they obeyed that internal, irrational force. In the “Canticle,” the final verses on forgiveness and death are inspired by the same underlying concept of love as guidance of human behavior. Mankind’s response may be positive acceptance or negative refutation. Hence the resulting warning to some and compensation to others.The unnamed inspirer of all goodness remains the spirit of love, the only commandment of the new covenant, to which both the lines on forgiveness and the lines on death may be linked. Besides being the aesthetic inspiration of the last part of the “Canticle,” the Gospel passage on the Beatitudes also underlies the instructive, sermonlike tone of the Franciscan poem. In Luke the Beatitudes are

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formulated in the context of the “First Sermon,” when Jesus,“fixing his eyes on his disciples,” addressed them with his teaching (Luke 6:20). In Matthew’s Gospel a much longer version of the Beatitudes is presented as part of the “Sermon on the Mount” (5:1–7:29).The variety of poetic tones in the “Canticle” shifts from the prayerful beginning, in which the poetic discourse addresses God directly, to the still prayerful but more mediated rhetoric of the central section. In the middle part, God is praised in relation to earthly creatures by means of the insisted and iterated anaphora “Laudato si, mi Signore” (“Praised be, my Lord”) characterizing verses five to ten. Finally, the tone turns sermonic in the last few lines. It is the deictic allocutive forms “beati quelli” (“blessed are those”),“guai a quelli” (“woe to those”) that turn the poet’s address from God to human beings. That is why the concluding doxology, which is directed to humans in the imperative form of the second person plural, a change from the previous allocutive form, is not surprising, since the entire last portion of the poem is addressed to human beings. The rhetoric of the “Canticle” can be perceived in two different but not necessarily contrasting ways: one is the vertical rhetorical paradigm of a prayer addressed to God, which rises from human beings to him, and thematically descends from the heavens to humans; the other is a horizontal paradigm, since the “Canticle” displays a sermonic tone, particularly in its second half, in which the discourse moves from the preaching poetic voice to the readers or listeners of the “Canticle.” This double orientation of the poem is corroborated by its tripartite division, which can be viewed as either vertical or horizontal.The vertical paradigm appears to match the thematic structure “heavens–earth–human beings”; the horizontal reading affords a vision of the Trinitarian structure “Father–Son–Spirit.” The middle section of the poem, insisting as it does on the mediating function of earthly elements, bears the metaphorical characteristics of Incarnation. It is here, more than in the heavenly or the human sections, that the sense of the recuperation, revaluation, and reconstitution of creation is stressed through several rhetorical devices (already pointed out), such as the insistence on adjectival terms, the iterated use of the conjunction “e” (“and”), and the increased recurrence of the characteristic refrain “Laudato si, mi Signore” (“Praised be, my Lord”). The anaphora “Laudato si, mi Signore” is an invitation to praise God, although a certain ambiguity about the identity of the one praising stems from Francis’s use of the preposition “per,” which may acquire a

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multiplicity of signifieds. Since “per” follows a passive diathesis, in Francis’s archaic usage it may correspond to the modern Italian “da,” “by,” thereby making the creatures evoked into the bearers of God’s praise, as in “May the Lord be praised by. . . .” But it is plausible that “per” could also mean “for,” as it would in modern Italian; and in this case the performers of the praiseful act would be human beings, who thank and praise God for all creation. Another possible meaning of this polysemic preposition (although less immediately perceptible in the text as modern readers read it) implies a movement through the creatures, and in this case “per” would be translated as “through” or “by means of.” The creatures would be the agents—more or less physical, whether “per” means “through” or “by means of ”—of the human beings’ praise of God.48 The long-lasting philological dispute over the meaning of the preposition in Francis’s text may leave its less specialized reading audience skeptical about the truthfulness of any one of the proposed meanings, but it undoubtedly underscores the hermeneutical significance of its referent: the interpretation of the entire poem changes (although not drastically) according to the meaning assigned to “per”—and Francis’s theological approach to nature and divinity changes along with it.Without slighting the numerous interpretive efforts devoted to discovering the author’s intentions, it may be a fair assessment of the poem’s rhetoric to state that “per” has a mediating function; the preposition “per” stands as dynamic link between the two entities located graphically on each side of it; it is invested with the crucial role (and the term “crucial” is more than simply descriptive, since its pertinent metaphorical etymon is “cross,” or “crux”) of evincing the existing ties between God and creatures. All the possible semantic meanings of “per” (“by,”“for,”“through,”“by means of ”) underscore the dependence and subordination of creatures in relation to their Creator.The indirect, but fundamental, effect of the philological investigation of the matter only intensifies the polysemy of the morpheme in question, thereby stressing, in the referent, the interaction of the entities connected by that preposition in the signifier.49 In the well-known refrain of the “Canticle,”“Laudato si, mi Signore” (“Praised be, my Lord”), the signifier indicating divinity is placed at the center of the sentence, so that even syntactically God appears as the focus of the poem, while creatures are mentioned in the oblique case, behind— almost “hidden behind”—the preposition “per.”The author of the “Canticle” transforms the active imperative form “Praise him” of Psalm 148 and “Bless the Lord” of the Psalm of Daniel into the passive imperative

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“Laudato si” (“Praised be”), followed by the vocative “mi Signore,”“my Lord.” By means of this structural/syntactical change, which represents a further differentiation from the two biblical sources, God is placed at the center of the sentence, at once the grammatical subject of the sentence and the prayerful object of the praiseful action enacted in the “Canticle.” Both syntactically and theologically, creatures find themselves in a dependent position, which corroborates their subordinate role in relation to the central, divine subject. In the Franciscan theological perspective, the passive form acquires a spiritual significance: human beings are grammatically the passive agents of praise, while God is the central subject of the sentence articulating his praise as well as the object of that praise. The passive or active diathesis employed notwithstanding, in both the “Canticle” and its biblical sources, the imperative verb form issues an invitation to praise God. Francis’s imperative command that God be praised makes the recipient of the praiseful action clear, while leaving freedom of interpretation concerning the nature of the praisers, whether they may be human beings singing, reciting, or reading the “Canticle,” or human beings praising God by other means, or the various creatures listed (or unlisted and simply implied) in the poem.The poetic voice’s invitation to praise God establishes a more direct dialogical contact than usual between the poet, who may be assumed to be the first person to use this poem as prayer, and the unidentified addressees of his urge (the creatures? other supplicants?) to pray to God with the words of the poem—or with other, original words and actions.The anaphora “Laudato si, mi Signore” (“Praised be, my Lord”), which so strongly characterizes the “Canticle,” changes this prayerful poem into a prayer within the prayer: the metaprayerful message it carries within itself changes the “Canticle” into a specific type of prayer, the praise.50 The repeated invitation implicit in the refrain signifies that God ought to be praised both self-referentially by the reciting of the “Canticle” and by means of other independently articulated or enacted prayers. By contrast, Psalm 148, the Psalm of Daniel, and the last verse of the “Canticle” address a direct solicitation to all recipients to praise and bless God. In Francis’s characteristic refrain the passive imperative form, in combination with the polysemic significance of the preposition “per,” obscures the identity of the worshipers, but spells out clearly that the recipient of the praiseful action is God. God is confirmed to be the true interlocutor of the poet and the worshiper, not only by the vocative address to him after every praiseful invitation, but also by the interspersed second-person singular pronoun, “a te” (“to you”), “de te” (“of you”), and by the

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possessive adjectives, “tue so le laude” (“yours are the praises”), “le tue creature” (“your creatures”). The refrain “Laudato si, mi Signore” (“Praised be, my Lord”), like the “Praise him” of Psalm 148 and “Bless the Lord” of the Psalm of Daniel, is the main unifying element of the “Canticle.”51 The insistent anaphorical repetition of this invitation to praise God sets up the litanic cadence that characterizes the poem.The repetition of “Laudato si, mi Signore” (“Praised be, my Lord”) in the first part of the line produces the effect of showing the variants in the latter part of it, which contains the referent of the different creatures, so that the attention of the reader or worshiper focuses mostly on those variations, while the fixed refrain affords a pause, a textual interruption.The repetition of the same element equates to a silencing of the text.While the readers or worshipers may glide over the repeated element, although conscious that it is the crucial information conveyed by the text, their attention concentrates on the novelty of the various creatures mentioned. As with all litanic prayers, the alternation of repetition and novelty contributes to the musicality of the “Canticle.” Besides being melodious sound, musicality in the “Canticle” has its roots in the original recovery of natural harmony. Nature as the mediating structure between human beings and God acquires the privileged status of sacrament, being the tangible sign of divine presence in the cosmos.The harmonious communication with God, as it happens in Francis’s praiseful song, hinges upon the mediation of natural elements, which disclose the creating power of God originating them and testify to the subsequent redemption accomplished in them by the Incarnation. As is typical of medieval perception, such external harmony of the cosmos bears the specular image of human beings’ spiritual dimension, according to the widespread principle that the world without reflects the world within.The “Canticle” seems to incorporate the practical application of the Boethian theoretical classification of music in three different branches: the melody that makes it into a singable text brings forth the characteristics of musica instrumentalis, as the type of music that is a human artifact and originates from instruments or voice; its intrinsic message of a cosmos thoroughly reconciled with its Creator suggests the perfect harmonious hum emitted by every living element, which corresponds to Boethius’s idea of musica mundana; the musica humana, as the matching internal order and harmony of the external world within human beings, can be regarded as the inspirational element of the poem itself, particularly in consideration of Francis’s spiritual condition at the moment of the composition of the “Canticle.”52

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Given these characteristics of a reconstituted order and harmony between human beings and Creator, having nature as their mediating element, the “Canticle” may be read as a rewriting of the cosmogonic account in the Book of Genesis in light of the Incarnation. All elements in the “Canticle” point to the recovered, renovated, and restored status of creation: as the cosmos was new at the moment of creation, it is now perceived by Francis, because of his accomplished purification, as renewed.To the Mystic of Assisi, who strives in order to regain the sinless condition before the Fall to the point of imitating the first human beings in their nakedness, the natural world appears as uncontaminated and purified, so that he acknowledges its sibling relation to human beings, and can address every creature, animate or inanimate, as brother and sister. His rediscovery of nakedness as a symbol of human purity finds perfect metaphorical correspondence with the rhetorical harmony of the “Canticle” as an archetypal song of the beginning. NOTES 1. The view of the biblical Book of Genesis as a possible intertextual reference for the “Canticle” is embraced by Nicolò Pasero, Laudes creaturarum: Il Cantico di Francesco d’Assisi (Parma: Pratiche Editrice, 1992), 38, 40, 47, 49–52. Pasero quotes all the canonical sources of the “Canticle” and includes other psalms that express the same praiseful action; then he adds:“Da tutti questi testi, comunque, si risalirà a un’altra ‘fonte’ scritturale, il Genesi, in quanto ipertesto a cui si rifà in ultima analisi ogni discorso cristiano sul creato” (38). 2. The notion of “The Canticle of Brother Sun” as “Franciscan Psalm” is drawn from Spitzer, who refers to it as “Cantico o salmo di san Francesco.”“Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di Frate Sole,’ ” 44. 3. Although “Canticle of Creatures” is the traditional title of the poem, the majority of contemporary critics who have researched this Franciscan text agree that “Canticle of Brother Sun” is the authentic title Saint Francis and his companions used. Luigi Foscolo Benedetto (Il Cantico di frate sole [Florence: Sansoni, 1941], 14–21 and passim) argues that initially the song was probably referred to as simply laus or laudes, but that Francis himself felt the need for an impositio nominis and the poem came to be known as “Canticle of Brother Sun.” Adolfo Oxilia (Il Cantico di frate sole [Florence: Nardini, 1984], 137–39), supports the same hypothesis about the title of the poem, as does Roger D. Sorrell (Saint Francis of Assisi and Nature [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], 69).Yet,“Canticum creaturarum” is the more traditional title, and the most widespread among Italian critics of previous generations. See, for example, Alessandro D’Ancona,

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“Jacopone da Todi,” 9: “[I]l suo Cantico del Sole o come meglio dovrebbe dirsi Canticus [sic] creaturarum”; or Ildebrando Della Giovanna,“San Francesco d’Assisi,” in Manuale della letteratura italiana, vol. 1, ed. Alessandro D’Ancona and Orazio Bacci (Florence: Barbera, 1911), 49: “[I]l celebre Cantico di frate Sole che più propriamente deve chiamarsi Laudes creaturarum o de creaturis.”The more traditional title of Francis’s poem also gives the name to the excellent monographic study by Eloi Leclerc, Le cantique des créatures ou les symboles de l’union: Une analyse de saint François d’Assise (Paris: Fayard, 1970). 4. Regarding the status of the “Canticle” as the first Italian poem, D’Ancona goes so far as to consider it “il più antico poema spirituale in volgar lingua,” thereby placing the Franciscan poem in an international perspective.“Jacopone da Todi,” 9. Oxilia widens the scope of the poem’s initial importance beyond the realm of Italian tradition:“[I]l Cantico è la prima grande pagina della civiltà dell’Occidente: codice di valori spirituali, ma anche di valori estetici.” Il Cantico di frate sole, 175. Ozanam stresses the fact that the “Canticle” is one of the first lyrical poems in the Italian literary tradition: “È questo un puro grido; ma grido primo d’una poesia bambina, che si farà grande, e ne uscirà poi il suono per tutta la terra.” Poeti francescani in Italia nel secolo decimoterzo, 51. 5. For the concept of hypertext, see Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982). 6. The Bible of the Reformation expunged this lyrical text as apocryphal, but it is kept in the Catholic Bible. Both texts can be found in the appendix. 7. A cursory reference to the similarity between the two sources of the “Canticle” (Psalm 148 and the Psalm of Daniel) and the cosmogonic narrative of Genesis occurs in Spitzer,“Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di frate sole,’ ” 47, 53. 8. An in-depth analysis of symbolic numbers in the “Canticle” can be found in Oxilia, Il Cantico di frate sole, 131–36, and in its “Appendice,” 159–60, 181–89. 9. The literal translation of this phrase is “which is the day.” While it is poetically more appropriate, the translator’s rendering of this phrase as “who dawns on us” makes no reference to the sun as daylight. 10. According to Alfred Biese, the “Canticle” is the first vernacular Christian poem to express this praise, following numerous homages to nature written in Latin. See The Development of the Feeling of Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times (New York: Franklin, 1905), 50. 11. As with any other rhetorical figure, the definition of catachresis is mutable. It shifts according to the rhetoricians and dictionaries consulted. J. A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1991), defines it as “the misapplication of a word, especially in a mixed metaphor.” 12. According to Spitzer the close relation between the sun and divinity may be summarized in their common goodness toward human beings:“il sole porta significazione di Dio come causa secunda che riflette la causa prima, Dio. Il sole,

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illuminando noi e il mondo con bontà gratuita, imita il Creatore,‘buon Signore’ che ha creato il mondo e noi con la sua bontà.”“Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di frate sole,’ ” 44. 13. It may be worth noting in this context that the concept of the sun as a symbol of God appears in The Assisi Compilation 83:“[The sun] is more beautiful than all other creatures and can be most closely compared to God.” In Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 2:186. 14. Mircea Eliade offers a detailed account of the attribution of divine characteristics to the sun in many different cultures. Prayerful rhetoric often adopts the terms for “sun” and “god” interchangeably. Eliade stresses the fact that the Indo-European signifier combines the two concepts of sun and god:“The IndoEuropean supreme God, Dieus, denotes both the celestial epiphany and the sacred (cf. Sanskrit div, to shine, day; dyaus, sky, day; Dyaus, Indian God of Heaven)” (120). In the same study, Eliade examines many of the creatures mentioned by Francis in the “Canticle” (sun, moon, sky/heaven, water, earth), noting that they represent a sign of divinity in many religions, if they are not regarded as gods themselves. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans.Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959), 116–59. 15. For the use of terminology concerning social hierarchy, particularly chivalric terms, in relation to the “Canticle,” see Sorrell, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature, 71. 16. Gemma Fortini, Francesco d’Assisi Ebreo? (Assisi: Carucci, 1978), strongly upholds the theory of Francis’s Jewishness, despite the question mark in her title. For further information concerning the theory of Francis’s Jewish ancestry see Trexler, Naked before the Father, 19, who quotes Fortini’s study. 17. The homophony of these two referents in the English language, where “sun” equals “son,” makes their catachrestic superimposition all the more meaningful in the context of the “Canticle.” 18. The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano 3.125, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 1:295.This text presents a long series of superimposed quotations. The citation is originally taken from the Book of Sirach 50:6–7, and Thomas of Celano reports it as being quoted by Pope Gregory IX, when “[h]e praises the holy father Francis in noble words” during the papal declaration of canonization. 19. Paradiso 11.50, 52–54, in La Divina Commedia: Paradiso, ed. Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio (Florence: Le Monnier, 1989). 20. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Paradiso, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1986). 21. The origin of the toponym Assisi appears to be enveloped in a cloud of mystery and myth, as reported by Antonio Cristofani, who quotes as legendary the possible derivation of Assisium from the Greek name of the goddess Minerva, Asisia, and also the other etymology linked to its supposed founder Asios, a Trojan hero. Delle storie di Assisi libri sei (Assisi: Stabilimento Tipografico Metastasio, 1902), 2. Franco Tardioli and Antonio Rossi attribute the origin of the name to

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the ancient Umbrian term for “altar,” “asa,” without any comments on its credibility. Storia di Assisi e dei suoi monumenti (Rome: Editrice Nuovi Autori, n.d.), 7. 22. I have adopted the term “verse” instead of “laisse.”The definition of laisse, as taken from Oxilia, is, generically speaking, the following:“le strofe delle canzoni di gesta medievali, in numero vario, di norma legate da rime o assonanze,” Il Cantico di frate sole, 106. In Francis’s “Canticle” one laisse groups two or more verses together: for example, the laisse of death is verses 12 and 13, lines 27–31. 23. “For” is one of the possible translations of the much debated preposition “per” in Francis’s “Canticle.” The critical dispute over such a preposition will be elucidated later in this study. 24. For a poetic conceptualization of litany, see chapter 3 of this study. 25. The creation of the first six days is narrated in Gen. 1:1–31. On the sixth and last day, God’s comment is that his creation “was very good.” On the seventh day, when “God had completed the work he had been doing,” no further comment is made (Gen. 2:2). 26. Tusiani’s translation omits one of the four weather conditions of the original,“sereno” (“bright weather”), thereby reducing the fourfold division of the air conditions to a threefold structure.The tetradivision of the airy element in the original text may be significant, since it occurs elsewhere—for example, with four adjectives referring to “sister water” and four to “brother fire”—and since the “Canticle” is a highly symbolic text, in which numbers indicate something beyond their numerical significance. 27. Tusiani’s translation leaves out the first “and,” linking together “useful” and “humble.” I have taken the liberty of adding this conjunction, both because I consider it crucial to the point I am addressing and also because its omission appears to be an arbitrary decision on the translator’s part. 28. Among innumerable volumes devoted to the study of Catharism, the following have been valuable for the basic summary contained in this research: Jean Blum,“Les Cathares en leur temps,” in Les Cathares: Mystère et initiation (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1985), 37–77, and Jean Markale, “Qui étaient les Cathares?” in Montségur et l’énigme cathare (Paris: Pygmalion, 1986), 121–95, besides the entry “Catari” in the Enciclopedia cattolica, vol. 3 (Florence: Sansoni, 1949), 1087–90. 29. Eric Doyle’s study of the “Canticle” is for the most part devoted to the peculiarity of the concept of “brotherhood” contained in it, as suggested by his title: St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980).The following passage summarizes Doyle’s idea of the way Francis came to develop his sense of fraternity with all things:“When Francis surrendered himself and dared everything for love’s sake, the earth became his home and all creatures his brothers and sisters” (7). 30. For a discussion of this episode and its spiritual, theological, and psychological implications regarding Francis’s converted life, as well as for the poetics of the “Canticle,” see chapter 1.

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31. The taming of the wolf at Gubbio is reported in the The Little Flowers of Saint Francis 21, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 1:601–4; the “Sermon to the Birds” is in The Little Flowers of Saint Francis 16, in ibid., 1:591–94; the ocular cauterization is in Thomas of Celano’s The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, 2.125.166, in ibid., 2:354–55. 32. God’s command to human beings states:“Be masters of fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on earth” (Gen. 1:28). 33. Francis of Assisi, A Salutation of the Virtues, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, The Saint, ed. Regis J.Armstrong, J. A.Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 165. In this work, Francis uses the term “sister” to refer to many of the virtues. 34. John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon 3.678c, trans. Sheldon-Williams, 305. Among contemporary scholars of Franciscanism, Enrico Medi has suggested that Franciscanism depicts nature as God’s message that needs to be decoded. See his comment on the “Canticle,” Cantico di frate sole (Turin: ElleDiCi, 1982), 29. 35. The connection between Franciscan theology and Eriugena’s view of nature as the Second Book of God’s manifestation to the world is made by Lawrence Cunningham, Saint Francis of Assisi (Boston:Twayne, 1976), 55:“When Francis looked at the world around him and saw evidences of the Creator in that world he was only giving credence to a tradition in the Christian world that was common in his own time and went back at least to the time of John Scotus Erigena [sic] in the ninth century: God is revealed to men by means of two books: the Bible and the world of nature.This was axiomatic in the medieval world and it was the basis both of all medieval iconography and whatever natural science there was.” 36. Francis’s insistence on the preservation of any written words reaches the level of an obsession. See, for example, “Exhortations to the Clergy: Earlier Edition,” in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, The Saint, ed. Regis J.Armstrong, J. A.Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 53; “The First Letter to the Custodians,” in ibid., 1:56; The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano 29.82, in ibid., 1:251–52; Bonaventure’sThe Major Legend of Saint Francis, 10.6, in ibid., 2:609. The topic deserves more attention and greater space, and I hope to devote a separate study to it in the future. 37. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, trans. Simon Bartholomew (London: Collins, 1965), 24–28. 38. In the Provençal lyrical tradition, which Francis allegedly knew thanks to his maternal connections with Provence, a canso by the poet Jaufré Rudel presents the peculiar familial attributes employed by Francis’s “Canticle.” In the seventh stanza of the poem that begins “Belhs m’es l’estius e.l temps floritz,” while making an obscure mention of a mariage blanc (a customary ritual of courtly love, in which the male lover exposes himself to the temptation of lying naked in bed next to his beloved), Rudel refers to the two lovers involved as “brother” and

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“sister.”The nakedness of the two protagonists appears to complete this Franciscan picture avant la lettre. See Giorgio Chiarini, Il canzoniere di Jaufre Rudel (L’Aquila/Rome: Japadre Editore, 1985), 101–03. 39. Among the pre-Socratic philosophers, Empedocles is the one who proposes a more elaborate theory regarding the formation of earthly existence out of the four fundamental elements: air, water, earth, and fire; Aristotle’s theory of the “Four Elements” systematizes this concept. For further information on this particular topic, see James Barnes, ed., Early Greek Philosophy (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1987), 165–89. 40. Relevant symbolic numbers of the “Canticle” are highlighted by Giovanni Pozzi, “Dittico per San Francesco,” Versants: Review suisse des littératures romanes (August 1, 1981): 19–21, and also, although more indirectly, by Nicolò Pasero, Laudes creaturarum, 20–22. 41. For further comments on the division of the poem into sections, see Adolfo Oxilia:“Le PARTI, che siano tre, non lascia luogo a dubbio chi appena se ne accorga; e sono rispettivamente . . . di 5–4–5 strofe. La prima parte è di Dio e del mondo celeste . . . la parte mediana è del mondo sublunare . . . la terza parte . . . è dell’Uomo e del suo destino libero in Dio.” Il Cantico di frate sole, 133. 42. The Franciscan Legenda narrates that while Francis, who was sick with ophthalmia, was on his way to Fano to have his eye cauterized, he stopped at San Damiano. During the night, the physical suffering and the discomforts of his destitute housing caused him to call for God’s help. He was immediately reassured of the gift of eternal life, and his despondency abated.The next morning he composed “The Canticle of Brother Sun.”This is the account of the composition of the “Canticle” as told in Thomas of Celano’s The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul 2.161.212–13, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 2:384–85; in The Assisi Compilation 83–84, in ibid., 2:184–88; and in A Mirror of Perfection 100, in ibid., 3:346–48. 43. For the concept of love as representative of the third Person of the Trinity in the “Canticle,” see Petrocchi, San Francesco scrittore, 15. 44. According to Matt. 25:31–46 salvation and damnation will be determined solely on the basis of love, which is the measure on which the final judgment occurs. See the passage reported in note 47. 45. A connection of this last portion of the “Canticle” with the Dies Irae (attributed to the Franciscan biographer of Francis of Assisi,Thomas of Celano) is made by Leo Spitzer,“Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di Frate Sole,’ ” 56–57, 61. 46. This is the text of the passage in Luke 6:20–25: “Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said:‘How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are hungry now: you shall have your fill. Blessed are you who are weeping now: you shall laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you, denounce your name as criminal, on account of the Son of man. Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, look!—your

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reward will be great in heaven.This was the way their ancestors treated the prophets. But alas for you who are rich: you are having your consolation now.Alas for you who have plenty to eat now: you shall go hungry. Alas for you who are laughing now: you shall mourn and weep.’ ” 47. Matt. 25:31–46 reads as follows:“When the Son of man comes in his glory, escorted by all his angels, then he will take his seat on his throne of glory. All nations will be assembled before him and he will separate people one from another as the shepherd separates sheep from goats. He will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.Then the King will say to those on his right hand, ‘Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take as your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me.’ Then the upright will say to him in reply,‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to see you?’And the King will answer,‘In truth I tell you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.’Then he will say to those on his left hand,‘Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food, I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink, I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, lacking clothes and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.’ Then it will be their turn to ask,‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or lacking clothes, sick or in prison, and did not come to your help?’ Then he will answer,‘In truth I tell you, in so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.’And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the upright to eternal life.” 48. Among the abundance of critical studies that have examined the Franciscan text in an attempt to determine the actual intentions of the author in regard to the preposition “per,” I will cite only those that can be regarded as representative of the major points of view in this controversy. Benedetto maintains that the preposition means “by.” Il Cantico di frate sole, 35. Sorrell opts for the causality of the preposition “per,” insisting that the “Canticle” is intended to be an invitation to humanity to praise God “for” all the things he has created. St. Francis of Assisi and Nature, 122. Likewise, Spitzer opts for an anthropocentric reading of the poem, in which human beings offer to God their praise “for” all creatures. “Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di frate sole,’ ” 55–56.The most challenging essay on this topic is by Antonino Pagliaro,“Il Cantico di frate sole,” in Saggi di critica semantica (Messina: d’Anna, 1953), 199–226, who suggests an original interpretation of “per” as a spatial referent, by arguing that its meaning is similar to the Greek preposition δι`α. As a demonstration of this usage, Pagliaro quotes the Latin translation of δι`α as it appears in the Preface of the Mass:“per Christum

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Dominum nostrum.” His opinion on the preposition “per” in the “Canticle” is summarized by this sentence:“un significato propriamente locale, spaziale, e non strumentale e tanto meno di agente” (214). 49. This conciliatory interpretation of the various meanings of the preposition “per” is offered by Benedetto (Il Cantico di frate sole, 46), who seems to recant his initial opinion on the meaning of “per” as “by” in the same article. Antonio Viscardi agrees with Benedetto in his review of Benedetto’s book on the “Canticle,” Studi medievali 14 (1941): 161.The most satisfactory explanation of a possible reconciliation of all the different meanings of this preposition in the “Canticle” is given by Giovanni Getto,“Francesco d’Assisi e il Cantico di frate sole,” in Letteratura religiosa dal Due al Novecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), 41–43, 56–58, 75, who speaks of “polivalenza di sensi e perplessità sintattica.” 50. For the concept of “prayer within the prayer,” see Giovanni Pozzi:“L’utilizzazione che gli oranti fanno della preghiera è intensamente qualificata da espressioni performative: quelle che descrivono un’azione del locutore e la compiono nello stesso tempo per il solo fatto di enunciarla. Infatti, mentre si prega, spesso si afferma di pregare.”“Come pregava la gente,” Archivio storico ticinese 91 (1982): 204. 51. According to Spitzer, the ever-present litanic tone gives unity to the “Canticle” and is its principal characteristic. See “Nuove considerazioni sul ‘Cantico di Frate Sole,’ ” 56. 52. Concerning the music that Francis himself would have composed for the poem, see the following comments by Gustave Reese:“A MS at Assisi contains not only the words of his famous Canticle of the Sun but space for the melody with which it apparently was once provided, space which, exasperatingly, has come down to us blank.” Music in the Middle Ages, with an Introduction on the Music of Ancient Times (New York:W.W. Norton, 1968), 237.

