Iacopone da Todi

Matteo Leonardi, Ph.D, (2005), Università di Torino & Università di Trento, is a specialist of medieval literature. He published the first complete edition of Iacopone’s Laude (2010), the Bibliografia iacoponica (2010), Bonvesin da la Riva’s Libro delle tre scritture (2014), and Storia della Lauda, secoli XIII-XVI (2021). Alessandro Vettori, Ph.D. (1995), Yale, is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. He specializes in medieval Franciscan writers (Poets of Divine Love, 2004), the rewriting of scripture (Giuseppe Berto, La passione della scrittura, 2013), and Dante (Prayerful Pilgrimage, 2019).

List of Figures and Tables

Notes on Contributors



Introduction: Inside the Hood of the Mendicant: Iacopone’s Hidden Face



PART 1: Style, Rhetoric, Music, and the Construction of Poetic Identity



1 Poetry as Prayer in Iacopone’s Laude

 Erminia Ardissino

2 Medieval Self-Fashioning: Performances of Personality and Authority in Iacopone and Dante

 Nicolò Crisafi

3 “O novo canto, c’ài morto el planto de l’omo enfermato!”: The Musical Spirit of Iacopone’s Laudario and the Development of a New Italian Melody

 Federica Franzè

4 Educating, Enlightening, Edifying: Iacopone Da Todi’s Intellectual Journey

 Estelle Zunino



PART 2: Translation, Transformation, Adaptation



5 Ineffability and the Urgent Need to Tell: Comparing Four Twentieth-Century Translations of Laudas

 Magdalena Maria Kubas

6 Translating Iacopone da Todi in Romanian: a Noble Journey toward and inward amor d’esmesuranza

 Oana Sali?teanu



PART 3: The Language of Mysticism, Asceticism, and Marian Devotion



7 “Prindi da me dolcezza …”: Sweetness as a Principle of Asceticism and Salvation in the Laude of Iacopone Da Todi

 Anne-Gaëlle Cuif

8 Rhythm and Poetic Mysticism in the Laude of Iacopone Da Todi

 Alexander J. B. Hampton

9 “Sapor de Sapïenza”: Spiritual Senses and Body of the Spirit in Iacopone’s Laude

 Matteo Leonardi

10 The Marian Laude of Iacopone da Todi: Tradition and Renewal

 Brian K. Reynolds

11 Victorine Traces in Iacopone’s Laude

 Carlo Zacchetti



PART 4: The Many Forms of Franciscanism



12 Francis of Assisi and Franciscanism in the Laudario of Iacopone da Todi

 Alvaro Cacciotti

13 Image and Performance in Iacopone’s Laudario: the Case of Lauda 78, “Un arbore è da Deo plantato”

 Samia Tawwab

14 In Sickness and in Health: Iacopone’s Mystical Marriage through Malady

 Alessandro Vettori



Index