JACOPONUS AND THE “STABAT MATER.”
Jacoponus, known to us sometimes as Jacobus de Benedictis, and sometimes
as Jacopo di Benedetto, or as Giacopone da Todi from his Italian
birthplace, is a most quaint and singular singer. The name Jacoponus is
a mere title of reproach, and signifies either “Big James” or “Silly
James.” It was called after him on the street and he adopted it in a
spirit of humility and as a badge of self abnegation. The man himself
was an Italian jurist and nobleman, who lived in the thirteenth century.
He led a wild life, lost his property, and eventually regained it by
industry and ability. Evidently he neither cared nor scrupled about his
ways of making money. A crisis came in his life in consequence of his
wife’s sudden death. She was killed at the city games of Todi in the
year of grace 1268, where with other women she had been watching the
sports from a scaffold of wood. It was insecure and fell, killing her
instantly. Poor Benedetto, on hurrying to the spot, found that beneath
her garments she had been wearing a hair girdle next to the
skin—according to the harsh custom of the time—and he was deeply
affected by this evidence of her anxiety to please God. In those days
such an action spoke volumes for the victim’s piety, and no one was more
open to conviction than this erratic, sensitive, and brilliant man.
But it would seem that for a long time he struggled against his
feelings, since we have a record that by 1298 he had been a religious
person about twenty years. Indeed, there is a story that he was not
received at once by the Minorites, and that he finally produced certain
poems before they grew satisfied to take him in. However, when he was
fairly within their walls he outdid all the other Franciscans in
austerity. He had given up his position as Doctor of Laws and had
surrendered his property; now it would appear that he was determined to
advance beyond the rest in ascetic devotion. His penances and prayers
were greatly in excess of prescribed rules, and he must have proved as
sore a trial to any easy-going brother, as Simeon Stylites was when he
too led the whole convent to denounce his ascetic habits. There is small
doubt that the brain of Jacoponus was decidedly off its balance, even in
these earliest days, and his subsequent conduct gave full evidence of
his insanity. Still, we find in this self-abasement of his nothing that
looks like pride or egotism. Where others display a complacency which is
very Pharisaic, he only shows the monomania of a gifted soul. Some of
his expressions are remarkable for their spiritual depth and power. Thus
when he was pressed to explain how a Christian can be sure that he loves
God, he replied, “I have the sign of charity; if I ask God for
something, and He refuses me, I love Him notwithstanding; and when He
opposes me I love Him twice as much.” “I would,” he says, “for the love
of Christ, suffer with a perfect resignation all the toils of this life,
every grief, anguish, pain, which word can express or thought conceive.
I would also readily consent that, on leaving life, the demons should
bear my soul into the place of tortures, there to endure all the
torments due to my sins; to those of the just who suffer in purgatory,
and even of the reprobates and demons if this could be; and that until
the day of the last judgment, and longer still, according to the good
pleasure of the Divine Majesty. And, above all, it would be to me a
great pleasure and supreme satisfaction that all those for whom I should
have suffered should enter heaven before me, and, finally, if I came
after them that all should agree to declare to me that they owe me
nothing.” Surely no modern theologian has ever stated the doctrine of
“self-emptiness” in any shape which at all compares with this!
Nor was he deficient in wit. “I enjoy the realm of France,” he once
said, “more than does the King of France; for I take part in all the
happiness that comes to him and I haven’t the care of his business.” At
another time he entered the market-place on all fours naked, a saddle on
his back and a bit between his teeth, for what symbolic purpose no one
has ever explained. Again, he literally tarred and feathered himself,
covering his body with a sticky oil and then rolling in feathers of
various colors and kinds. In this elegant wedding attire he made his
appearance at his brother’s house to honor the marriage of his niece.
The guests, as might be expected, departed in confusion and disgust. But
to all remonstrances upon his conduct he retorted, “My brother thinks to
illumine our name by his magnificence; I shall do it by my folly.” He
was really a leaf taken out of Rabelais or Boccaccio—a jester whose
folly and wisdom were mingled unequally, much in the fashion of that
Wamba son of Witless, immortalized for us in the pages of _Ivanhoe_.
The man’s great mind had doubtless been shaken by his affliction and by
the gloomy theology of his time. Otherwise these performances, so
inconsistent with his genius, could never have taken place. The
irregularity of his productions, sometimes delicate as the most graceful
stanzas of the troubadours, and some times as coarse and rough as Villon
at his worst, are in exact proof of this assertion.
In theology he was, to quote Ozanam, “no longer a dogmatic but a
mystic.” He really became the leader of a band of pure and elevated
minds which continued, by direct genealogy, through Hugo and Richard of
St. Victor, and Tauler down to St. Theresa, Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and
our own Thomas C. Upham. It is an honor of no slight consequence to have
inspired so much of the spirit of the Apostle John into that turbid
current of mediaeval religion. And it does not surprise us, therefore,
to find the _Cur mundus militat_ of Jacoponus credited to Bernard of
Clairvaux, nor the _Jesu, dulcis memoria_ of Bernard attributed to
Jacoponus. The two men were very similar, but the opportunities of the
French abbot were infinitely superior to those of the Italian monk. And
after a very careful inquiry I remain convinced, like other
hymnologists, that these two great hymns have already been properly
assigned. It is certainly a staggering piece of testimony when the
latter is found in an old MS. of Jacoponus’s poems, precisely in the
form in which it appears in the most critical edition of the writings of
Bernard. And it is equally unsettling for us to come upon the _Cur
mundus militat_ in the works of the saint, when we know, on no doubtful
evidence, that this was the passport of the sinner into his Franciscan
convent. Once more it is worth our while to repeat the warning that any
positive designation of Latin hymns by their authors’ names must rest
upon a firmer foundation than the mere fact that they can be discovered
in this man’s or that man’s printed works.
Jacoponus also interests us in view of his Protestant spirit. He never
fancied Boniface VIII., and when that pope had a dream in which he saw a
great bell without a tongue, and consulted the keen-witted friar upon
its meaning, he received the reproof valiant, “Know, your holiness,”
said the undaunted monk, “that the great size of the bell signifies the
pontifical power which embraces the world. But take heed lest the tongue
be that good example which you will not give.” For this and other
liberties which he took it is no wonder that he presently found himself
in prison, where he suffered everything patiently, and announced that he
would go out when Boniface was ready to come in. And this, indeed,
actually occurred. He was excommunicated, too, but from this sentence
Benedict XI. released him on December 23d, 1303.
I cannot refrain from quoting some more of his religious aphorisms and
meditations which instinctively suggest to us the pious musings of À
Kempis. Here is one: “I have always thought, and I think now, that it is
a great thing to know how to enjoy God. Why? Because in these hours of
joy, humility is exercised with respect. But I have thought, and I think
now, that the greatest thing is to know how to rest deprived of God.
Why? Because in these hours of trial, faith is exercised without
evidence, hope without attempt at fulfilment, and charity without any
sign of the divine benevolence.” And here is a fragment from his last
poem: “Love, I see that thou art transfiguring me, and making me become
Love like thee, so that I dwell no longer in my own heart and that I
know no longer how to find myself again. If I perceive in a man any
evil, or vice, or temptation, I am transformed and I enter into him; I
am penetrated with his pain.”
It must not be supposed that these poems were in the Latin language in
every instance. Very few of the entire number are truly within our own
sphere of research, and all those composed in Italian are accessible to
us only through a French prose translation. But his “Praise of Poverty”
deserves a place even in these pages, for it reveals the nature of the
poet and helps us to comprehend the pathos and tenderness of his
unregulated genius:
“Sweet Poverty, how much in truth
Should we love thee!
For, child, thou hast a sister named
Humility.
