Da Bernardo di Chiaravalle allo Iacopone bolognese : rimodulazioni mistiche della transformatio

In the rhymes of the Devotissime compositioni rhythmice, a Bolognese laudistic sylloge of the 15th-16th century, we can perceive the lively echo of the centuries-old meditation on transforming love as a theandric paradox, théosis realized in the inclusive dialectic of the irreducible. Twelfth-century theology, through the voice of the masters of Saint Victor and of the Cistercian monks, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, had celebrated in love the configuration of human matter to the divine form and in this the assimilation to the way of being of the God-Trinity.

Franciscan spirituality had exalted, reworking monastic theology, the contextuality of divine fullness and nullity in man: the laude of Iacopone da Todi, for example, celebrate in the nullity of man informed by Being the nature of Love as transcendence perennial in the Other. Through the medium of the Iacoponic and paraiacoponic tradition, the theme of the transformatio is accepted and re-elaborated in the Devotissime compositioni rhythmice. In the Bolognese laude, the union with the Beloved in the wine cellar of the Canticle of Canticles is made possible by the courage to believe it possible for one's own fragile creaturehood, which in love is transfigured without being erased. [Publisher's text]