In 1205 Francis of Assisi stands in the piazza of his hometown, takes off his clothes, and walks completely naked before his fellow citizens. He stands naked before the people and naked before God.

This undressing publicly is a crucial occurrence in the Saint’s life that later becomes a cultural icon of the Franciscan movement. Its defiance of Western social and moral codes has inspired religious and secular commentaries. Fictional renditions and cinematographic versions of Francis’s life, as well as theological and psychological interpretations of Franciscanism, have exploited this episode to stress Francis’s nonconformist attitude and technique. His public nudity...

Reading thirteenth-century franciscan texts through the lens of the Edenic myth in the Book of Genesis reveals that adoption of nudity as a chief human trait is complemented by matrimonial union as a theological and poetic topos. Franciscan mysticism considers humanity in its two-gendered typology and portrays it as a binomial entity. Francis emphasizes the fraternal/sororal relation between the sexes as accompanying spousal ties; Iacopone repeatedly evokes matrimonial consummation as the image of the otherwise inexpressible bond between human beings and God.

In the Book of Genesis, the two narratives accounting for the origins, the Priestly source and the Yahwist...

The interactive union of male and female as specular reflection of God’s love for human beings inspires and animates Franciscanism and its theology according to the matrix of the Book of Genesis. Francis founded the First and Second Orders as two manifestations of the same spirituality in men and women respectively, and the foundation of the Franciscan Third Order cemented and confirmed a theological emphasis on the union and cooperation of the two human genders as forming the most perfect image of divine love in the created world. Nudity and the dynamics of two genders in one unit are complemented...

The structural symbolism of “The Canticle of Brother Sun,” combined with its unembellished rhetoric, epitomizes Francis of Assisi’s desire to return to the uncontaminated first stage of creation. Theologically, a return to the beginning implies the radical idea of bringing back the state of humanity depicted in the biblical myth of creation, when man and woman were nude and had not yet undergone temptation and Fall; their relation to each other and to nature remained harmonious and flawless. The poetics of the “Canticle” proposes a view of pre-Fall creation as depicted in the Book of Genesis.¹ More than a utopian...

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...

After Lauda 34 Iacopone abandons the battle of two contrasting forms of love. The pacification of carnal and agapic love opens the way for an increased presence of divine love in the collection. From this point on, the poet’s ascetic progression includes a more positive outlook on love, which is no longer viewed as a negative inclination to be exorcized, but seen as a healing, transforming force. Love descends from God and returns to God after drawing human beings closer to God. Most of the laude on spiritual love (what Iacopone has so far also defined as “infused love”) are...

With the sublimity of mystical union between Anima and Christ achieved in Lauda 71, the remaining portion of Iacopone’scanzonierefocuses on the intricate consequences of this rare religious occurrence. The poet’s closeness to God leads to reflections on the inadequacy of language to convey the effects love has produced on his soul. But the poems at the end of theLaudealso consider the crucial choice of thevia negativaas a path leading to mystical vision, the role of silence as ascetic practice, the reevaluation of cosmic creation as a manifestation of God, and finally the discovery of...