Italian literature: Encyclopedia II - Italian literature - Religious poetry

Italian literature - Religious poetry

In the 13th century a mighty religious movement took place in Italy, of which the rise of the two great orders of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic was at once the cause and effect. Around Francis of Assisi a legend has grown up in which the imaginative element prevails: the saint's miracles and visions, his ability to talk to animals. Not only was Francis a great mystic and a powerful reformer of the Catholic Church, he is considered remarkably modern for giving a moral dignity to nature. Though Francis was educated, his poetry is a far cry from the refined poetry at the center of Frederick's court. The legend goes that in the eighteenth year of his penance, almost rapt in ecstasy, he dictated the Cantico del Sole. This hymn is attributed to him, though doubts remain about its authenticity. It is the first great poetical work of Northern Italy, being written in a kind of verse marked by assonance, a poetic device that is more widespread in Northern Europe. As for the other poems, which for a long time were believed to be by Saint Francis, their spuriousness is now generally recognized.

A poet who represented the religious feeling that had made special progress in Umbria was Jacopo dei Benedetti of Todi, known as "Jacopone da Todi". Not only is Jacopone possessed by St. Francis' mysticism, he is a strong satirist who does not hesitate to mock the corruption and hypocrisy of the Church personified by Pope Boniface VIII, who persecuted him and Dante. Jacopone's story is that sorrow at the sudden death of his wife had disordered his mind, and that, having sold all he possessed and given it to the poor, he covered himself with rags, and took pleasure in being laughed at, and followed by a crowd of people who mocked him and called after him Jacopone, Jacopone. Jacopone went on raving for years and years, subjecting himself to the severest sufferings, and giving vent to his religious intoxication in his poems. Jacopone was a mystic, who from his hermit's cell looked out into the world and specially watched the papacy, scourging with his words Pope Celestine V and Pope Boniface VIII, for which he was imprisoned.

The religious movement in Umbria was followed by another literary phenomenon, that of the religious drama. In 1258 a hermit, Raniero Fasani, leaving the cavern in which he had lived for many years, suddenly appeared at Perugia. This was a turbulent period, that of the factions of the Ghibellines and the Guelphs, the interdicts and excommunications issued by the popes, the reprisals of the imperial party. The cruelty and tyranny of the nobles, the plagues and famines, kept the people in fear. Fasani represented himself as sent by God to disclose mysterious visions, and to announce to the world terrible visitations. Under the influence of fear there were formed Compagnie di Disciplinanti, who, for a penance, scourged themselves till they drew blood, and sang Laudi in dialogue in their confraternities. These Laudi, closely connected with the liturgy, were the first example of the drama in the vulgar tongue of Italy. They were written in the Umbrian dialect, in verses of eight syllables, and of course they have not any artistic value. Their development, however, was rapid. As early as the end of the same 13th century we have the Devozioni del Giovedi e Venerdi Santo, which have some dramatic elements in them, though they are still connected with the liturgical office. Then we have the representation di un Monaco c/fe and al servizio di Dio ( of a monk who entered the service of God ), in which there is already an approach to the definite form which this kind of literary work assumed in the following centuries.

In the 13th century Tuscany was peculiarly circumstanced. The Tuscans spoke a dialect which most closely resembled the mother-tongue, Latin - one which afterwards became almost exclusively the language of literature, and which was already regarded at the end of the 13th century as surpassing the others; Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam thus writes Antonio da Tempo of Padua, born about 1275. Being largely unaffected by the Germanic invasion, Tuscany was never subjected to the feudal system, and its internal struggles did not weaken its cultural life. After the final fall of the Hohenstaufens at the battle of Benevento in 1266, it was the first province of Italy. From 1266 Florence began the movement of political reform which in 1282 resulted in the appointment of the Priori delle Arti, and the establishment of the Arti Minori. This was afterwards copied by Siena with the Magistrato dei Nove, by Lucca, by Pistoia, and by other Guelph cities in Tuscany with similar popular institutions. In this way the guilds had taken the government into their bands, and it was a time of social and political prosperity.

In Tuscany, too, there was some popular love poetry; there was a school of imitators of the Sicilians, led by Dante of Majano; but its literary originality took another line -- that of humorous and satirical poetry. The entirely democratic form of government created a style of poetry which stood in the strongest antithesis to the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. Devout invocation of God or of a lady came from the cloister and the castle; in the streets of the cities everything that had gone before was treated with ridicule or biting sarcasm. Folgore of San Gimignano laughs when in his sonnets he tells a party of Sienese youths the occupations of every month in the year, or when he teaches a party of Florentine lads the pleasures of every day in the week. Cene della Chitarra laughs when he parodies Folgores sonnets. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half fun and half satire, as is the work of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, the oldest humorist we know, a far-off precursor of Rabelais and Montaigne.

Another kind of poetry also began in Tuscany. Guittone d'Arezzo made art quit chivalrous for national motives, Provençal forms for Latin. He attempted political poetry, and, although his work is often obscure, he prepared the way for the Bolognese school. Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical poetry appeared there. Guido Guinizelli was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In him the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged; he sings of love and of the nobility of the mind. The reigning thought in Guinizelli's Canzoni is nothing external to his own subjectivity. His poetry has some of the faults of the school of Guittone d'Arezzo. Nevertheless he marks a great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connection with Dante's lyric poetry.

In the 13th century, there were several poems in the allegorical style. One of these is by Brunetto Latini, who was a close friend of Alighieri. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author professes to be lost in a wilderness and to meet with a lady, who is Nature, from whom he receives much instruction. We see here the vision, the allegory, the instruction with a moral object, three elements which we shall find again in the Divina Commedia. Francesco da Barberino, a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishops, a judge, a notary, wrote two little allegorical poems the Documenti d'amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne. Like the Tesoretto, these poems are of no value as works of art, but are, on the other hand, of importance in the history of manners. A fourth allegorical work was the Intelligenza, sometimes attributed to Compagni, but this is probably only a translation of French poems.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Religious poetry", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki