Jacoponus, known to us sometimes as Jacobus de Benedictis, and sometimes as Jacopo di Benedetto, or as Giacopone da Todi from his Italian birthplace, is a most quaint and singular singer. The name Jacoponus is a mere title of reproach, and signifies either “Big James” or “Silly James.” It was called after him on the street and he adopted it in a spirit of humility and as a badge of self abnegation. The man himself was an Italian jurist and nobleman, who lived in the thirteenth century. He led a wild life, lost his property, and eventually regained it by industry and ability. Evidently he neither cared nor scrupled about his ways of making money. A crisis came in his life in consequence of his wife’s sudden death. She was killed at the city games of Todi in the year of grace 1268, where with other women she had been watching the sports from a scaffold of wood. It was insecure and fell, killing her instantly. Poor Benedetto, on hurrying to the spot, found that beneath her garments she had been wearing a hair girdle next to the skin—according to the harsh custom of the time—and he was deeply affected by this evidence of her anxiety to please God. In those days such an action spoke volumes for the victim’s piety, and no one was more open to conviction than this erratic, sensitive, and brilliant man. But it would seem that for a long time he struggled against his feelings, since we have a record that by 1298 he had been a religious person about twenty years. Indeed, there is a story that he was not received at once by the Minorites, and that he finally produced certain poems before they grew satisfied to take him in. However, when he was fairly within their walls he outdid all the other Franciscans in austerity. He had given up his position as Doctor of Laws and had surrendered his property; now it would appear that he was determined to advance beyond the rest in ascetic devotion. His penances and prayers were greatly in excess of prescribed rules, and he must have proved as sore a trial to any easy-going brother, as Simeon Stylites was when he too led the whole convent to denounce his ascetic habits. There is small doubt that the brain of Jacoponus was decidedly off its balance, even in these earliest days, and his subsequent conduct gave full evidence of his insanity. Still, we find in this self-abasement of his nothing that looks like pride or egotism. Where others display a complacency which is very Pharisaic, he only shows the monomania of a gifted soul. Some of his expressions are remarkable for their spiritual depth and power. Thus when he was pressed to explain how a Christian can be sure that he loves God, he replied, “I have the sign of charity; if I ask God for something, and He refuses me, I love Him notwithstanding; and when He opposes me I love Him twice as much.” “I would,” he says, “for the love of Christ, suffer with a perfect resignation all the toils of this life,