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5 Theology of Ravishment THE INTRICATE DYNAMICS of erotic and agapic love, which originated in the dualistic perception of Neoplatonic thought, rose in status in thirteenth-century theology. In the latter part of the Middle Ages, new concepts and ideas about love led to a new sensitivity toward forms of love different from those that had prevailed in the classical era.The codification of courtly love sanctioned a breakthrough in loving relations and brought renewed vigor to the way men and women interacted. In keeping with biblical and theological models, erotic love was regarded as the most fitting metonym for divine expressions of love toward human beings, and it was frequently adopted as a metaphor in poetry. In Franciscan poets of the thirteenth century, the secular doctrine of courtly love and love formulations in the tradition of the Christian Church Fathers come together and amalgamate.The desired bond of lover and beloved, around which courtly love rhetoric revolves, becomes an image for the hoped-for union of the Soul with God. Concepts and metaphors used by courtly love lyric are transferred to the spiritual, mystical realm. The Soul,Anima, is the beloved and God is her Lover. In his collection of laude Iacopone daTodi devotes considerable space to the problematic and controversial relation of eros and agape.The Laude encompasses an ascending development from a radical, uncompromising rejection of erotic love,seen as physical union between two human beings, to a consideration of it as a metaphorical image of the loving relationship binding God to humankind. In the collection taken as a whole Iacopone gradually moves away from his violent attacks on erotic love and revives its allegorical formulation.The rejection of physical love in the first part of the Laude is transformed into a metaphorical acceptance of it in the second part. Iacopone’s Laude displays a wide range of topics and styles. His poems feature invocations, petitions, thankful songs to God, didactic, edifying poems, virulent and satirical attacks on the poet’s enemies, irreverent and pugnacious diatribes against the corrupt papacy and the clergy, and poetic renderings of theological and doctrinal issues,as well as prayerful addresses to God.The title Laude given to Iacopone’s canzoniere conceals a polymorphous ensemble of poetic enterprises having religious tone and content as their common denominator. Iacopone experiments with numerous rhetorical structures, thereby transforming the genre of lauda into an extremely malleable poetic medium.1 Some of his poems may be classified as tensons, others as dramatic dialogues, some as litanies, others as prayers.2 His original use of specific tropes is also noteworthy: Iacopone makes use of such complex tropes as epanadiplosis for the first time in Italian literary history. As may be deduced from the foregoing statements, in this study Iacopone ’s Laude is afforded the status of canzoniere. The Laude ought to be considered not simply as a collection of individual poems assembled together because of their attribution to one author or their common religious content , but rather as a structured body of poems, organized according to an intrinsic sequence and a particular internal pattern. But if a consideration of Iacopone’s collection of laude as an orchestrated canzoniere, to be read as a progression and development, both thematically and linguistically ,appears arbitrary to the rigorous philologist,a long tradition of readers and critics testifies to the de facto approach to Iacopone’s Laude as a corpus poeticum, an organized constellation of poems, rather than random poetic texts assembled under the same title and attributed more or less authoritatively to a single author.3 The poems were selected and ordered by an anonymous redactor, and printed for the first time in Florence by Francesco Bonaccorsi in 1490.4 This is the text modern readers use today. Presumably, the author played no part in the organization of the Laude. The assembling of the collection , as well as the composition and dating of individual poems, are enveloped in the same darkness as surrounds Iacopone’s existence.5 One of Iacopone’s critics maintains that the Bonaccorsi Edition “presents 102 lauds in the presumed order of their composition.”6 Others prefer to limit the scope of their philological investigation and simply affirm that the sequence of laude, as it has been transmitted to us, represents Iacopone ’s spiritual development, but the laude were not necessarily written in that order.7 Some of them address the issue openly; others take the sequence for granted.8 Still others deny the possibility of reading...

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