available; and with this assistance the work of identification should be fairly simple. It will be remembered that similar identifications have been recently attempted, with remarkable success, in the reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission. As we have seen, this coordination of our national archives should be supplemented by the skilful investigations of a foreign intelligence department organised on the lines of the continental and American archive missions.' Such an organisation would not only promote the long neglected comparative study of European history, but would serve as a useful bureau of information for the assistance of English students in every capital of Europe.

These operations are not beyond the powers of the authorities of the Record Office, and perhaps they might add to them the advisory direction of the training and examination of archivists; while the desirability of consulting professed historians on the subject of the destruction of superfluous documents has been already referred to. At the same time some such consultation may also be advantageously held in respect of record publications. Finally, the recognition and encouragement by the State of the extensive but often ill-directed schemes of publication from the resources of learned and local societies is a matter deserving consideration; and the new British Academy is well qualified to act as an intermediary between the Government and these isolated bodies.

As

it is, instances will occur to the reader in which the privately-printed description of a class of records or local muniments dispenses with the need for an official inventory.

The existence of certain defects in our meritorious but antiquated archive system need, after all, give rise to no feeling of despondency or irritation. It must be remembered that the scientific study of this subject abroad was due to causes that have never operated in this country. The sense of national responsibility for the well-being of these priceless possessions has undoubtedly tended to the advancement of more than one branch of learning. It would almost seem that the experiment might be tried by ourselves, salvo jure cujuscumque, as the old lawbooks remind us.

Art. 3.-JACOPONE DA TODI: THE POET OF THE

'STABAT MATER.'

1. Bibliographical Notes on the Poems of the Blessed Jacopone da Todi, and on the writers who speak of him. By Eduard Boehmer. Romanische Studien, 1871.

2. Jacobone da Todi, il Giullare di Dio del secolo xiii. By Alessandro d'Ancona. Nuova Antologia, vol. xxi, 1880. 3. Jacopone da Todi; lo' Stabat Mater 'e' Donna del Paradiso.' Studio su nuovi codici. By Annibale Tenneroni. Todi, 1887.

4. A Milanese Codex of the Lauds of Brother Jacobone. Edited by Francesco Novati. Franciscan Miscellanies,' i-iii, 1889.

5. Les Poètes Franciscains en Italie au 13me Siècle. By A. F. Ozanam. Paris, 1852.

6. Jacopone da Todi. By Cav. Piero Alvi (Arcidiacono di Todi). Todi, 1906.

7. Fra Jacopone da Todi e l'Epopea Francescana. Biordo Brugnoli. 1907.

By

TODI's peace and poverty are threatened at last. Sleepers hewn and piled for miles along a line planned from Perugia are ready for the coming railway; but for a year or two Todi will remain a haunt of ancient leisure, a city which welcomes her rare guests with enthusiasm, escorts them up and down her steep streets, and speeds them, not without a suggestion of largesse for her hospitality.

A slight acquaintance with her medieval traditions prevailed over indolence, procrastination, and parsimony, and induced me to share a friend's carriage from Assisi across the Spoletan valley and over the pass below Montefalco into the valley of the Naja and the Rio. We started at six o'clock in the morning in a shabby old chariot, which, six years earlier, had taken me to all the Franciscan shrines within reach, and whose dislocations and tatters the intervening time had only emphasised. The May morning was cool enough at first to counsel wraps, but it developed soon into midsummer heat. Our first stage was Cannara, a quaint walled village on the Umbrian plain, whose narrow streets and many-storeyed buildings suggest a section of a city rather than a townlet

well known to St Francis and his companions, who were wont to nurse its sick and exhort its sound early in the thirteenth century. Eight o'clock struck as we entered Bevagna, the 'misty Mevania' of Propertius, dear to all who honour the memory of St Francis. We could not fix the spot where he preached to the birds, but it was just before the entrance-gate. We halted for two hours to breathe our excellent steeds, and looked, as he must often have done, on the high walls of San Michele and San Silvestro, pierced with tiny arched windows.

How beautiful was the drive over the gentle ascent of the pass and along thirty miles of high road to Todi ! Behind us was the great plain backed by Subasio and the high range about Foligno and Trevi, where the Topino has its source; further south was Spoleto, and near it Clitumnus, whose steers are still snow-white. To our left rose hills terraced with farms and vineyards, on one of which stands Montefalco, the watch and ward of Umbria, north and south. To our right the low Apennines stretched westwards, broken, as they neared Perugia, by the valley of the young Tiber making its way to Todi from the north. On either wayside lay cushions of thyme, purple, mauve, and lavender, in continuous masses. Where the ground was cultivated, long flax-furrows bent their sky-blue waves to the wind; here and there spread acres of dark blue salvia; on the roadside lingered roses, red and white, unsoiled, for here motors have not begun to forge their desecrating way. We topped the brow and came into sight of the southern valley. It is much narrower than the valley of Spoleto and much more wooded. Oak-trees grow everywhere, in clumps or in straggling lines; and mile after mile repeats the landscape of vineyard, corn, and boscage, of farmhouse and wayside hamlet, till Todi on her throne is espied where the plain widens, where the Tiber gleams, and the Rio and Naja render up their tributes to its historic stream.

