ered, and to be remembered (owing to the
embalming power of music) far beyond his vernacular poems. Tradition has
it that he turned to the religious life in consequence of the sudden
death of his beloved, and the discovery that she had worn a hair-shirt
next her delicate body. Be this as it may, many allusions in his poems
suggest that he had lived the wild life of the barbarous Umbrian cities,
being a highwayman perhaps, forfeiting his life, and also having to fly
the country before the fury of some family vendetta. On the other hand,
it is plain at every line that he was a frantic ascetic, taking a savage
pleasure in vilifying all mundane things, and passionately disdainful of
study, of philosophical and theological subtleties. No poet, therefore,
of the troubadour sort, or of the idealising learned refinement of
Guinicelli or Cavalcanti. Nor was his life one of apostolic sweetness.
Having taken part in the furious Franciscan schism, and pursued with
invectives Boniface VIII., he was cast by that Pope into a dungeon at
Palestrina. "My dwelling," he writes, "is subterranean, and a cesspool
opens on to it; hence a smell not of musk. No one can speak to me; the
man who waits on me may, but he is obliged to make confession of my
sayings. I wear jesses like a falcon, and ring whenever I move: he who
comes near my room may hear a queer kind of dance. When I have laid
myself down, I am tripped up by the irons, and wound round in a big
chain (_negli ferri inzampagliato, inguainato in catenone_). I have a
little basket hung up so that the mice may not injure it; it can hold
five loaves.... While I eat them little by little, I suffer great
cold."

Moreover, Pope Boniface refuses him absolution, and Jacopone's
invectives are alternated with heart-rending petitions that this mercy
at least be shown him; as to his other woes, he will endure them till
his death. In this frightful place Jacopone had visions, which the
Church, giving him therefore the title of Blessed, ratifies as genuine.
One might expect nightmares, such as troubled the early saints in the
wilderness, or John Bunyan in gaol; but that was not the spirit of the
mediaeval revival: terror had been cast out by love. More than a quarter
of Jacopone's huge volume consists in what is merely love poetry: he is
languishing, consumed by love; when the beloved departs, he sighs and
weeps, and shrieks, and _dies alive_. Will the beloved have no mercy?
"Jesu, donami la morte, o