A common bowl, for food and drink,
Is all thy need;
Bread, water, and a few poor herbs,
Suffice indeed.
“And, if a guest should come, she adds
A pinch of salt;
She travels fearless, and no foe
Can bid her halt;
Thieves do not plunder her; she dies
At length in peace;
She makes no will; no grasping hands
Clutch her increase.
“Poor little thing! Behold thou art
Heaven’s citizen;
No vulgar earthly wishes draw
Thee down to men;
Thine is the greatest sceptre, thine
The kingdom here,
For what thou carest not to seek
Still crowdeth near.
“O science most profound and deep!
For thus we rise,
And gain our freedom by the things
We most despise!
O gracious Poverty, supplied
With joy and rest,
Thine is the plenty of the heart,
And that is best!”
It is strangely incongruous with this almost idyllic gentleness for us
to find such a man hanging a coveted bit of meat in his cell until the
odor of its putrefaction disgusted the rest of the monks, as well as put
an end to his own craving for the forbidden dainty. Then, too, we have
several other anecdotes of his grim humor and bold denunciation of sin.
Take, for example, the story told of his peculiar half-satirical conduct
in an instance which Wadding, the historian of the Franciscan Order,
relates with great gusto. A citizen of Todi, a relative of the poet, had
bought a pair of chickens, and not wishing to be inconvenienced by them,
he said to Jacoponus, “Take them and carry them for me, if you please; I
don’t care to burden myself with them.” To which Jacoponus answered,
“Trust me! I’ll carry your chickens home.” He then went direct to the
church of Fortunatus, in which his own monument was afterward placed,
and pulling up a gravestone he thrust the chickens in and replaced the
slab. The worthy citizen on his return of course found no chickens, and
therefore at once hunted out Jacoponus in the public square and
reproached him. “I took them to your house,” retorted the Franciscan.
“But I have just come from it and my wife says she has not seen you,”
the Tudescan asserted. Thereupon Jacoponus took him to the church and
having removed the stone, said to him: “Friend, isn’t that your home?”
The citizen, says Wadding, took his chickens, being a man evidently of
frugal mind, and, “not without fear, went his way absorbed in thought.”
This mad Solomon is at times so keen in his denunciations of the
corruption of the Church, and so evidently sincere in his own religion,
that more than one hymnologist has thought that his folly was largely
assumed as a guise under which he had greater freedom. The court fool
was a “chartered libertine” as to his language, and when we read the
epitaph of Jacoponus it seems as if he had reversed the saying of
Shakespeare and had stolen Satan’s livery to serve Heaven in. There is
no question but that this satirical freedom actually cost the poor
jester some considerable share of imprisonment, and this heightens the
likelihood that he was playing Brutus in order to abolish Caesar.
Boniface VIII., whom he had very plainly rebuked, was the one who
imprisoned him, and he was not released before the case—as he had indeed
predicted—was precisely reversed. Let me record my own conviction, based
upon the poem of which I append a translation, and upon the other facts
of his life, that this view of his career has much in its favor. Those
days and these are not to be compared in respect to liberty. Where
Bernard of Cluny swung his sling about his head and let the pebbles fly
to right and left with no very tangible result, Jacoponus took bow and
arrows and drove his shaft into the target. No one meddled with Bernard;
but Jacoponus, a century later, was a Tell for the ecclesiastical
Gessler.
Of the _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_, carried by the Flagellants into every
corner of Europe as they flogged themselves in public to its anthem, it
can be said that it is one of the very greatest hymns—if not actually
the greatest—of the Roman Catholic Church. The _Dies Irae_, the _Veni,
Sancte Spiritus_, and the Hymn of Bernard of Cluny, are catholic rather
than Roman. This is Roman rather than catholic. It is full of
Mariolatry. Take a stanza from a prose translation by way of example:
“Virgin of virgins, illustrious, be not now bitter to me, make me mourn
with thee, make me carry about the death of Christ, make me a sharer in
His passion, adoring His suffering.” And again: “O Christ, when I go
hence, give me, through Thy mother, to attain the palm of victory,” etc.
