Saint Who?
Saints Who Were Poets
Blessed Jacopone da Todi
Religious († 1306)Feast: December 25
Jacopo (James) Benedetto belonged to a noble family in northern Italy. A successful lawyer, he married a devout woman named Vanna. Concerned for her husband’s worldly way of life, Vanna decided to do penance for him. And when she died in an accident, Jacopo decided to reform.
He gave away his possessions and became a Third Order Franciscan. Going about in rags, he earned the nickname Jacopone, “Crazy Jim,” which he came to love. After a decade, he sought to become a friar. His request was initially refused, until he composed a beautiful poem about the vanities of this life. Jacopone spent the rest of his life as a humble brother, and wrote many more poems, including a number of vernacular hymns, or lauda, for popular devotion.
He was the poetic voice of the strict Franciscan group known as the Spirituals. But he earned the wrath of Pope Boniface VIII, whose election he opposed. Excommunicated and imprisoned, a repentant Jacopone accepted his sufferings as penance until Boniface’s successor pardoned him. He continued to write in his final years, and is credited with penning the Stabat Mater, which appears in the liturgy before the Gospel on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, but is also sometimes used to accompany the Stations of the Cross. According to a biographer, he welcomed death with a song, dying just as the Gloria was being intoned for midnight Mass on Christmas.
Heavenly Father, through the intercession of
Blessed Jacopone, grant us conversion of life
and joy in repentance.
