Among the literary works Joacobus wrote or
compiled, the earliest and most famous is a Legenda
sanctorum aurea (Golden Legend). After the Legenda,
Jacobus composed four large sets of Latin sermons,
which evidently circulated as models for other preach-
ers to use: Sermones de sanctis, on major saints and
festivals of the church year; Sermones de tempore, on
the Sunday gospels for the year; Sermones quadragesi-
males, on the weekday gospels for Lent; and Mariade,
or Laudes deiparae virginis, sermons in praise of the
Virgin Mary. Jacobus’s sermons survive in numerous
manuscripts and early printed editions and thus must
have enjoyed a wide and long-lasting popularity. His
last major work, Chronicle of Genoa, which he wrote
as archbishop, is noteworthy for the local history and
hagiography it preserves and for some autobiographical
passages that shed light on his own life.
Further Reading
Kaeppeli, Thomas. Scriptores Ordini Praedicatorum medii aevi,
Vol. 2. Rome: Ad S. Sabinae, 1975, pp. 348-369.
Monleone, Giovanni. Iacopo da Varagine e la sua Cronaca di
Genova dale origini al MCCXCVII, 3 vols. Rome: Tipografi a
del Senato, 1941.
Sermones aurei.. ., 2 vols. Ed. Rudolph Clutius. Augsburg and
Cracow: Apud Christophorum Bartl, 1760. (Latin edition:
includes all four sermons).
Sherry Reames
JACOPO DA MILANO
(13th century)
The Franciscan lector Jacopo da Milano (Jacob of Milan,
James of Milan, Jacobus Mediolanensis, Giacomo da
Milano) was the author of the original version of a spiri-
tual classic in Latin, Stimulus amoris (Prick of Love).
Much has been surmised but little is known for certain
about Jacopo. From the date of the earliest evidence for
the Stimulus amoris, and from the acquaintance it shows
with the writings of Saint Bonaventure, Jacopo must
have composed it in the second half of the thirteenth
century. Jacopo has been plausibly but not conclusively
identifi ed with a Brother James of Milan recorded as
a lector at the Franciscan convent at Domodossola in
- Some scholars have thought him identical or pos-
sibly identical with a mid-thirteenth-century Milanese
theologian who was known until 1979—incorrectly—as
Giacomo Capelli or de Capellis; but this person is no
longer credibly a Jacopo. Jacopo could well have been
the renowned Franciscan, formerly a lector in Milan,
who sometime after 1296 read and approved Arnaldo of
Foligno’s Memorial on the mystic and visionary Angela
of Foligno. One modern scholar has ascribed to Jacopo
a meditation on the hymn Salve Regina, transmitted
in some of his manuscripts and at times attributed to
Bernard of Clairvaux (among others), but this idea has
not found widespread acceptance.
Recent investigation has revealed Stimulus amoris in
its Jacopean form to be an unstable “open text” whose
very title is uncertain. As now edited, it consists of a
prologue and twenty-three brief chapters; the fi rst nine
chapters guide the reader toward divine rapture, and
the rest deal with other aspects of the contemplative
life. The writing style is often intense and rhetorically
effective; it combines direct address, exclamation, and
fi gures of repetition with an intentionally simple vo-
cabulary. Chapter 14, an especially vivid meditation on
Christ’s passion, is thought by some to have furnished
the theological basis for the imagery in the window of
the Glorifi cation of Saint Francis in the upper church of
Francis’s basilica at Assisi. However, the ideas in ques-
tion were common in later thirteenth-century Franciscan
contexts, and the dating of both the window and the
earliest version or versions of the text is uncertain.
Jacopo’s Stimulus circulated with Bonaventure’s
works, was soon mistakenly attributed to Bonaventure,
and was expanded twice in the fourteenth century by
persons unknown. Modern scholars differentiate these
texts by calling the original Stimulus (amoris) minor
and the expansions (treated as a single version) Stimulus
(amoris) maior. The maior was more widely read: there
are more than 130 manuscripts of it, as opposed to some
ninety manuscripts of the minor. A recent suggestion that
the maior was actually the original seems unpersuasive.
Starting in the later fourteenth century, this very differ-
ent larger version was translated into other European
languages, including English. A fourteenth-century
translation (now lost) of Stimulus minor into Tuscan
dialect is thought to underlie its fi rst printing in Italian
(Venice, 1521).
See also Angela da Foligno, Saint;
Bonaventure, SaintFurther Reading
Edition
Fathers of the College of Saint Bonaventure, eds. Stimulus amo-
ris fr. Iacobi Mediolanensis—Canticum pauperis fr. Ioannis
Peckam. Bibliotheca Franciscans Ascetica Medii Aevi, 4.
Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1905, pp. vi–xvii,
1–132. (Reprint, 1949).Critical Studies
Alberzoni, Maria Pia.’ “L‘approbatio’: Curia Romana, ordine
minoritico e Liber.” In Angèle de Foligno: Le dossier, ed.
Giulia Barone and Jacques Dalarun. Collection de l’École
Française de Rome, 255. Rome: École Française de Rome,
1999, pp. 293–318. (See especially pp. 311–114.)
Canal, Jose M., “El Stimulus amoris de Santiago de Milán y la
Meditatio in Salve regina.” Franciscan Studies, 26, 1966,
pp. 174–188.
Cremaschi, Chiara Giovanna, trans. “Introduzione” and StimulusJACOPO DA MILANO