For this reason the Protestant metrical versions of the _Stabat Mater_
are few in number and generally accompanied by disclaimers of one kind
or another. Of course the music, on whose wings the hymn has now flown
world-wide, will need no word of mine. If the _Stabat Mater_ itself
receives commonly the second rank among hymns, it follows that Rossini,
Pergolesi, Palestrina and Haydn have not detracted from its glory. And
though in the terse language of one of our best hymnologists, we say,
“It is simple Mariolatry, most of it,” the human pathos of the verses
appeals strongly to those who refuse the added errors of the poem.
Of the _Stabat Mater Speciosa_ I confess to a decided doubt. It is in
the nature of a paraphrase, almost of a parody. It is unworthy of the
brain that formed the _Mater Dolorosa_, and the jester must have gone
beyond common folly if he descended to this imitation of himself. It is
more likely—and there is good ground for the opinion—that it is the work
of some later hand. Archbishop Trench, by the way, will not include
either of them in his collection.
Of the other writings of Jacoponus it may be interesting to say that he
composed hymns and satires in great abundance, both in Latin and in
Italian, which were collected by Franciscus Tressatus, a Minorite
brother, and published in seven books. The _Cur mundus militat_ (which
Wadding quotes at length) meets this editor’s highest praise. Of the
Italian poems we can say that they are now regarded by Symonds and
others as the fountain-head of Italian literature, and that they
contained many of the crude expressions of the common people mixed with
an elegance of phraseology to which Dante and Petrarch were accustoming
their mother tongue. Indeed, I know no other similar poet, unless it be
John Skelton, rector of “gloomy Dis” in England, who about a century
later shot the same kind of shafts at the same manner of target and with
much the same bitter, gibing wit.
But of all the compositions of our mad monk which I have seen, I am most
especially interested in this _Cur mundus militat_. Its attractiveness
consists, first of all, in its dactylic measure and in its singular
adaptation to the character of Jacoponus. It is hard, in the
translation, to catch that strange jingle of the cap and bells and that
tossing of the fool’s bauble which accompany the exhortation. Only in
the last stanza does it appear as if he deigned to be serious. All that
precedes this is the quaint world-weariness of the man too wise for his
time, and who is therefore well pleased to be _stultus propter
Christum_—a “fool for Christ’s sake.”
THE VANITY OF EARTH.
Why should this world of ours strive to be glorious
Since its prosperity is not victorious?
Swiftly its power and its beauty are perishing
Like to frail vases which once we were cherishing.
Trust more to letters carved fair on some frostiness
Than to this brittle world’s empty untrustiness.
False in her honors, in semblance of purity,
Never as yet had she time for security.
More should be trusted to glass, which is treacherous,
Than to Earth’s happiness wretched and venturous—
Filled with false vanities, lured by false madnesses,
Worn with false knowledges, sick of false gladnesses.
Where now is Solomon, once so pre-eminent?
Where is that Samson, so valiantly prominent?
Where the fair Absalom, stalwart and beautiful?
Where the sweet Jonathan, lovely and dutiful?
Whither went Caesar, that monarch illustrious?
Or the proud Dives, at table industrious?
Tell me of Tullius, lofty in eloquence;
Or Aristoteles, first in grandiloquence.
So many heroes, such spacious activity,
Dancers and mountebanks, kingdoms and levity;
Rulers of earth who were tyrannous o’er us all—
Swift as a glance they are gone from before us all!
What a short holiday this of Earth’s best estate!
Joys, which to man are like dreams that attest his fate;
Which, the rewards of eternity banishing,
Lead him through paths where his comfort is vanishing.
Food of the worm thou art—clod of the common clay!
O dew! O vanity! Why praise thy common way?
Thou who art ignorant whether the morrow come!
Do good to all ere the time of thy sorrow come.
