Franciscanum (Jan 2015)
L’amore non è amato (El amor no es amado): en torno al origen y la leyenda de una frase atribuida a san Francisco de Asís y el alcance de una visión del Evangelio
Abstract
«Love is not loved», phrase about how the Love of God is not recognized, and it’s an expression attributed to Francis of Assisi. However, the phrase does not appear in any of the fundamental biographies written about the saint in the thirteenth century, which raises the question about the origin of the tradition that collected this phrase associated with the exploit of the Poverello. Oktavian von Rieden observes that it can be affirmed that it was Jacopone da Todi who composed the expression «l’amore non è amato». This is verified by means of a revision of several manuscripts belonging to the fifteenth century. The documentation shows how the identification of Jacopone as the author of the phrase is clearly recorded by two lines of textual tradition: one religious biographical, and another related to the philological study of his poetic work. This leads again to wonder about a different tradition that associates the saint of Assisi to the phrase, and that hypothetically had to be initiated at the periphery of the Franciscan orders not before the eighteenth century. In this sense, the influential work of Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori perhaps established the definitive traces of the legendary episode with the phrase «love is not loved» pronounced by Francisco.