5

Theology of Ravishment THE INTRICATE DYNAMICS of erotic and agapic love, which originated in the dualistic perception of Neoplatonic thought, rose in status in thirteenth-century theology. In the latter part of the Middle Ages, new concepts and ideas about love led to a new sensitivity toward forms of love different from those that had prevailed in the classical era.The codification of courtly love sanctioned a breakthrough in loving relations and brought renewed vigor to the way men and women interacted. In keeping with biblical and theological models, erotic love was regarded as the most fitting metonym for divine expressions of love toward human beings, and it was frequently adopted as a metaphor in poetry. In Franciscan poets of the thirteenth century, the secular doctrine of courtly love and love formulations in the tradition of the Christian Church Fathers come together and amalgamate.The desired bond of lover and beloved, around which courtly love rhetoric revolves, becomes an image for the hoped-for union of the Soul with God. Concepts and metaphors used by courtly love lyric are transferred to the spiritual, mystical realm. The Soul,Anima, is the beloved and God is her Lover. In his collection of laude Iacopone da Todi devotes considerable space to the problematic and controversial relation of eros and agape.The Laude encompasses an ascending development from a radical, uncompromising rejection of erotic love, seen as physical union between two human beings, to a consideration of it as a metaphorical image of the loving relationship binding God to humankind. In the collection taken as a whole Iacopone gradually moves away from his violent attacks on erotic love and revives its allegorical formulation.The rejection of physical love in the first part of the Laude is transformed into a metaphorical acceptance of it in the second part. Iacopone’s Laude displays a wide range of topics and styles. His poems feature invocations, petitions, thankful songs to God, didactic, edifying poems, virulent and satirical attacks on the poet’s enemies, irreverent and pugnacious diatribes against the corrupt papacy and the clergy, and poetic renderings of theological and doctrinal issues, as well as prayerful addresses

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to God.The title Laude given to Iacopone’s canzoniere conceals a polymorphous ensemble of poetic enterprises having religious tone and content as their common denominator. Iacopone experiments with numerous rhetorical structures, thereby transforming the genre of lauda into an extremely malleable poetic medium.1 Some of his poems may be classified as tensons, others as dramatic dialogues, some as litanies, others as prayers.2 His original use of specific tropes is also noteworthy: Iacopone makes use of such complex tropes as epanadiplosis for the first time in Italian literary history. As may be deduced from the foregoing statements, in this study Iacopone’s Laude is afforded the status of canzoniere. The Laude ought to be considered not simply as a collection of individual poems assembled together because of their attribution to one author or their common religious content, but rather as a structured body of poems, organized according to an intrinsic sequence and a particular internal pattern. But if a consideration of Iacopone’s collection of laude as an orchestrated canzoniere, to be read as a progression and development, both thematically and linguistically, appears arbitrary to the rigorous philologist, a long tradition of readers and critics testifies to the de facto approach to Iacopone’s Laude as a corpus poeticum, an organized constellation of poems, rather than random poetic texts assembled under the same title and attributed more or less authoritatively to a single author.3 The poems were selected and ordered by an anonymous redactor, and printed for the first time in Florence by Francesco Bonaccorsi in 1490.4 This is the text modern readers use today. Presumably, the author played no part in the organization of the Laude. The assembling of the collection, as well as the composition and dating of individual poems, are enveloped in the same darkness as surrounds Iacopone’s existence.5 One of Iacopone’s critics maintains that the Bonaccorsi Edition “presents 102 lauds in the presumed order of their composition.”6 Others prefer to limit the scope of their philological investigation and simply affirm that the sequence of laude, as it has been transmitted to us, represents Iacopone’s spiritual development, but the laude were not necessarily written in that order.7 Some of them address the issue openly; others take the sequence for granted.8 Still others deny the possibility of reading them according to a logical and coherent sequence.9 In her important work on Iacopone’s poetry, Evelyn Underhill relies on the Bonaccorsi Edition because of its textual accuracy and philological reliability, though she does not accept the sequence in which the laude

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appear in that particular edition.10 Because the purpose of her investigation is to reconstruct Iacopone’s ascetic life, Underhill is “the first to attempt a chronological and therefore autobiographical dating of the Lauds.”11 She selects laude from the Bonaccorsi Edition and reshuffles them into what she considers their tentative chronological order of composition, in order to make them fit her proposed scheme of the poet’s ascetic growth. All these perspectives show repeated attempts to read Iacopone’s Laude as an organized and developing collection of poetry. In light of the scanty philological data and shaky chronological reconstructions, the proposing of alternative guidelines to the reading of the Laude will not seem out of place.The trajectory suggested in this study develops around the theme of love, which is central to the entire collection, but more or less prominent in the different sections, and subject to change and development in the course of the canzoniere.12 Relying on uncertain chronological data, critics may rearrange the sequence of poems to form a pattern and prove their theories regarding the author’s spiritual journey or poetic maturation. But the theme of love requires no readjustment or redistribution in the Bonaccorsi Edition.13 As the poems are arranged in this edition, love develops from an abhorrence of physical, erotic union between man and woman to the celebrated metaphorical rendering of mystical union between divinity and humankind. Subsequent changes and transformations from a rejection of eroticism to the view of matrimonial consummation as fitting symbolism for caritas mark the ascetic development of Iacopone’s collection of laude.14 Iacopone’s canzoniere unfolds around the theme of love. Unlike other canzonieri, its main focus is not the self. On the contrary, it displays no consciousness of the lyrical self, as do Dante’s Vita Nova and, even more so, Petrarch’s Rime sparse. Dante and Petrarch concentrate on the development of the self over time, and fashion their perception of themselves in lyrical terms. In both Dante’s and Petrarch’s work, the poet’s view of his own past experience structures the assembling of his poetic work according to an individual line of thought and an existential pattern. Iacopone does not seek clarification or a deeper understanding of his past life through the love of a woman—literal or symbolic.The love for a woman that guides the maturing self in other canzonieri is replaced in Iacopone’s work by the love of God. His trajectory follows an ascension to the Third Heaven; his backward outlook depicts a rejection of his sinful past; his amorous poetry represents an invocation requesting the gift of divine love;

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his poetic endeavor shapes not the self but an image of divine love and its effects on humankind. The issue of autobiography, which represents the more or less hidden textual mechanism behind a self-assembled, single-authored canzoniere, remains remote from Iacopone’s poetic enterprise. Rather than self-fashioning, his collection is indeed self-deconstructing. Far from elevating the self, he constantly attempts to conceal or chastise the self in order to praise and honor God, the counterpart of the self.15 Even poems that apparently deal with self-reflection and refer to the poet himself by name, such as Lauda 55,“Que farai Fra Iacovone?—se’ venuto al paragone” (“What now, Fra Jacopone? / Now you’re put to the test”), unfold along the fine line separating spiritual humiliation from poetic self-magnification.The logical sequence by which the Laude is assembled reveals a double development while maintaining an internal equilibrium.The progressive diminishing of the author’s poetic voice leaves space for the growing importance of divine love.The disappearance of poetic self occurs within and without the text, in subject matter and in assemblage.The self gradually extinguishes itself inside the poems along the horizontal axis of the collection, but remains silent also vertically regarding the sequential organization of the Laude, in which it plays no part.This double absence of the poet serves as crucial mise-en-abîme for Iacopone’s spiritual journey. His lack of a defining role in the assemblage of his own laude becomes part of his poetics. Iacopone has no role in designing and organizing his spiritual ascent. It is also significant that his physical existence disappears behind the Laude, the only extant testimony of his poetic identity.16 His absence as self-assembler of his poetry metaphorically signifies the passive role he played in his ascetic growth and strengthens the pervasive function of divine love.17 The structure and sequence of the Laude are intrinsically connected to poetic matters, such as the development of the concept of love, but they also have implications for readers’ reception, since generations of readers have referred to the various laude according to the numbers assigned to them in the editio princeps, the Bonaccorsi Edition. Its anonymous editor introduces his work by discussing the nature of the collection in the Proemio and explaining the precariousness of the text he is editing. Given the inaccuracy of the manuscripts from which he is drawing his material, some of the laude he selects are not definitely Iacopone’s and may only be attributed to him, while other Iacoponian laude may have been omitted because they are contained in codices he did not consult.The editor also chooses the sequence of laude: he begins with two laude addressed

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to Mary, and then arranges the poems by decreasing order of difficulty— “dapoi . . . le più facile, e successive le altre” (first . . . the easiest and the others in succession [my translation])—and by subject matter—“et anco distinguere le materie, e metterle insieme al meglio che si ha inteso” (and also distinguish the subject matter and put them together as best as one can understand [my translation]).18 By accepting the editio princeps of 1490 as canonical, one follows the authoritative example set and legitimized by notable literary critics, such as Franco Maccarini, Marino Fioroni, and Brian Richardson, who apply to that edition a thematic progression representing the poet’s spiritual ascending itinerary.19 More specifically, Fioroni organizes the entire argument of his book regarding the similarities between Dante and Iacopone around a comparison of the general structure of the Divine Comedy and the Laude.20 He sees a distinct evolution in the Iacoponian collection: Che cosa sono dunque queste Laude? Dovremmo definirle un Canzoniere; ma c’è anche qualcosa di diverso, e seguendo i criteri estetici di Dante, dovremmo piuttosto chiamarle una Commedia, cioè un canto che s’inizia con grande tristezza, per poi sollevarsi gradatamente e addolcirsi, fino a raggiungere accenti di estasi e di letizia paradisiaca. Questa Commedia però (chiamiamola così) non segue un criterio logico-estetico ben determinato, ma un intuito realistico autointrospettivo della coscienza del poeta, che dà all’opera una certa unità, quella che i romantici nostri chiamavano unità del cuore. Non c’è neanche una precisa distinzione di parti, bensì una graduale varietà che, dai canti più propriamente penitenziali si evolve fino a giungere al lirismo puro delle ultime Laude.21

This evolution follows a line from penance to pure lyricism.The theme of love in the Laude is an excellent focus through which to perceive such a progression. As the collection approaches its conclusion, love acquires an increasingly purified essence. Lauda 27 can be regarded as an introduction to the theme of love in the Laude. It is a petitional prayer, in which the poet invokes God as love and asks forgiveness for his past disobedience and mistakes. He looks back on his life, then ahead, seeking aid against the negative influences of materiality.“Delightful Love” is the opening expression of the poem; its invoking apostrophe requesting pity establishes the prayerful tone for the entire text:“Amor diletto,—Cristo beato, / de me desolato—agge piatanza” (“O Blessed Christ, Love source of all delight, / Have pity on my wretchedness!”). After this invocation to Christ-love, a confession of sins and an

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admonition against the perils of the physical world ensue. Erotic love remains unmentioned on a literal level in this lauda, but it is the indirect target of recurrent metaphors throughout the text. Anima, the soul, led astray by the poet’s own sinfulness, has been captured by “three mysterious enemies” who, under the pretense of friendship and amicableness, injure her, mock her, and strip her naked.The violence the three false friends exercise on Anima resembles the physical violation of a woman: they appear under the false identity of friends in order to ravish her more easily.The metaphor continues with Anima’s first-person account of the violent attack she endured.The antagonistic relationship between the three attackers and their victim is rendered more fitting by the opposition of the two genders: the female soul,Anima, is at the mercy of three obscure and unidentified male evildoers. Aggression and rape function as the signifiers of temptation and sin, the referents that take hold of the soul and attack her deceitfully. In Lauda 27, the rhetoric of physical violence persists through the image of the rotten, infected wound that follows. Anima insists on the necessity of cutting, cleaning, and dressing the old wound.22 The metaphorical implications of the untreated wound that never heals are undoubtedly moral: the corrupted soul needs to cut out all sinful behavior in order to regain her lost cleanliness and her closeness to her true love. The identity of the three false friends remains unexplained, and in the next stanza the Enemy that corrupts is reduced to a single entity. Since no correspondence is offered for transferring the metaphorical image of these three untrustworthy seducers onto the literal level, a possible interpretation is to consider them as three counterfigures of the Persons of the Christian Trinity.True love, which manifests itself in the Trinity, is constantly threatened and stealthily supplanted in the human soul by that violent triad.The righteous love of the Trinitarian God is attacked and taken over by the wrongful action of the three enemies. Like Dante’s threefaced Lucifer in Inferno 34, the Iacoponian three-in-one Enemy may be interpreted as a literary image of its Trinitarian counterpart. The triad’s deceitful action on the soul continues in the next stanza, in which the poet reiterates his request for help against the false Enemy, who surreptitiously strikes the poet’s vulnerable heart with his bow and arrows: Ora m’aiuta—me liberare, ch’io possa campare—dal falso Nemico; fasse da lunga—a balestrare

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ed assegnare—al cor ch’è pudico; la man che me fere—non posso vedere; tal cose patere—me danno gravanza. Help me escape from the deceitful Enemy, O Lord: His arrows, shot from afar, are aimed at the cleansed heart. I cannot see the hand that wounds me; To suffer thus is more than I can bear.

The topos of the winged cherub unexpectedly shooting lovers in their hearts metamorphoses, in Iacopone’s rhetoric, into the more somber “deceitful Enemy,” who aims his arrows at pure hearts and shoots them in order to corrupt them. Iacopone borrows the image from the classical tradition, in which Ovid represents Eros as a little blindfolded Cupid who strikes the hearts of two people to make them fall in love with each other. Besides Iacopone, other medieval poets, such as Guido Guinizzelli in “Lo vostro bel saluto e ’l gentil sguardo,” make use of the same topos. But the innocent cherub who hits blindly is transformed in Iacopone’s sin-centered and self-deprecating philosophy into a determined, ill-intentioned Enemy who keeps his vision and purposefully strikes the hearts of pure people from a distance; he manifests himself mainly through deceitfulness, since he skillfully conceals his hand after shooting.23 More than simply offering an opposition of physical and divine love, Lauda 27 calls the whole world into question as assailing the soul’s purity. In the stanza following the striking Enemy, the world itself becomes the crossbow, the typical medieval weapon, which is used figuratively to attack the soul: Fatto ha balestro—del mondo aversire lo qual en bellire—me mostra sua vita. Making a bow of this world’s delights, the Devil sends arrows winging toward me.

The “mondo aversire” (contrasting world [my translation]), with all its delights and pleasures, is instrumental in the heart’s corruption, since it is metaphorically represented by the bow used to shoot arrows at the heart. By gradually becoming more specific, the text explains that the five human senses are the channels through which “the contrasting world” attacks the

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soul, and in the final section of the lauda the poet laments the plight caused to his spiritual life by each of them. Iacopone’s human senses no longer perceive the beauty of creation as Francis’s did; they only appreciate the world’s decadence and perdition. Similarly, in Lauda 32, deceitfulness and betrayal characterize those dedicated to assaulting the soul’s integrity and honesty. Iacopone’s encoded language echoes the pervasive evangelical metaphors of the meek lamb and the prowling wolves.24 If the righteous soul wishes to save herself, she must be wary of her entourage; although pretending to be friends, the people around her actually lead her on the wrong path.The rhetoric of ravishment lies implicitly in the image of the wolves’ assault; the understanding of it as abduction becomes clear only in the wider context of the laude surrounding Lauda 32, which deal with the issue of the soul’s being forcibly rent between two types of lovers. Iacopone’s theological perspective favors total disengagement from matter, so that an increased closeness to God may be achieved. His ascetic journey implies ridding himself of all entanglements with the world and broadening the distance from materiality. Unlike Francis, with his emphasis on the function of creation as instrumental to his reaching union with God, Iacopone strives to achieve detachment from the material realm.The dichotomy between world and spirit at this stage of his askesis may be the result of neophyte enthusiasm, but it appears to repudiate the basic principles of Christian teaching and preaching, especially in a Franciscan matrix.25 Rather than enjoying the aesthetic beauty of all creatures as sacraments of divine presence in the world, Iacopone perceives the concrete world as a hindrance and a drawback in his ascent toward God. Francis’s appreciation of creation in “The Canticle of Brother Sun” is contrasted by Iacopone’s request for physical pain in expiation for his sins in Lauda 48. Such a Manichaean separation of flesh and soul, of good and evil, translates into a division between types of love: a repudiation of physical love among human beings and an exaltation of the purity of agapic love. Lauda 33 is a doctrinal, didactic poem, which brings this distinction in types of love into the foreground. It is structured on the sharp contrast between human love, which is false but easily mistaken for its counterpart, and divine love itself, the true kind.Though the poem insists on the apparent similarities between the two types of love, which are designed to lead humans astray and confuse them about the real nature of love, Iacopone belabors the lack of any connection between the two.Warning against all misconceptions regarding their similar appearance, he gives

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a fitting characterization of the wrong type of love as “counterfeit love.” The following description of the ruinous effects of false love is found at the beginning of Lauda 33: Amore contrafatto,—spogliato de vertute, non può fare le salute—là ’v’è lo vero amare. Amor si fa lascivo—senza la temperanza; nave senza nuchiero—rompe en tempestanza; cavallo senza freno—curre en precipitanza; sì fa la falsa amanza—senza vertute andare. . . . Counterfeit love, empty husk of virtue, You cannot attain to the heights where true love dwells. A storm-battered ship without a captain, A stallion running wild— No virtues to guide it, this false, Unbridled and intemperate love. . . .

At the beginning, “counterfeit love” stands for the type of love human beings commonly feel for each other. Later in the poem, agape as the only acceptable kind of love is spelled out even more clearly:“O caritate, vita,— ch’ogn’altro amore è morto” (“O Charity, true life—for every other love is dead”). According to Iacopone, human love does not hinge on truthful, divine love and therefore is destined to give itself away and show its real nature. Because of its intemperate and uncontrolled qualities, it inevitably overflows into lustfulness and licentiousness.The fury of unrestrained passion figuratively becomes the run of a wild, unbridled stallion or the turbulent voyage of a storm-battered ship without a captain. Such metaphorical rendering of the tempestuous nature of lust parallels Dantean images of uncontrolled love and political turmoil. In Inferno 5 the damned souls of the lustful are punished by being incessantly blown by strong gusts of wind; the contrapasso constantly reminds them of the sweeping force of their passion on earth.What in Iacopone is an inner tumult governing the existence of the passionate lover is transferred to the outer world of natural elements in Dante’s figuration.The setting of the Second Circle of Inferno appears to the pilgrim in the form of a night storm at sea violently blowing the souls from side to side: Io venni in loco d’ogne luce muto, che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta,

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se da contrari venti è combattuto. La bufera infernal che mai non resta, mena li spirti con la sua rapina; voltando e percotendo li molesta [Inferno 5:28–33].26 I reached a place where every light is muted, which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest, when it is battered by opposing winds. The hellish hurricane, which never rests, drives on the spirits with its violence: wheeling and pounding, it harasses them.27

The similar figurative rendering of the condition of the lustful in Dante and Iacopone stems from a parallel conception of lust as an uncontrollable deviation from true love.The weak quality of love, deriving from its human, nondivine nature, is the cause for such wrongful attitudes. In Iacopone, the righteous feeling of love, when severed from the virtue of temperance, transforms into various wrongful manifestations.The most evident is lust, but it may also take the form of hypocrisy, or lukewarm religious belief. In Lauda 33, the six stanzas following the initial definition of “counterfeit love” describe in didactic terms how this deceitful form of love may lead to licentiousness, to religious hypocrisy, to a deplorable confusion of earthly and divine things, to the breaking of the law, and even to a justification for sinful behavior. Inferno 5 focuses on lust as the consequence of a deviant form of love, and Dante blames the carnal sinners’ lack of self-control for their damnation.The lustful sinners, toward whom the poet shows a certain degree of gentleness and understanding (even as he places them in hell), were unable to curb the violence of their passions with the use of reason:“I peccator carnali, / che la ragion sottomettono al talento” (38–39) (“they sinned within the flesh, / subjecting reason to the rule of lust”).28 Although it is inserted into the spiritual context of an eternal reward for one’s earthly actions, Dante’s rhetoric points more to the power of personal control over one’s actions than to the exercise of a theological virtue in order to rein in one’s passions.When dealing with lust, Dante’s philosophical term “ragion” (“reason”) corresponds to Iacopone’s theological “temperanza” (“temperance”), which interestingly rhymes in the next two lines with the poetic “tempestanza,” for “tempest,” and with the subsequent “precipitanza,” the precipitous, ruinous fate of the unbridled equine run. Lustful human beings lack the necessary temperance that would allow

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them to fight against the tempestuous dominion and precipitate nature of their passions. The other Iacoponian metaphor portraying the fate of lovers who indulge in their passionate sentiments also resembles a famous Dantean metaphor concerning the lack of guidance in Italian politics. Iacopone’s line, the “nave senza nuchiero—rompe en tempestanza” (“a storm-battered ship without a captain”) bears strong resemblances to Dante’s Purgatorio 6 (76–78):“Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, / nave senza nocchiere in gran tempesta, / non donna di provincie ma bordello!” (“Ah, abject Italy, you inn of sorrows, / you ship without a helmsman in harsh seas, / no queen of provinces but of bordellos”).The metaphor of a battered ship in a sea storm, signifying uncontrollable passions in one case, and anarchic politics in the other, may be considered too frequent a rhetorical device to prove a possible contact between the two poets.The similar formulation of this metaphor invites simply a genealogical, nonderivative association of the two passages, especially in consideration of the two authors’ temporal vicinity and linguistic contiguity; they may have drawn it from common usage.29 When Iacopone delineates his dichotomy between two separate types of love, one utterly human, one unquestionably divine, in Lauda 33, he stresses that there are no similarities and no contacts between them.They are, in fact, irreconcilably opposed. Instead of viewing divine love as the highest stage of purified, sublime human love, he considers the two types of love as belonging to two different realms and as having no common elements. One is pure deviation from the divine path; the other is directly infused into human beings by God.30 The theological discussion of love in Iacopone inevitably transfuses into the crucial topic of human freedom, another complex and controversial item in Christian doctrine. By defining false love as an unbridled horse running wild or a ship drifting in a stormy sea (or, less figuratively, as governed by “intemperance”), Iacopone indirectly warns against the belief that love may exist without strict regulations. Freedom and love are tightly connected and interdependent but, contrary to a logical ordering, the former originates from the latter, not vice versa. Even more paradoxically (at least from a secular, rational viewpoint), true freedom derives from perfect obedience to divine law.A highly ordered and regulated existence receives freedom as recompense from God. A gift bestowed upon human beings by God-love, freedom is the result of a process, not a prerequisite.The false freedom that precedes love, and is synonymous with

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the absence of rules and regulations, leads only to libertinage and licentiousness.True love must be ordered by virtue and by law. In Iacopone’s merit-oriented theology, true love is rooted in rigorous obedience. It is not a free gift granted by divine grace; it is a human acquisition accomplished through sacrifice and self-denial. In Lauda 33, the true type of love may be recognized by some of its positive features, even though Iacopone expresses them in negative form. Love ought to be “strong,”“righteous,”“wise,” and “prudent.” These qualities identify true love in the openings of stanzas three, four, and five by means of litotes, the rhetorical figure in which an affirmative statement is expressed by negating its opposite: Amor che non è forte . . . Amor che non è iusto . . . Amor che non è saggio,—de prudenza vestito . . . Love which is not strong . . . Love which is not righteous . . . Love which is not wise,—clothed in prudence. . . .

In the following stanzas, there are other negative grammatical devices: for example, a privative prefix, such as “enfedele” (“unfaithful”), or a privative preposition, as in “senza speranza” (“without hope”). By affirming love’s positive qualities through a negative construction, Iacopone seems to suggest the impossibility of numbering its good characteristics, in light of the equation love = God. It is more humanly (and poetically) feasible to list untrue, negative traits of love. By listing the positives, the poet runs the risk of leaving some out; listing the negatives allows him ample space to imply love’s ineffably good qualities.These statements about the sharp distinction between true love and untrue love continue throughout Lauda 33, always characterized grammatically by their privative quality.The general negative tone of the poem surfaces through its pervasive rhetoric of negation.The high frequency of such words as “non” (fourteen times) and “senza” (eight times) demonstrates this characteristic of the poem.This recourse to negation in order to affirm is a rhetorical device that matches the mystical via negativa, a strategy Iacopone appropriates from Dionysius the Aeropagite in particular and the Neoplatonic tradition in general.31 But the sole quality that identifies “counterfeit love” and distinguishes it from agapic love is the absence of law.The concept of law and

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orderliness as related to love and freedom is reiterated thoughout this lauda, until Iacopone lapidarily states:“non dica libertate—om senza legge stare” (“outside the law there is no freedom”).Then he draws the connection between love and law: O caritate, vita,—ch’ogn’altro amor è morto; non vai rompendo legge; nante, l’observe en tutto e là ’ve non è legge—a legge l’hai redutto; non pò gustar lo frutto—chi fugge el tuo guidare. O Charity, true life—for every other love is dead— You break no laws, but obey them all; and in the heart In which there is no law, you bring it into being. He who flees from you cannot know the sweetness of your fruit.

Not only does true love follow the law, it even instills a sense of law into lawless hearts.After this general, theological statement on the importance of law to achieve love and, consequently, freedom, Iacopone investigates more precisely his idea of law, which is tightly linked to the broader concept of orderliness. Orderliness and law are by no means limited to abiding by divine commandments, or even by the New Testament love commandment; they also involve an immanent application of those theological principles, and permeate human life in all its manifold manifestations.These include social roles, hierarchical structures, and even professional activities. Harmony depends upon human beings’ exercising the functions assigned them by divine command, by social position, or simply by contingency: Omne atto si è liceto;—ma no ad onnechivigli; al preite sacrificio,—a moglie e marito figli; al potestate occidere,—al iudece consigli; a li notar libigli,—a medici el curare. All acts are licit, But not for one and all: For the priest, sacrifice; For husband and wife, the begetting of children; For civil authority, the execution of criminals; For judges, handing down sentences; For lawyers, the presentation of evidence; For doctors, healing the sick.

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By mentioning the duties and obligations of a few crucial social functions and modes, Iacopone depicts an image of orderly societal structure, which appears to be the secular version of the Pauline definition of the Church as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12–30).The civil harmony characterizing a society of law-abiding citizens is a metaphorical mirror of the harmony that stems from obedience to religious commandments. But the two types of harmony are also interdependent.The following stanza insists on the same concept through the negative rhetoric of litotes: Non è ad ogne om licito—d’uccidere ladrone; la potestà ha officio—dannarlo per ragione; a l’occhio non è congruo—de far degestione, né al naso parlagione—né a l’orecchie andare. Not everyone has the right to kill a thief— Only those invested with the proper authority. The eye does not pretend to digest, The nose to speak, nor the ear to walk.

Besides strengthening the parallel with the Pauline passage, the metaphorical rendering of the functions of different organs and features of the human body emphasizes the natural order of things and the necessity for human behavior to conform to it.The lowly style of this section, filled with inelegant references to parts of the body, joins the corporeal with the spiritual.The sublimity of a harmonious spiritual life is rooted in the orderliness of practical routine.This link represents the seed of an acknowledgment that materiality and spirituality are interdependent in Christian doctrine—and confirms that Iacopone’s perspective is not disconnected from the dogma of the Incarnation. After a list of the nefarious effects of false love on human existence, Lauda 33 makes clear, literal, doctrinal assertions, concluding that the presence of true love is contingent upon law-abiding behavior at all levels, both secularly in human relations and social structures, and religiously in the Church conceived as the body of Christ. The duality of false love and true love, which has been sketched in Lauda 33, continues in Lauda 34 with a more articulated spectrum of different kinds of love.The classification of Lauda 34 maintains the tone of an unbalanced dichotomic bifurcation, in which the one and only true love, on one side, contrasts with various kinds of false love, on the other. This highly didactic and yet sublimely poetic lauda poses spiritual love as

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far removed from any other type of love, and peremptorily instructs the reader on the nature of spiritual love unattainable through rational knowledge, because it can be infused only by divine intervention. Righteous and wrongful types of love are the outcome of proximity to and distance from God, respectively.The opposition of true and false love is supplanted by a contrast between the original causes of the two categories of love: closeness to God originates true love; separation from God brings false love. Freedom persists as the discriminating element between sinfulness and righteousness, as in Lauda 33: O libertá subietta—ad omne creatura, per demostrar l’altura—che regna en bonitate. Non pò aver libertate—omo ch’è viziuso, che ha perduto l’uso—de la sua gentileza; lo vizio sí lega—legame doloruso, diventa fedituso—e perde la forteza; deforma la belleza—ch’era simile a Dio, e fasse om sí rio—che ’nferno ha redetate. O Freedom, subject to all creatures, You reveal the depths of the goodness of God. He who sins has lost his freedom, For he has betrayed his nobility. Caught in the painful web of vice, He becomes base; the Godlike strength and beauty Mirrored in man becomes twisted and deformed. The kingdom he then inherits is Hell.

