IT is a curious fact that in the modern revival of interest
in the Franciscan movement, little attention has been paid
to the life and works of Angela of Foligno. Yet, excepting
only St. Bonaventura, this woman has probably exerted a
more enduring, more far-reaching influence than any other
Franciscan of the century which followed the Founder's
death. In saying this, I do not forget the claims of such great
Franciscans as John of Parma or Jacopone da Todi, nor
yet of St. Clare, the Founder of the Second Order. But
the influence of John of Parma was comparatively shortlived; and that of Jacopone's superb poetry, though great
in Italy, did not go beyond it. His ecstasies could not be
translated into other tongues. As to St. Clare, with whom
the feminine aspect of the Franciscan ideal first showed itself, her vocation was to the foundation of a contemplative
order, which should support by its heavenly correspondences
the active and missionary life of the Franciscan friars. The
business of the Second Order is the essential woman's business, of keeping the fire of love alight upon the hearth. lts
influence, therefore, was and is almost entirely confined
within the boundaries of the spiritual family. The deepest
wells of Franciscan mysticism are there hidden, and must
always be hidden, from the outer world.
But the vocation of Angela of Foligno was, in a sense,
more thoroughly Franciscan than this, more broadly human,
more complete. Like that of St. Catherine of Genoa, a mystic
[page161]
whom she resembles in certain respects, it was a twofold
vocation: to the eternal and to the temporal, to the divine
and to the human. She was a great contemplative, but she
was also an exceedingly successful teacher of the secrets of
the spiritual life: one of the great line of artist-mediators
between the infinite and the human mind.
We know nothing of St. Clare's mystical experience. We
know of Angela's all that she was able to express; and she
tried hard, though for want of language she confesses that
she often failed. This passionate, faulty, very human woman,
who came to the Mystic Way from a discorderly life, and was
hampered by a natural egotism which she transmuted, it
is true, but never perhaps really killed, has earned the great
title of "Mistress of Theologians." She penetrated to that
world of realities which the diagrams of theology, like the
temple built with hands, foreshadow upon earth. Her book
of visions and revelations, now so little read, profoundly
affected the religious life of Europe. During the sixteenth
and the seventeenth century we often come upon its traces
in England and in France, as well as in Italy itself; for in
this period it was one of the most widely circulated religious
works. It exerted great influence on St. Francis de Sales,
and also upon the French Quietists. It is quoted as an
authority by Madame Guyon, Poiret, and Malaval; and
through the great English Benedictine, Augustine Baker, and
his pupil, Gertrude More, it has left its mark on the English
Catholic mysticism of the seventeenth century.
This book is practically our only trustworthy source for the
facts of Angela's inner and outer life. It was written in Latin,
at her dictation, by her Franciscan confessor Fra Arnaldo;
at some date subsequent to 1294, since it dates a past event
by the pontificate of Celestine V. It was not printed till the
sixteenth century, when first an Italian translation, and then
the Latin text appeared. Both soon became popular; the
translation being one of the first Italian books of devotion to
[page 162]
appear in the vulgar tongue. It is divided into three parts,
which must be read in relation with one another. First
we have the history of Angela's conversion, penitence, and slow,
difficult education in the mystic way: a detailed psychological
document of much interest. Secondly we have, grouped
together, all the visions and revelations which she received
in that way. Unfortunately Fra Arnaldo has seen fit to
arrange these according to their subjects, and not according
to the order in which they were experienced; thereby increasing their edifying character at the expense of their
scientific worth. Last comes "the evangelical doctrine of
the Blessed Angela "; a treatise largely made up of letters
addressed to her disciples, but, like the writings of St. Teresa,
full of illuminating autobiographical touches.
Here, then, we have in one volume three aspects of human
life as seen within the limits of one personality: the biographical facts, the supernal vision, and the ordered conclusions
drawn from those facts and that vision, for the instruction of
other men. All are of value to us in our study of her personality; for we shall never understand her as a mystic unless
we try first to understand her as a human creature.
First as to her outward life. Angela was born of a prosperous Umbrian family in 1248; twenty-two years after the
death of St. Francis, seventeen years before the birth of
Dante. She was one year younger than St. Margaret of Cortona, the other great Franciscan penitent and contemplative.
