Le Laudes Dei altissimi di frate Francesco e l’oratio iniziale dello Stimulus amoris. Un precoce esempio di ricezione duecentesca

This work aims to study the textual relationship between the opening prayer of the stimulus amoris written by the lector Giacomo da Milano between 1273 and 1293 ca., and the Laudes Dei altissimi of Francis of Assisi. For this purpose, the historical-textual debate on the Chartula of Assisi is summarised and at the same time re-discussed, in order to outline its diffusion and reception in the XIIIth century. The most interesting point of Giacomo’s reception is that it constitutes a proof of the circulation of Francis’s prayer by the end of the thirteenth century, well before the surviving manuscript tradition that dates back to the XIVth century. The discussion of the relationship between the stimulus and the Laudes also provides the opportunity to formulate new interpretative hypotheses on some passages of Francis’s text.