IACOPONE da Todi. - Franciscan mystic and poet, b. at Todi ca. 1230, d. at Collazzone on 25 Dec. 1306. He studied law at Bologna, practiced the art of the attorney in his native city, and toward the end of a dissolute youth married Vanna of the counts of Coldimezzo, who, after a year of marriage, died, it is said, during a feast, from the collapse of a floor. Struck to the heart, I. abandoned the world, and from 1268 to '78 he lived as a bizozo in excessive, wandering, wild penance. To this decade belong, perhaps, the laude of the greatest asceticism, of self-hatred carried to the point of invoking every contempt and every evil, including madness. In 1278 he entered the Franciscan Order as a layman, meditated the mysticism of St. Bonaventure, sang of poverty in love and the ascending degrees of holy nothingness (1278-88). But, an extremist temperament, intolerant of mitigations of the rule, he plunged into the most heated group of dissidents, the followers of Angelo Clareno, protected by Celestine V. In 1294 at Palestrina he joined the Colonna against Boniface VIII; in 1297 he signed with the rebels the refusal to present himself to the Pope, and was excommunicated with them. In this period (1288-97) he hurled against the relaxed Franciscans, the worldly prelates and Boniface VIII violent satires, which smack of heretical indiscipline, even if they are not doctrinally heretical. Imprisoned with the others after the capture of Palestrina, I. from prison, joyfully accepted as supreme poverty, addressed rhymes of repentance to Boniface VIII so that he might lift the excommunication, but this he obtained only from the successor Benedict XI, at the end of 1303. Perhaps in the last three years the tempestuous mystic, tamed by sorrow, sang more highly the ecstasy of the love of God. To I. is sometimes attributed the title of "blessed"; his cult, however, has not been recognized by the Church.
He composed ca. 110 laude (codex of Chantilly) and in Latin the Stabat Mater. Two lines are distinguished in his mysticism and in his poetry: holy nothingness and madness for love; the one moves from knowledge of self, the other from the study of Christ; from the first derive the doctrinal laude, from the second the mystical ones, not without interferences, especially where the "glorious nothing" reaches union with God. I. excels in the poems to the Madonna. The Stabat interprets liturgically the martyrdom of the Virgin on Calvary; the most beautiful lauda Donna del Paradiso interprets it popularly and dramatically, representing in foreshortening the whole Crucifixion. With originality superior to the contemporary rhymers, he dramatizes in other laude the contrast between soul and body, between living and dead, between fleeting pleasure and eternal damnation; he arouses the horror of the burial and the terror of the Judgment. Ardently veristic in his pessimism about men, he lashes with ridicule the feminine vanity, the hypocrisies and ambitions of the bigots, satirizes with fierce sarcasm Boniface VIII. And it is the same poet who sings ineffably the nativity scene. An exceptional penitent, with the temper and culture of a great lyric poet, I. wrote only for the glory of God and the salvation of his neighbor, avoiding, out of humility, the search for expression, and abandoned himself to his vein, now crystalline, now turbid and torrential, using the popular form of the ballata with varied and always musical rhythms. Insofar as he expresses (albeit in a paradoxical way) the itinerary of the soul to God, I. is not only the representative of the Middle Ages, but the poet of Christian asceticism and mysticism of every age, the poet who has brought into focus the madness of divine love and of human ingratitude.
Bibliography16 works
7-38 (idealistic interpretation); M. Vinai, J. e s. Bonaventura, in Cultura neolatina, 1 (1941), pp. 133-42. For the spirituality and art of I.: F. Ozanam, Les poètes franciscains au XIIIᵉ siècle, Parigi 1852; J. Schmitt, Metrica di J. da T., in Studi medievali, 1 (1905), pp. 513-60; A. D'Ancona, J. da T. giullare di Dio, Todi 1914; E. Underhill, J. da T. poet and mystic, Londra 1910; M. Casella, J. da T., in Arch. Romanicum, 4 (1920), pp. 281-89, 429-85; N. Sapegno, Frate J., Torino 1926; C. Cadorna, J. da T., Firenze 1926; G. Trombadori, J. da T., Venezia 1926; V. Soncini, Bibliografia iacoponica, Reggio Emilia 1933; F. Liuzzi, La lauda e i primordi della poesia italiana, Roma 1935; G. Papini, J. da T., in Storia della lett. ital., Firenze 1937, pp. 39-67. For the Stabat Mater: M. Suchet, La poesia liturgica francescana nel sec. XIII, Roma 1914; F. Ermini, Lo Stabat Mater e i Pianti della Vergine nella lirica del medio evo, Città di Castello 1916. Maria Stieco
CULTO POPOLARE. - I. was a religious of eminent holiness of life, informed by a rigid asceticism with strong expressions of a lofty and burning mysticism, most evident in his writings. He was considered a saint or "blessed," in the technical sense of the word, by historians and by the people, who venerated him with acts of cult, while his name was entered in the Franciscan Martyrology. Buried in the church of the Poor Clares of Montecristo near Todi, in 1433 his bones were transferred to the crypt of St. Fortunato, where in 1596 the bishop Angelo Cesi re-composed them in a more honored tomb, adorning it with a fine inscription.
However, the cult of I. has not yet been confirmed by the Church, despite the attempts made to this end at Todi by the municipal Council in 1628 and by the Cathedral Chapter in 1676. In 1868 and 1869 the Postulation of the Friars Minor reopened the cause and gathered the documents proving this cult rendered ab immemorabili, which was manifested also in iconography with a few miniatures, with the effigy on the tomb and another beside it together with other saints, and especially with the famous sixteenth-century fresco of the cathedral of Prato. Certain attitudes of I. with regard to Boniface VIII and the well-known poetic intemperances concerning the same Pontiff seem to oppose definitive confirmation.