Freedom depends on the exercise of virtue. Lack of freedom brings aesthetic consequences to creatures and causes the disfigurement of their beauty. This lapidary statement is not simply metaphorical.Aesthetic “deformity” results from sinfulness, as manifested by various types of false love. “Carnal love,”“counterfeit love,”“spurious, bastard self-love” are listed as deviant forms of love that will eventually disfigure the aesthetic look of those indulging in them.Their souls will turn foul, but their bodies will also suffer the consequences of negative aesthetic transformation.“Natural love” is categorized as the most dangerous of all, because of its external similarity to spiritual love. It resembles spiritual love in every aspect, but has a profoundly different essence. It skillfully masquerades as the true form of love, but in moments of crisis it fails its mission; contrary to true love, it reveals its weakness and inability to withstand suffering and illness.

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The discriminating factor between “natural love” and “spiritual love” remains hidden in their respective origins. One feeds on humanly acquired knowledge; the other is infused directly by God in the human soul. One collapses at the first sign of any difficulty; the other proves resistant and invulnerable to vicious external attacks, and its positive drive spurs it to reach out as a loving force toward other human beings: Amore spiritale,—poi ch’è spirato en core, ’n estante spira amore—en altro trasformato; amore trasformato—è de tanto valore, che dà sé en possessore—a quello c’ha emanato. Spiritual love, once infused in the heart, Immediately blows love, which is transformed in another Transformed love is so valuable That it gives all of itself as a possession to its beloved [my translation].

In Lauda 34 the resemblance and opposition of “natural love” and “spiritual love” soon transforms into a similar clear-cut comparison and contrast between “acquired knowledge” and “infused knowledge.” In the second half of the poem the terms of the theological question are “scienza acquisita” (“acquired knowledge”) and “scienza enfusa” (“infused knowledge”). The original Iacoponian approach, along with the implementation of new terminology accounting for the poet’s unique experience of love, conceals the ancient, consolidated topos of “holy madness” in Christian mysticism, which originated scripturally in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (chapters 1 and 2).The concept of closeness to God as equaling ignorance dates from the diatribes of orthodox Christianity against Gnosticism in the first centuries of the Christian era. In fact, its beginning may be attributed to Paul’s attack on the Gnostics of Corinth, who believed that “salvation depended on some body of special knowledge.”32 Paul’s reply leaves little space for doubt regarding the paramount importance of worldly ignorance:“There is no room for self-delusion. Any one of you who thinks he is wise by worldly standards must learn to be a fool in order to be really wise. For the wisdom of the world is folly to God. . . . Here we are, fools for Christ’s sake, while you are the clever ones in Christ” (1 Cor. 3:18–19, 4:10).While originating in Paul’s theological discourse, this concept of an opposition between human knowledge and divine love comes to Iacopone by way of more recent theological sources, such as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio,Thomas Aquinas, and the Victorines.

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In practical terms, the opposition between “acquired knowledge” and “infused knowledge” becomes more controversial as it gradually infiltrates the irreconcilable Franciscan debate on poverty and its practical application to the life of the Order.The more moderate side of the Franciscan Order (the faction that will be organized in the Conventuals) supported the necessity of holding some possessions, including books; they viewed intellectual life and bookish knowledge as part of human spiritual development.The more radical Franciscans (the faction that will split into the Spirituals) opted for absolute poverty and considered possessing books and acquiring knowledge as condoning human riches; they supported purely divine wisdom unaccompanied by human science. Iacopone unequivocally sided with the radical faction and denied validity to humanly acquired knowledge, while stressing radical poverty to the point of encompassing knowledge as a form of riches, and its instruments—libraries, writing materials, and even books and breviaries—as deplorable possessions. For Iacopone God’s wisdom was the only science worthy of the name, and it could be achieved not through studious application, but rather through faith and prayer or, in its most accomplished form, through mystical union. This is what Iacopone defines as “infused knowledge” in Lauda 34. He expresses his opinion even more clearly when, in Lauda 31, he contrasts “Ascisi” to “Parisi”: one, the birthplace of Franciscanism and the source of true knowledge as signified by poverty and profound spiritual search; the other, the site of the famous university and the origin of false acquisition of knowledge in the form of sophisticated human investigation and science. He commends the example set by Francis and condemns the practice of Franciscan friars teaching at the university of Paris.The antithesis attains increased poetic power thanks to the paronomasia uniting the two toponyms. The contrast between them and, especially, between what each represents increases because their names sound so similar.The founder of the Order relied on the strength gained through his mystical experience; deplorably, the new generation of Franciscans grounds its wisdom on intellectual knowledge drawn from books and human teaching.The opposition between “spiritual love”/“infused knowledge” (which might more aptly be named “wisdom”), on one side, and “natural love”/“acquired knowledge,” on the other, rises to the level of a divisive theological dispute.Those Franciscans arguing for the importance of studying and intellectual life, and therefore supporting the necessity of possessing books, confront those favoring contemplation and preaching, which together with poverty represent the three distinguishing elements of Franciscan theology.

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Iacopone’s stand in this controversy knows no compromise.While addressing the issue of knowledge as having two separate origins and natures, he indirectly expresses an opinion on both prayer and theology as the two main activities occupying Franciscan friars.The split between them is a relatively new phenomenon in the thirteenth century. Until then, theology was an “umbrella concept,” a comprehensive, all-inclusive discipline encompassing all related subjects and activities that enhanced and improved human beings’ relation to God. Jean Leclercq gives the following explanation of the inextricable connection between prayer and theology: Theologia da principio non designava una maniera di conoscere, ma una maniera di pregare: essa è alla base dell’ascesi e porta alla contemplazione. . . . Essa non consiste nel ragionare o speculare. Essa costituisce lo scopo supremo della istituzione monastica in questa vita, confondendosi con la perfezione di questo stato. Questa vera teologia è la “vetta dell’orazione”: la si può chiamare con diversi nomi e qualificarla con epiteti diversi: mistica, sperimentale, monastica, essa è tutto ciò e molte altre cose ancora; tutto tranne che dialettica, scolastica, sillogistica. La vera teologia è muta, eccetto che di lode e di adorazione. . . . Questa era la nozione di teologia, fino al secolo XII: un discorso di Dio, sermo de Deo, theo-logia, non analizzata intellettualmente, né discussa a scuola, ma contemplata, amata, adorata, proclamata nella lode e nel rendimento di grazie: si tratta di una attività di tutto l’uomo e che si effonde nell’orazione intima e nella liturgia.33

Before the advent of Scholasticism, prayer was one with theology. In Iacopone’s time a separation had already occurred between those religious devoting themselves to contemplation and those spending their lives studying theology or leading an active life of preaching and charitable works. Francis himself addressed the issue of the vita contemplativa versus the vita activa in chapter 16 of the Little Flowers. His assessment stressed the need for both, and the dependence of one (vita activa) on the other (vita contemplativa). When confronted with the distinction between intellectual learning and prayer, Iacopone unquestionably favors the latter. In two consecutive stanzas of Lauda 34,“natural love” and “acquired knowledge” are effectively opposed to “spiritual love” and “inspired wisdom”: O amore naturale,—nutrito en scienza, simile en apparenza—a lo spirituale; descernese a la prova,—ché vien men la potenza patere omne encrescenza,—tranquillo en omne male; non ha penne né ale—che voli en tanta altura;

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remanse en afrantura—ne la sua enfermetate. Amore spiritale,—poi ch’è spirato en core, ’n estante spira amore—en altro trasformato; amore trasformato—è de tanto valore, che dà sé en possessore—a quello c’ha emanato; se ’l trova desformato,—vencelo per vertute; enclina sue valute—ad trattabilitate. Natural love strengthened by philosophy Bears some resemblance to spiritual love, But in moments of crisis and pain Its strength ebbs; when it is caught In the tangle of suffering and illness, It lacks the wings to soar above them. Spiritual love, once infused in the heart, Immediately becomes love of neighbor, so strong That it gives all of itself to its beloved. Its violent strength makes whole Any love that is malformed, As it lowers itself to heal.

Originating from two opposite sources, having nothing in common,“natural love” and “spiritual love” come together in the middle, thanks to their deceitful external similarity.They appear equal, but the truth about their respective natures surfaces in moments of crisis: one heals and transforms, the other flattens and declines. One seductively leads astray, the other strenuously leads to salvation.34 Other medieval poets create similar oppositions between “folly” and “wisdom,” one linked to “carnal love,” the other to “spiritual love.”The topos of religious conversion in medieval canzonieri often results in a dichotomy between two types of love; the opposition, then, is between what love was before and what love is after. The Provençal poet Guiraut Riquier defines as “folly” his preconversion love for a woman and “truth” his postconversion love for God. Likewise, Guittone d’Arezzo names carnal love “folly” before he turns to divinity, while subsequently, in his postconversion writing, spiritual love is named “wisdom.”35 In Iacopone’s work, carnal love is linked to philosophy and presupposes rational learning; spiritual love is associated with prayer and emanates from the inexplicable dialogue with God. Hence the necessity to expound on the difference between “acquired knowledge” and “infused knowledge.” In Lauda 34, the stanza reporting this difference focuses on the

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well-known Iacoponian concept of orderliness as synonym for divinely inspired harmony: Scienzia acquisita—assai può contemplare; non può l’affetto trare—ad essere ordenato; scienza enfusa,—poi che n’hai a gustare, tutto te fa enfiammare—a essere enamorato; con Dio te fa ordenato—’l prossimo edificando e te vilificando—a tenerte en veritate. Acquired knowledge, however long its meditation, Cannot engender properly ordered love. Infused knowledge, as soon as it touches you, fills you With burning love, makes peace between you and God. It makes you humble, edifies your neighbor, And gives you knowledge of the truth.

The sterility of “acquired knowledge” is counterbalanced by the fruitful results of “infused knowledge.”The Iacoponian “infused knowledge” for the most part coincides with the concept of “wisdom” in Christian tradition.This association constitutes the otherwise missing link between Christ-love and Wisdom-the-beloved, which is the topic of Lauda 34 and a frequent theme of medieval poetry. Examples of this love relation can be found in the troubadour tradition, in Guittone d’Arezzo, and in Dante’s Vita nova and Divine Comedy, in which Beatrice is an emanation and a prefiguration of Christ, and the poet’s love for her an image and metaphor of divine love. In Iacopone, the concept remains on the theoretical level; it is never articulated by means of an allegorical figura of a lady who is the poet’s beloved. Lauda 34 concludes with a description of the positive effects brought by “infused love”/“wisdom” and the disastrous consequences of human pride and haughtiness.A balancing of three qualities in human beings brings the essential status of peace.This triad is nothing less than an image of the Trinity, as the poem itself explains:“Potere, senno e bontate—en uguale statera / de trenetate vera—porta figuramento” (“A symmetrical balance of strength, judgment, and the will to do good, / Infused knowledge conveys an image of the Trinity”).The consequences of an imbalance of strength, judgment, and goodness are expounded in the last portion of the lauda. The combination of those three components brings positive effects; the absence of one causes the perfectly constructed triad to collapse.

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The tug-of-war between two different types of love continues in numerous poems following Lauda 34. But the central theme of these laude is no longer the dichotomy of false and true love; it is the conjugal relation uniting God and human beings. Matrimony as the sacrament binding two human beings together for life becomes Iacopone’s sacred image of the inseparable, eternal union joining divinity and mankind. Beginning with Lauda 35, marriage becomes the focus of Iacopone’s rhetoric of divine love, and the theme persists until Lauda 46. In this group of laude Anima is a wavering woman, who remains undecided between her commitment to divinity and her attraction for carnality. She intentionally approaches union with Christ, but she feels drawn back by lust and hindered by sin; in general, she is not yet ready to give herself wholly to her divine bridegroom. She lingers, seduced by secularism and worldliness. The call of profane things remains strong, and she often strays while resisting the bridegroom’s call to be united with him.Anima is still torn; her life is ruled by the ambiguity between the purity and spirituality she desires and the worldly matters to which she feels attracted.This is the main quality of the middle part of Iacopone’s canzoniere, while in subsequent laude, starting from Lauda 67, such aporia disappears, and the marital link of Anima to Christ stands purely as image of agapic love, no longer hindered by materiality and carnality. When viewed through the perspective of love, Iacopone’s canzoniere presents an ascending structure. It begins with a denial of the validity of carnal love, moves to a state wavering between the two opposing types of love, and concludes with a substantial section on mystical union. Duality governs Iacopone’s perception in the center of his canzoniere. Numerous elements appear to have a double nature.The two opposing points of view often take the shape of tenson, one of Iacopone’s favorite poetic genres. Tensons place two contrasting elements at odds with each other, either Anima and Christ (Lauda 42, through the mediation of the angels, and Lauda 67, in which, while Anima implores Christ to return, the skirmishing rhetoric between them is maintained), or Uomo and Nemico (Lauda 47), or Verità and Bontade (Lauda 51), or Christ and the corrupt Church (Lauda 52).This opposition of two contrasting elements reaches its ultimate, climactic point in Lauda 55, in which the reader is presented with a doubling of the poetic persona, whose divisiveness allows him a dialogue with himself.36 The poetic voice addresses Iacopone in the third person, and asks the same question it asked Pietro da Morrone in the previous poem. In Lauda 54 the interrogation was “Que farai, Pier da Morrone?—

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èi venuto al paragone” (“What now, Pier da Morrone? / This is the test”); and, in Lauda 55,“Que farai, fra Iacovone?—se’ venuto al paragone” (“What now, Fra Iacopone? / Now you’re put to the test”). In the original Italian version, a further sense of doubling occurs by means of the word “paragone” (“comparison”), which implies examining through a comparison of two elements placed side by side. The duality that permeates this section of the canzoniere has the crucial role of originating Iacopone’s dialogic style. His laude are either dialogues between two entities (allegorical or literal) or letters and messages addressed to an interlocutor. Duality of rhetorical structures and of poetic forms is undoubtedly a specular image of ambiguity in subject matter.37 Duality is Iacopone’s way of portraying human conduct in relation to divinity: while rationally desiring utter loyalty to her bridegroom, Anima keeps relapsing into her uncontrollable fascination for the mundane.This persistent struggle, one can assume, represents the poet’s existential condition at this stage of his spiritual ascent. While introducing the topos of marriage, Lauda 35 presents Anima’s vexed drama, the background story leading up to her wedding ceremony.The whole text revolves around Anima’s absurd choice of a bridegroom other than Christ. She was born of noble ancestry, she was destined to a grand marriage with the divine bridegroom, but she has given herself over to the shabby, lowly world of corporeality instead. In the language of medieval similes, it is as if the daughter of the king of France gave herself to a villain.The reproachful rhetoric of the poem cautions against the improper use she has made of her body.The body God gave her, so that she might use it as her tool and her servant, has now become her master.Whether she wrongfully marries an unworthy bridegroom or virtuously marries the divine one, the marriage bond remains the focus of Lauda 35. It is also the subject matter of Lauda 36, in which Iacopone insists on the necessity for Anima-the-bride to beautify herself before she marries. Her embellishment is metaphorically represented by moral virtues, with which she ought to adorn herself. Similarly, in Lauda 37 chastity is the chosen virtue that Anima should possess and put on, in the same fashion as she would adorn herself with a gown or jewelry. Chastity is her most important embellishment, but it is specified that it ought not to be her only one. The theme of conjugal love permeates the middle section of Iacopone’s collection taken as a whole, since it also occurs in Laude 41, 42, 45, and 46. In the mystical marriage between Christ and Anima, the bridegroom displays unconditional love and declares his willingness to die for

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his bride.38 Passion becomes a comprehensive sentiment that acquires the dual connotation of fiery feeling and excruciating suffering, the main characteristics of Christ’s Passion.39 In Lauda 41, passionate love causes inevitable pain to the lover: Dicete a la mia sposa—che deggia revenire; tal morte dolorosa—non me faccia patire; per lei voglio morire,—si ne so enamorato. Tell My bride to come back, all wrongs forgotten, To save Me from the cruel death she will have Me die; Joyfully adorned with My tender love, Have her come back to Me.

The lover beseeches Anima to return to him and save him from an excruciatingly painful death. In Lauda 42, it is Anima’s turn to suffer because of love.The poem is structured in the form of a dialogue, in which Anima is told figuratively that the way to find Christ-the-bridegroom necessitates a passage across the valley of humiliation; this path takes her through a tight and difficult stretch, but when she reaches her destination, her stay will be joyful, as compensation for the hardships she had to endure.The change she must undergo is indicated by the metaphor of dressing/undressing, much employed throughout the canzoniere. Anima must take off her filthy, lurid, smelly clothes. She must undress in order to appear aesthetically appealing to her bridegroom. She must strip herself of the world and of every worldly love, since that is what made her look soiled and unclean: Del mondo ch’agio ’l vestire—vegente voi, me ne spoglio e nul encarco mondano—portare meco più voglio; Ed omne creato ne toglio—ch’io en core avesse albergato. Here in your sight I strip myself, And put aside the love of all created things— May they no longer have a place in my heart.

The metaphor of clothing/unclothing continues and becomes a leitmotif throughout the poem. Anima must wear certain virtues and divest certain vices; all references to her qualities are made by means of different garments she should or should not wear: “false, evil hope” must be

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taken off; “spiritual friendship” will robe her.The ultimate metaphorical assumption regarding nakedness as purity occurs at the conclusion of the poem, when nakedness becomes the prelude to physical union and matrimonial consummation between the two lovers. If Anima desires to be joined with Christ, she must disrobe completely and ascend the cross with him naked.The cross is their bed, on which they will become one.While the majority of the stanzas report a dialogue between Anima and the angels, in the last portion of Lauda 42 the dialogue takes place between Anima and Christ, as they announce their mystical union by means of an erotic metaphor: Alma, poi ch’èi venuta—respondote volontire: la croce è lo mio letto,—là ’ve te poi meco unire; sacci, si vogli salire,—haveráme po’ albergato. Cristo amoroso, e io voglio—en croce nudo salire; E voglioce abracciato—Signor, teco morire; Gaio seram’ a patire,—morir teco abracciato. Soul, since you have come to Me, Gladly will I answer you. Come, See, this is My bed—the cross. Here we will be one. Come to Me And I will quench your thirst. O my Love, naked will I scale that cross, To suffer and to die with You. Lord, clasped close in Your embrace, In joy will I suffer and die.

Anima and Christ will join on the bed, metaphorically represented by the cross.The nakedness of Christ on the cross at the culminating moment of his death appropriately prepares for the erotic metaphor that follows. Likewise, the cross as climactic locus of the love that leads to Christ’s rescue of human beings fits the correspondence with the bed as the place of the two lovers’ highest expression of love. Utmost passion is reached thereon, thanks to a paradoxical coincidence of extreme pleasure and extreme suffering. Sexual consummation as a symbol for a mystical union of God and human beings has a long tradition that extends from the Bible to Christian mystics of all ages. It is the focal subject matter of the biblical Song of Songs, and it was used in numerous commentaries written by the Church Fathers well into the Middle Ages. In the poetic tradition, Iacopone’s

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ecstasy in Lauda 42 chronologically precedes the description of a similar ecstatic union in Saint John of the Cross’s Càntico espiritual. The novelty of Iacopone’s text consists in its unprecedented insistence on nudity as a fundamental element of the erotic metaphor. In the ascending rhetoric of his canzoniere, nudity carries slightly different symbolic connotations in the middle section of the collection from those in later sections. In Laude 35 to 46 love continues to resemble amorous relations between two human beings, with marital consummation as the highest, most totalizing expression.40 Iacopone no longer insists on the dichotomy of erotic love versus agapic love. His recovery of purely human love is limited to using it as a metaphor for the union of Christ and Anima. Erotic relations gradually become purified of any sinful reverberations and become symbolic referents for the mystical union. Hence the human necessity for Anima to embellish and beautify herself, so that she may seduce Christ and induce him to remain close to her, as if they were two lovers at the beginning stages of their relationship. Such rhetoric carries the symbolic referent of human love. It continues to resound with the same sensual overtones as those laude coming shortly before these in the collection that deplore physical, sensual love.The process of purification is long and laborious.41 The topos of marriage and consummation permeates Lauda 45 and Lauda 46 as the best and most complete kind of relationship uniting God and Anima. In Lauda 45 the poet lists five ways by which God may manifest himself to Anima: fear, healing love, tender sustenance, fatherly love, and conjugal love.The fifth is the best and causes the following effects: Lo quinto amore mename—ad esser desponsata, Al suo Figliol dolcissimo—essere copulata; Regina so degli angeli,—per grazia menata, En Cristo trasformata—en mirabel unitato. In the fifth mode Love leads me to the conjugal bed And I lie in the embrace of the Son of God. O my soul, Led by grace, you are the queen of the angels, In wondrous fusion transformed into Christ.

Sexual consummation is spelled out in unambiguous terms, having as its final result Anima’s metamorphosis into Christ himself. In Lauda 45 the poet specifies that copulation occurs within marital union and prepares the way for the image of mystical wedding in Lauda 46:

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La corte o’ se fon ste noze—sì è questa chiesa santa, Tu vien’ a lei obedente—ed ella de fé t’amanta; Poi t’apresenta al Signore,—essa per sposa te planta, Loco se fa nova canta—ché l’alma per fé è sponsata. Holy Mother Church is the hall of the wedding. Enter by the door of obedience and be mantled with faith, And she will then set you before the Lord as His bride. Sing a new song for the bride now wedded in faith.

The word “church” in this context includes the two connotations of being the institutional body holding Christians together as well as the architectural place of Christian worship.The original Italian text has “corte” as locus of such encounter.The word “corte” is a signifier indicating both “hall” and “court,” in the sense of a sovereign’s entourage. Christ and his bride Anima are united in matrimony inside the church, confirming the theological principle that salvation is administered through the medium of the ecclesiastical institution. But the wedding also occurs in the highly regal atmosphere that such an important union undoubtedly deserves. Having begun with an uncompromising refutation of love in its physical, erotic component, Iacopone’s collection of laude develops to an acceptance of sexual consummation and matrimonial union as an image of the loving relation binding God to humankind.This conjugal love found in the middle section of the canzoniere will change into pure, ineffable agapic love in the final portion of the Laude. NOTES 1. The artistic value of Iacopone’s poetry is stressed by Sapegno:“Quando Jacopone abbandoni del tutto anche l’esteriore paludamento ammaestrativo e moraleggiante, e faccia della sua anima stessa l’inizio ed il fuoco della sua poesia, e lasci penetrar ne’ suoi versi tutto il complicatissimo dramma delle sue esperienze umane e divine: allora sentiremo di trovarci di fronte ad una più grande arte, della quale avevamo raccolto e vagheggiato fin qui gli sparsi frammenti.” Frate Jacopone, 115. 2. This is the definition of tenson, according to Cuddon:“A type of poetic composition (also known as tenzone and tencon) which originated in Provence in the 12th c[entury]. It usually consisted of a debate between two poets, or with a poet versus an imaginary opponent.The subjects were various: love, politics, literary ctiticism.” Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 960.

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3. The tendency to read the Laude as a collection with an internal order and a coherent sequence is widespread. Francesco Novati, one of the first critics of Iacopone’s work, writes about the Laude: “Sono anche qui rerum vulgarium fragmenta; rottami poetici, cui dà coesione un’intima unità, un sistema filosofico, non privo di valore e d’interesse.”“L’amor mistico in San Francesco d’Assisi ed in Jacopone da Todi,” in Freschi e minii del Dugento (Milan: L. F. Cogliati, 1908), 248. Without many preambles or justifications (taking for granted the notion that Iacopone’s poems make up a canzoniere), Giuseppe Defrenza confidently states:“Le laudi son disposte secondo lo schema tradizionale della teologia ascetica e mistica, quale era stato abbozzato fin dai tempi dello pseudo-Dionigi. È lo schema delle tre vie: purgativa, illuminativa e unitiva, che l’anima ordinariamente percorre nel suo itinerario a Dio.”“Jacopone poeta,” Italia francescana 37 (1962): 234. Defrenza refers to Franca Brambilla Ageno’s edition, but the same concept may be applied to the Bonaccorsi Edition, on which Ageno’s text is based. Lidia Menapace Brisca, in her study on Iacopone’s language and poetics, explicitly makes reference to the Laude as a canzoniere. She states, for example:“la poetica di Jacopone procede nel senso di una successiva semplificazione: infatti le composizioni più gravate di cultura retorica si trovano nella prima sezione didascalica e impoetica, mentre con lo svilupparsi della poesia di Jacopone il linguaggio diventa più sobrio, meno artefatto, più personale, pur potendo essere ricondotto alla osservanza generale della cultura del tempo.”“La poetica di Jacopone,” Contributi dell’Istituto di Filologia Moderna, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) 1 (1961): 14.The notion of canzoniere for Iacopone’s collection was also adopted by Alvaro Bizziccari, who refers to the Laude as a canzoniere in the title, but seems to use the term as a synonym for collection.“L’amore mistico nel canzoniere di Jacopone da Todi,” Italica 45, no. 1 (1968): 1–27. 4. The Bonaccorsi Edition of 1490 was based on Umbrian manuscripts and was the best and most trustworthy edition until Franca Brambilla Ageno published her Jacopone da Todi: Laudi, Trattato, e Detti (Florence: Le Monnier, 1953). As already noted, the edition used for the present study is Luigi Fallacara’s Jacopone da Todi: Le Laudi, which reproduces the Bonaccorsi Edition, drawn from its numerous reprints, and amended textually and orthographically according to changes proposed by Caramella, Barbi, Casella, and especially Ageno. 5.While commenting on the Proemio to the Bonaccorsi Edition,Vincent Moleta convincingly explains the possible relation between the manuscript and the editio princeps: “The preface to the Bonaccorsi edition does not reveal the precise MS. to which the editor had access, nor does it suggest that the place of each poem in the collection was a matter of editorial choice and taste.The phrase ‘distinguere le materie e metterle insieme’ could well apply to poems grouped together in the MS. sources.The responsibility for the overall order may have been Bonaccorsi’s, but the finer divisions and groupings within that order will have been already apparent in the groups of poems as presented by the MS.”

