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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 mediæval 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.
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.
Can we not see them, the souls of such fervent lovers, swaying and eddying, with joined hands and flapping wings, flowers dropping from their hair, above the thatched roof of the stable at Bethlehem? The stable at Bethlehem! It is perpetually returning to Jacopone's thoughts.
Dante's fiery denunciations, Jacopone's threats, the fierce invectives of Petrarch, and the thundering prophecies of Joachim lead the chorus. Boccaccio follows with his scathing irony.
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