Much though we value this glory of earthiness,
Scripture declareth, as grass, its unworthiness;
Like the light leaf, by the mighty wind hurried off,
So is this life, by the darkness soon carried off.
Nothing is thine which thy spirit may lose again—
What this world gave it intendeth to choose again;
Lift up thy thought where the heart hath its treasure-house—
Happy art thou to despise this Earth’s pleasure-house!
We are not to imagine that these stirring verses, whether in Latin or in
Italian, went unnoticed. In the various productions of his muse the
humble monk enjoyed a popularity like that of Abelard. Numerous
manuscripts of his writings were scattered through Italy, France, and
Spain, and translations in these different languages helped to increase
his fame. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries at least eight
editions appeared. But for critical purposes they are not so valuable as
might be supposed, since there are interpolations by other hands which
confuse and deter the investigator. They were supplemented in 1819 by
the publication of a number hitherto unknown, which were edited by
Alessandro da Mortara.
Of the Latin poetry ascribed to him the _Jesu dulcis memoria_ is
certainly Bernard’s, for Morel discovered it in an Einsiedeln MS. “older
than 1288.” There are two hymns—_Crux te, te volo conqueri_ and _Ave
regis angelorum_—of which we merely know the opening lines and have no
accessible originals. The _Verbum caro factum est_, the _Ave fuit prima
salus_, and the _Cur mundus militat_ are doubtless his own. The _Mater
Speciosa_ I take the liberty to discredit because of its gross
Latinity—a point which Ozanam concedes in spite of his belief in its
genuine character. The _Mater Dolorosa_ itself has not escaped question,
for Benedict XIV. declared it to be the work of Innocent III., to whom,
with about the same amount of truth, has also been attributed the _Veni,
Sancte Spiritus_.
In the year 1306, after imprisonment and excommunication had both passed
over his head and spent their force harmlessly, the aged Jacoponus drew
near his end. His companions urged him to ask for the final sacrament,
but he was in no haste. He would wait, he said, for John of Alvernia,
his true friend, and from his hands only would he receive it. They
considered this another proof of his untamed and rebellious nature, and
loudly lamented around his bed. But the dying man gave no heed to their
weakness. He raised himself upon his arm and with lifted face began to
chant the _Anima benedetta_—the song of a blessed soul. Scarcely had his
voice uttered the closing words ere two men were seen hastening across
the field. One was that very John of Alvernia, moved by some strange
presentiment to visit his friend. He entered the room and greeted
Jacoponus with a kiss of peace. Then he administered the sacrament of
the Eucharist. And thereupon the failing singer, his desire being at
last fulfilled, sang the _Jesu nostra fidanza_ and relapsed into silence
for a time. Then he exhorted those about him to live holy lives, and,
lifting his hands toward heaven, gently expired. It was on Christmas eve
and, in the neighboring church, the choir had just begun to chant the
_Gloria in Excelsis_.
Two hundred and ninety years after his death his tombstone and its
inscription were placed. The words, when rendered from Latin into
English, are these:
“The bones of the blessed Jacoponus de Benedictis of Todi, who, a fool
for Christ’s sake, deluded the world by a new art and took heaven by
force.”
There is in the Lenox Gallery a small picture by Zamacois, which
represents a jester leaning against a head of Pan. The rude, broken bust
stands on an antique pedestal, its mouth, in its half-tragic, half-comic
curves, appearing to whisper into the ear of its companion. He,
scarlet-clad and with his bauble swinging idly in his hands, inclines
his head toward it and seems in a sad gravity to listen to its words.
There, indeed, do I see Jacoponus! The eager heart of the great
misunderstood, inconsistent, vain, and empty World tells him of its
nothingness—a broken and abandoned deity deserted in its garden of Eden.
An inexpressible sadness comes over me. Quietly I put by the _Stabat
Mater_; I do not love it!—but I close the page softly over the poor mad
prophet who rests his weary head on the steps of Solomon’s throne.