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“Dialogues and Dramatic Poems in the Laudario Iacoponico,” Italian Studies: An Annual Review 30 (1975): note 12. 6. Louise V. Katainen,“Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic:A Review of the History of the Criticism,” Mystics Quarterly 22, no. 2 (June 1996): 50. As regards the canonicity of this important edition, see the following comment by the same critic:“The Buonaccorsi edition proved to be so important that it remained the primary source for subsequent editions until the publication almost five centuries later of Ageno’s Laudi, Trattati e Detti.” Ibid. 7. For a spiritual interpretation of Iacopone’s Laude as a progression culminating in the union of the soul with God, see Cunningham, Saint Francis of Assisi, 70, quoted by Frances M. Biscoglio,“Cross,Tree, Bridegroom, and Circle: Markings in the Mystical Journey of Bonaventure and Jacopone da Todi,” Studia Mystica 11 (1988): 32. 8. According to George T. Peck, the order proposed by the Bonaccorsi Edition “follows closely the development of both Jacopone’s style and his spiritual growth; it is still used in all editions except Mancini’s.” The Fool of God, 226.The edition of Iacopone’s Laude referred to is Laude, ed. Franco Mancini, Scrittori d’ Italia 257 (Bari: G. Laterza, 1974). 9. Paolo Cannettieri denies any internal order and sequence to the Laude: “l’opera di Iacopone non mostra alcuna logica interna, né la successione delle laude è data univocamente dai manoscritti o comunque in modo tale da permettere di ricostruire il piano dell’autore dietro i diversi ordinamenti forniti dai laudari, anche se alcune laude di argomento affine risultano spesso in posizione di contiguità. In nessun modo è possibile far rientrare la produzione di Iacopone in un quadro unitario: né relativamente ai temi né alle forme metriche utilizzate.” Introduction to Iacopone e la poesia religiosa del Duecento, ed. Paolo Cannettieri (Milan: Rizzoli, 2001), 37. 10. Evelyn Underhill claims that this edition is “the best for purposes of study,” because of the editor’s “remarkable critical sense” and “an almost modern enthusiasm for textual accuracy.” Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic, 1228–1306: A Spiritual Biography, with a Selection from the Spiritual Songs, English translation of Jacopone’s texts by Mrs.Theodore Beck (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1919), 10. 11. See Biscoglio,“Cross,Tree, Bridegroom, and Circle: Markings in the Mystical Journey of Bonaventure and Jacopone da Todi,” 31. 12. Along similar critical lines, Sapengo considers the theme of an encounter of humanity with divinity as the leitmotif of Iacopone’s canzoniere. Frate Jacopone, 117–19, 157. 13. The theme of love occurs in those laude that Gaetano Trombatore defines as “laude in cui [Jacopone] più direttamente espresse la sua esperienza mistica.” In the threefold classification this critic develops, the other two categories of Iacopone’s laude are represented by “laude raziocinative ed esortative” and “laude

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politiche.”“Jacopone da Todi e le sue laude,” in Saggi critici (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1950), 7. 14. While not addressing the issue of assembled thematic structures in Iacopone’s collection (which he defines as laudario, not canzoniere), Moleta speaks of “cluster[s] within which Iacopone pursues and develops a single idea,” and of “[u]nity of inspiration.” He also believes that “it is clear that there are laude in the corpus which fall into thematically related groups or which appear together as variations on a single theme.” But the following is the most interesting statement to support the theory of a development of the theme of love as stated in this study. Moleta writes:“in this sense the Bonaccorsi edition can be taken as a guide to the original compositional order within groups of poems in the Laudario, even if the overall order remains a vexed question. One might not argue that each of these groups were written at a single sitting, but it makes sense to print them and read them in sequence.”“Dialogues and Dramatic Poems in the Laudario Iacoponico,” 12–13. 15. Sapegno comments on this particular aspect of Iacopone’s canzoniere: “Questo motivo dell’annullarsi dell’uomo in Dio è, come tutti sanno, l’argomento di molte fra le poesie del Tudertino.” Frate Jacopone, 87. 16. The attribution of the Trattato and Detti remains in doubt. 17. For the concept of canzoniere as related to the construction of the self in Italian literature of the origins, see the comprehensive study by Olivia Holmes, Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), which demonstrates how the idea of self in poetic collections developed in Provençal tradition, therefore amply preceding Petrarch, who is generally regarded as the initiator and master of poetic self-assemblage. 18. Richardson reports the essential parts of the Proemio and comments on it and on the organization of the Bonaccorsi Edition.“The First Edition of Jacopone’s Laude (Florence, 1490) and the Development of Vernacular Philology,” 26–40. Among other things, he states that “[t]he contents of the volume were also influenced by a desire to print exactly one hundred laude” (30). 19. Maccarini considers Iacopone’s canzoniere “la storia di un’anima” (73) and then identifies three different stages of the poet’s spiritual development: “esasperazione dell’odio,”“esasperazione dell’amore,” and “nichilismo.” Jacopone da Todi e i suoi critici (Milan: Gastaldi, 1952), 156. 20. The possible connection between Iacopone and Dante has been speculated on, more or less convincingly, since the beginning of Iacoponian scholarship. For example,Antoine Frédéric Ozanam was the first to propose Iacopone as Dante’s precursor and to believe that Dante knew Iacopone’s poetry and admired it. Poeti francescani in Italia nel secolo decimoterzo, 160. In recent times, Natalino Sapegno simply connects them in the name of their poetic abilities:“Forse la più potente personalità della nostra storia letteraria prima dell’Alighieri.”“La letteratura religiosa

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del Due e del Trecento e la critica letteraria moderna,” Studi Cateriniani: Bullettino della Società Internazionale di Studi Cateriniani, 12, nos. 2–3 (1937), 79. In the opposite camp, among those denying any possible connection between Iacopone and Dante is Agostino Barolo, who writes:“Si può quindi escludere, senza tema d’errare, ogni ispirazione, non solo, ma anche ogni influsso da parte del canzoniere jacoponico, sulla colossale opera di Dante, mentre non possiamo negare che, con la sua opera, Jacopone abbia disposto i contemporanei ad accogliere, con minore sorpresa, quel miracolo di sapienza e di arte col quale il genio dantesco si rivelò all’estatico suo tempo.” Jacopone da Todi (Turin: Bocca, 1929), 160–61. 21. Marino Fioroni, Dante e Jacopone (Marsciano:Tipografia Marscianese, 1969), 16. 22. The image of the ill heart comes to Iacopone from the Provençal tradition, possibly by way of the Sicilian School. Although his description is not as graphic as Iacopone’s, Giacomo da Lentini makes ample reference to the wound of love that causes pain and pleasure contemporaneously; he refers to the pain of the heart in “Meravigliosamente” and to the paradox of the wound that heals by being further wounded in “A l’aire claro ò vista ploggia dare.” A possible connection between Iacopone, Provençal poetry, and the Sicilian School is drawn by Sapegno, Frate Jacopone, 172–74. 23. The “Nemico,”“Enemy,” is also a borrowing from the Sweet New Style indicating Satan, for instance, in Chiaro Davanzati’s poetry. 24. The theme is a topos especially in the New Testament; see Matt. 10:16 and John 10:12. 25. Iacopone’s negative perspective on the material world has caused some critics to formulate strong accusations against him. For example, Giovanni Papini believes that Iacopone cannot even be called a Christian:“non fu neanche un autentico cristiano secondo l’Evangelo. . . . [D]i quel che Cristo fece e disse tra la Nascita e la Morte Jacopone non parla mai o solo in generici termini di moralista astratto.”“Jacopone da Todi,” in L’aurora della letteratura italiana (Florence:Vallecchi, 1956), 26–27. 26. Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia: Inferno, ed. Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio (Florence: Le Monnier, 1987). 27. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1982). 28. For a detailed, intuitive, and thoughtful analysis of this canto, see Teodolinda Barolini,“Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love): Inferno V in Its Lyric Context,” Dante Studies 116 (1998): 31–63, which exhaustively examines the significance of “la ragion sottomettono al talento” (“subjecting reason to the rule of lust”). 29. There is no evidence to support or deny the notion of Dante’s knowing Iacopone’s Laude or even being aware of Iacopone’s literary production. Given that Iacopone composed his laude approximately in the last two decades of the

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thirteenth century, but certainly before 1306, the year of his death, and Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in the first twenty years of the fourteenth, the possible literary contact between them has been the subject of speculation among critics, but no convincing conclusions have been drawn so far about the issue. Ozanam suggests that Dante and Iacopone knew each other, but gives no source for this piece of information:“Dicesi che Dante conoscesse il poeta di Todi, che lo amasse e che, andando per ambasciadore a Filippo il Bello, gli recitasse de’ versi di questo religioso, la cui fantasia teneva in bilico la politica di Bonifacio VIII.” Poeti francescani in Italia nel secolo decimoterzo, 160. 30. This idea of the separation of the two types of love resembles the philosophical and theological viewpoint expressed (in a very different period of time and in a very different culture) by Anders Nygren on the subject. Nygren considers human love and divine love to originate from opposite sources and to have no common ground to share. Agape and Eros: The Christian Idea of Love, trans. Philip Watson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 31. For a reading of Iacopone through the negative theology of Dionysius the Aeropagite, see Paolo Valesio,“ ‘O entenebrata luce ch’en me luce’: La letteratura del silenzio,” in Del silenzio: Percorsi, suggestioni, interpretazioni, ed. Giovannella Fusco Girard and Anna Maria Tango (Salerno: Ripostes, 1992), 15–44. 32. Peck, The Fool of God, 170. 33. Jean Leclercq, “Teologia e preghiera,” in La preghiera nella bibbia e nella tradizione patristica e monastica, ed. Cipriano Vagaggini and Gregorio Penco (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 1964), 954–57.The link of theology to prayer is also stressed by Karl Barth:“All human thought and speech in relation to God can have only the character of response to be made to God’s word. Human thought and speech cannot be about God but must be directed towards God, called into action by the divine thought and speech directed to men, and following and corresponding to this work of God.What is essential to human language is to speak of man in the first person (I) and of God in the second person (thou). And this means that theological work must really and truly take place in the form of a liturgical act, as invocation of God and as prayer.Theological work does not merely begin with prayer, and is not merely accompanied by it; in its totality it is peculiar to and characteristic of theology that it can only be done in the act of prayer.” Karl Barth, quoted without any further reference by John Drury, Angels and Dirt: An Enquiry into Theology and Prayer (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973), 43. 34. The difference between external appearance and inner condition is a topos of medieval poetry.The deceitful quality of this relationship is thematized, for example, in Dante’s sonnet in the Vita nova “O voi che per la via d’Amor passate.” Dante Alighieri, Vita nova, ed. Gugliemo Gorni (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 35–37. The intricate dynamics of semblance and truth are a leitmotif of Iacopone’s canzoniere; the opposition of appearance and reality occurs, for example,

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in Lauda 60: “Ciò che te pare non è,—tanto è alto quello che è, / la superbia en cielo s’è—e dannase l’umilitate. / Entra la vertute e l’atto—molti ci ode al ioco ‘matto,’ / tal se pensa aver buon patto—che sta en terra alienate” (“You see that things are not as they seem to you, / so high a state has been reached. / The proud win Heaven and the humble are damned; / Between aspiration and realization yawns a great gap, / And the man who thinks he has succeeded / Is often the loser”). Poetically, the paradoxical, theological concept of two contrasting entities, one fallacious, one veracious, which nevertheless preserve similar likeable appearances, is rendered through the rhetorical figure of oxymoron. One of Iacopone’s most famous oxymoronic lines on the contradictory essence of light and darkness is contained in this lauda:“Omne luce è tenebria,—ed omne tenebre c’è dia, / la nova filosofia—gli utri vecchi ha dissipate” (“All light is shrouded in darkness, / All darkness bright as the noonday sun; / This new philosophy / Has burst the old wineskins”). The opposition of darkness and light explains Iacopone’s dichotomic thought of a separation of earthly and heavenly, of evil and good, and of humanity before the Fall and after the Fall.The deceitfulness of appearance, which conceals the truthfulness hidden behind it, creates confusion in this already complex train of thought. 35. For the transformation of “carnal love” into “spiritual love” in Guittone d’Arezzo and Guiraut Riquier as related to the concepts of “folly” and “wisdom,” see Holmes, Assembling the Lyric Self, 53–54, 113–15. 36. For the poetic, but also social and ideological implications of the popular genre of tenson, see Louise V. Katainen,“The Intellectual and Ideological Foundations of the Poetry of the Scuola Siciliana,” Romance Languages Annual 1 (1989): 151. 37. A similar dialogic structure as reflection of the soul’s union with God occurs in the rhetoric of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (Iacopone’s contemporary and fellow-Franciscan brother), as noted by Joan M. Ferrante, Woman as Image in Medieval Literature from the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 106. 38. Moleta speaks of “an intensely physical perception of Christ as lover, present now in the meditative imagination.”“Dialogues and Dramatic Poems in the Laudario Iacoponico,” 25. 39. For the joining together of suffering and joy in Iacopone’s poetry, see Lina Berardi, Un revisionismo di una singolarissima figura (Todi:Tipografia Tiberina, 1978; repr.,Todi: Res Tudertinae, 1979), 12–13. 40. Moleta comments on the core of this “small cycle” of poems, as he calls it:“The personal and mystical realization of the Redemption through erotic symbols, which Iacopone shares with the reader in the small cycle xl, xli, xlii, draws from the poet his most fluent style, at once vivid and restrained.”“Dialogues and Dramatic Poems in the Laudario Iacoponico,” 27.

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41. Medieval hermeneutical methods substantiate this theory. A prominent example is offered by Bernard of Clairvaux’s interpretation of the Song of Songs. A mystical reading skips the literal level of interpretation entirely and passes straight to the metaphorical.While reading the Song of Songs, Bernard pays no attention to the possible sensual connotations of the text; the passage in which the groom praises the bride’s breasts, followed by a full description of their shape and color, he understands as the richness of Mother Church.This parallels Iacopone’s treatment of marital consummation in the last portion of the Laude.

6

Ecstasy of Agapic Love AFTER LAUDA 34 Iacopone abandons the battle of two contrasting forms of love.The pacification of carnal and agapic love opens the way for an increased presence of divine love in the collection. From this point on, the poet’s ascetic progression includes a more positive outlook on love, which is no longer viewed as a negative inclination to be exorcized, but seen as a healing, transforming force. Love descends from God and returns to God after drawing human beings closer to God. Most of the laude on spiritual love (what Iacopone has so far also defined as “infused love”) are assembled in the second half of the collection.They are prayerful poems that, in a less didactic and more dramatic tone than the poems heretofore considered, implore God to bestow the gift of love on the poet. God is no longer an alternative to human love, but the sole addressee of the poet’s prayerful invocations. In some instances he remains a silent interlocutor for Anima’s heartfelt pleas to obtain a sign of his presence; in other instances he rebukes her, reprimands her, or simply converses with her, either in a dialogue or in epistolary form.The emphasis on matrimonial union in the second section of the canzoniere at times acquires the connotation of a sublime ceremony; at other times it gives Christ and Anima the intimacy and ease of two human spouses who bicker and argue before reconciling.The theme of matrimony comes to Iacopone from Bonaventure.1 But his insistence on the topic also suggests a reading in light of the Book of Revelation, in which the establishment of God’s Kingdom is signified by “the marriage of the Lamb.”2 The theme of matrimonial union is introduced in Laude 45 and 46, and its increasing importance makes it the thematic focal point of the second half of the collection.The poems that follow will intensify the idea that conjugal love is the most fitting image for the mystical union of God and humankind, by adding elements to express its complexity and intricacy.The theme of matrimonial union presents a poetic challenge; the growing complexity of the canzoniere reveals Iacopone’s effort to find a rhetoric capable of conveying the peak of mystical askesis.The increasing technical and rhetorical difficulty of the collection accompanies the thematic ascent and, one could speculate, the poet’s own spiritual climb.3

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Poverty, music, and total (spiritual and physical) assimilation with Christ are the ingredients of Iacopone’s exposition of the theme of matrimonial union.The introductory unit to the theme of divine love comprises Lauda 59 to Lauda 65.The theme is then developed in a more diluted fashion in the next section. After two laude on poverty (59 and 60), and two on Francis (61 and 62), Laude 64 and 65 deal with the Nativity but include themes common to all poems in this section, such as poverty, harmony, the opposition of clothes and nudity, and divine love as expressed by matrimonial union.4 The theme of marital consummation will be explored in Lauda 67 and Lauda 68.The climax will finally be reached in Lauda 71 with ecstatic union likened to sexual encounter. Laude 59 and 60 present the theme of poverty, which is the most important Christian virtue in the Franciscan lexicon. In Lauda 59 poverty is synonymous with freedom.The Franciscan idea of possessing nothing revives the joy of possessing all existing things without becoming attached to any of them. Only then does the paradox of the “riches” of poverty become understandable.The poor possess all of creation, by right of not appropriating any of it and simply enjoying the whole of it. In Alvaro Cacciotti’s view, Lauda 59 resembles, in structure and theme, Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun.”5 In the first section, Iacopone’s more geographic outlook has the same result as Francis’s cosmic praise of all creatures. Iacopone lists countries and peoples:“Francia . . . Inghilterra . . . Sassogna . . . Guascogna . . . Borgogna . . . Normandia . . . Medi, parsi ed elamiti,—iacomini e nestoriti, / giurgiani, etiopiti,—India e Barbaria” (“France . . . England . . . Saxony . . . Guascogne . . . Burgundy . . . Normandy . . . Medes, Persians, Elamites, Syrians, and Mongols, / Georgians, Ethiopians, Indians, and Moslems”). He reserves a more general list of cosmic creatures for the latter part of the poem: Terra, erbe con lor colori,—arbori e frutti con sapori . . . Acque, fiumi, lachi e mare,—pescetegli en lor notare, aere, venti, ucel volare . . . Luna, sole, cielo e stele. . . . Land, fields full of flowers, trees, Succulent livestock . . . Lakes, rivers, and oceans teeming with fish. Air, winds, birds . . . Moon and sun, sky and stars. . . .

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As it is in Francis’s perception, poverty is the prelude to the harmonic unification of mankind with all other creatures of the universe; and, again, as it is for Francis, harmony serves as a synonym for perfect consonance both with material elements in the cosmos and with melodic, musical sound.The poet’s detachment from earthly preoccupations and material involvements allows him the necessary weightlessness that raises the mystic high above the level of other humans entangled in worldly affairs. Relieved of material heaviness, he can fly from earth to heaven.The poem specifies that such radical detachment (as poverty brings) implies total renunciation of willpower: Se son nude le virtute—e le vizia son vestute, mortale se don ferute,—caggio en terra vulnerate. Puoi le vizia son morte,—le virtute son resorte confortate de la corte—d’onne empassibilitate. If virtues are stripped—and vices are dressed, they strike and injure one another to death,—they fall to earth. With the death of the vices, the virtues come to life again, sustained by the court’s every impassivity [my translation].6

The moral struggle between virtues and vices is fought on the battlefield of the soul. Nudity grants the virtues their victory over the dressed vices, after which the soul may enjoy the desirable status of impassivity, the prize attained through the exercise of poverty. Nichilitate expresses in philosophical terms the purifying process of elimination. It is tightly connected to material and spiritual poverty and through it the soul reaches the state of serenity. Nudity is the overarching metaphor for both nichilitate and poverty.While nudity becomes increasingly important in the second half of the canzoniere, in Lauda 60 it serves as a rhetorical device for the thematization of nichilitate and poverty. In Iacopone’s formulation, nichilitate is an implementation of poverty in the spiritual realm. In the same way as the via negativa attempts to give a definition of God by approaching the concept negatively and affirming what he is not (rather than what he is), nichilitate is the “dark night” of the soul, the passing stage that will allow a mystic ecstatic union, his deserved recompense. Before the concept of nichilitate is developed in subsequent laude, a brief reference to it appears in Lauda 60, though the poem focuses primarily on poverty.7 In the Franciscan lexicon, poverty is a virtue that gradually dismisses all

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intermediary impediments to the purification of heart and soul; it is an allencompassing, comprehensive concept, which includes both material moderation and spiritual pruning. By corresponding to the philosophical concept of via negativa, Franciscan poverty stands for a progressive elimination of all obstacles preventing the enjoyment of Edenic purity. Poverty so defined has a primary role in the next two poems, Lauda 61 and Lauda 62, devoted to Francis.The portrayal of the Saint hinges on three elements: poverty, the cross as represented by the stigmata, and the foundation of the Franciscan Order. Poverty grants Francis the seven visions of the cross and the gift of the stigmata in Lauda 61. In Lauda 62, the victory over the Enemy is obtained in part because of Francis’s radical poverty. The resemblance between Christ and Francis, which is stressed in both these laude, is accomplished by means of a constant assimilation of Francis to his model.The measure of this progressive assimilation is poverty, a trait common to both.8 The inextricable bond typical of matrimony is used in Lauda 61 to describe the unseverable union of Christ and Francis.They are “two in one form,” akin to man and woman at creation in the Book of Genesis. Addressing Francis in the second-person singular as if he were speaking to him or writing to him, Iacopone brings together the two important phenomena of the Passion, love and the cross.The stigmata indicate utmost sacrifice; they appear on Francis’s body as a reward for his dedication to Christ; their pain is reminiscent of the crucifixion: [F]usti en lui sì trafisso,—mai non te mutasti; co te ce trasformasti—nel corpo è miniato. L’amore ha questo ufficio,—unir dui en una forma; Francesco nel supplicio—de Cristo lo trasforma, emprese quella norma—de Cristo ch’avea en core, la mostra fe’ l’amore—vestito d’un vergato. You were so closely bound to Him in love you never faltered, And the marks on your body attested to that union. This is the mission of love, to make two one; It united Francis with the suffering Christ. It was Christ in his heart that taught him the way, And that love shone forth in his robe streaked with color.

The Passion unites Francis and Christ, and transforms the body of the Beloved into the body of the Lover.The two are bound by the unseverable tie of

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love, like two lovers united in marital union; for “this is love’s mission: to unite two in one form,” as Iacopone’s line runs if translated literally.The repercussions of Francis’s transformation appear in the striped robe he wears; garments are once again the semiotic indicator of conversion and transformation.Yet, this time the transformation is complete. One could state that Francis is literally “clothed in Christ.”9 Humanity, divided and wounded by the Enemy, finds its rescuing force in love alone. Lauda 62 reemphasizes the importance of poverty in order to defeat the Enemy. In the fictional dialogue between Iacopone and Francis in the second half of the poem, Francis manifests his intention to become a mendicant (“Metteròmme a gir pezente—per lo pane ad onne gente” [“I shall go about in rags and beg for my bread”]) and insists that his brothers of the Order touch no money (“Tener voglio la via vera,—né sacco voglio né pera, / en pecunia posto èra—che non sia dai miei toccato” [“I will stay on the true path, with neither purse nor bag; / I have told my followers they must never touch money”]), a practice that became customary among the most radical friars at the beginning of the Order. Lauda 64 and Lauda 65 present the Nativity of Christ. In Lauda 64 the harmony that was reestablished with the Incarnation is rendered by metatextual references to singing and chanting.10 Harmony as the pivotal topic of Lauda 64 provides a suitable atmosphere for a reflection on divine love that begins in the next poem, Lauda 65. Harmony is one of the principal qualities of matrimonial union, as it appears in Lauda 65, the second poem dedicated to the Nativity.The typically Franciscan scene of the crèche never acquires the tones of an idyllic nocturnal representation in Iacopone, whose fiery perception and pessimistic sensitivity would not permit any sentimentality. Iacopone picks up the tradition of the manger and uses it to unfold different thematic structures, including poverty, matrimonial union, holy madness, and unconditional love.11 The text develops in the form of a narrative addressed in part to Anima, the spouse of the Incarnate God, and in part to Christ-thebridegroom.Then the poem’s structure imperceptibly changes into an amorous dialogue between Christ and Anima.12 The verbal courting dalliance at times acquires paradoxical tones.13 For example, according to Iacopone’s account, the mystery of the Incarnation occurred so that God might bestow a dowry on Anima, his impoverished spouse. Iacopone is perfectly aware of the contradictions inherent in the concept of a bridegroom’s bringing a dowry to his bride, especially when the dowry is metaphorically represented by “[m]y blood shed for you . . . on the cross.”

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Christ’s only wealth is his poverty, and his dowry the redemptive blood shed on the cross, an instrument of torture and death.The tone is reminiscent of the symbolic wedding between Francis and Lady Poverty in the Sacrum commercium. Sposa dota marito,—da lui non è dotata; prima dota è trattata—che la voglia sponsare; nullo par sì smarrito—per cui dota sia data, già se non ha trovata—donna de grande affare, volendo esaltare—sé per gran parenteza, levando sua bassezza—ad dignità d’onore. Alteza non aspetto—né alcuna magioria da te, o sposa mia,—ad cui sì me so dato; prendo per te defetto—vergogna e meschinìa; or donque sempre sia—en me tuo amor locato, perché non m’hai dotato,—ma te voglio dotare, tutto mio sangue dare—en croce con dolore. “A bride gives a dowry to her husband, She does not receive one from him; And that arrangement precedes the wedding. To give his wife a dowry A husband would have to be mad, Unless her lineage would exalt him.[”] “My bride, I do not expect from you rank or riches, And for love of you, for your sake, I accept need, shame, and servitude. Love Me forever, then, For it is I who will give you a dowry— My blood shed for you in pain on the cross.[”]

Begun as a meditation on the mystery of the Incarnation as accomplished in the Nativity scene, the poem becomes a love song between bridegroom and bride, Christ and Anima, in which the Incarnation represents their nuptial agreement.This epithalamium, which paradoxically unites in a single poem an exaltation of poverty in the manger, the redemptive function of the cross, and the love between Christ and Anima, comes full circle with a hymn to the force of love that originated the Incarnation: Voglio ormai far canto,—ché l’amor mio è nato e hame recomperato;—d’amor m’ha messo anello. . . .

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Amor, or ne manteni—d’amore enebriati, teco stare abracciati—en amor trasformato; e sempre ne sovieni—che non siamo engannati, ma en amor trovati—col cor sempre levato; per noi, amor, se’ nato,—d’amor sempre ne ciba, qual fariseo o scriba—non gusta per sapore. I sing for the birth of my Love; He has redeemed me and slipped on my finger His ring. . . . Love, keep us drunk with love; Keep us in Your embrace, in Love that unites. Watch over us constantly that we may not be deceived. Let our hearts be ever filled with love and lifted up to You. You, Love, were born for us; nourish us with that food Whose sweetness is all unknown to scribes and pharisees.

This conclusion, together with the entire second section of Lauda 65, establishes the theme of matrimonial union between Christ and Anima that shapes the second half of Iacopone’s canzoniere. This lauda combines the poverty of the crèche with matrimonial union.The connection appears to be one of dependence and subordination: the acceptance of poverty leads to Anima’s matrimonial union with Christ; his donation of himself in the dejected condition of the stable brings about the fruit of love. As a whole, Lauda 65 brings together the concept of poverty, as thematized in Laude 59 and 60 and again in Laude 61 and 62, with that of the mystical marriage of Anima and Christ in the following section of laude.The six laude just considered address core themes of Franciscanism and are placed at a crucial point in the canzoniere. They present a microcosm of Iacopone’s Franciscan poetics.The two laude on poverty set the tone for the next two, which are dedicated to Francis, and the following two on harmony and Incarnation complete the cycle. The next three laude continue the preparation for the description of mystical union in Lauda 71. Laude 66, 67, and 68 speak of Anima and Christ as bride and bridegroom.They assume the matrimonial relation uniting them, drawing on a long tradition that has its roots in the Judeo-Christian metaphor of God as married to his people.The thematic core around which these three poems revolve is the painful separation of the two spouses, which the poet laments in all three texts. Lauda 67 is structured as a dialogue between Anima and God.Their conjugal relation is now a fact, so much so that one of the two parties

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is accused of abandoning the other.The poem is a lament of the abandoned bride,Anima-the-soul.While the dialogical structure of this lauda aptly suits the definition of prayer as a mentally or vocally articulated dialogue with God, it also mimics e contrario the troubadour tradition of entreating the favors of a disdainful lady.14 In Lauda 67 it is the soul, Anima, the female side of this marital union, who laments her spouse’s abandonment and repeatedly, almost obsessively, beseeches him to return to her.The paradox is double. First, the woman’s demand for an explanation defies the troubadour and courtly code, in which it is the faithful servile male lover who asks for his love to be requited by the lady.15 Second, God’s abandonment of Anima creates a theological aporia, in view of the Pauline assurance of God’s unceasing faithfulness, even at the moment of mankind’s defection.16 Anima’s request begins with a series of questions, aimed at discovering the reason for God’s abandonment. God’s later and much shorter reply, in the second part of the lauda, interestingly changes the gender of the interlocutor from Anima to “Omo,” thereby creating sexual ambiguity and stressing the notion of God-as-bridegroom, who engages in a love relationship that surpasses gender differentiation.17 Iacopone implies here that the spirit of God unites in marriage with males and females alike. His ambiguity of genders perpetuates a Franciscan tradition that looks back to Francis’s “Sermon to the Birds” in the Little Flowers. Incidentally, the word “omo,” from the grammatical point of view, might also be a neutral impersonal form, as it is in “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” similar to the usage of the impersonal “on” in French. More than a dialogue, then, the lauda is construed as two consecutive monologues, Anima’s lamentation and Christ’s reply, followed by onestanza reprises for each speaker in the conclusion.The pattern resembles that of love letters.The poem contains, in fact, some obvious clichés of amorous correspondence.Anima solicits an explanation from her beloved in the first half, then Christ explains his motives to her in the second half. She blames her own unattractiveness for his departure in the first stanza, “se da schifeza èi vento,—vogliote satisfare” (“Is it my vileness that repels you? Let me make amends”). In this particular context, the assertion means that she acknowledges being disfigured by her own sinfulness.18 Her conversion will likely transform her unappealing looks into beauty, and her willingness to change her mode of life (“vogliote satisfare” [“Let me make amends”]) gives rise in the next line to a pun on the verb “tornare.” In medieval Italian this verb maintains the dual connotation of “ritornare,”

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“returning,” “coming back,” and “volgere” or “volgersi,” as in “turning around.”The last line of the first stanza reads:“s’io me voglio tornare,— non te ne torne amore?” which, translated literally, means “if I will turn my life around [metaphorically meaning ‘conversion’]—will you not come back to me?”19 The pun displays a self-referential quality, insofar as it underscores, by means of a verb of movement, the concept of movement intrinsic to the action of transforming one’s life through µετ΄αγνοια (metanoia).The change of mentality, which transliterates the Greek term for conversion, µετανο΄εω (metanoeo), is rendered through a morpheme indicating an about-face, a complete change of direction. Moreover, the combination of the pun on “tornare” and the trope of chiasmus created by the verb gives the impression that the lovers are at once close and separate.The same signifier identifies two separate actions: Anima’s willingness to convert and Christ’s homecoming.The two different referents, conversion and homecoming, identified by the single signifier “tornare,” give a sense of the double relation linking the lovers, their unity and closeness, but also their separation and distance, as represented by the figure of speech of chiasmus. Far from being simply a pun, the line is a semantic rendering of the lovers’ complex rapport.The bridegroom’s homecoming strongly depends on the bride’s capacity to turn her life around. In light of this concept, God’s abandonment of the beloved—and his return— finds a theological explanation in human free will. Other clichés of amorous correspondence follow.Anima describes the great suffering caused to her by the separation and proceeds to confess her inability to orient herself mentally or physically in the absence of her beloved. Amor, tua compagnia,—tosto sì m’è falluta, non saccio do’ me sia,—facendo la partuta; la mente mia smarruta—va chedendo ’l dolzore, che gli è furato ad ore—che non se nn’è adato, amore. Suddenly bereft of You I know not where I am; Confused, I look for You all about, Look for the sweetness that all unawares, Little by little was taken from me.

