BLESSED ANGELA OF FOLIGNO. — Mystic, b. at Foligno c. 1248, d. 4 Jan. 1309. Her conversion is dated to 1285, when she felt inspired to make a general confession to a Franciscan friar, her fellow citizen and kinsman, Arnaldo (or Adamo) of Foligno, who became her spiritual director and secretary. Up to that time she had lived, dividing her cares between her mother, her husband, and her children, while indulging in vanities, though not without some remorse. When, in a short space of time, all her family died, she was able to sell her possessions, enter the Third Order of St Francis, and devote herself to a life of rigorous penance and fraternal charity, especially heroic towards lepers. Her apostolate, both through doctrine and example, gathered around her a circle of religious spirits, among whom should be mentioned the celebrated friar Ubertino of Casale, who was the first to extol her in the prologue of the *Arbor vitae crucifixae Iesu*. With regard to the internal struggles within the Franciscan Order, Angela maintained herself on a high plane of serene equilibrium, though she had greater affinity with the “Spirituals” (not to be confused with the “Brethren of the Free Spirit,” against whom she took a clear stand). Important for the history of the Portiuncula Indulgence is her devotion, traces of which remain, 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 Office, for the Franciscan Order and for the diocese of Foligno. In this city her remains are preserved in the church of St Francis.
After a crisis suffered in the basilica of the Sacred Convent of Assisi, whither she had gone on pilgrimage in 1291, Friar Arnaldo, wishing to know the 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 Angela might be the victim of evil suggestions. The memorial, written in Latin with scrupulous fidelity to the vernacular dictation of the woman, who is referred to in the text by the generic designation “Christifidelis,” and not without Umbrian expressions, shows a break, due to a forced interruption of the conversations, after the twentieth step; the remaining ten steps are condensed into seven, grouping together the phases of ecstasy and the dark nights, up to the attained life of transforming union (the seventh step of the second group), which Angela reached about 1296. In that year Arnaldo, or Adamo as he may have been, closed the memorial.
The book — which in the most authoritative codex of Assisi (n. 342, 14th or 15th cent.) bears the title *Liber sororis Lelle de Fuligneo de tertio Ordine s. Francisci* and in others is designated in the incipit as *Liber de vera fidelium experimentia* — together with other revelations of the blessed, transcribed by various less faithful secretaries, and with some of her letters, forms a compendium of mystical theology, such as might flow from the fervent soul of an intelligent and sensitive, though unlettered, woman, though it is not excluded that she knew how to read. There is an echo here of Bonaventurian mysticism and, through it, of the Victorines; yet Angela’s spontaneity is most evident, so that she has been rightly styled “Magistra theologorum.”
DOCTRINE. — Having established the principle of salvation in the grace of divine light, to be obtained by assiduous prayer, the manifestation of God and of the self, in the threefold way of beginners, proficients, and the perfect, Angela teaches how asceticism and mysticism must be the constant care of the faithful soul, which, keeping its mind and affections fixed on the Cross, will be impelled to the imitation of Christ crucified, the loving and beloved model to which it is bound to conform itself in the poverty of voluntary stripping not only of temporal goods but also of self, in practical humility, in suffering keenly endured and embraced. This triad of the “companionship of Christ” recurs frequently in her exhortations, almost a synthesis of the “book of life,” as she calls the God-Man; and upon these steps her gradual ascent is based, until identity is reached: “Thou art I and I am Thou.” Through affective, Christocentric contemplation, Angela rises to the knowledge, and therefore to the love, of the Trinity. God, seen now as beauty, now as goodness, or, to use her own word, as *Ognibene* [All-Good], now as inexpressible fullness, is a term to which one more easily attains through Eucharistic transports. Thus she comes to recognize Him as ever and everywhere present, without falling into the errors of pantheism, and thus she finds not merely tolerable but even lovable the proximity of sinful creatures, 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 all created things derive their being: then the soul sees “itself alone with God, all celestial in Him,” in an inexpressible manner, surpassing all previously experienced modes. It is the highest degree, not attained by all mystics: “And it seemed to me that I was standing in the midst of the Trinity.”
Noteworthy is the part played by the Virgin-Mother in Angela’s marvellous experiences; perhaps there is here a hint of the thesis of the Immaculate Conception in a passage of the short treatise on the sorrows of the Passion and on prayer (cf. ed. Doncoeur, p. 111).