ANGELA OF FOLIGNO, Blessed. - Mystic, b. at Foligno ca. 1248, d. 4 January 1309. Her conversion is fixed at 1285, when she felt inspired to make a general confession, which she made to a Friar Minor, her fellow citizen and blood relative, Arnaldo or Adamo da Foligno, who became her spiritual director and secretary. Until that time she had lived dividing her cares between her mother, her husband and her children, but also indulging in vanities, though not without a touch of remorse. When all her family had died within a short span of time, she was able to sell her possessions, enter the Franciscan Third Order and give herself to a life of rigorous penance and fraternal charity, especially heroic toward lepers. The apostolate of doctrine and, even more, of example attracted around her a cenacle of religious spirits, among whom mention must be made of the famous friar Ubertino da Casale, the first to exalt her in the prologue of the Arbor vitae crucifixae Iesu. But with regard to the internal struggles of the Franciscan Order, A. kept to the elevated sphere of a serene equilibrium, although she had greater affinity with the "Spirituals" (by no means to be confused with the "Brethren of the Free Spirit," against whom A. took a clear stand). Important for the history of the Indulgence of the Portiuncula is her devotion, of which a trace remains, especially on the occasion of a pilgrimage in 1300, in her writings. No regular process of canonization was ever instituted, but she was given the title of blessed, with a proper Mass and lessons, for the Franciscan Order and for the diocese of Foligno. In that city her remains are kept in the church of St. Francis.
Following a crisis she suffered in the basilica of the Sacred Convent of Assisi, where she had gone on pilgrimage in 1291, friar Arnaldo, who wished to know its motive, began in 1292 to gather that most interesting series of sublime confidences, which he set down in written notes in order to submit them to the judgment of experts, in the fear that A. might be the victim of evil suggestions. The memorial, composed in Latin with the utmost fidelity to the woman's vernacular dictation, referred to in the text by the generic designation "Christifidelis," not free of Umbrian locutions, presents a break in continuity, owing to a forced interruption of the conversations, after the twentieth step; the ten remaining steps are concentrated into seven, grouping the phases of ecstasy and of the dark nights, up to the attained life of transforming union (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 codex of Assisi (no. 342, 14th or 15th cent.) 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, transcribed by various less faithful secretaries, and with some letters of hers, constitutes a compendium of mystical theology, such as could spring from the fervent soul of an intelligent and sensitive woman, but not a learned one, even if it is not excluded that she could read. An echo of Bonaventuran mysticism is discernible in it and, through this, of the Victorines; nevertheless A.'s spontaneity is most evident, so that she has rightly been called "Magistra theologorum."
Doctrine. - Having established the principle of salvation in the grace of divine light, to be implored with assiduous prayer, as manifestation of God and of the self, in the threefold way of beginners, proficients and the perfect, A. teaches how asceticism and mysticism must be the constant care of the faithful soul, which, keeping mind and affection fixed on the cross, will feel itself driven to the imitation of Christ crucified, loving and beloved model, to whom one is bound to conform in the poverty of voluntary stripping not only of real goods but also of oneself, in practical humility, in sorrow exquisitely suffered and embraced. This trinomial of the "company of Christ" returns frequently in her exhortations, almost as a synthesis of the "book of life" as she calls the God-Man; and on these hinges her gradual ascent is set, up to identity: "You are me and I am You." Through Christocentric affective contemplation, A. rises to the knowledge, and therefore to the love, of God-Trinity. God, seen now as beauty, now as goodness or, to use her word, as All-Good, now as ineffable fullness, is the term to which one ascends more easily from Eucharistic transports. Thus she comes to recognize him always and everywhere present, yet without falling into the errors of pantheism, and thus she finds not merely tolerable but even lovable the very nearness of transgressing creatures, as is said in the seventh and final step.
Less easy is it to follow her in her flight through the luminous darkness up to the vision not only of the divine attributes, but of Him who is Being and from whom being derives to created things: then the soul sees "itself alone with God, all heavenly in Him," in an inexpressible manner, superior to all the modes previously experienced. It is the supreme degree, not reached by all mystics: "And it seemed to me that I stood in the midst of the Trinity."
Notable is the part that the Virgin-Mother has in A.'s wondrous experiences; perhaps an allusion to the thesis of the Immaculate Conception is to be discerned in a passage of the small treatise on the sorrows of the Passion and on prayer (cf. ed. Doncoeur, p. 111).
Bibliography5 works
Fausta Casolini