Anima laments her loss of direction as a consequence of Christ’s departure, but most of her epistolary-styled remarks concern the possible reason for his abandonment. She lodges a series of complaints, quoting various examples of unfairness drawn from the mercantile world. God has

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deprived her of himself and his riches, and paradoxically he is to be held responsible in front of the heavenly court. In five consecutive stanzas Anima goes through the whole casuistry of behaviors that are reminiscent of Christ’s abandonment.This five-stanza section of the poem offers more than just a metaphor for the withdrawal of Christ’s love from Anima. Her fierce accusations of Christ’s meanness are aimed at obtaining restitution. Love is turned into a commodity. If Christ does not return his love-riches to the soul, he is comparable to a dishonest merchant.The insistence on mercantile metaphors in this context indicates not only the contractual, commercial nature of medieval marriage, but also the importance of commercial exchanges in Iacopone’s hometown,Todi.That one-fourth of the poem is devoted to mercantile metaphors (five stanzas out of twenty) suggests that mercantile vocabulary spoke clearly to Iacopone’s audience, no doubt because of Todi’s thirteenth-century economic boom.The town’s small banking community comprised both Christians and Jews, and its first and most prominent guild was that of the merchants.Todi’s increasing prosperity is demonstrated by its continuous building initiatives, involving both civil and religious construction throughout the century.20 Anima’s persistent commercial rhetoric finally invokes Christ’s sharp rebuke, beginning with his stunning vocative address that changes the gender of the interlocutor from Anima to Omo: Omo che te lamenti,—brevemente responno, tollendo lo tuo albergo,—crédici far sogiorno; albergastice ’l monno—e me cacciasti via; donqua fai villania,—s’ tu mormori d’amore. Hear Me, you who make such loud lament: I will answer in brief. I made My abode in you And I wanted to stay, But you cast Me out And welcomed the world. You are less than honest, then, In your complaints against Love.

Her ingratitude and unappreciative attitude are Christ’s reasons for withdrawing his love. He lists all he has done for her and blames her for his departure, because she cast him out and welcomed the world in his stead. Anima viewed as Christ’s abode has obvious sexual resonances in this song.

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The lover inhabits his beloved and fills her with his existence and essence. The subtext for such ambiguous rhetoric is the Song of Songs, with its epithalamic language of eroticism aimed at describing the relation of God to his people.21 Love dominates the whole of Lauda 67. Its absence turns love into an obsessively repetitive concept.The lamented lack of love in the contents of the poem is overcompensated for by a dense abundance of signifiers indicating it.The pressing nature of Anima’s petition to be reunited with her lover is expressed by reiteration of the word “amore,” at the beginning and at the end of each stanza in the part of the dialogue/epistle spoken by Anima. She invokes Christ with the apostrophe “Amore,” or sometimes with its pericope,“Amor,” which in amorous language becomes a nickname for the beloved, a metonym transferring the significance of the term indicating the feeling of love to the person to whom the feeling is addressed. In Christian doctrine “God is love,” and Anima addresses him by his proper name. However, the erotic rhetoric of this text creates a superimposition of the two possible meanings of “love,” insofar as God is love/caritas in relation to the human soul, Anima, but he is also Christthe-lover in relation to his bride.The word “amore” also occurs at the end of each stanza in the second part of the poem.When spoken by Christ in this section, the word is not an invocation; it simply keeps its literal meaning:“amore” is simply the feeling Christ is discussing with his bride. The ubiquitous appearance of the word “amore” in Lauda 67 inevitably affects the readers’ notion of love in Iacopone’s theological universe.22 From the poem’s perspective, the totality of Anima’s existence depends on the presence or absence of love.The way this word permeates the poem and organizes it by delimiting its confines hints at the significance of love in Christian doctrine: according to the Gospel of John, God-love represents the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of the new faith. The trope known as anaphora is the repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of a line; when a word is repeated at the beginning or at the end of a line or verse, the trope becomes an epiphora; but when the rhetorical structure changes into a more complex trope with a word recurring at the beginning and at the end of each verse, as “amore” does in the first section of this lauda, the appropriate definition is epanadiplosis.This rare trope shows the sophisticated rhetorical expertise Iacopone achieved, even at the initial stage of vernacular poetry.The medieval literary milieu that produced the Provençal sestina, one of the most challenging poetic forms, invented such difficult rhetorical devices as Iacopone’s epanadiplo-

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sis. In keeping with the harmonious interaction of form and content at the root of this poetic text, the rigid structure of epanadiplosis seems to accommodate the theological concept Iacopone puts forth. Epanadiplosis structurally agrees with the idea that a strictly regulated and organized human deportment is necessary in order to obtain the gift of divine love. The poet believes that rigorous discipline and unwavering righteousness bring God’s love as spiritual reward, and he expresses this theological concept through an equally inflexible rhetorical device.The rigid organization and enclosed structure of the poem support the human effort behind the bestowal of God’s love on human beings. Repetitiveness of the trope indicates the crucial importance of love in Iacopone’s doctrinal panorama. Love becomes a well-defined, orderly apparatus that is orchestrated within the limits of his poetic text.The structure is controlled to the point of achieving aesthetic specularity: the beginning word of each stanza is also its final. In the concluding stages of Iacopone’s developing curve of the theme of love, such a confined, neat framework will be replaced by the more explosive, uncontainable cry of the word “amore.” In Lauda 81 and Lauda 90, epanadiplosis evolves into litany; poetry turns into prayer. In the next poem of the collection, Lauda 68, the absence of Christthe-bridegroom in Anima’s life resembles the tragedy of widowhood.The apparent death of her spouse leaves Anima to her destitution and bereavement—a topos of love poetry.The reiterated invitations to weep in the first three stanzas give the text the characteristics of a funeral song.The two imperatives urging the soul to weep at the beginning of the poem may be understood as the poet’s own or, if read self-referentially, the poet’s incitement to his own allegorized soul to wail and mourn, or it might even be the soul referring to herself in the second person singular. After the ambiguous “Piangi” . . .“Piangi” (“Weep” . . .“Weep”), Anima takes over the speaker’s role and assertively states her intention to lament:“Io voglio piangere” (“I wish to weep”).The melancholic tone of the poem continues throughout and is conveyed by a series of vocatives introduced by “O” in stanzas four to seven.23 This sorrowful song is inscribed in the medieval genre of planctus, a funeral song, a lament for the loss of a loved one, typically a patron or patroness in the Provençal tradition.Anima weeps over Christ’s departure, because by abandoning her he has deprived her of both father and husband. Evelyn Underhill remarks on the troubadour derivation of this type of text and on the apparent contradiction between the erotic element of Iacopone’s poetry and his severe asceticism:

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In [his] laments of the soul for its absent Love, he seems indeed to be directly imitating on new levels of feeling the popular type of troubadour song in which the lover bewails his separation from Madonna, or the Lady that from her love.Though such adoption of the conventions of earthly passion seems inconsistent with his bitter asceticism, we must remember first the erotic element in Iacopone’s early mystical transports, and next the extent to which his Franciscan environment would encourage spiritual romanticism. St. Francis, a natural poet and skilled musician, had brought the methods and feeling of the troubadours to the service of God.24

If the love relation of Christ and Anima resembles the feeling of the lover for the lady in secular poetry, metaphorical widowhood is Anima’s status resulting from the absence (real or simply perceived) of Christ-the-lover. The funereal rhetoric of this lauda bears some resemblances to Lauda 93,“Donna de Paradiso,” Iacopone’s famous planctus for Christ’s Passion and crucifixion.Anima’s pitiable complaint makes use of the same terminology and tone as Mary does at the foot of the cross in Lauda 93. In Lauda 68: Io voglio piangere, ché m’agio anvito, ché m’ho perduto pate e marito; Cristo piacente, giglio fiorito, èsse partito per mio fallore. I weep for good reason, For I have lost both son and father. Comely Christ, lily in flower, Has left me, and the fault is mine.

In Lauda 93 Mary calls out to her son in desperation and addresses him as “figlio, patre e marito” (“son, father, and spouse”).The appellation “giglio” as referred to Christ also occurs in both texts: the “giglio fiorito” (“lily in flower”) of Lauda 68 becomes the alliterative and much more powerful, evocative line in Lauda 93,“O figlio, figlio, figlio!—figlio, amoroso giglio” (“my son, my son, my son, my loving lily”). In Lauda 68, as in previous instances, Anima once again acknowledges that her faults are responsible for the bridegroom’s disappearance (“èsse partito per mio follore” [“(he) has left me, and the fault is mine”]), but she is also quick to blame him for her imminent death,“O Iesù Cristo, co ’l puoi sofferire / de si amara morte farme morire?” [“O Jesus Christ, how can you allow me / to die such a bitter death?”]). Subsequent

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lines pose a real theological impasse.Anima’s desire to die defies not simply the appreciation of the gift of life, but also the Christian taboo of suicide. Anima, in fact, asks for Christ’s permission to take her own life, or else she will die an even harder death.These subversive concepts are formulated as follows: Damme licenzia de me ferire, ché mo m’occido con gran desiore. O Iesù Cristo, avessi altra morte che me donassi che fosse più forte! Give me leave to deal myself a mortal blow, For I would gladly do so. O Jesus Christ, If You could let me die A death still harder than that.

Death may be desired in Christianity only when it signifies a reunification with divinity, which does not seem to be the case in Lauda 68. Death as a violent assault on one’s life occurs out of desperation and bears a sinful stigma. In a text devoted to the absence of the bridegroom in the true tradition of secular love lyric, Anima reaches the disquieting conclusion that she would rather perish than be without him. Lauda 68 is Iacopone’s De profundis, the mournful prayer for the deceased that laments the disappearance of God and the hopeless feelings accompanying it. It is a cry of desperation for his return.The similarity between Iacopone’s text and Psalm 129, the song known as De profundis, is both thematic and textual. In the two texts there is a common feeling of abandonment and a sense of expectation regarding the new coming of Christ, but there are also poetic echoes and semantic assonances that link the two poems; a close comparison of them will reveal the similarities.The biblical text of the Vulgate, the version Iacopone knew, reads as follows: De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine; Domine, exaudi vocem meam. Fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae. Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, Domine, quis sustinebit? Quia apud te propitiatio est, et timebimus te. Sustinui te, Domine;

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sustinuit anima mea in verbo eius, speravit anima mea in Domino. Magis quam custodes auroram, speret Israel in Domino. Quia apud Domino misericordia, et copiosa apud eum redemptio. Et ipse redimet Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus eius.25

The New Jerusalem Bible translates the text of Psalm 129 (which in the new numerical order of this biblical version becomes Psalm 130) as follows: From the depths I call to you,Yahweh: Lord, hear my cry. Listen attentively to the sound of my pleading! If you kept a record of our sins, Lord, who could stand their ground? But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered. I rely, my whole being relies, Yahweh, on your promise. My whole being hopes in the Lord, more than watchmen for daybreak; more than watchmen for daybreak let Israel hope in Yahweh. For with Yahweh is faithful love, with him generous ransom; and he will ransom Israel for all its sins.

Profound desperation caused by the absence of God and weeping lamentation shape Iacopone’s poem and the biblical text; both refer to the soul’s lament metalinguistically: Anima in Lauda 68 and the soul in Psalm 129 wail, while pointing out that they are doing so.The main difference between the two poems is the metaphoricity of Lauda 68, which transforms its figurative personification of the beloved into an allegory and depicts the relation of Christ and Anima in poetic terms by regarding them as lovers.The allegorical quality of Iacopone’s poem opposes the directness—it would be difficult to name it “literalness,” given the nature of the interlocutor— of Psalm 129, in which the cause of God’s absence is certainly not death, but the soul’s own iniquity.

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Both are mournful poems reflecting on and referring to moaning lamentation in turn. Such metalamentation appears in particular in one word that links the two texts semantically.“Clamore,” derived etymologically from the Latin verb “clamare,” “to cry,” “to shout,” occurs twice in Lauda 68, echoing the preterite “clamavi” of the first line in Psalm 129 (the translation of The New Jerusalem Bible changes the past tense of the Vulgate into a present tense).The crucial position of this semantic link stresses its overall importance in both texts.The word is placed in the first line of Psalm 129 and occurs twice at approximately the center of Lauda 68 (stanza six and stanza seven of an eleven-stanza poem), where the two “clamore” rhyme with each other.The self-referential significance of “clamare” in Psalm 129, in which the supplicant “cried out” to God, separates into two different meanings in Iacopone’s Lauda 68.The split helps to clarify the semantics of the term as contained in Psalm 129 as well.The soul speaks to Christ-the-beloved in these terms: Sèmmeti tolto serrate hai le porte, non par che c’entri a te mio clamore. O cor tapino, e que t’ha emprenato, che t’ha el dolor cusì circondato? recerca de for, ché ’l vaso è acolmato, non hai dannagio da non far clamore. You have left me bereft, closed the gate, And it seems my cry does not come unto You. O wretched heart, what is the root of this pain That holds you tightly in its grasp? It is brimming over, the vessel is full; Yours no grief that could be endured in silence.

The first “clamore” indicates “prayer,” in the sense of a lamenting request that remains unfulfilled.The second “clamore” retains the more literal meaning of “crying” or “weeping.”The outcry, as prayer of supplication for the soul’s rescue in Psalm 129, appears in a more diluted form in Lauda 68, where the two meanings of the word “clamore” are rendered in different contexts.The reference to lamentation gives these texts a metaprayerful and meta-lamenting tone.They are prayerful, lamenting texts that in their turn reflect on lamentation as a form of prayer.The absence of God-the-beloved inspires the loud request for his return, either in the form of an extreme planctus, as in Lauda 68, or in the form of hopeful expectation, as in Psalm 129.

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The mournful theme of the De profundis, which the liturgical tradition has adopted as a funeral song, also structures Lauda 68, in which a considerable portion lists the negative effects caused by the lover’s death.The body wails and cries along with the soul—or, rather, the soul talks about herself as having a metaphorical body. Her heart is so filled with grief that it can only weep. Her ears, which once heard the beloved’s jubilant sounds and joyful singing, now listen to sad cries. Her eyes shed tears until they lose vision, since they have been deprived of the vision of Christ.This final detail regarding blindness is a literary topos, but in the Franciscan context it may also be read as a reference to Francis’s loss of eyesight, which the Franciscan Legenda attributes to his excessive crying in sympathy for Christ’s Passion and death.26 The common mournful qualities of Lauda 68 and the De profundis allow for two separate approaches to the absence of God and to the lack of an answer from him. In Psalm 129 the sorrowful tone at the beginning of the text converts into the hopeful metaphor of the night watch impatiently awaiting dawn in the second half. In Lauda 68,Anima persists in her lament until the end, stressing her desperation and the sense of emptiness occasioned by the death of her beloved.The two texts feature the two possible responses to the absence of a loved one: one is the hopeful expectation of reunification, which corresponds theologically to resurrection; the other focuses on despondency and looks back, rather than forward. The pessimistic attitude shaping Lauda 68 finds a solution in Iacopone’s sequel to this intricate and controversial rapport between Christ and Anima. The following stage of their relationship is sketched in Lauda 71 and consists in their triumphant and joyous reunification.While thematizing the two lovers’ rapprochement, Iacopone revives the metaphor of copulation, previously censored on a physical level.The poem’s sensual and erotic overtones are acknowledged even by the editorial title, which reads:“Come Cristo se reposa ne l’anima ornata da virtù come sposo con la sposa” (“As Christ rests in the soul adorned by virtues, like the bridegroom with his bride”). Should any doubts arise as to the nature of this reunification, the poet makes it clear by placing them together on the bed, the new locus of mystical union. Iacopone renders in poetic terms what other mystics accomplish in prose accounts, when “they resort to explicitly erotic language and images, both scriptural and nonscriptural, to describe their experiences.”27 By the time the reader of the canzoniere reaches Lauda 71, consummation stands for more than simply an image of agapic love, since the possible sexual overtones echoing in earlier laude have by now disappeared

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and eroticism occurs as a component of ι‘ερ`ος γ`αµος (hieros gamos), the sacred marriage.All elements are purified. In the economy of the last section of the canzoniere, consummation no longer bears a referent in the physical union of two human beings; it is solely a signifier indicating a mystical experience. In a similar fashion, all other elements participating in the unification require a symbolic interpretation, and the many parts that structurally compose the bed metonymically represent different theological concepts.As is the case in numerous medieval commentaries on the Song of Songs, the amorous dalliance and sensual courting of the two lovers are interpreted as the love relation of God and humankind.28 The literal stage of sexual intercourse between the bridegroom and bride is skipped entirely. It is there to represent something else, as the only fitting image that can circumvent the ineffability of such a strong union, and its literalness is instrumental to a higher level of signification. After a didactic preface on the importance of brevity in any type of discourse, Iacopone self-referentially announces the beginning of his “dittato,”“the poetic matter,” and reiterates orderliness as the conditio sine qua non for Christ’s unification with Anima.Then the entire text of Lauda 71 unfolds along a single simile, whereby the Christ-Anima relation equals the consummation of marriage.29 Orderliness accomplishes the desired closeness to divinity for an unspecified “omo” (an impersonal, neutral human being). Subsequently, the same concept of orderliness is enacted in the long series of matches between parts of the bed and more or less canonical theological principles. The bed features as the privileged setting for the lovers’ intimate encounter. The many parts that structure the bed metonymically represent Christian theological concepts and articles of faith. Iacopone lists a long series of matches to demonstrate the exactness of his simile. He equates various parts of the bed with an equal number of virtues, theological concepts, and spiritual assets, which empower a sound and strong relation between the soul and Christ. Some of the structural parts of the bed are peculiarly medieval, which adds to the obscurity of some parallels. Interestingly, the locus of this crucial encounter corresponds to the mind—“la mente sì è ’l letto” (“the mind . . . is the bed”).Then all other correspondences ensue in a strictly metaphorical pattern: the four feet of the bed are the cardinal virtues, the ropes tying the bed together are the articles of faith, the bed cover is hope, while charity is more generically (and somewhat obscurely) equaled to “what ties together” and “ties with God” (“la caritate iogne—e con Dio me coiogne”). Although several items are not impeccably matched, the

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litanic tone created by the long list of bed parts with their corresponding elements in Christian faith evokes the textual layout of medieval theological treatises and biblical commentaries. Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the “Song of Songs” is an excellent example, because, besides having a comparable rhetorical structure, it is a suitable parallel to Iacopone’s Lauda 71 by virtue of their similar subject matter. But the series of correspondences between components of the bed and elements of faith more precisely echoes the tradition of mnemotechnics, the art of memory. In her study on this topic, Frances Yates draws a picture of mnemonic techniques from classical antiquity to its flourishing phase in the Renaissance.The influence of the anonymous (previously attributed to Cicero) Ad Herennium, the classical text on ars mnemonica, endured throughout the Middle Ages and was perpetuated in the works of Martianus Capella,Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas, reaching its climax in Renaissance Italy with Giulio Camillo’s L’idea del theatro.30 Iacopone’s Lauda 71 appears to adopt the classical tradition of associating loci and imagines as a method to remember the sequence and order in which various elements of a speech are to be spoken. 31 Iacopone replaces more general architectural components with parts of the bed, but retains the detailed matches and the orderliness lying behind the associations.The intricate cluster of theological and spiritual notions leading to ecstatic union becomes accessible because of the metaphorical correspondence with the practical and graspable echelon of bedding. Again, order and organization indicate the presence of God. However, after the first few conceptual connections, Lauda 71 proceeds to list matches that are dictated more by analogy and free association of rhyme or alliteration than application of logic.Amid the hardly decipherable correspondences of bed parts and theological concepts, the general gist of the central verses concerns the Passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, combined with sin as the parallel human cause of those crucial mysteries of Christianity. De paglia c’è un saccone:—la mia cognizione, como so vile nato—e pieno de peccato. De sopre è ’l materazo—Cristo per me fo pazo, o’ se mise a venire—per me poter avire. Ècce un capezale:—Cristo en croce sale, morto e tormentato,—con ladron compagnato. Stese ce son lenzuola:—lo contemplar che vola, specchio de divinitate,—vestito d’umanitate.

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There is a big sack of straw— The recognition of our sins and unworthiness, And on that, the mattress— Christ mad with love of me, Come to possess me. At the head of the bed, Christ climbing onto the cross, Dying in pain, with a thief at His side. The sheets are spread out—winged contemplation, Through which man enfleshed can mirror divinity.

Parenthetically, one might notice that this section stands at the center, between the mention of the first theological virtue (faith) and the other two (hope and charity), besides being the center of the poem as a whole. After all, just as the referent (Christ’s Passion) is a crucial occurrence in Christianity, the signifier of the metaphorical setting is also “central” in relation to the object considered. Iacopone refers to the core of bedding in this section: the box spring (sack of straw), the mattress, the bolster (or pillow), and the sheets. If the stuffed sack of straw, which lies under the mattress, the locus of ecstatic unification of Christ and Anima, suggests to the poet the superabundance of human sinfulness, the bolster, the head of the bed, represents the culmination of Christ’s sacrifice with his crucifixion.32 The sheets are important elements for the analogies they establish.They reflect Christ’s image as in a mirror, bringing to mind the shroud - the sheet used to envelop his body at the deposition and σινδ ων ΄ (sindon), later worshiped as a relic, tangible proof of his resurrection. By analogy, the sheets and the image imprinted on them at the crucifixion are superimposed, so that the unifying act taking place on the bed becomes linked to the Passion.The moment of ecstasy in the mystic’s life becomes associated with the suffering of Christ. Love and Passion coincide.The key verse refers to physical possession to indicate Christ’s saving act and leaves little space for ambiguity:“De sopre è ’l materazo—Cristo per me fo pazo, / o’ se mise a venire—per me poter avire” (On top of the mattress—Christ was crazy for me, / and he decided to come—in order to possess me [my translation]).The lover loses control of his actions, driven by an uncontrollable impulse to love and be united with Anima. Christ’s loving mania urges him to come into the world and rescue humanity, even though this remains an incomprehensible act for the beloved Anima. Such folly is caused by his desire to repossess her and make her his own.

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The rhetoric of Lauda 71 follows the loving process from orderliness and control to overpowering folly.The culmination of this ascent marks liberation from all limits and the abandonment of demarcations. Climactic pleasure leaves behind the orderly structures that have accompanied Anima until this point. She is now ready for consummation, which represents the fulfillment of sacramental union as it does in marriage. Unrestrained love finds its expression in physical and spiritual self-donation.The loss of organized structure in the parable of love parallels similar loosening of stylistic rigidity. Iacopone abandons the list of neat correspondences that structure the initial two-thirds of the lauda and launches into a cryptic, hermetic description of its outcome in mystical union.The change in poetic rhetoric and the obscure, hermetic medium suggest the difficulty of linguistically rendering an ineffable event, such as ecstatic pleasure conveyed by union with the divine. La caritate iogne—e con Dio me coniogne, iogne la vilitate—con la divina bontade. E qui nasce un amore,—ch’a emprennato el core, pieno de desiderio,—d’enfocato misterio. Prenno liquidisce,—languendo parturisce: parturisce un ratto—nel terzo ciel è tratto. Cielo umano passa,—l’angelico trapassa, ed entra en la caligine—col Figlio della Virgine. Ed en Dio uno e trino,—loco li se mette el frino lo entelletto posato,—l’affetto adormentato. E dorme senza sonnia—c’ha veritate d’omnia, c’ha reposato el core—nello divino amore. Charity then approaches, And makes me one with God, Joins my unworthiness and His goodness. And of that union is born A love that impregnates the heart, Full of desire and flaming mystery: The fecund soul melts and in mortal weakness Gives birth to ecstasy. It is swept up past human heaven, Past that of the angels, Into the third heaven, The realm of darkness,

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Where it finds the Son of the Virgin. All motion ceases in God, One and Three, The mind and the motions are in repose. The soul falls into a dreamless sleep For it possess all truth, And rests in the heart of God.

All elements of matrimonial consummation occur, though they are obscurely reported. Hermeticism may be interpreted as a poetic device that helps to convey the confusion and excitement experienced by the lovers.The poet’s analogical style appears to be the poetic/rhetorical parallel of the ecstatic moment he is describing.When language fails its mission, Iacopone resorts to free association and abundant rhyming. Each stanza consists of four septenaries that form rhyming couplets. A different characteristic of ecstatic union is reported in each consecutive stanza.The succession of concepts associated in this section includes love as the underlying sentiment, then fecundity, labor, rapture, ecstasy, a nebulous mystical union with the Son of the Virgin, arrival in the Third Heaven, and finally deep sleep.The rhyming septenaries confer uniformity to this text, but the homogeneity of the first two-thirds of the poem, when Iacopone lists the metaphorical correspondences of parts of the bed with theological elements, is lost.The style becomes hermetic; the associations are no longer rigorously structured; the tone changes to convey the mystical, mysterious experience of the Third Heaven.The images are presented more or less in free association and appear to imitate the apocalyptic style of the biblical Book of Revelation. Ecstatic union with God equals an ascent to the Third Heaven, which is described in the mystical language of Dionysius the Aeropagite as “the kingdom of darkness.”33 The journey to the Third Heaven, as in the tradition of Saint Paul and, proleptically, Dante, unveils the mystery of the Trinity. After the climactic moment of revelation and ecstasy, Anima collapses with exhaustion and falls asleep. Having reached the ineffable moment of pleasure and fulfillment, she rests. Sleep follows intimate ecstatic union with her lover.This is when “the soul falls into dreamless sleep / for it possess all truth, / and rests in the heart of God.” Having reached such sublimity, Iacopone concludes Lauda 71 with an ironic remark.The poetic envoi warns the reader against the perils of falling from such attained heights of the spirit and the mind.The last verse reads:

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Vale, vale, vale!—Ascende per queste scale, ché pò cader en basso,—fari’ grande fracasso. Farewell, farewell, farewell. Climb up these steps, For to stumble here would lead to a mighty fall.

