Post 1: What is Idle Knowledge?

Jacopone is kind of a rock star.

Reading the poems assigned, I had so many things to discuss about all of them, but the thing that stuck out most to me is Jacopone consistently referring to two forms of knowledge: learning vs pious devotion, or true knowledge vs university knowledge.

First, this sticks out to me because, you know, I go to a university. So that got me thinking about what I was learning in class. Was that knowledge true, or was it something that wasn't? Jacopone seems to think that there is learning that falls in line with God and the way he wants us to live and learning that takes away from God. God must be a present figure in your learning and knowledge. This is true. Sometimes, knowledge creates pride. When I was a little girl, "know-it-all" or "Smart Alec" were among the worst of insults you could get (you know, besides "Poopy Head"). Knowledge is supposed to benefit yourself and others. It's not supposed to be something to cut yourself off from others or put yourself above them.

This passage, in 34 (ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TRUE AND COUNTERFEIT LOVE, ACQUIRED AND INFUSED KNOWLEDGE), stuck out to me the most:

"Acquired knowledge, however long its meditation,
Cannot engender properly ordered love.
Infused knowledge, as soon as it touches you, fills you
With burning love, makes peace between you and God.
It makes you humble, edifies your neighbor,
And gives you knowledge of the truth."

Well, hey there, Jesuit values. Going to a Jesuit liberal arts school, you kind of get this sense of "learning for the sake of learning," but you also get that learning serves as a tool to help other people (as well as kind of a cool path to self-fulfillment through helping others). Through knowledge, you pursue a higher truth about the world that's not as much of a cut-and-dry means to an end as perhaps knowledge solely for the sake of being rich.

For knowledge to work for Jacopone, it must be selfless, and that wasn't something he was seeing a lot of when he was living. People with knowledge and in higher offices got paid more, and they were being very corrupt. Popes were rich and getting corrupt. Jacopone didn't see the aspect of their offices where they helped other people--at all, it seems. His solution was to get rid of them and to hope in vain that people would eventually turn and follow the path to true knowledge, that people would ultimately turn away from pride and follow God.

The papacy did eventually clear up (and by eventually, I'm talking more like "recently"), but learning even more about how corrupted the papacy was, I can see how hopeless it must have seemed for poor Jacopone. It's hard to stick it to the man when the man runs like...everything.