Francesco e i giullari

Il canto delle laude come forma di predicazione

By (author) Francesco Zimei By (author) Matteo Leonardi

Book cover: Francesco e i giullari

Extent: 98 pages

Publisher: L’ERMA di Bretschneider

Subjects: Medieval Studies, Religious Studies

Language: Italian

Paperback (Forthcoming)

(September 2026)

ISBN: 9788891339812

5.12 x 7.87 inches

Price: $82.00

What happened when music and vernacular poetry, fused through performance into a vivid and penetrating experience, became part of preaching? It was thus that at the beginning of the thirteenth century, around the figure of Francis of Assisi, a new way of communicating the faith took shape: singing, the expressive use of the mother tongue, oral tradition, and collective participation became the distinctive features of a spirituality capable—perhaps like never before—of speaking to people’s hearts. Shortly after the middle of the century, the progressive clericalization of the Franciscan Order attempted to stem the phenomenon’s impact by relegating its salient aspects to the margins of catechesi, but the advent of lay confraternities managed to redeem the dignity of the lauda by transferring its functions to the ritual sphere, resulting in ensuring that practical continuity received today even within the liturgy. From troubadours to contrafactio, from processions to social dances, these pages recount the birth and establishment of the genre in the early Franciscan climate, bringing to light a chapter in the history of Italian culture that is as important as it is neglected by studies or reduced to a few conventional lines. Accompanied by the essays of the two authors and an interview by Paolo Scarnecchia on approaches to the laudistico repertoire, eight audio tracks taken from a rare recording of twenty-five years ago offer the opportunity to look into that world and savor its powerful sonic and spiritual dimension, rendered through philologically reliable performance methods.

  • By (author) Francesco Zimei
  • By (author) Matteo Leonardi