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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
The following pages merely give a few glimpses of the spiritual teaching of Blessed Angela of Foligno. Apart from her Instructions and Letters we owe what we have to a certain friar Arnaldo. He was, it seems, her cousin; and he appears first, in anything but an appreciative mood, on the occasion of Angela's mystical experience in the church of San Francesco at Assisi. Fortunately he was spiritual enough to see beneath the surface, which appeared mere hysteria to others, and to appreciate Angela's genuine holiness. Later on, as director and secretary, he drew from her an account of her spiritual experiences and thoughts, and set them down; but not in the contemporary Tuscan that Angela would have used, but in Latin. His task was no easy one. Much of what Angela spoke must have been hard to grasp in any case—she once told him she could not recognise what he had written down as hers—and everything had to be done rapidly.
1 Practically all is drawn from Le Liure de la Bienheureuse Soeur Angéle de Foligno, which contains all the original documents translated from the Latin; edited by P. Paul Doncoeur, S. J. (L'Art Catholiqur. Paris, 1926). I wish here to express my thanks for permission to quote at will from P. Doncoeur's book.
2 The reference is found in the First Prologue to The First Book (in the Venice edition of 1485). The language is very laudatory indeed but with a tinge of self-glorification: ‘Omnia dona propria', he writes, ‘per meam malitiam perdita in immensum multiplicata restituit'; and a little later he says that the change Angela wrought in him was so great: ‘ut nullus sane mentis qui me prins cognoverit habeat dubitare quin spiritus Christi in me sit de novo genitus'. I owe the complete extract from Ubertino's book, to Fr Aloysius Kelly, O.F.M., who kindly transcribed it for me from the copy at the Friary, East Bergholt.
3 The affectionate abbreviation for Angela.
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