Her life, covering the second half of the thirteenth century,
was roughly contemporary with that of Jacopone da Todi,
who was twenty years her senior; and with those " spiritual" friars, such as Conrad of Offida and John of La Verna,
who are commemorated in the "Little Flowers." The period,
in Italy, was one of contrasted worldly luxury and spiritual
enthusiasm, and Angela's life-history appears to have included
experience of both extremes. She married when very young
and had children, but lived a thoroughly worldly if not an
[page 163]
actually immoral life: posing before society as an excellent
Christian, but actually denying herself few indulgences. We
learn from the list of sins of which she afterwards accused
herself, that these "infirmities and diseases" had included
the washing of her face, the curling, braiding, washing, combing,
and anointing of her hair, wearing of "needless vain and curious clothes," and laced shoes adorned with cut leather. She
had also incurred the risk of hell by "vain running and dancing
and walking about for pleasure," and even by enjoying the
scent of flowers: a crime which St. Francis could hardly have
condemned. Remembering the intensely ascetic tone of
Franciscan penitence and the puritan ideals of the Spiritual
zealots, we need not take these confessions too seriously, or
interpret in the worst sense the "embraces, touches, and other
evil deeds" which she deplores. Nevertheless, the unregenerate Angela in early womanhood was not the kind of person
whom one would pick out as likely to develop into a saint.
She makes it quite clear to us that she was a vain, self-important, and hypocritical little egotist, "painted in false colours,
a dissembler within and without." Probably, like many
women of the world, a nominal Tertiary, she loved to make a
pious impression, but loved comfort even more. " I diligently
made an outward show of being poor, but caused many sheets
and coverings to be put down where I slept, and taken up in
the morning so that none might see them." There was
an offensive sanctimoniousness about her too. "During
the whole of my life," she says frankly, "I have studied how
that I might obtain the fame of sanctity."
We do not know the date of Angela's conversion, or the
circumstances which brought it about; save that it took
place under Franciscan influence, which was of course paramount in that part of Umbria in her day. It seems to have
taken the form of a gradual awakening of conscience to the
sinfulness and hypocrisy of her life. In her mental distress
she prayed to St. Francis, and he appeared to her in a dream,
[page 164]
the earliest of her visionary experiences; the confessor to
whom she then went for advice was a Friar Minor, and after her husband's death she adopted the plain habit worn by the
more fervent Tertiaries, and remained faithful to the Order till her death. The fixed dates in her life are few and confusing.
Her own book only gives two: the date of her final purification and the date of her death. We gather from this and other sources, however, that after her widowhood she lived at first with one companion in great retirement; but by about 1290, had formed a small sisterhood in Foligno. Its members, who observed Franciscan poverty in its full rigour, took the rule of the Third Order and the three vows of religion, but they were not cloistered. They devoted themselves to the
care of the sick, and other works of charity.
In this community Angela spent the rest of her life; gradually becoming known as a teacher of "Seraphic wisdom " amongst those Spiritual Franciscans who were struggling to keep the ideals of St. Francis alive. She seems to have been the centre
of a group of Franciscan Tertiaries of both sexes, for whom she
was at once friend and prophetess, like St. Catherine of Siena
in the next century. Several of her letters to these "sons" of hers are embedded in her book of "Evangelical Doctrine." One of them, the turbulent and ardent friar Ubertino da Casale,
owed to her his true initiation into the spiritual life: and his
account of the impression which she made on him helps us
understand the nature of her influence. He came to her
from Paris in 1298, when he was twenty-five years old; a successful preacher, but already conscious of the inward call
to a life of greater perfection. "She restored," he says, " a
thousandfold all those spiritual gifts I had lost through my own sins; so that from that time I have not been the same
man that I was before. When I had experienced the splendour of her radiant virtue, she changed the whole face of my mind, and so drove out the weakness and languor from my soul and body and healed my mind that was torn with distraction,
[page 165]
that no one who knew me before could doubt that the Spirit
Christ was newly begotten in me through her." This is almost
our only glimpse of Angela as she was seen by contemporary
eyes: but it indicates the position she came to occupy among
the more devout Franciscan zelanti.
She died, surrounded by her spiritual children, in the octave
of the Feast of the Holy Innocents, 1309, aged sixty-one; and
was buried in the Church of the Franciscans at Foligno, where
her body still lies. An Office in her honour was approved by
Gregory XIV in 1701, and her Feast is kept throughout
the Franciscan Order on March 30.
