ANGELA da FOLIGNO, blessed. — Mystic, born at Foligno around 1248, died on 4 January 1309. Her conversion is dated to 1285, when she felt inspired to make a general confession, which she made to a Friar Minor, her fellow citizen and kinsman, Arnaldo or Adamo da Foligno, who became her spiritual director and secretary. Until that time she had lived dividing her care among her mother, her husband, and her children, while also indulging in vanities, though not without some remorse. After all her family had died within a short period, she was able to sell her possessions, enter the Third Franciscan Order, and devote herself to a life of rigorous penance and fraternal charity, especially heroic charity toward lepers. The apostolate of doctrine and, still more, of example attracted around her a circle of religious spirits, among whom the celebrated friar Ubertino da Casale should be remembered, the first to exalt her in the prologue to the Arbor sitae crucifixoe Iesu. But with regard to the internal struggles of the Franciscan Order, A. remained in the elevated sphere of a serene equilibrium, although she had greater affinity with the «Spirituals» (who must absolutely not be confused with the «Brethren of the Free Spirit», against whom A. took a clear stand). Her devotion is important for the history of the Indulgence of the Portiuncula, traces of which remain, especially in connection with a pilgrimage in 1300, in her writings. A regular process of canonization was never instituted, but she was given the title of blessed, with a proper Mass and Office, for the Franciscan Order and for the diocese of Foligno. In that city her remains are preserved in the church of S. Francesco.
Following a crisis she experienced in the basilica of the Sacred Convent at Assisi, where she had gone on pilgrimage in 1291, Friar Arnaldo, who wished to discover its cause, began in 1292 to collect that most interesting series of sublime confidences, which he set down in written notes in order to submit them to the judgment of experts, fearing that A. might be the victim of evil suggestions. The memorial, composed in Latin with the utmost fidelity to the woman’s vernacular expression, who is designated in the text by the generic name «Christifidelis», and not free of Umbrian turns of phrase, exhibits a discontinuity owing to a forced interruption of the conversations after the twentieth step; the remaining ten steps are concentrated into seven, grouping the phases of ecstasy and of the dark nights, up to the attainment of the life of transforming union (the seventh step of the second group), which A. reached around 1296. In that year Arnaldo, or Adamo as the case may be, closed the memorial.
The book — which in the most authoritative Assisi codex (no. 342, fourteenth or fifteenth century) bears the title Liber sororis
Lelle de Fulgineo de tertio Ordine s. Francisci and in others is designated in the incipit as Liber de vera fidelium experientia — together with other revelations of the blessed woman, transcribed by various less faithful secretaries, and with some of her letters, constitutes a compendium of mystical theology, such as might have flowed from the fervent soul of an intelligent and sensitive but unlearned woman, although it is not excluded that she may have been able to read. An echo of Bonaventurian mysticism, and through it of the Victorines, can be perceived in it; nevertheless, A.’s spontaneity is most evident, and she has therefore rightly been called «Magistra theologorum».
Doctrine. — Having established the principle of salvation in the grace of divine light, to be obtained through assiduous prayer, the manifestation of God and of the self, along the threefold way of beginners, the proficient, and the perfect, A. teaches that asceticism and mysticism must be the constant care of the faithful soul. Keeping mind and affection fixed upon the cross, the soul will feel impelled to imitate Christ crucified, the loving and beloved model to whom one must be conformed in the poverty of voluntary renunciation not only of material goods but also of oneself, in practical humility, and in pain exquisitely endured and embraced. This triad of the «companionship of Christ» frequently recurs in her exhortations, almost as a synthesis of the «book of life», as she calls the God-Man; and upon these foundations her gradual ascent is established, reaching the point of identity: «You are me and I am You». Through affective, Christ-centered contemplation, A. rises to knowledge, and therefore to love, of God the Trinity. God, seen now as beauty, now as goodness or, to use her own word, as Ognibene, now as ineffable fullness, is the goal to which one ascends most readily through Eucharistic transports. Thus she comes to recognize Him as ever present and everywhere, without falling into the errors of pantheism; and thus she finds not merely tolerable but even lovable the proximity of creatures who transgress, as is said in the final seventh step.
It is less easy to follow her in her flight through the luminous darkness to the vision not only of the divine attributes but of Him who is Being and from whom created things derive their being: then the soul sees «itself alone with God, wholly heavenly in Him», in an ineffable manner superior to all the modes previously experienced. This is the supreme degree, attained not by all mystics: «And it seemed to me that I was in the midst of the Trinity».
The role of the Virgin-Mother in A.’s marvelous experiences is noteworthy; perhaps an allusion to the thesis of the Immaculate Conception is to be discerned in a passage of the short treatise on the sufferings of the Passion and on prayer (cf. ed. Doncoeur, p. 111).