We stopped only once at a smithy, where our careful driver flung beakers of red wine down his horses' throats, the smith helping, as they resented the refresher. But it availed, and they spurted cheerfully onwards to the foot of Todi's hill, where stands a fine church of the decadence planned by Bernini. Winding round the walls, we climbed up a steep and narrow street and drew up below

a flight of steps down which the host of Todi's only hotel came to meet us. The salone where we had tea was a relic of the palatial past; and the whole house bespoke bygone importance, its solid structures broken by arches so symmetrically grouped that they claimed their descent from an age when building was a regal art. In that age Todi was a wealthy city which had outlived two civilisations, and had learnt from both such architecture as defied time. Twenty thousand people then filled the town, and forty thousand more farmed the plains which the Counts of Todi owned. Now, five thousand in the city and ten or twelve thousand in its communal environs complete the muster-roll. Its walls are based here and there with massive Etruscan masonry, and an arch spans the main street whose foundations may be Etruscan too; but its broken bridge joining two sections of some ancient magnate's palace belongs to the decadence. Tudertum, Tudertanum, Tuder-for such are its antique nameswas a city of importance, perhaps because of its position on the left bank of the Tiber. Roman remains are plentiful, the Forum with its fractured wall still showing four arched recesses in which booths or stalls might be set up. An amphitheatre and twenty great halls for public cisterns testify to the munificence of Imperial provision.

But it was medieval Todi and its condition during the thirteenth century which had lured me thither, and which lure all who care to understand a little the literature preceding Dante and expressing Italian ideals before his time. He was familiar with this literature, and in the twenty-fourth canto of his ' Purgatorio' puts into Forese's mouth the names of some of its most eminent representatires. Neither in that list nor in those of cantos XI and IIVI does Jacopone's name appear, probably because he was still alive in 1300, the date chosen by Dante for his spritual pilgrimage. But it is impossible to suppose that he never read Jacopone's Canticles and Lauds written in the vernacular, nor the two great Latin hymns of the 'Stabat Mater,' 'Mary at the Manger' and 'Mary at the Cross,' which rank in the Church with Thomas of Celano's 'Des Iræ.'

It was to catch the spirit of their poet's time, to learn the aspect of his surroundings, to look on the nature

which soothed him in his agony, to visit the house to which he brought his bride, that I went to Todi. I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Monsignor Alvi, Archdeacon of Todi and Prior of the Cathedral, who helped my quest. I discovered the house for myself. It stands on a wide ledge of the hill up which Todi climbs, a ledge known locally as La Piana, a little way below the ruins of the Forum. On this ledge, a row of houses with massive substructures faces the mountains and looks over the plain. One of these houses is built on to an antique church, San Carlo, no longer used, whose beautiful façade and belfry recall a more primitive architectural epoch than that which produced the Duomo and San Fortunato, Its pierced window and delicate decorative mouldings point to the tenth or eleventh century. When Jacopone was born these other churches did not exist, although they were begun during his life.

This house, joined to San Carlo, which it outsteps a pace, is the most imposing in the row. Its bases are very old and are probably Etruscan. I pushed open its portone and entered a stone hall, at the far end of which is a great recess where stands a huge quadrangular trough, very high, into which acqua vivente falls, its overflow disappearing down an ancient drain in the floor. Above the hall are several stories which form separate dwellings, their rooms still on the original plan, covered by the same beams, protected now by strong wooden boxes. The windows were renewed in the eighteenth century and provided with mullions, which detract from their antiquity, but their outlook is the same, away to the mountains of Massa Martana and to the eternal snows of the glorious Leonessa.

Jacopone's father was a famous notary of Todi, Benedetto di Simo, of noble family and possessing a feudal estate outside the city called Spagliagrano. He was a Ghibelline, and popular amongst the people, who had submitted to the Emperor Frederick II. So far as can be gathered, his son was born in his house outside the city. His birth-year was probably 1228, two years after the death of St Francis, and about the same tine that his future foe Benedetto dei Gaetani, afterwards Pope Boniface VIII, was born at Anagni. They were contemporaries for seventy-three years.