| In the Middle Ages, interview with Franco Mancini
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28 March, 2001
  Siena
The New Era is today in Agello, near the Trasimeno lake in the beautiful Italian region of Umbria.
We are being hosted in the house "Domus Egidia" of Franco Mancini (80 yeas old), a retired professor of the University of Perugia, and a poet.
Professor Mancini is a "guru" of the culture of the Middle Ages, in particular of the religious poetry (i laudari). He is a philologist, editor of the
poems of Iacopone da Todi, the most important italian poet before Dante Alighieri.
Professor Mancini explains:"Iacopone speaks about madness, he glorifies it, but it does not mean that he is mad or he feels mad. He confesses his ectasies,
but we don't judge his writing irrational. Iacopone rails against science, but he is not ignorant. He fights against the reality
of his time, but he is not outside his time".
But the at atmosphere becomes evocative when Professor Mancini reads a poem: "Audite una entenzone, / ch'era 'nfra dui persone, / vecchi descaduti / c'ad òpo eran perduti."
It is a discussion between two old men, who are speaking of their families and their lives. It's an ardent review, by intense personalities.
It is a dive in our origins, a long lament.
"Veddi, o compar meo, del me' figlio iudeo, / veddi con'm'à addobbato / de lo meo guadagnato! / La sua lengua tagliente / plu ca spada pognente......
Tank You Mr Franco Mancini.
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