Page 17 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 12(2) (2024)

es the lamentation of Christ by his mother at the der relationship between mother and son. In the
moment of the crucifixion, with the mother’s entire Lauda, the word ‘son’ appears 40 times to
feeling in the foreground, rather than the suffer- humanize the sacred or bring the content clos-
ing experienced by the son. The Mother of God, er to the pathos and feelings of ordinary people.
just like Christ, is not depicted with holiness and The same thing happens through the mention of
unattainability but represents every mother who breastfeeding, which emphasizes the physical as-
mourns for her child, thus calling for the uni- pect of the relationship: Figlio, perche t’ascundi
versality of human existence. The specificity of al petto o’si lattato? (‘Son, why do you spurn the
the form of the Lauda allows it to contain both breasts that suckled you?’, verse 47). In verse 77,
a narrative and dialogic part, apart from its pri- Mary’s expression speaks of a motherly feeling
mary poetic structure. The narrative part of the which is described in words from the realm of
praise follows the Gospel, with the Messenger profane love (‘figlio, lo meo deporto’ - My Son!
appearing as the first omniscient narrator, most My Comfort!), just as in verse 116, ‘Red Son and 17
likely the Apostle John, who communicates to White Son’ is a way of describing beauty which
the Virgin the facts about the crucifixion of Je- is often it is found in love poetry, and the same
sus in chronological order: his capture, torture, metaphor is used in the Song of Songs, V, 10 (‘my
evocation of betrayal, humiliation and transfer beloved is white and red’).
to Pilate to be crucified. Jacopone da Todi brings However, Mary never leaves her human di-
the suffering of the Virgin to the scene in place mension, and her grief still seems to maintain
of the suffering of Jesus. It is considered that the the unbridgeable chasm between the human
poet wrote in the form of a Lauda, which could and divine worlds. In the initial address to Mary,
already be found in the form of frescoes in the St. John uses the lexeme ‘donna,’ whose transla-
chapels of northern and central Italy as early as tion is not ‘Madam’ but originates from the Lat-
the 12th century, but also that he leaned towards in ‘domina,’ which acquires a more sophisticated From Religious Lauda to Medieval Canzone and Sonnet
the specifics of the Lauda originating from Pe- meaning as ‘the lady from Heaven.’ It is as if the
rugia which is advocated less for asceticism and address ‘Signora,’ which would contain the dis-
mysticism, as for a general and humane rep- tanced meaning of ‘Madam,’ is deliberately left
resentation of suffering (Sapegno 1926). out. On the contrary, through the lexeme ‘don-
na,’ the emphasis is placed on the human nature
Lexical peculiarities of the mother’s reactions. The title ‘Signora’ will
In this lauda, we can find two different lexical be reserved for the Virgin’s stay in Heaven; until
registers: one refers to the lexicon from the collo- then, she is a wife and mother.
quial speech or sermo cotidianus, and the other to In the verse ‘figlio, pat’e mmarito’/’son, fa-
the lexical elements that are Latinisms from the ther and husband’ (verse 89), the reference to
Gospel. The first should emphasize the univer- son, father and husband is both a metaphor and
sality of the mother-son relationship and give a an allusion to the holy trinity, the Father, the
humanistic vision to the poem, while the second Son and the Holy Spirit. A connection is made
register should emphasize its religious content. between the ordinary human and the sacred, ex-
The frequent repetition of the lexeme ‘son,’ as panding the semantic field of the son with that
well as the address of Jesus to the Mother of God of the Father (God) and the Spirit, who himself
with the vocative ‘mother’ (‘Donna de Paradiso’, is the embodiment of love, hence using the lex-
verses 84, 92 and 104, cited in Sapegno 1926, 78) eme ‘husband.’ The son’s identification with ho-
or, for nuance, the more formal use of ‘mia mate’ liness is also metaphorical when Mary addresses
at the moment when Jesus hands his mother him in verse 41: ‘figlio, amoroso giglio!’/’son, be-
over to his friend John for him to be her new son loved dove’ (verse 89), knowing that the dove in
(verse 108), they highlight the intimate and ten- Christianity symbolizes spiritual purity.