While the conclusion solicits the reader to be on guard against a possible catastrophic fall from the sublime height of ecstasy, its bitter irony drops the general poetic tone of the lauda, thereby enacting in the different stylistic realm the rapid descent to which it refers thematically.The final warning functions as a return to the difficult reality of a constant struggle that characterizes the ordinary relation of Christ and Anima and a return to the reality of the poetic text.The rare occurrence of an ecstatic moment is counterbalanced by the necessity for continuous ascent, as suggested by the “[a]scende per queste scale” (“[c]limb up these steps”), which might be interpreted as a self-referential, deictic directive to follow in the various steps indicated by the poem itself. The ironic turn of Lauda 71 indicates Iacopone’s passion for linguistic and stylistic experimentation. He unwaveringly treats everything that concerns divinity in a sublime and serious fashion, but irresistibly satirizes human petty concerns in general and his own faults in particular. After reaching the unsurpassed heights of the Third Heaven, he satirically brings the poetic level down by referring to the disastrous fall he is risking. Starting with a joyous song to poverty in Lauda 59, the second section of Iacopone’s canzoniere highlights the importance of harmony, particularly in Lauda 64, in order to introduce matrimonial union of Christ and Anima in all its manifold manifestations in Lauda 67 and Lauda 68 and then to reach its highest peak in the mystical ecstasy of Lauda 71. From now until the conclusion, the collection of laude concentrates on finding a linguistic and rhetorical medium to express the unprecedented experience the poet has just reported. NOTES 1. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Vitis mystica 3.5, The Mystical Vine, in The Works of Bonaventure, Cardinal, Seraphic Doctor, and Saint, vol. 1, Mystical Opuscula, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, N.J.: St.Anthony Guild Press, 1969), 155; and Itinerarium mentis ad Deum 4.8, in The Journey of the Mind to God, in ibid., 41–42.

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2. This is the passage in Rev. 19:6–9:“I heard what seemed to be the voices of a huge crowd, like the sound of the ocean or the great roar of thunder, answering,‘Alleluia! The reign of the Lord our God Almighty has begun; let us be glad and joyful and give glory to God, because this is the time for the marriage of the Lamb. His bride is ready, and she has been able to dress herself in dazzling white linen, because her linen is made of the good deeds of the saints.’ ” 3. Novati opposes the purity of Francis’s mysticism to Iacopone’s more theoretical approach to mysticism.“L’amor mistico in San Francesco d’Assisi ed in Jacopone da Todi,” 227–51. 4. Lauda 63 is a peculiar prose letter addressed to Brother John of Fermo, which breaks up the sequence of laude shaping the introduction to the theme of love. 5. Alvaro Cacciotti comments on this poem as follows:“la povertà, in tutta la lauda, canta inebriata il suo dominio. Sulla scorta dei medesimi temi e sulla scia della stessa affinità di animo e di intenti col ‘Cantico delle creature’ di S. Francesco, il componimento jacoponico, nell’abbondante citazione di regni, popoli ed elementi naturali, innegga alla povertà, gran Signora. . . . In questo clima di gioiosa festa la Povertà è quella gran Signora, fiera e padrona di tutto. È una dilatazione infinita dello spirito, padrone del mondo intero. L’amore portato all’innamorante povertà è il possesso e l’unione piena con [Cristo].” Amor sacro e amor profano in Jacopone da Todi (Rome: Edizioni Antonianum, 1989), 156–57. 6. The translation by Serge Hughes and Elizabeth Hughes excises all references to the opposition of nakedness and clothes, which is crucial to my reading of these lines. 7. The concept of the via negativa in religious discourse comes into play indirectly in Kenneth Schmitz’s investigation of “symbol” and its significance in religion:“There is within such symbolism . . . the interplay of presence and absence. . . .The symbol reveals, but it hides more than it reveals, and it reveals that it hides more than it reveals. For it discloses the sacred presence as that which stands essentially free of the conditions of the symbol.The sacred is present in or to the symbol, but not enclosed by it.The inner process of symbolism, then, leads out to a reality which turns back, so to speak, upon the sign elements and discloses a numinous presence that out-strips them absolutely.”“Links Between Religious Experience, Natural Language, Religious Theory, and Practice,” in Religions and Languages:A Colloquium , ed. Bruce S.Alton (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 34. 8. In Dante’s rendering of the life of Francis in Paradiso 11, Lady Poverty is the bride of Christ who, after being widowed at Christ’s death on the cross, remains alone until she is united in matrimony with Francis more than eleven hundred years later.This is how Dante relates Poverty to Christ and Francis in Paradiso 11:64–66: “Questa, privata del primo marito, / millecent’anni e più dispetta e scura / fino a costui si stette sanza invito” (“She was bereft of her first husband; scorned, / obscure, for some eleven hundred years, / until that sun came, she had had no suitor”).

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9. The expression is Saint Paul’s:“every one of you that has been baptised has been clothed in Christ” (Gal. 3:27). See also chapter 1, note 48. 10. For an analysis of the melic aspect of Lauda 64, see chapter 3. 11. According to Thomas of Celano, Francis reproduced the first Nativity scene in the year 1223, three years before his death. The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano 1.30.84–87, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 1:254–57. 12. On the imperceptible development of the lauda into a dramatic dialogue, see Moleta,“Dialogues and Dramatic Poems in the Laudario Iacoponico,” 11:“The scene at Bethlehem is merely the preface to a long and passionate dialogue between the soul and Christ the Bridegroom.” 13. For the possible influence of troubadour love poetry on Iacopone, see, among others, Francesco Flora, Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 1 (Milan: Mondadori, 1945), 54:“Jacopone accetta della precedente poesia amorosa di provenienza franco-provenzale tutti i modi, ma li traspone in sensi religiosi e mistici.” 14. Iacopone’s poetic style and thematic patterns break away from the Provençal tradition, which was absorbed and in part imitated by the Sicilian School and the Siculo-Toscani, but Iacopone is certainly influenced by the cultural and poetic aura of courtly love, which occasionally reappears in his collection. On the topic of Iacopone’s relation to the previous poetic tradition, see Francesco Grisi, La protesta di Iacopone da Todi: Appunti sulla contestazione religiosa (Rome:Trevi Editore, 1976), 24; and Underhill, Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic, 214. 15. Elena Landoni considers Iacopone’s revision of the courtly tradition in linguistic terms:“con coerenza ineccepibile [Iacopone] rovescia la portata semantica di alcuni capisaldi della terminologia cortese, instaurando così, per via linguistica, una scala di valori alternativa e autentica a quella lirico-tradizionale.” Il “libro” e la “sentenza”: Scrittura e significato nella poesia medievale—Iacopone da Todi, Dante, e Cecco Angiolieri (Milan:Vita e Pensiero, 1990), 13. 16. See Saint Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy 2:13.“If we are faithless, he is faithful still, / for he cannot disown his own self.” The only possible Iacoponian inspiration for the theme of abandonment in Scripture might be Christ’s cry from the cross:“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). 17. For the combination of male and female in medieval Christian writings, see Ann W.Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 13:“In the metaphysics of sexuality, every person, male or female, is more feminine than masculine in relation to God—because receptive, dependent, and small.” 18. The concept of disfigurement of Anima-the-bride is a topos of medieval theology. It can be found, for example, in Hugh of St.Victor:“But look what you have done, my soul; you have deserted your betrothed, and prostituted your love with strangers.You have corrupted your wholeness, befouled your beauty, scattered abroad your attiring. So vile, so disgraceful, and unclean have you become that you are no more worthy of the embraces of such a betrothed.” The Soul’s Betrothal-Gift, 23.

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19. The translation consulted for this study solves the difficulty of this punning line by stressing the aesthetic elements of Anima’s appearance while hinting at conversion:“If I reshape myself, will You not come back?” The solution is elegant, although the interesting pun is lost in the process. 20. For this aspect of Todi’s history at the time of Iacopone, see Peck, The Fool of God, 21. 21. Besides being an imitation of the epithalamic rhetoric of the Song of Songs, the metaphor of wedlock as depicting the relation of God to his people has a long tradition starting with Hosea and Jeremiah. 22. To the poem’s great impoverishment, the translators of the English edition used for this study have for the most part omitted this important feature of the lauda, thereby altering its structure and its significance. 23. In the ninth stanza the vocative moan “O” is replaced by the initial “o” of the word “Orecchie” that starts the line. 24. Underhill, Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic, 214. 25. Biblia sacra, iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. Bonifatio Fischer et al. (Stuttgart: Wüttembergische Bibelanstalt, 1975). 26. This is how Bonaventure explains Francis’s blindness in Legenda maior and links it to the vision of God:“[Francis] taught those who strive after the perfect life to cleanse themselves daily with streams of tears. Although he had already attained purity of heart and body, he did not cease to cleanse the eyes of his soul with a continuous flood of tears, unconcerned about the loss of his bodily sight.When he had incurred a very serious eye illness from his continuous weeping, and a doctor advised him to restrain his tears if he wanted to avoid losing his sight, the holy man answered:‘Brother doctor, we should not stave off a visitation of heavenly light even a little because of love of the light that we have in common with flies. For the body receives the gift of light for the sake of the spirit and not the spirit for the sake of the body.’ He preferred to lose his sight rather than to repress the devotion of the spirit and hold back the tears which cleansed his interior vision so that he could see God.” Major Legend of Saint Francis 5.8, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 2:565–66. 27. McGinn, “The Language of Love in Christian and Jewish Mysticism,” 202.The article examines several examples of eroticism in mystical language, ranging from Bernard of Clairvaux to Rupert of Deutz, Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Theresa of Avila. 28. Alphonso-Karbala explains the importance of the lovemaking imagery to the understanding of God in his relation to human beings and sees the Song of Solomon as the best biblical book for that purpose:“[T]he imagery that evokes the deepest and profoundest of human emotions and experiences is the imagery of lovers, in which all of us are capable of participating.”“Mythic and Symbolic Verbal Structures and Literal Meaning in Literature,” 54.

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29. Anson Laytner’s discussion of rabbinical usage of the marital allegory points out that “the metaphor provides continuity while allowing for alienation, discord, anger, and, unfortunately, violence. But more significantly, there always exists as well the possibility of a reconciliation and of a renewal and ever-deepening love.Therein lies the power of the metaphor—hope remains no matter what happens in the interim.” Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1990), 139. 30. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). Giulio Camillo, L’idea del theatro, ed. Lina Bolzoni (Palermo: Sellerio, 1991). 31. According to Cicero’s De oratore, memory is one of the fundamental skills in which rhetoricians must be versed. 32. The association of straw with sinfulness may have been inspired by a similar parallel in Matt. 3:12: “His winnowing-fan is in his hand; he will clear his threshing-floor and gather his wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out.”An almost identical metaphor occurs in Luke 3:17. 33. For the concept of “darkness” as being above light itself in Dionysius the Aeropagite, see, for example, The Mystical Theology, trans. Colm Luibheid, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, ed. Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 135 and passim.

7

Symphony of the Ineffable WITH THE SUBLIMITY of mystical union between Anima and Christ achieved in Lauda 71, the remaining portion of Iacopone’s canzoniere focuses on the intricate consequences of this rare religious occurrence.The poet’s closeness to God leads to reflections on the inadequacy of language to convey the effects love has produced on his soul. But the poems at the end of the Laude also consider the crucial choice of the via negativa as a path leading to mystical vision, the role of silence as ascetic practice, the reevaluation of cosmic creation as a manifestation of God, and finally the discovery of melodic, musical language as the sole medium that can, although inadequately, manifest the otherwise unsayable entity of God and the ineffable experience of encountering him. Lauda 71 marks the climax of ecstatic union.After the concept of divine love has been pondered at length and the apex of mystical ecstasy reached, the subsequent step involves reflections on love and on the language of love.The theme of agape, in all its possible polymorphous manifestations, pervades the last thirty laude of the collection.As explained in chapter 5, the issue that needs to be addressed is not the author’s intent. In all probability Iacopone played no part in assembling his poems. But the editor or redactor followed a specific plan in putting together the Laude, which, as a collection, appears to sketch an ascent from easier to more complex poems, but also designs a pattern of love as its main theme.The final third of the collection marks the apotheosis of love. A recourse to ineffability would be a common rhetorical escape when reporting the experience of the Third Heaven, but the poet realizes the necessity for a compromise with language.The linguistic medium cannot give a full, satisfactory report of an encounter with the “Unutterable,” but can, although obscurely, indicate its characteristics and its effects. Grounding his belief in his personal experience of mystical union, Iacopone embraces apophatic theology, which teaches that divinity is outside the realm of any human discourse. But he then adopts poetic language as a most fitting approximation. Unlike Dante, with his insistence on the impossibility of accounting for his vision of God, Iacopone uses innovative

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rhetorical devices and stylistic tools to stretch the limits of poetic language and accommodate his challenging purpose.1 Dante punctuates the narrative of the Paradiso with persistent declarations of ineffability.The epic genre of the Divine Comedy, as sublime and elevated as it is in Paradiso 33, remains within the boundaries of narration and cannot accomplish the results of lyricism. Once he reaches the vision of God, Dante-pilgrim joins Dante-poet in hiding behind the thick, defensive shield of ineffability.2 The lyricism of Iacopone’s Laude grants the poet more space to experiment with his poetic medium and permits the leaps that may indicate, although cryptically, the Unknowable hidden behind language. Reflections on language and silence occur throughout the canzoniere. Iacopone’s awareness of pushing the limits of poetic rhetoric manifests itself with frequent references to language, usually in order to stress its restricted, partial abilities, if not its absolute powerlessness. Silence, as the opposite of linguistic formulations, occurs in his poetry in more than one manifestation. Silence as a form of prayer leading to contemplation is a much-invoked practice in the Laude; it is recommended to aspiring candidates to the mystical experience.3 Lauda 38 contrasts the pleasurable practice of silence with the necessity to do good works, which deprive the religious of their peacefulness; and the poet himself indicates the contradiction between the two religious practices: Piaceme lo silenzio,—bàilo de la quiete; lo bene de Dio arlegame—e tolleme silete; demoro infra le prelia,—non ce saccio schirmete, a non sentir ferete—alta cosa me pare. I bask in silence, the guardian of tranquillity, But doing God’s work robs me of that silence. How can I defend myself Against the onslaught of contradictions? It is triumph enough not to feel the wounds!

The internal battle between a pleasurable, quiet life and the imperative call to perform good works mirrors the theological impasse that contrasts the vita contemplativa with the vita activa, originating in the evangelical account of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38–42). In Iacopone’s figuration, the opposition becomes a cruel battle, which regularly injures the poet. But the fierce personal combat between action and contemplation is

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simply a passing stage; subsequently, ascetic maturity instructs the religious on actions that draw their origin from contemplation, and the two coexist quite peacefully. In approaching the middle of the collection, in Lauda 47, the reader finds a long instructive section on the importance of knowing when to practice silence and when to use words to proclaim God’s greatness; the ascetic importance of silence should not deter the religious from employing words to praise him.The blurry confines of silence and words are delineated in a dialogue between the poet and the Enemy, suggesting the risks that both phenomena may represent for the ascetic, who is constantly called to discriminate between good silence/bad speech and good speech/bad silence.4 This is how the contrast is formulated in Lauda 47: Un defetto par che agi—del silenzio del tacere, multi santi per quiete—nel deserto volser gire. Se tu, frate, non parlassi—sirì a edificazione, molta gente convertèra—ne la tua amirazione. La Scrittura en molte parte—lo tacere ha commendato, e la lengua spesse volte—fa cader l’omo en peccato. Tu me par che dichi vero,—se bon zelo te movesse; en altra parte voi ferire—s’io a tua posta tacesse. Lo tacere è vizioso—ch’ello o’ l’om dèi parlare: lo tacer lo ben de Dio—quando el deve annunziare. Lo tacer ha ’l suo tempo,—el parlar ha sua stagione curre omo questa vita—fin a consumazione. “One more flaw in you: you do not practice silence. In its holy name many saints went into the desert. How edifying, Brother, if you were to practice the art— How many would admire you and turn to God! Scripture, you know, commends silence, Since the tongue often leads man to sin.” “If you were speaking out of zeal, What you say would be true. But you want to persuade me to be silent For your own unworthy ends. When we ought to speak out, silence is a sin, As when we fail to proclaim the goodness of God. There is a time for silence and a time for speech, And this holds true until the very last.”

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The Enemy knowingly quotes Scripture, as he does when tempting Christ in the desert (Matt. 4:1–11, Mark 1:12–13, Luke 4:1–3). Iacopone’s “[t]here is a time for silence and a time for speech” appears to echo the dichotomic separation of time according to the Book of Ecclesiastes (3:7),“a time for keeping silent, / a time for speaking.” Both have a crucial function in religious life. Silence is an edifying practice when it strengthens the search for God and increases knowledge of divinity, but it may become a sinful excuse to eschew witnessing to one’s faith with charitable words. Likewise, speech reveals two sides. On one hand, it proclaims “the goodness of God” and helps to attest to the new covenant of Incarnation and resurrection; on the other hand, it may serve as a foul instrument of destruction and calumny.When speech acquires these negative qualities, Iacopone associates it with his archenemy, Pope Boniface VIII. In Lauda 56, the first “Letter to Boniface,” the pope’s “lingua” is the derogatory term for his venomous rhetorical skills; Iacopone puns on the two Italian meanings of “lingua,” as both “tongue” and “language,” when formulating a request for pardon to the pope who excommunicated him:“Colla lengua forcuta—m’hai fatta sta feruta, / che colla lengua ligni—e la piaga me stigni” (“You have wounded me with your forked tongue; / That selfsame tongue can soothe and heal me”). In beseeching the pope for forgiveness, the poet attributes to him the forked tongue typical of a serpent, in biblical imagery the symbol of evil.The metaphor is powerful. If it appears to acknowledge the pope’s absolute power to cast out and readmit into the body of the Church, at the same time it suggests debasing and improper figurative associations. Iacopone deftly demonstrates his own rhetorical propensity when he forges his entire poetic text around the wide dichotomy between the papal role and spirituality.The pope’s superficial function of excluding and readmitting Christians into the body of the Church stands in opposition to the deep spiritual life matured by the mystic through prolonged grief and toiling.The poem announces that while Boniface enjoys the formal power of his insincere and void words, Iacopone’s silence and reclusion possess invincible spiritual strength.Thus Iacopone’s initial request for pardon is overshadowed by a tinge of pride and becomes somewhat hypocritical, if not utterly ironic.5 In Lauda 58, the “Third Letter from Jail to Pope Boniface VIII,” the submissive (although mockingly so) request for pardon of the previous poem gives way to an unwaveringly accusatory tone. Boniface’s tongue is once again the focus of Iacopone’s debasing rhetoric:

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Lucifero novello—a sedere en papato, lengua de blasfemia—che ’l mondo hai venerato, che non se trova spezie,—bruttura de peccato, là ’ve tu se’ enfamato—vergogna è a proferire. Poneste la tua lengua—contra la relione, a dicer la blasfemia—senza nulla cagione; e Dio sì t’ha somerso—en tanta confusione che onom ne fa canzone—tuo nome a maledire. O lengua macellaia—a dicer villania, remproperar vergogne—con grande blasfemìa, né emperador né rege—chi vol altri se sia, da te non se partìa—senza crudel ferire. Behold a new Lucifer on the papal throne, Poisoning the world with his blasphemies! Nothing good is left to you—only sin; I’d be ashamed to mention some vices you’re accused of. Blaspheming, for no good reason, You condemn religious orders. God will let you perish in this turbulence, And all men’s tongues will curse your name. Your tongue is murderous in its arrogance, Heaping injury and humiliation on all; Not even an emperor or a king Can leave your presence without suffering an affront.

The pope’s tongue is his chief instrument of evildoing; all his sins originate from it.The forked tongue of ambiguity in Lauda 56 has the double ability to injure and to heal; the serpentine association caused by its forked nature is modified only by the duplicitous function Iacopone attributes to it. In the more direct accusatory tone of Lauda 58, Boniface’s tongue is “lengua macellaia” (a butchering tongue [my translation]); it butchers and murders with slander and blasphemy.The resemblance to Lucifer is no longer a possible similitude, but an unambiguous equation, since Boniface is called “Lucifero novello” (a “new Lucifer”). The Laude exalts silence as a virtuous ascetic practice. Iacopone conveys the message that the prayerful exercise of silent contemplation has the mysterious result of increased closeness to God and, eventually, although only infrequently, mystical union.As noted above, the insistence on silence often hides the topos of ineffability.The expedient of speechlessness becomes a synonym for the impossible account of divine experience. Silencing

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(himself and the text) often references Iacopone’s resolution to express ineffability; announcing that words are useless equals the presence of God. From the opening of the canzoniere, in Lauda 2, one of the two poems dedicated to the Virgin Mary (Laude 1 and 2), silence conceals all the numerous, caring actions Mary performed for her son, which, though naturally maternal, were made unutterable when sanctified by her son’s divine nature: O Madonna, quigli atti, che tu avev’en quigl fatti, quigl’enfocati tratti—la lengua m’han mozzata. O Lady, I am struck mute When I think of how you looked on Him, As you fondled Him and ministered to His needs.

The presence of divinity itself “chops the poet’s tongue” and provokes silence as a reaction.There are no adequate expressions to describe the sensations given by performing those simple actions on God himself, who had taken on the body of an infant. A reprise of silence as ineffability occurs in Lauda 37, where it is stressed that language cannot suitably speak of the virtue of chastity:“la mia lengua è mancheza—de parlarne con vuce” (“I falter when I try to speak of you”). In Lauda 38 Iacopone cuts his poetic rhythm short, with an action that may be interpreted as silencing his own poetic text.The poem concludes with a self-referential device pointing out the abbreviation of his text, which may be perceived as inability to persevere on the theme:“abbrevio miei ditta—’n questo loco finare” (I abridge my speech—I must conclude here [my translation]).6 Self-censorship occurs here not as a realization of Iacopone’s own exceeding but as an acknowledgment of the superiority of silence over speech in the mystical/poetic realm. The doctrinal, dogmatic nature of the poems in the first part of the canzoniere permits only limited references to silence as a reflection on mystical union. Silence as the inexpressible presence of divinity occurs more frequently in the final portion of the collection, to indicate the all-encompassing presence of agapic love as the arrival point of the poet’s itinerary, which has been patterned through the Laude. After beginning with a refutation of erotic love, and moving on to a metaphorical relation of Christ and Anima as matrimonial consummation, the poet can find no fitting imagery to capture in words the aftermath of ecstatic union. Even poetic language fails its mission.The human instrument of rhetoric

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offers only a glimpse of it, while the larger portion of such an experience remains concealed behind the screen of ineffability. The last thirty laude of the canzoniere combine ineffability with a Iacoponian understanding of the concept of nichilitate. The term “nichilitate” contains Iacopone’s version of the via negativa in the mystical tradition of Dionysus the Aeropagite. In Iacopone’s usage,“nichilitate” signifies a theological approach to divinity by means of negating what divinity is not, rather than attempting the impossible task of giving a positive definition of it. Likewise, it is easier to view the ecstatic phenomenon negatively and state what it is not than to give a positive account of it and of its qualities, because “[t]o understand the infinite, we need negative definitions.”7 The recourse to nichilitate involves the rhetoric used to account for it.The extremity reached by rhetorical structures at this point in the Laude transpires self-reflectively in the text by repetition of words such as “esmesurato” (“outsized”) and “esmesuranza” (“outsizedness”). It is a state of being beyond measure and beyond understanding. Nichilitate leads to poetic mania; the love of God causes human folly. Closeness to God, the progressive acquisition of which is described throughout the canzoniere, brings with it the phenomenon of divine folly in the mystical poet. The insistence on the impossibility of expressing love and love’s effects becomes a rhythmic, repetitive pattern, which starts early in the collection and proceeds slowly for its first two-thirds, but gains momentum and power in the last portion. One of the qualities of nichilitate, as Iacopone describes it in Lauda 60, seems to be interruption of language:“Questo cielo ha nome none,—moza lengua e ’ntenzone” (The name of this heaven is Nothingness,—it chops one’s tongue and all affirmations [my translation]).8 Nichilitate extends to the realm of rhetoric. Seized by the impulse to negate, the poet opposes rational faculties to the force of love in Lauda 73: O gran prezo senza lengua,—viso, audito senza cuore esmesuranza en te regna,—hai anegato onne valore; lo ’ntelletto sta de fore—o’ l’amore sta a pascuare. O great treasure, with no tongue—sight, hearing with no heart dis-measure reigns in you—you deny all values; intellect is left outside—of the place in which love resides [my translation].

The dichotomy expressed in these lines confirms the deep division between human beings’ rational faculties and the spiritual dimension residing in

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them.The spiritual “treasure” they carry inside cannot be clearly expressed. It is a treasure without a language; love dwells in the reign of esmesuranza (“outsizedness”), and intellect resides elsewhere; they do not coexist in the same realm.9 The poem concludes with a summarizing of familiar concepts interlaced in the ecstatic experience: lo voler de Dio gli è ’nfuso—che ’l suo voler fa nichilare. Poi che l’omo è anichilato,—nasce l’occhio da vedire questo prezo esmesurato—poi l’acomenza sentire nulla lengua lo sa dire—quel che sente en quello stare. The soul is infused with God’s will, its own annihilated. Then man acquires eyes with which to see And begins to understand the price that was paid; And what he feels then no tongue can describe.

These dense lines enucleate convoluted concepts typical of Iacopone’s thought processes.The infusion of God’s will into the mystic causes the annihilation of the mystic’s willpower and the achieving of a symbiotic state, which is hardly orthodox Christianity.The reward for the mystic is the vision of divine things, which grants an understanding of the price paid by Christ for redemption—something the eyes perceive but the tongue fails to account for. Iacopone insists on the ineffability of the sensations inspired by divine love. He refers to them rationally, but also indirectly through the mention of silence in all its multifaceted manifestations. However, he does not conclude his account of a personal spiritual ascent to God by concealing his acquired spiritual exuberance. Expression through language is at once a compromise and a necessity, insofar as Iacopone feels an uncontrollable urge to express his enthusiasm and joy for the goal he has achieved.The final poems of the canzoniere constantly oscillate between these alternatives. Silence would be the more truthful option, in line with both the nature of divine love and the traditional topos of its ineffability. Its alternative involves yielding to an impulse of jubilation, which results from mystical union and defies the commitment to silence.The persistent vacillation between declaring love’s ineffability and attempting to circumvent it with poetic language shapes the last portion of the Laude. It can be found, for example, in Laude 75, 76, 77, three consecutive poems that swing from silence to oral jubilation and singing. In Lauda 75 Iacopone states his speechlessness:

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E me fatt’ha muto che fui parlatore, en sì grande abisso entrat’è el mio core, ch’io non trovo quasi uditore con chi ne possa de ciò ragionare. And I who once could talk am now made mute; My heart has plunged into such an abyss I can find almost no one to whom I can speak Of the horror of this void.

Lauda 76 takes the opposite stand and speaks of the irrepressible song emanating from the joyful heart: O iubilo del core,—che fai cantar d’amore! Quando iubilo se scalda,—sì fa l’uomo cantare; e la lengua barbaglia—e non sa que parlare, dentro non pò celare,—tanto è grande el dolzore! O heart’s jubilation, love and song, Joy and joy unceasing, The stuttering of the unutterable— How can the heart but sing?

The following lauda, number 77, bears the title “Silent Love,” and stresses the injuries befalling the man who attempts to speak of love. Similar oscillation between the implementation of silence imposed by divine ecstasy and the irresistible desire to manifest love’s beauty continues at least through Lauda 91. Iacopone appears to be aware of the paradox: he proclaims the importance of silence as the unique rhetorical response to such an event; at the same time he obeys the uncontrollable impulse to formulate it in words and writes about his ecstatic experience.10 Upon reaching an impasse, he prefers the incoherence of poetic mania to surrendering to love’s overwhelming effects. He openly declares his inability to silence his passionate impulse; in fact, the intensity of God’s loving fire increases if it is kept hidden in his heart; silencing its presence ignites it all the more; the more he keeps love concealed, the more abundant and uncontainable love’s flames become.11 Such is the “silent love” of Lauda 77: Quanto l’om più te cela,—tanto più ’n foco abunne; om che te ven occultando—sempre a lo foco iugne, ed omo c’ha le pugne—de volere parlare,

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spesse volte è feruto. Omo che se destenne—de dir so entendimento, avenga che sia puro—’l primo comenzamento; viene da fuor lo vento—e vagli spaliando quel ch’avea receputo. To seek to conceal your fire is to make it leap higher yet; The man who feels the wild desire to speak of you incurs wounds. If he is beside himself enough To speak to others of this hidden love (Even if his intentions are pure when he begins) The wind will come with a mighty rush And disperse the gifts he has received.

