Pietro lorenzetti, compianto (dettaglio) basilica_inferiore di assisi 1310-1329

Angela of Foligno

Recently Pope Francis canonized Blessed Angela of Foligno, a Franciscan mystic from the 13th century – but why?

When Pope Francis canonized the blessed Angela of Foligno it merely meant that she was to be globally recognized as a saint; and not that the church up until now had disregarded her. In fact, Pope Innocent XII officially beatified her in 1697. This recent recognition just ensures her recognition in the world-wide catholic calendar of saints.

Angela of Foligno (1248 -1309) was born into a wealthy family in Foligno in Umbria. She was married at an early age, had several children and lived according to her own words a pleasant life full of enjoyments and fun. Several sorrows in her surroundings – an earthquake in 1279, a hurricane, warring with Perugia and probably the harsh living conditions which followed in the wake of the deteriorating climate pushed her towards a more reflective way of life. This led little by little to an immersion in the Franciscan way of life, an endeavor which culminated after 1288, when her mother, husband and children all died. After these tragedies she sold all her possessions and enrolled in the third order of St. Francis. She died in Foligno in 1309.

Angela-von-Foligno

During these final decades of her life she was busy with works of charity, while at the same time pursuing a mystical union with Christ. This she brought about through pursuing a penitential path and imitating the sufferings of Christ – through extreme asceticism and self-harm. Her religious experiences were later dictated to a Franciscan friar, Arnoldo, describing the many stages she had to move through in order to achieve her ambition of full union. This text appended with 36 instructions was later translated into Latin. She was buried in the Churchh of St. Francis in Foligno, where she lies in a baroque contraption complete with wax figure.

Googling Angela of Foligno produces app. 419.000 hits, which is nearly as many as Clare of Assisi can garner (423.000), witnessing that she is – if not beloved – at least fascinating to thousand of modern spiritual seekers (of the female gender).

Interestingly enough, however, it is apparently not these mystical “qualities” which seem to have secured her final recognition in the Catholic Hall of Fame. According to the Pope she should be remembered primarily for the fact that she undertook this penitential and spiritual journey in which she was “attentive to the many signs in which God makes his presence felt in our lives”; and not so much for the fact that she seems to have reached an apogee. One wonders whether this is once more an instance of a male cleric trying to superimpose a more pedestrian understanding of what was obviously difficult to understand for the friar, who tried to mediate between the mystic and her audience.

In order to review this, one has however to descend into the abyss of her Memoria and try to understand the text in its context – as a historian. Luckily we possess a series of scholarly introductions to her writings and their context which can help us in this direction!

 

SOURCE:

Remarks by the Pope in connection with the sanctification

 

READ MORE:

Critical Editions: 
Il libro della Beata Angela da Foligno
Ludger Thier and Abele Calufetti, eds, ,
Rome: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae 1985

Angela of Foligno: Complete Works (Classics of Western Spirituality Series)
Ed. and translated by Romana Guarnier and Paul A. Lachance
Paperback: 424 pages
Language: English
Paulist Press International, U.S. 1993
ISBN-10: 0809133660
ISBN-13: 978-0809133666

Secondary Literature:
Angela of Foligno
By Christina Mazzoni.
In: Medieval Holy Women in the Christian tradition c. 1100 – c. 1500.
Brepols 2010
ISBN 978-2-503-53180-9 (Print)
ISBN 978-2-503-53699-6 (Online)

Religious Women in the Later Middle Ages
By Caroline Walker Bynum
In: Christian Spirituality. Vol 2: High Middle Ages and Reformation. Ed by Jill Raitt in collaboration with Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff.
Crossroad, New York 1997
ISBN: 0-8245-0765-7

Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics)
By Caroline Walker Bynum
Paperback: 300 pages
Language: English
University of California Press; New Ed edition (1 July 1992)
ISBN-10: 0520063295
ISBN-13: 978-0520063297

Angela von Foligno. Ein Beitrag zur franziskanischen Frauenbewegung um 1300
By Ulrich Köpf
In: Peter Dinzelbacher / Dieter R. Bauer (Hgg.): Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter, (Dokumentation der Wissenschaftlichen Studientagung “Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter”, 19.-22. März 1986 in Weingarten, veranstaltet von der Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, = Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, Herausgegeben von Egon Boshof, Heft 28)
Böhlau Verlag, Köln & Wien 1988
ISBN 3412033863, S. 225-250.

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