Jacopo Passavanti

Jacopo Passavanti ( – 15 June 1357) was an Italian Dominican friar, preacher and writer.

Biography Jacopo Passavanti's parents were Banco and Cecca di Tornaquinci of old patrician stock. He entered the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella at the age of fourteen and held important positions in the order in the course of his life, becoming prior in Pistoia and Florence. Passavanti was, for a number of years, also the vicar of the bishop of Florence Angelo Acciaioli. He studied in Florence and later in Paris (1330–3) before teaching philosophy and theology in Pisa, Siena, and Rome. He returned to Florence in 1340, and during the Black Death (1348) was in charge of the rapidly growing convent library. He supervised the completion of Santa Maria Novella and was partly responsible for the founding of the Florence Charterhouse.

Works Some of his sermons survive but he is best known for the Specchio di vera penitenza, an elaborate reworking of homilies he delivered in Lent 1354. Through its vivid treatment of the nature of sin and its consequences, it aimed to provide a lay audience with a practical guide to repentance. Passavanti shows impressive doctrinal expertise. He also develops the forty-eight examples with which he illustrates his message into what are in effect novelle, his artistry bearing comparison with that of Giovanni Boccaccio in the Decameron. Several translations are attributed to him; one of the Homilies of Origen, one of St. Augustine's City of God and some accounts from Livy's Ab urbe condita.