Suffering is the necessary price paid for the growing abundance of love within.The dissipation of love, metaphorically blown away by a mighty wind, is the consequence of announcing it to the world. Once expressed in linguistic sounds and signs, love loses its force and power. Lauda 77 proclaims the importance of concealing the presence of love inside oneself, but Iacopone also acknowledges his helplessness when confronted with the pressure to announce what love has done to him. In Lauda 80, while reflecting on the threefold nature of love, Iacopone confesses his folly in trying to express the significance of love, yet admits to being overwhelmed with the urgency to represent it in language: Parlar de tale amor faccio follia, diota me conosco en teologia, l’amor me conestregne en sua pazia e famme bannire. Prorompe l’abundanza en voler dire, modo non gli trovo a proferire, la verità m’empone lo tacire, ché non lo so fare. It is folly for me, ignorant of theology, To speak of this highest Love, But Love in its wildness Forces me to shout out its praises. With so much to say, I know not how; And though I know it would be better For me to remain mute, I cannot hold my peace.

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Love governs his feelings and his will, and he must obey love’s folly, which forces him to shout. Here Iacopone suggests he is possessed by the force of love and is losing his ability to make rational decisions. His realization that truth would impose silence on him leads to naught, since the superabundance of love directs his actions to express his jubilation nevertheless.12 Iacopone, expressing his awareness that he operates at the limits of poetic language, reflects on the poverty of linguistic communication, when the contents he must convey surpass the instruments at his disposal. Lauda 81 offers ample demonstration that logical, rational language fails its mission as love’s channel of communication. Iacopone addresses language directly as a personalized, allegorized entity and reproaches its proud and pretentious claim to speak about God, when all it can utter is, in fact, simple blasphemy: O lengua scotegiante,—come se’ stata osante de farte tanto enante—parlar de tale stato? Or pensa que n’hai detto—de l’amor benedetto, onne lengua è en defetto—che de lui ha parlato. Se onne lengue angeloro—che stanno en quel gran coro parlando de tal foro,—parlara scelenguato. Ergo co non vergogni?—nel tuo parlar lo pogni, lo suo laudar non giogni,—’nante l’hai blasfemato. O proud tongue, how have you dared To speak of holy Love? Human speech cannot rise to such heights. In speaking of this Love The tongues of angels falter— And you feel no misgivings and shame? You reduce Love To the measure of your words; This is not praise, but blasphemy.

In Iacopone’s own formulation,“reducing Love to the measure of one’s words” represents a shameful rhetorical process; the inadequacy of language transforms praise into insult. If even the language of angels sounds like stuttering when attempting to speak of God, so much more will the language of humans be utterly inadequate.13 The insufficient resources of language become a leitmotif of the final part of the canzoniere.

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After advocating the recourse to silence and contrasting it with the irresistible urge to speak, the poet creates a new opposition between inadequate language and desire to express his feelings—which is simply another way of expressing the sense of ineffability. In Lauda 91, the Empyrean finds no deserving explanation in words: “En quello cielo empiro—sì alto è quel che trova, / che non ne può dar prova—né con lengua narrare” (“It is so high what you find in the third heaven, / that it is beyond demonstration, nor can it be narrated with language”).The paradoxical nature of language, which erupts in senseless expressions and formulates meaningless concepts on the “beyond,” utilizes oxymora such as those in Lauda 92,“Parlando taccio, grido fortemente” (“My speech is silence and shout”), and in Lauda 95, “parlando tazo,—lassando alazo” (“speaking I am silent, while loosening I tighten”). Resorting to oxymoron underscores the paradoxical nature of the poet’s rhetorical operation: God and the experience of God are the meeting point of silence and speech; in such a place affirmation and negation of the power of language equal each other. The poet finds God where finite language encounters divine infinity, where words meet the Word.14 Language’s own reply to the poet in Lauda 81 stresses the necessity for expression.The serious consequence of not crying out “Amore, amore, amore” may be death by suffocation: Non te posso obedire—ch’amor deggia tacire, l’amor voglio bandire,—fin che mo m’esce ’l fiato. Non è condizione—che vada per ragione, che passi la stagione—ch’amor non sia clamato.— Clama la lengua e ’l core:—Amore, amore, amore! Chi tace el tuo dolzore—lo cor li sia crepato. E credo che crepasse—lo cor che t’assaggiasse; se amore non clamasse,—trovárese afogato.— I cannot obey your command to be silent; As long as I have breath in me I will sing of Love’s glory. It is not right That time should pass Without my singing the praises of Love. My heart and tongue call out,“Love, Love, Love!” Should a man taste of Your sweetness And say nothing, may his heart burst!

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If his heart does not shout The praises of Love He will surely suffocate and die!

Repressing the articulate or inarticulate sounds that emerge from one’s throat after the ecstatic experience of love may bring suffocation, so strong is the flow of words and their urge to surface. More directly expressed: death by superabundance of love also occurs at the end of Lauda 90, when the poet asks to be overwhelmed by love to the point of death:“Iesù, speranza mia, abissame en amore” (“Jesus, my hope, drown me in Love”).15 Death or near-death experience accompanies the mystical encounter, whether because of an attempt to suppress the impulse to speak of it, or simply because of the overwhelming force of the experience itself.16 The alternative to ineffability consists in stretching the limits of available language in order to provide a partial hint at the inexpressible journey to the Third Heaven the poet has undergone.17 Iacopone employs a broad range of rhetorical and stylistic devices to express his unutterable experience.18 Along the same lines as “parlare esmesurato” in Lauda 77, both Lauda 80 and Lauda 81 point in the direction of a transformed linguistic medium, which might attempt the complex task of communicating what a more logical poetic discourse would fail to express. “Esmesurato” and “esmesuranza” are two favorite terms in Iacopone’s vocabulary, generally indicating a sense of oversized measure and superabundance that attempts to hint at infinity.19 When the limits of poetic rhetoric have been reached, the next step is a recourse to music.20 Song and melody are better tools to hint at the outsizedness of God.The ethereal essence of music can address the impasse of inexpressivity. In Lauda 80 the song involuntarily coming from the poet’s mouth is compared to a “hissing” or “whistling.”A similar soft noise, as the wind blowing, or a gentle breeze rustling by, was identified by Elijah as God’s voice speaking to him: L’abundianza non se pò occultare, loco sì se forma el iubilare, prorompe en canto che è sibilare, che vidde Elia. How can this overflowing love be suppressed? The jubilation will out,

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As Elias once learned, In prophetic song.

The synesthesia of Elijah’s “seeing” the “whistling of the song” serves the purpose of demonstrating further the expressive power of poetic language, as opposed to the helplessness of literal, prosaic speech.21 Iacopone’s original interpretation of the biblical passage in which the prophet Elijah perceives the blowing wind as the presence of God includes viewing the noise made by the wind as angelic song, or at least as sound stretching beyond the human realm of communication.The episode reported in the First Book of Kings (19:9–18) gives an account of Elijah’s various trials that progressed toward a secure feeling of God’s presence near him. In a typically symbolic fourfold structure, the account speaks of Elijah experiencing a strong wind, an earthquake, and a fire. Finally, the murmur of a soft breeze is the fourth sign and the manifestation of God to him. This poetic image associates Elijah’s exchange with God in the form of a soft, murmuring breeze with the poet’s more or less inarticulate sounds reporting his own encounter with the divine.While poetic language must give an account, although in a flawed fashion, of the ungraspable experience of infinity, it forcibly treads new paths, relying on the poet’s creativity and invention.22 The jubilation that inevitably results from this profound experience inspires an instinctive, uncontrollable emission of sounds, which are not intelligible, known words. 23 They are the instinctive articulations of pleasure, testifying to the ecstatic state experienced by the poet in the course of his mystical union with the divine. In Lauda 81, and even more in Lauda 90, the use of alliteration and rhyme is carried to such an extreme that some lines sound more like word plays and puns than real linguistic referents. Such lines as the following, taken from Lauda 81, sound as if they were inspired by poetic mania; they flow almost uncontrollably, in rhythmic assonance, out of the mouth of the poet, who appears to have produced them unconsciously, as if under the inspiration of a poetic daemon: O amor amativo,—amor consumativo, amor conservativo—del cuor che t’ha albergato. . . . Amore grazioso,—amore delettoso, amor suavetoso, che ’l core hai saziato. . . . Luce luminativa,—luce demostrativa, non viene all’amativa—chi non n’è luminato. . . .

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Amor, lo tuo effetto—dà lume a lo ’ntelletto, demostrali l’obietto—de l’amativo amato. . . . [O loving Love, consuming Love, You fill with throbbing life The heart that shelters You . . . ]. [Generous Love, Gracious Love, Your riches are beyond imagining . . . ]. [Light that enlightens, light that teaches, He who is not illumined by You Does not reach the fullness of Love . . . ]. [Love,You give light To the intellect in darkness And illumine the Object of Love . . . ].

Words such as “amativo,” “consumativo,” “suavetoso,” “luminativa,” and “amativa” evince creativity as a result of the author’s mania. Being seized by the flow of his poetic discourse, the poet strings adjectives and substantives together with no logical connection among them, and the euphoria deriving from his reminiscence of the occurred ecstasy causes words to emerge automatically in his text.This poetic operation is similar to a devinalh, a genre in which morphology and content value are subordinated to phonology and euphonic flow.24 Iacopone’s addition of original terms suggests the desire to transform the terminology at his disposal to render with words a phenomenon that is by definition ineffable. He bends phonology to fit alliterative forms and to create an original musical sound. Iacopone operates at the limits of poetic discourse. He is aware of it, and his attempt to circumvent ineffability has several stylistic and rhetorical consequences. His poetic rhythm accelerates to paroxysmal speed; the urge to account for his love encounter is felt in the pressing tone and fast rhythmical pace. In comparison with previous laude in the collection, the numerical symbolism and lexical creativity of the poems in the final section become even more crucial. Iacopone organizes his verses according to the symbolic number three, as Irene Steiger so rightly indicates:“The triad is the commonest form, the threefold repetition of amor in connection with one or two adjectives or attributes, which often are paradoxically opposed to one another.”25 Confronted with the limitations of language, Iacopone resorts to semantic creation and numerical symbolism. In the midst of poetic mania, he invents original words in

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order to keep assonances and rhymes, so that the stress is put more on the signifier than on the signified.The assonances bring about a quasi-hypnotic rhythm.26 The prevalence of sound over meaning places Iacopone’s poetic rhetoric closer to singing, which favors agreeable melody over the lyrics’ semantics.The harmony resulting from such poetic texts, in which the sound surmounts the literal or even metaphorical significance of words, mirrors the harmony of the mystical union it portrays.27 The “drowning in love” that marks the conclusion of Lauda 90 offers a self-reflective image of the drowning in the repetition of the word “amore,” which occurs at the beginning of most lines in Lauda 81, and throughout the final section of Lauda 90.The poet drowning in “love” can only cry out the word representing the essence in which he is drowning.The persistent, compulsive repetition of the word “amore” at the beginning of virtually every line in Lauda 81 and the double repetition at the beginning of almost every line in the final section of Lauda 90 creates an accumulation of “amore” that mysteriously evokes the presence of love itself.That the first part of each line is structured on the repetition of the word “amore” gives the ending of Lauda 90 a litanic quality and easily transforms the lauda into a prayable text.As with any litanic prayer, the verses contain an original section—in this case the second—accompanied by a repetitive part— here the beginning. Repetition and innovation, as fundamental phenomena of the Christian experience and of Christian prayer, are significant characteristics of these Iacoponian texts.The repetition of the word “amore” also gives the texts a musical, melodic structure, which aids the Iacoponian attempt to surpass the limits of language and to hint at the more ethereal realm of divinity. From the rejection of physical, erotic love for another human being, through the didactic refutation of all types of counterfeit love, Iacopone follows a contorted trajectory leading him to the rediscovery of physical intercourse and matrimonial consummation as a symbol of a mystical, otherwise indescribable, union of human beings with God. Language remains the indispensable means of poetic communication, but Iacopone stretches it to the limits of music and harmony, both by means of the semantic creation of assonances and rhymes and through the repetition of the symbolic word “amore.” Unable to represent the “real” ecstatic union through words, which are inevitably ambiguous and vague, language offers an imprecise indication of God and of his manifestation to human beings. Its rendering is veiled

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and opaque, in the same fashion as names imposed on things do not give the essence of things, but are simply their linguistic signifier.When the referent is God, musical language presents itself as a still imperfect, and yet more apt, signifier. As Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote of eroticism in the Song of Songs, language is “the game of naming in a veiled way that which ought not to be named and nevertheless must be absolutely indicated.”28 By referring to an important text on ecstatic union and mystical matrimony, the definition summarizes the incongruent feeling of impulsive necessity and rational impossibility, during which the whole process is reduced to a ludic enterprise: attempting to verbalize divinity is like a game, the game of naming.Attributing a name to things equals covering them with a veil, or a garment. Language poses itself as a garment, the indispensable garment covering reality and at the same time determining it. Its opposite is silence, which is directly related to nudity in the mythic account of Earthly Paradise.29 While language covers and blurs, it functions as the imperfect but indispensable indicator of reality.The need for human beings to wear (broadly defined) garments after the Fall in Earthly Paradise parallels the temporal and spatial need for linguistic exchange among humans. Language and garments distinguish them from other creatures and identify them as humans. Being poetic, the language of these texts acts as concealing garment by making use of tropes and other rhetorical devices, in themselves ambiguous contrivances that both reveal signifieds and conceal them. Poetic language is by definition allusive and symbolic; it is dressed in thicker garments, which paradoxically allow a clearer understanding.30 Musical harmony as a comprehensive art in the Middle Ages included soothing sounds and a peaceful, amorous relation of all creatures in the world. Francis and Iacopone, the two Franciscan poets at the beginning of the Order, share a predilection for this type of harmony.They express their experience of God through musical language, while drawing poetic inspiration from the biblical myth of creation in Earthly Paradise, with its nude human beings, its gender dynamics of separation and union, and its harmonious relation to nature.

NOTES 1. The concept of apophatic theology in relation to language is the focus of Michael Huntington, “Mysticism and the Limits of Language,” in Language in

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Religion, ed. Humphrey Tonkin and Allison Armstrong Keef (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1989), 36 and passim. Huntington distinguishes between “ ‘expressions’ of the reality of God,” which exist, and “ ‘definitions’ of the reality of God,” which are meaningless. In the first of his Studies in Logology, Kenneth Burke establishes the connection between secular words and sacred Word, which can be summarized by the following passage:“The supernatural is by definition the realm of the ‘ineffable.’And language by definition is not suited to the expression of the ‘ineffable.’ So our words for . . . the supernatural or ‘ineffable’ are necessarily borrowed from our words for the sorts of things we can talk about literally, our words for . . . the world of everyday experience.” The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 15. 2. Regarding the notion of lyrical language in Dante’s Paradiso, see Teodolinda Barolini,“ ‘Cominciandomi dal principio infino a la fine’ (V.N., XXIII, 15): Forging Anti-Narrative in the ‘Vita Nuova,’ ” in La gloriosa donna de la mente: A Commentary on the “Vita Nuova,” ed.Vincent Moleta (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 122. 3. Casella makes the following remarks on silence and words in Iacopone’s prayerful poems:“[Iacopone] era allora giunto . . . a quegli ultimi gradi dell’esperienza mistica, quando la preghiera si fa muta e il cuore trepida in una aspettazione gioiosa e nel silenzio sacro risuonano misteriosamente le parole di Dio.”“Iacopone da Todi,” 307. 4. According to Trombatore, dialogue in Iacopone’s laude is a rhetorical device that often represents the contrast inside the poet’s conscience.“Iacopone da Todi e le sue laude,” 30. 5. Grisi identifies the three poems about Pope Boniface VIII as satirical. La protesta di Iacopone da Todi, 27. 6. The Hughes translation renders this line with “Each of the blades cutting into me. / Enough!”This may be more poetic but does not give a sense of the poet’s self-reflection on language. 7. Alphonso-Karbala,“Mythic and Symbolic Verbal Structures and Literal Meaning in Literature,” 57. 8. The English version used throughout this study changes the meaning of these lines and does not render the ineffability expressed by them; it translates: “The name of this heaven is Nonbeing—/ All affirmations are forbidden.” 9. In Landoni’s words:“Il concetto di ‘esmesuranza’ è centrale nel canto iacoponico. . . . La predilezione per il paradosso suggerisce sottilmente che la lingua non è più in grado di definire lo stato delle cose, ma è spesso ‘altro’ dalle cose; si rivela inadeguata dalla sua funzione e al suo oggetto.” Il “libro” e la “sentenza,” 34. 10. The concept of paradox is strictly connected to mystical language by Bimal Matital:“The mystics believe in the instrumentalism of paradoxes. Paradoxes, according to the mystics, help us to look beyond the normal domain of discourse.”“Ineffability: Issues of Logic and Language,” in Religions and Languages: A Colloqium, ed. Bruce S.Alton (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 122.

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11. Papini formulates this concept about Iacopone’s poetry:“Il Dio cristiano è Amore e la pienezza dell’amore non può sfogarsi che nel canto.” Jacopone da Todi, xv. 12. For this paradox of an encounter between silence and jubilant sounds in Iacopone’s poetry, see Casella,“Jacopone da Todi,” 307. 13. Trombatore expresses the concept of stuttering in Iacopone’s poetry as follows: “La sua mente abbagliata dal sole accecante dell’Amor Divino non sa trasmettere alla lingua altro che un supremo, commovente balbettio.”“Iacopone da Todi e le sue laude,” 23. 14. Giulio Bertoni remarks on the paradoxical nature of Iacopone’s poetry in more general terms: “il tono di tutta la sua lirica non è decisamente né popolareggiante, né cortese, né di un poeta spontaneo, né di un poeta dotto; ma è l’una e l’altra cosa insieme. Quale il suo atteggiamento spirituale, tale è la sua lingua.”“La lingua di Jacopone,” in Lingua e pensiero: Studi e saggi linguistici (Florence: Olschki, 1932), 66. 15. I am aware that Franca Brambilla Ageno’s more recent critical edition designates this lauda as spurious, but the Bonaccorsi Edition, which is taken as canonical in this study, includes it as Iacopone’s. 16. Valesio comments on Iacopone’s language of love and death as connecting the realm of water, fire, and air. “ ‘O entenebrata luce ch’en me luce’: La letteratura del silenzio,” 33. 17. The critic Franco Maccarini draws an interesting (although far-fetched) parallel between Iacopone’s syntax and Benvenuto Cellini’s:“La sua sintassi potrebbe essere paragonata a quella del Cellini essendo guidata più dal sentimento ispiratore che da una particolare logica espressiva.” Jacopone da Todi e i suoi critici, 128. 18. On the expression of mystical experiences in language, see Michael Huntington,“Mysticism and the Limits of Language,” 41, who writes:“[W]e see mystics using all sorts of metaphorical, allegorical, mythical or otherwise ‘stretched’ types of language in their attempts to communicate their private experience.” 19. On the obsessive recurrence of the terms “esmesuranza” and related words, see Landoni, Il “libro” e la “sentenza,” 39. 20. The connection between the ineffability of divine experience and music as a channel of its communication is also established by Fernando Liuzzi:“Ritmi e rime, allitterazioni e insistenze, accelerazioni e progressioni lo sospingono talora, come assetato e invaghito di suono, a scrolli caparbi e furiosi del dettato, quasi a tentarne la resistenza sintattica e la possibilità di ribellione ai vincoli logici, quasi volesse insomma frangere costrutti e parole per liberarne un grido e spremerne un gemito. Un’aspirazione musicale ora fiera e squillante, ora estenuata e morbida, ferve dunque frequente nelle Laudi. Sboccò essa nel flusso rasserenante della melodia? Fu Iacopone desideroso soltanto o pure esperto di musica? Sognò solo o forse effettivamente procurò che le sue dense parole si sciogliessero e ricomponessero nella modulazione nel ritmo e nel timbro della voce alzata a cantare?”

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The questions at the conclusion of Liuzzi’s statements must be interpreted as rhetorical questions, especially in light of his subsequent and more specific booklength investigation of the musical quality of Iacopone’s poetry.“Profilo musicale di Iacopone,” 172. 21. The translators’ rendering of “Elia” with “Elias” makes little sense in this poem. In a Franciscan context, Elias would be identified with Brother Elias, the odious general of the Order, who was accused by the Spirituals of having corrupted the original rule of poverty established by Francis.The more suitable English translation of the name would be Elijah, the biblical character from the First Book of Kings. 22. Iacopone’s poetic experimentations brought him to adopt the secular structure of ballad and adapt it to religious poetry.According to Berardi:“Adottò come metro della lirica sacra quello profano della ballata. Intuí che era opportuno adattare i ritmi e le forme della poesia popolare alla innodia per rendere questa più gradita e più accessibile al volgo.” Un revisionismo di una singolarissima figura, 10. 23. In his criticism of “Donna de Paradiso,” Italo Bertelli identifies the ability to express his interior life as peculiarly Iacoponian:“[P]roprio in questa facoltà di esprimere e di rappresentare poeticamente la propria vita interiore consiste la dote più alta e più originale di Jacopone.” Impeto mistico e rappresentazione realistica nella poesia di Jacopone: Appunti sulla lauda “Donna de Paradiso” (Milan: Bignami, 1981), 27. 24. Landoni speaks of devinalh in relation to Iacopone:“genere del devinalh . . . [la] poesia del non-senso, in cui le parole costruiscono una realtà lirica, ma non forniscono alcun messaggio logico. In altri termini, si tratta dell’affermazione del valore formale ed espressivo del componimento poetico, e quindi il riconoscimento della sua assoluta rappresentatività, pur nell’eliminazione di ogni supporto significativo e di ogni intento comunicativo.” Il “libro” e la “sentenza,” 22. 25. Irene Steiger, Jacopone da Todi: Welthass und Gottesliebe (Zurich: Buchdruckerei Akeret, 1945), 86; my translation. 26. According to Paolo Toschi, Iacopone’s great poetic achievement is his expression of ineffable joy:“Jacopone è grande perché . . . riesce a esprimere questa ineffabile gioia del congiungimento dell’anima umana con Dio, e a farne partecipe chiunque lo ascolti con animo puro.” Il valore attuale ed eterno della poesia di Jacopone (Todi: Res Tudertinae, 1964), 32. 27. The harmony created by the unification of words and sound is explored by Jean Brun, L’homme et le langage (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), 22. 28. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Gloria: Un’estetica teologica, vol. 6, L’antico patto, trans. Robert Friedman (Milan: Jaca Book, 1980), 116; quoted in Perniola,“Between Clothing and Nudity,” 242. 29. For an etymological connection in Indo-European languages between “nudity” and “mutism,” see Martin E. Huld, “Magic, Metathesis, and Nudity,”

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in Studies in Honor of Jaan Puhvel, Part One: Ancient Languages and Philology, ed. Dorothy Disterheft, Martin Huld, and John Greppin (Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997), 87. 30. Allusion as a “systematic artistic device in poetry” is a concept developed by Jan Mukařovsk`y, On Poetic Language, trans. and ed. John Burbank and Peter Steiner (Lisse, Belgium: Peter de Ridder, 1976), 64.

CONCLUSION Francis of Assisi and Iacopone da Todi are mystics and poets.Their mysticism permeates their lives and works and infuses an indelible imprint on their poetic achievements. Despite their opposing theological perspectives, their mysticism clearly displays a Franciscan matrix.The radical approach to religion which they share finds a justification in their historical roles at the beginning of the Franciscan Order, when the new mendicant concepts were still being forged and formulated. Both identify poverty as a primary asset, the crucial virtue that will open the way to ecstatic union. In the poetry of both, harmony features as a pivotal concept and coincides with a personal reappropriation of the atmosphere in Earthly Paradise. The mythical stage of humanity, when nudity and silence characterized the lives of the first human beings, represents the goal of their theological (and anthropological) principles. From the early stages of humanity in Earthly Paradise the two Franciscan poets also borrow the concept of “two in one flesh” as a metaphor for the indelible love union between Anima and Christ.The unification of the two separate genders forges Francis’s foundation of the two independent but complementary Orders, the Franciscans and the Poor Clares, and shapes the topos of matrimonial consummation in Iacopone’s poetry. The two mystics are aware that reaching back to the harmonious relationship of human beings with God is a theological operation, a reconstruction and a re-creation of an original status; the knowledge that human beings acquired after eating the “forbidden fruit” accompanies their attempt to reestablish that lost dimension and, in a sense, makes that lost status impossible to accomplish fully.They can revisit Earthly Paradise only through the experience of mystical union, thanks to Christian redemption, of which the crucifixion is the apex and the resolution.The nudity and silence toward which they strive appears as the common denominator of Earthly Paradise and the cross. Francis and Iacopone imitate at once the naked and silent Christ on the cross and Adam and Eve before the Fall.They try to reach the purity and innocence of the mythical,

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unaware human beings in Earthly Paradise, by modeling their lives on the violently stripped and passively speechless crucified man.Two crucial moments of the biblical account, the Book of Genesis and the Passion, come together in the single icon of nudity and silence; from beginning to new beginning, the elimination of two most human qualities, clothes and speech, paradoxically produces a more spiritual human entity. These ideas can be extrapolated from the hagiographic accounts of their lives as well as from their poetic works. But rhetoric is also an essential portion of the mysticism of both. Francis and Iacopone express new concepts, but they also display a new style and a new rhetoric that facilitate the acquisition of an original perception of divinity. Poverty and simplicity led them to consider reality from different angles and to view Christianity in a new light. They surpass the complexity of theological conceptualizations in order to recover some core concepts of Christianity.This process has purification as its final goal.While it eliminates all encumbering elements that may obscure the spirit, the purifying process sometimes brings on socially reprehensible behavior or exposes the uncouth, almost animalistic, side of humanity. In various episodes narrated by their hagiographers, Francis and Iacopone utilize histrionic, clownish techniques or act like animals.A fitting example is offered by Thomas of Celano, who reports that, during the preparation of the first manger scene, Francis mimicked the sound of a sheep. He began repeating the word “Bethlehem” aloud, and while he pronounced the name of Christ’s birthplace, his enunciation acquired the connotation of a bleating lamb. As he was “burning with . . . the sweetness of the word,” the pronunciation of Bethlehem revealed to him a novel connection with the image of Christ-the-Lamb.1 Christ’s sacrificial destiny is already inscribed in the name of his birthplace.The bleating of its phonetics discloses the prophecy of the Lamb of God, while the semantics of Bethlehem, literally “the house of bread,” likewise bears a highly symbolic significance as the birthplace of Christ, who will be identified with “the bread of life” in the Eucharist.The bleating sound emanating from Christ’s birthplace marks the conjunction of the manger scene evoking his birth with the crucifixion that concludes his life. But the inarticulate ovine sound also elicits innocence and purity as two of the main symbolic referents of the lamb, a meek and submissive creature.These theological ideas are epitomized in Francis’s buffoonish imitation of a lamb. His bleating eschews the complexity of human theological formulations and manifests his desire to be equal to an animal in the natural world.

