Jacopone da Todi

Jacopone da Todi (c. 1230 – 25 December 1306) was an Italian Franciscan friar from Umbria. He wrote several laude (songs in praise of the Lord) in the local vernacular. He was an early pioneer in Italian theatre, being one of the earliest scholars who dramatised Gospel subjects.

Born Jacopo dei Benedetti, he was a member of a minor noble family. He studied law in Bologna and became a successful lawyer. At some point in his late 20s, he married a young noblewoman, Vanna di Bernardino di Guidone, who according to some accounts, was a pious and generous woman. Due to his reputation as a worldly and greedy man, she took it upon herself to mortify her flesh in atonement for his behavior.

Not long after their wedding, Benedetti urged his wife to attend a public tournament. In the course of the spectacle, she was killed when part of the stand in which she was sitting gave way. Rushing to her side, he discovered that she had been wearing a hairshirt. The shock of his wife's death and the evidence of her secret penance made such an impression on him that he abandoned his profession and became a Franciscan tertiary.