The mystics in every faith tradition look to experience and the inner life to inform their experience of the divine, which makes them a subject of great interest to all students of the human soul/psyche. It also often leads them out of step with institutional religion, and makes possible insights considered too “dangerous” for approved theologies.
Jacopone da Todi (c. 1230-1306) was a Franciscan Friar best known for his “Lauds” or poems of praise. Little known today, through the years his work has been both praised and denounced for its grittiness, disregard for poetic conventions of the day, and unapologetic portrayals of the good and bad of Jacopone’s spiritual journey. His tomb is inscribed with this provocative summation of his life: “The blessed bones of Jacapone di Benedictis of Todi, who having gone mad with the love of Christ, by a new artifice deceived the world and ravished heaven.”
Through an examination of his life, context and writing, we’ll explore mystical themes that have given rise to such mixed feelings about him: madness, fear, eroticism, and ecstasy. We will see how, like most mystics, Jacopone transcended first the cultural values of his day, and ultimately even the conventional religious understandings of the institutional church, bringing him into conflict with the highest authorities and even landing him in prison for a substantial portion of his adult life. What these conflicts could never do was to dissuade Jacapone from his path of falling madly, passionately, and even violently in love with the divine.