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Iacopone also imitated animals, when he wore colorful feathers and disguised himself as a chicken at his brother’s wedding. He simply wanted to mock the wedding party’s superficial elegance and worldly love of external appearance, but the effect exceeded his intentions and involved highlighting the animal essence of humanity and his own personal attempt to regain the simplicity and poverty that characterize animal life. The study of Francis’s and Iacopone’s poetry in light of their mystical experience evinces, among notable differences, shared features.A desire to reconsider humanity as comparable to all other creatures that inhabit the earth, an unceasing attempt to surpass purely verbal communication, and the drive to reevaluate nudity as privation of all unnecessary superstructures and embellishments that obscure the original beauty of human nature are the main ingredients of a reconstructed Earthly Paradise.While attempting to surpass the ambiguity of words, both Franciscan mystics divest themselves of all clothes and all words.They follow the pattern of humanity at the moment the Book of Genesis begins, and they act in the reversed order from Adam and Eve. Reaching the purity of the moment before the Fall in Earthly Paradise signifies the removal of any covering structure imposed at the beginning of history in order to go back to that prehistorical (or metahistorical) dimension.The two mystics do not remain naked and silent, but accept the hardships of a sackcloth habit, whose shape recalls the torturing sacrifice of the crucifixion, and in their histrionic actions reproduce inarticulate, animalistic sounds as rudimentary forms of communication. In their poetry the two Franciscans elevate their verses to the angelic harmony of music, in which words blend into chanting sounds and reproduce the wordless melodies of celestial bodies, as they were perceived in Earthly Paradise, before words and clothes covered and stifled all that was most essentially divine in humanity.

NOTE 1. The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano 1.3.86, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 1:256.

APPENDIX CANTICO DI FRATE SOLE Altissimo, onnipotente, bon Signore, tue so le laude, la gloria e l’onore e onne benedizione. A te solo,Altissimo, se confano e nullo omo è digno te mentovare. Laudato sie, mi Signore, cun tutte le tue creature, spezialmente messer lo frate Sole, lo quale è iorno, e allumini noi per lui. Ed ello è bello e radiante cun grande splendore: de te,Altissimo, porta significazione. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna e le Stelle: in cielo l’hai formate clarite e preziose e belle. Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Vento, e per Aere e Nubilo e Sereno e onne tempo, per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor Aqua, la quale è molto utile e umile e preziosa e casta. Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Foco, per lo quale enn’allumini la nocte: ed ello è bello e iocondo e robustoso e forte. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre Terra, la quale ne sostenta e governa, e produce diversi fructi con coloriti fiori ed erba. Laudato si, mi Signore, per quelli che perdonano per lo tuo amore e sostengo infirmitate e tribulazione. Beati quelli che ’l sosterrano in pace, ca da te,Altissimo, sirano incoronati. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale, da la quale nullo omo vivente po’ scampare. Guai a quelli che morranno ne le peccata mortali!

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Beati quelli che troverà ne le tue sanctissime voluntati, ca la morte seconda no li farrà male. Laudate e benedicite mi Signore, e rengraziate e serviteli cun grande umilitate.1

1. Il Cantico di Frate Sole: Studio delle fonti e testo critico, ed.Vittore Branca (Florence: Olschki, 1950), 82–87.

APPENDIX

199

THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN Most high, omnipotent, and kindly Lord, yours are the praise, the glory, all blessings and all fame. To You alone, most High, do they belong as there is here no man worthy to speak your name. Praised, O my Lord, with all your creatures be, most especially master brother sun, who dawns for us, and You through him give light: and fair is he and shining with mighty luminescence, and carries, O most High, a glimpse of what You are. Praised be, my Lord, for sister moon and every star: in heaven You have made them precious and clear and fair. Praised be, my Lord, for brother wind, for the air and clouds and every kind of weather by which You give your creatures nourishment. Praised be, my Lord, for sister water, which is so very useful, humble and precious and pure. Praised be, my Lord, for brother fire, through which You lend us luster through the night, and he is fair and merry, and vigorous and strong. Praised be, my Lord, for our sister, mother earth, which does sustain and govern us, and brings forth diverse fruits with colored buds and grass. Praised be, my Lord, for those who for your love forgive, and every trouble, every illness bear. Blessèd are those who meekly all endure, for You, most High, will crown them finally. Praised be, my Lord, for sister our bodily death, from which no living man can ever flee. Woe to all those who die in mortal sin, and blessèd they who in your holy will are found, for in no way will they by their second death be wronged. So praise and bless and thank my Lord, and be subject to Him with great humility.2 2. Francis of Assisi,“The Canticle of the Sun,” trans. Joseph Tusiani, in The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry, ed. Joseph Tusiani (New York: Baroque Press, 1974), 35.

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HYMN OF THE THREE YOUNG MEN IN THE FURNACE: DANIEL 3:51–90 Then all three in unison began to sing, glorifying and blessing God in the furnace, with the words: May you be blessed, Lord, God of our ancestors, be praised and extolled for ever. Blessed be your glorious and holy name, praised and extolled for ever. May you be blessed in the Temple of your sacred glory, exalted and glorified above all for ever: blessed on the throne of your kingdom, exalted above all, glorified for ever: blessed are you who fathom the abyss, enthroned on the winged creatures, praised and exalted above all for ever: blessed in the expanse of the heavens, exalted and glorified for ever. Bless the Lord, all the Lord’s creation: praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, angels of the Lord, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, heavens, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, all the waters above the heavens, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, powers of the Lord, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, sun and moon, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, stars of heaven, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, all rain and dew: praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, every wind, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, fire and heat, praise and glorify him for ever!

APPENDIX

Bless the Lord, dew and snow-storm, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, frost and cold, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, ice and snow, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, nights and days, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, light and darkness, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, lightning and cloud, praise and glorify him for ever! Let the earth bless the Lord: praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, mountains and hills, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, every plant that grows, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, springs of water, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, seas and rivers, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, whales, and everything that moves in the waters, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, every kind of bird, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, all animals wild and tame, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, all the human race: praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, O Israel, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, priests, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, his servants, praise and glorify him for ever! Bless the Lord, spirits and souls of the upright, praise and glorify him for ever!

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Bless the Lord, faithful, humble-hearted people, praise and glorify him for ever! Hananiah,Azariah and Mishael, bless the Lord, praise and glorify him for ever! For he has rescued us from the Underworld, he has saved us from the hand of Death, he has snatched us from the burning fiery furnace, he has drawn us from the heart of the flame! Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his love is everlasting. Bless the Lord, the God of gods, all who fear him, give praise and thanks to him, for his love is everlasting!3

3. The New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1990).

APPENDIX

PSALM 148 Alleluia! Praise Yahweh from the heavens, Praise him in the heights. Praise him, all his angels, Praise him, all his host! Praise him, sun and moon, Praise him, all shining stars, Praise him, highest heavens, Praise him, waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of Yahweh At whose command they were made; He established them for ever and ever By an unchanging decree. Praise Yahweh from the earth, Sea-monsters and all the depths, Fire and hail, snow and mist, Storm-winds that obey his word, Mountains and every hill, Orchards and every cedar, Wild animals and all cattle, Reptiles and winged birds, Kings of the earth and all nations, Princes and all judges on earth, Young men and girls, Old people and children together. Let them praise the name of Yahweh, For his name alone is sublime, His splendour transcends earth and heaven. For he heightens the strength of his people, To the praise of all his faithful, To the children of Israel, the people close to him.4

4. The New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1990).

203

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INDEX Abelman, Paul, 31, 32, 34 Ad Herennium, 163 Adam, xvii, 6–8, 27, 41 Adams, J. Donald, 31 Adamites, 34 Agape. See Love Ageno, Franca Brambilla, 138, 139, 190 Alain of Lille, 43 Albertus Magnus, 163 Albigensian Crusade, 88 Alphonso-Karbala, John B., 39, 56, 170–71, 189 Alton, Bruce S., 168, 189 Alter Christus, 8–9 Angela da Foligno, 11, 35 Animals, 94 Anselm, Saint, 32 Aristotle, 109 Armstrong, Regis J., 30, 33, 34, 38, 57, 58, 76, 108, 109, 169, 170, 195 Ass, Brother, 14 Assisi, 3, 7, 66, 85, 106, 128 Assisi Compilation, 76, 77, 106, 109 Astell,Ann W., 169 Augustine, Saint, 61, 66 Babel,Tower of, xvii Bacci, Orazio, 105 Balthazar, Hans Urs von, 75–76, 188 Barnes, James, 109 Barolini,Teodolinda, 141, 189 Barolo,Agostino, 141 Barth, Karl, 142

Battuti, xv Beatitudes, 90, 98–100 Bed, metaphor of the, 162–64 Béguin,Albert, 73 Benedetto, xv Benedetto, Luigi Foscolo, 104, 110, 111 Benedict, Saint, 49 Benjamins, H. S., 40 Berardi, Lina, 143, 191 Bernard of Clairvaux, 42, 43, 45, 58, 144, 163 Bernini, Gianlorenzo, 33 Bertelli, Italo, 191 Bertoni, Giulio, xx, 190 Bethlehem, 193 Bible: Hosea, 42, 170; Isaiah, 42; Jeremiah, 42, 170; John, 9, 51, 141, 155; Kings, 185, 191; Luke, 99–100, 109–10, 171, 173, 175; Mark, 9, 35, 39, 169, 175; Matthew, 23, 99, 100, 109, 110, 141, 171, 175; Numbers, 41; Pentateuch, xxi;“Psalm 129” (De profundis), 158–61;“Psalm 148,” 80, 82, 101, 102, 103; Psalm of Daniel, 80, 82, 101, 102, 103; Revelation, 26, 145, 166, 168; 1 Samuel, 63–64; Sirach, 106; Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), 42–43, 44, 55, 93, 135, 144, 155, 162, 169, 170–71, 188 Biese,Alfred, 105 Biscoglio, Frances M., 139

220

INDEX

Bizocone, 13 Bizziccari,Alvaro, 138 Blindness, 161, 170 Blum, Jean, 107 Boethius, 62–63, 66, 72, 103 Bolzoni, Lina, 171 Bonaccorsi Edition, xvi, 39, 113–14, 115, 138–40 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, 127, 143; Itinerarium mentis ad Deum, 167; Major Legend, 3–4, 8, 33, 38, 76, 108, 170; Minor Legend, 30, 34; Vitis Mystica, 167 Boniface VIII, Pope, 36, 175–76, 189 Books and writing material, 91–92 Bosco, Umberto, 106, 141 Bower, Calvin Martin, 76 Branca,Vittore, xx Brisca, Lidia Menapace, 138 Brother and Sister, 89–95, 104, 108. See also Sister Birds Brun, Jean, 5, 191 Bruno of Segni, 43 Burbank, John, 192 Burke, Kenneth, 189 Butler, Christopher, 74 Cacciotti,Alvaro, 146 Caluffetti,Abele, 35 Camillo, Giulio, 163 Cannara, 52 Cannettieri, Paolo, 139 “Canticle of Brother Sun,” xiii, xviii, 54–55, 65, 71, 72, 74, 119, 146, 152; Composition of, 95–96, 109 Canzoniere, xvi, 112–17, 145–46 Capella, Martianus, 60, 75, 163 Caritas. See Love Casella, Mario, 35–36, 189, 190 Catachresis, 29, 83, 106 Cathars or Catharism, 44, 88, 107 Cavani, Liliana, 30

Cellini, Benvenuto, 190 Chiarini, Giorgio, 109 Christ, 83–84. See also Cross and Crucifixion Church, 125 Cicero, 163, 171 Clare, Saint, 49–52, 58 Conley,Verena Andermatt, 31, 32 Conventuals, 128 Conversion: of Francis, 4, 73; of Iacopone, 13–14; in Laude, 152–53 Cosby, Michael R., 34–35 Creatures, 79–80, 81, 91–92, 97, 101, 102, 119 Cristofani,Antonio, 106 Cross, 8, 11, 26, 27. See also Crucifixion Crucifixion, 9–10, 22, 48, 193–94. See also Passion Cuddon, J.A., 105, 137 Cunningham, Lawrence, 108, 139 Curtius, Ernst R., 75 Cutro,Vito, 33 D’Ancona,Alessandro, xv, xxi, 38, 104–105 Daniel. See Psalm of Daniel Dante, xiv, 57, 85, 114, 116, 117, 120–22, 131, 140–42, 166, 168, 172–73 Davanzati, Chiaro, 141 David, King, 64 Della Giovanna, Ildebrando, 105 Defrenza, Giuseppe, 138 De profundis. See Bible (Psalm 129) Devinalh, 186, 191 Dialogue, 133, 134, 143 Dies Irae, 98 Dionysius the Aeropagite, 28, 166, 171 Disciplinati, xv Disterheft, Dorothy, 192

INDEX

Dominican Order, xv “Donna de Paradiso.” See Lauda 93 Doyle, Eric, 107 Dragonetti, Roger, 60, 75 Drury, John, 142 Earthly Paradise, xvii, xviii, xxi, 5–7, 12, 59, 64, 66, 73, 74, 78, 89, 104, 188, 193–94 Ecclesiastes, Book of, 175 Eckhart, Meister, 10–11 Ecstatic union, 165–66. See also Matrimonial union and Lauda 71 Eden, Garden of. See Earthly Paradise Eliade, Mircea, 106 Elijah, 184–85 Elohim, 40, 55 Empedocles, 109 Ephrem the Syrian, Saint, 39 Erikson Mowat, Joan, 57–58 Eriugena, John Scotus, 75, 91 Eucharist, 50 Eve, 6–7, 41 “Exhortation to the Clergy,” 108 Exodus, Book of, 41 Ezekiel, Book of, 42 Fallacara, Luigi, xxi, 138 Fasani, Ranieri, xv Feher, Michael, 33 Ferrante, Joan M., 143 Fessio, Joseph, 76 Fioroni, Marino, 116 Fire, Brother, 91 “First Letter to the Custodians,” 108 Flagellants, xv Fleming, John V., 57 Flora, Francesco, 169 Fohr, S. D., 55 Fool of God, 14, 67 Fortini,Arnaldo, xxi, 77 Fortini, Gemma, 106

221

Four Elements, 95, 97, 109 Franceschina, 13 Francis’s father. See Pietro di Bernardone Francis in Iacopone, 148–49 Franciscan Order, xv, 49, 51–52, 93, 148;Third Franciscan Order, 52–54, 58 Freedom, 122–24, 126, 146 Frugoni, Chiara, 32 Fusco Girard, Giovannella, 142 Genesis, Book of, xvi–xvii, xviii, xxi, 5, 6, 40–41, 51, 55–56, 59, 74, 79, 80, 81, 82, 87, 93, 94–95, 95, 104, 107, 108, 148, 193–94, 195. See also Earthly Paradise Genette, Gérard, 105 Getto, Giovanni, 111 Ghyka, Matila, 75 Giacomo (Iacopo) da Lentini, 141 Giotto, 57 Giovanni da Vicenza, xv Giraut Riquier, 130, 143 Glynn, Prudence, 31 Gnosticism, 55, 56, 58, 88, 127 God’s name, 84–85 Gorni, Guglielmo, 78, 142 Gregory IX, Pope, 85 Greppin, John, 192 Grisi, Francesco, 169, 189 Guinizzelli, Guido, 118 Guittone d’Arezzo, xx, 130, 131, 143 Hallelujah, xv, 68–69 Harmony, xviii, xix, 59–63, 64, 67–70, 71, 74, 79, 90, 93, 103–104, 125, 149, 187, 195 Hellmann, J.A.Wayne, 30, 33, 34, 38, 57, 58, 76, 108, 109, 169, 170, 195 Holmes, Olivia, 140, 143 Honorius of Auton, 43

222

INDEX

Hopper,Vincent Foster, 76 Horden, Peregrine, 76 Hugh of St.Victor, 43, 169–70 Hughes, Serge and Elizabeth, xxi, 170, 189, 191 Huld, Martin, E., 191–92 Humility, 16–18, 90, 91 Huntington, Michael, 188, 190 Incarnation, 69–70, 85, 86, 88, 89, 92, 97, 103, 125, 149, 150, 175 Innocents, Holy, 69 Irony, 166–67, 175 Jeffrey, David L., 32, 75 Joachim of Flora, xv John of the Cross, Saint, 136 John of Erfurt, 64 John the Evangelist, 69. Johnson, Sherman Elbridge, 35 Jones, Peter Murray, 76 Joseph, 35 Katainen, Louise V., 139, 143 Katz, Steven T., 56 Keef,Allison Armstrong, 39, 189 Kermode, Frank, 34 Knowledge, 27, 127–28 Knox, J., 35 Kuhn, Rudolph, 33 Kuryluk, Ewa, 31, 39 Kvam, Kristen E., 55 Landoni, Elena, 169, 189, 190, 191 Langner, Lawrence, 31, 32 Language, xvii Lauda, xiii; genre of, xiv–xvi, xix, 113; composition and edition of Iacopone’s Laude, 112–16 “Lauda 1,” 177 “Lauda 2,” 177 “Lauda 3,” 17

“Lauda 4,” 18 “Lauda 16,” 18, 39 “Lauda 18,” 19 “Lauda 19,” 19 “Lauda 23,” 16 “Lauda 26,” 16 “Lauda 27,” 18, 116–19 “Lauda 29,” 19 “Lauda 31,” 128 “Lauda 32,” 119 “Lauda 33,” 119–25 “Lauda 34,” 125–31 “Lauda 35,” 132, 133 “Lauda 36,” 20, 133 “Lauda 37,” 20, 133, 177 “Lauda 38,” 17, 173, 177 “Lauda 41,” 21, 133, 134 “Lauda 42,” 20, 22–23, 132, 133, 134–36 “Lauda 43,” 20, 24 “Lauda 45,” 133, 136, 145 “Lauda 46,” 132, 133, 136–37, 145 “Lauda 47,” 132, 174 “Lauda 48,” 119 “Lauda 41,” 21 “Lauda 42,” 132 “Lauda 51,” 132 “Lauda 52,” 132 “Lauda 54,” 132 “Lauda 55,” 115, 132, 133 “Lauda 56,” 175, 176 “Lauda 58,” 175–76 “Lauda 59,” 67–68, 70, 146–47, 151 “Lauda 60,” 25, 143, 147, 151 “Lauda 61,” 26–27, 30, 146, 148, 151 “Lauda 62,” 21, 146, 148, 149, 151 “Lauda 63,” 168 “Lauda 64,” 25, 67–69, 146, 149 “Lauda 65,” 25, 68, 146, 149–51 “Lauda 66,” 151 “Lauda 67,” 70, 72, 132, 146, 151–55 “Lauda 68,” 146, 151, 156–61

INDEX

“Lauda 69,” 21 “Lauda 70,” 26 “Lauda 71,” 146, 151, 161–67 “Lauda 72,” 70, 72 “Lauda 73,” 21–22, 70, 178 “Lauda 75,” 27, 179–80 “Lauda 76,” 179–80 “Lauda 77,” 179–81, 184 “Lauda 80,” 181–82, 184 “Lauda 81,” 27, 156, 182–87 “Lauda 82,” 70, 72 “Lauda 90,” 70–71, 72, 156, 184, 185–87 “Lauda 91,” 27–28, 180, 183 “Lauda 92,” 28, 183 “Lauda 93,” xv, 157 “Lauda 95,” 28, 29, 183 Laudari, xvi Laudesi, xiv Lausberg, Heinrich, 78 Laver, James, 32 Law, 123–25 Laytner,Anson, 171 Leclerc, Eloi, 105 Leclercq, Jean, 129, 142 Lewis, C. S., 44 Light and Darkness, 143 Litany, 72–73, 78, 81, 87, 103, 111, 187 Little Flowers, 49–50, 52–54, 58, 94, 108, 129, 152 Liuzzi, Fernando, xx, 77, 78, 190–91 Locus amoenus. See Earthly Paradise Lorgnet, Michèle A., 58 Louise de Marillac, Saint, 49 Love: agape, 172; carnal, 45, 126; courtly, 42, 44, 45–48, 47, 112, 169; Christian, 43, 44, 45, 70, 71, 97–98, 99, 115, 155–56; erotic, 42, 43, 45, 48, 51, 112, 114, 116–19, 161–67; opposition of human and divine, 122–25, 142;

223

true and false, 122–27; natural versus spiritual, 127–30 Luttikhuizen, Gerard P., 55 Macrobius, 39 McGinn, Bernard, 56, 170 Maccarini, Franco, 116, 190 Machiavelli, Niccolò, xx Madness, Holy, 127, (folly) 178 Mancini, Franco, 39, 139 Mandelbaum,Allen, 106, 141 Manger (crèche), 194 Markale, Jean, 107 Marriage, 46, 132. See also Matrimonial union Matital, Bimal, 189 Matrimonial union, xviii, 20, 40–43, 46–48, 49–50, 55, 59, 67, 71–72, 74, 93, 112, 114, 132, 133, 135–37, 145, 151–55, 161–67. See also Laude 66, 67, 68 Medi, Enrico, 108 Mendicant Orders. See Dominican Order and Franciscan Order Menéndez Pidal, Ramon, 77 Menestò, Enrico, 36–38 Mercantilism, 154 Merindol, Christian de, 36 Midons, 46 Miles, Margaret R., 31 Minnis,Alistair J., 38–39 Mirror of Perfection, 65, 66, 76, 109 Mnemotechnics, 163 Moleta,Vincent, 138, 140, 143, 169, 189 Money, 149 Monna Vanna, 13–14. See also Nudity Montaigne, Michel de, 36 Moon, 82 Moses, xxi, 48 Mukařovsk`y, Jan, 192

224

INDEX

Music: as medicine, 63–64; of the “Canticle of Brother Sun,” 64–66, 111; in Iacopone, 67. See also Harmony Nakam, Géralde, 36 Nakedness. See Nudity Nativity, 8, 67–69, 149. See also Lauda 64 and Lauda 65 Nature, 59, 61, 64, 79, 91, 103, 146 Neoplatonism, 112 Nichilitate, 28, 147, 178 Nicolosi, Salvatore, 33 Noah, 34 Noort, Ed, 56 Novati, Francesco, 138, 168 Nudity, xv, 59, 109; of Anima, 134–36; in the “Canticle of Brother Sun,” 12; of Christ, 8, 9, 21–22, 27; in Christian sects, 9; in Earthly Paradise, xvi, xvii, 5, 6, 31, 31, 31–32; of Francis, 3–5, 8, 11, 33–34, 48, 66, 73, 89, 104; God as naked king, 10–11; in Gospel of Mark (14:50(52), 9–10; as humiliation, 9, 15, 16–18; in Iacopone, 12–13, 14–15; in Iacopone’s Laude, 15–16; of Iacopone’s wife, 13–14, 37–38; as liberation, 35; opposed to clothes, xviii, 5–7, 11, 13, 17–20, 22, 24, 29, 31, 146 Nygren,Anders, 142 Origins, xiii–xvii, xxi, 11, 40, 79. See also Earthly Paradise Ostriker,Alicia Suskin, 55 Ovid, 44 Oxilia,Adolfo, 104, 105, 107, 109 Ozanam,Antoine Frédéric, 76, 105, 140, 142 Pacifico, Brother, 65 Page, Christopher, 76

Pagliaro,Antonino, 110–11 Pantheism, 91 Papini, Giovanni, 190 Pasero, Nicolò, 104, 109 Pasquini, Emilio, xx Passion of Christ, xv, 18, 134–35, 148, 161, 163, 164. See also Lauda 93 and Nudity Pastoureau, Michel, 36 Paul, Saint, 15, 29, 125, 127, 152, 166, 169 Payne, Blanche, 36 Peck, George T., xx, 11, 68, 77, 139, 142, 170 Peck, Russel A., 75 Penance, xv, 17 Penco, Gregorio, 142 “Per,” 100–101, 102, 110–11 Perniola, Mario, 33, 34, 191 Petrarch, 114, 140 Petrocchi, Giorgio, xx, 32–33, 58, 76–77, 109 Picards, 34 Pietro da Morrone (Pope Celestine V), 132–33 Pietro di Bernardone, 3–5 Pistolese, Rosanna, 36 Planctus, 156–61. See also Lauda 68 Plato, 63, 74 Poor Clares, 49, 51–52, 58, 93 Poverty, xiii–xiv, 3, 4, 7–8, 11–12, 36, 52, 67–68, 128, 146–149, 150, 168; Lady Poverty, 46–47, 50, 150. See also Lauda 59 and Lauda 60 Pozzi, Giovanni, 109, 111 Prayer,xiv,xv,xix,97,100,102,111,116, 128,130,145,152,156,160,187 Pre-Socratic philosophy, 95, 109 Provençal tradition, 45, 46, 76, 108–109, 140, 141, (troubadour) 152, 155, 156, 169

INDEX

Pythagoras, 61 Pythagoreans, 63, 76 Quadrivium, 60 Quaglio,Antonio Enzo, xx Reese, Gustave, 111 Reggio, Giovanni, 106, 141 Régnier-Bohler, Danielle, 36 Rhetoric, xvii–xviii, 6 (Pseudo-) Richard of St.Victor, 43 Richard Rolle, 43 Richardson, Brian, 39, 116, 140 Riches, John, 76 Righetti, Mario, xx Robertson, D.W., 75 Rossi,Antonio, 106–107 Rotelle, John E., 77 Rougement, Denis de, 44–45, 56–57 Rowling, Marjorie, 74–75 Rudel, Jaufré, 108–109 Rupert of Deutz, 43 Sabatier Edition, 76 Sacrum commercium, 46–48, 50, 57, 150 Saint Mary of the Angels, 49, 52, 58 Salutation of the Virtues, 91 San Damiano, 4, 49, 50, 58 Sapegno, Natalino, xxi, 137, 139, 140, 141 Saul, King, 63–64 Scarpati, Claudio, 78 Schearing, Linda S., 55 Schmitz, Kenneth, 168 Scholastica, Saint, 49 Scholasticism, 129 “Sermon to the Birds,” 52–54, 108, 169 Short,William J., 30, 33, 34, 38, 57, 58, 76, 108, 109, 169, 170, 195 Sicilian School, 141, 169 Siculo-Toscani, 169

225

Silence, 7, 66, 71, 173–77, 188; in Francis, 6 Sister Birds, 52–54, 91, 94–95 Slocum, Kay Brainerd, 75 Smallman, Stephen E., 32 Smith, Bruce, R., 75, 76 Sorrell, Roger D., 104, 106, 110 Soul (Anima), as Bride of Christ, 21–24, 25–26, 42, 43 Spirit, Era of the, xv Spirituals, 128 Spitzer, Leo, 74, 78, 104, 105, 109, 110 Stanislao da Campagnola, xx Steiger, Irene, 186 Steiner, Peter, 192 Stephen, Saint, 69 Stigmata, 8, 26–27, 48, 85 Storm, Penny, 36 Struncks, Emily Jo, 36 Suicide, 158 Sun, 81–86, 105–106 Surles, Robert, 75 Sweet New Style, 141 Sylvester, Brother, 52 Tango,Anna Maria, 142 Tardioli, Franco, 106–107 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 92 Tenson, 132, 137 Theatrics: in Francis, xv, 6, 7, 30, 194; in Iacopone, 15, 195 Theology, 129, (Apophatic) 172 Theresa of Avila, Saint, 33 Thier, Ludger, 35 Thomas Aquinas, 127, 163 Thomas of Celano, 109; The Life of Saint Francis, 8, 76, 85, 108, 169, 194; The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, 33–34, 38, 64, 76, 108, 109 Todi, 154 Tonkin, Humphrey, 39, 189

226

INDEX

Toschi, Paolo, 191 Transitus, or Death of Francis, 8, 33–34, 96 Trexler, Richard C., 31, 106 Trinity, 97 Trivium, 60 Trombatore, 189, 190 Tropes: anaphora, 78, 100, 102, 103, 155; Chiasmus, 153; Epanadiplosis, 78, 113, 155–56; Epiphora, 155; Litote, 123, 125; metaphor, 83; Paronomasia, 128 Tusiani, Joseph, xx, 107 Umbria, xv Underhill, Evelyn, 113–14, 139, 156–57, 169 Vagaggini, Cipriano, 142 Valesio, Paolo, 6, 58, 142, 190

Venus, 61 Via negativa, 29, 90, 123, 147–48, 168, 172, 178 Vita activa and contemplativa, 129 Victorines, 127 Vincent de Paul, Saint, 49 Virtues, 133, 134, 147; Cardinal, 20, 21;Theological, 20, 163 Viscardi,Antonio, 111 Wedding feast, 23 William of Auvergne, 64 William of St.Thierry, 43 Wolf, Brother, 90–91 Yates, Frances, 163 Zeffirelli, Franco, 30 Ziegler,Valerie H., 55 Zizka, John, 34