Whole towns walked nine days singing one song

TODI, Umbria, September 13, 2026 AD — By 1399 AD, on the roads of Provence, whole towns were singing the same song as they walked. They went in white, from church to church. They fasted and prayed, and they kept it up for nine days. The bands were called the Albati or the Bianchi — the white ones.

What they sang was a poem in Latin, ten verses long, about Our Lady at the Cross. It is called the Stabat Mater dolorosa. It was written around the turn of the fourteenth century. The Church still sings it at the Mass of Our Lady of Sorrows on September 15.

It starts with Our Lady on her feet. Stabat Mater dolorosa, iuxta Crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius — word for word, the sorrowful Mother was standing, in tears, beside the Cross, while the Son hung there. Stabat does not mean “she stood”, as though it were over in a moment. It means she was standing, and went on standing. And iuxta means beside — hard against, with no distance left between her and the wood.

The whole poem grows out of one sentence of Scripture. The baby Jesus was brought to the Temple, and Simeon said to his mother: “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce.” In the second verse of the poem that sword arrives: a sword has passed through her soul, groaning, grieved and in pain. Simeon had said the sword shall pass through her soul. The poet moved it into the past. She trembles and she weeps. She cries out loud only once, right at the end, after her Son has given up his spirit.

The name the boys in the street gave him

Who wrote it is not settled. Seven names have been put forward. Only two are held likely: Pope Innocent III, and a Franciscan poet of Todi called Jacopone da Todi. Jacopone died in 1306 AD. Pope Benedict XIV gave the hymn to Pope Innocent III, with no doubt about it. Most writers since have given it to Jacopone instead.

Until about 1268 AD Jacopone was a lawyer in Todi. Then a raised platform gave way under his wife, Vanna, at a public feast. Jacopone reached Vanna and opened her rich dress. Underneath it he found a hair cloth, a penance Vanna had kept secret from him. He gave up the law and joined the Franciscans. Once he crawled on all fours across the public square of Todi, saddled and bridled like a donkey. The boys who mocked him in the streets gave him the name Jacopone. He answered the mockery in a couplet of his own: Senno me pare e cortesia, empazir per lo bel Messia — a wise and courteous choice he’d make, who’d be a fool for the dear Lord’s sake.

Whoever made it, the poem did not stay in the friars’ houses. By the end of the fourteenth century it was known to every kind of person.

Late in the poem the grammar changes hands. The poet stops describing Our Lady and starts asking for something: Iuxta Crucem tecum stare, et me tibi sociare in planctu desidero. Word for word: I want to stand beside the Cross with you, and to join myself to you in mourning. The word from the very first line, iuxta, comes back. This time tecum, with you, is fastened to it. A poem that opens with Our Lady standing ends with the singer asking to stand in the same place.