So much for the scanty outer history. Of greater interest
is our knowledge of her inner life; the real life of mystics and
contemplatives. The history of this inner life assures us that
Angela was of the stuff of which great mystics are made
though not at all of the stuff of which many amateurs of
mysticism expect them to be made. First great necessity,
she possessed a strongly romantic temperament; like St.
Francis, Suso, St. Ignatius, Mechthild, St. Teresa, her companions on the highway of the soul. Like these, she had
also an innate simplicity and ardour, a character at once
childlike and heroic; that "all-or-none" reaction, the power
of total self-giving to the matter in hand, which distinguishes
the hero, whether as man of action, as artist, or as saint. Indeed, heroism may properly be ascribed to a comfortable and
self-indulgent married woman, who leaves all for the lonely adventure of Sinai, however many tumbles she may have upon
the road. With this courage she combined an extreme sensibility to impressions, great power of endurance, a strong will ;
all the potentialities of a great sinner or a great saint. Further,
she evidently possessed that peculiar, unstable psychic makeup, which the mystic shares with other types of genius; and
which is seen in its full development in the two greatest
of Italian saints, Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena
She experienced all the normal episodes of complete mystical
[page 166]
development: the phases of penitence and self-discipline,
illumination and dereliction, and at last that ecstatic union
with the Divine Nature which is the goal of the Way. Her
mysticism was deeply coloured by the Franciscan atmosphere
in which it was nurtured; it exhibited the highly emotional
and enthusiastic character, the tendency to eccentric penances,
the concentration upon the Cross and Passion of Christ, which
are found in her contemporary Jacopone da Todi, and are
typical of the Franciscan mystics at their best. Indeed,
the many parallels between Angela and Jacopone suggest to
us that the favourite subjects of their contemplations were
those in vogue in "Spiritual" circles at this time; and that
we have in their works the surviving examples of a complete
school of mysticism, which taught, as Ubertino da Casale
says that Cecilia of Florence did, "the whole art of the higher
contemplation."
"As I walked," said the Blessed Angela, "by the way of
penitence, I took eighteen spiritual steps before I came to
know the imperfections of my life." This is the first sentence
of the book of Conversion and Penitence, which analyses
in detail the changes through which she passed on her
way to complete self-knowledge and self-adjustment. Those "eighteen steps" extended over many years. When they
began, Angela was living luxuriously, as a married woman, in
her husband's house. When they ended, she was a poor widow
vowed to the religious life; stripped of every superfluity,
everything that would entangle her in the web of appearance, apt in contemplation, companioned by visions, esteemed
as a teacher and an ecstatic, and the centre of a group of
disciples. Her inner life, during these years of ascent, of
hard and difficult growth, seems to have been a life of bitter
and almost continuous struggle. Even after the preliminary
steps of repentance were over, and her visionary powers had
developed, the new spiritual ideals demanded of her ever
more difficult renunciations. We see her, as we read the
[page 167
wonderful memoirs of her years of penitence, perpetually
flung to and fro between adoration and contrition; as first
one element and then the other of her complex personality
took the upper hand. In her long and slow ascent towards
the stars, she alternately experienced the sunshine and the
shade.
From the turmoil which surrounded the hard re-making of
Angela's character, there emerged two great principles round
which her subsequent life and teaching were to be grouped.
The first was poverty, the second was self-knowledge. Naturally her instinct for poverty would be fostered by her Franciscan environment; but it is an instinct implicit in the mystical
temperament, and not peculiar to the Poor Man of Assisi.
Mystics know that possessions dissipate the energy which
they need for other and more real things; that they must
give up ownership, the verb " to have," if they are to attain
the freedom which they seek, and all the fullness of the verb "to be." Thus Jacopone in his great ode expressed a universal
spiritual law:
"Povertate è nulla avere
e nulla cosa poi volere;
ed omne coca possedere
en spirito de libertate."
It cost Angela many struggles before she fully accepted and
acted upon this truth, and attained that which she calls the "liberty of poverty." Self-knowledge, that hard essential of
the soul's re-education which Richard of St. Victor, and
afterwards St. Catherine of Siena, made the starting-point of
all mysticism, she recognized from the first as the true objective
towards which her hard penances and long meditations must
tend.
The eighteen "steps," then, exhibit with extraordinary
honesty her gradual progress in these two arts of self-knowledge and renunciation. At the first step, as we have seen,
she was by something — we know not what — startled into
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attention to the real, and terrified by the vision of her own
naked reality stripped of its pleasant veils and self-deceits.
Her first reaction to this vision was avoidance. She was
ashamed to look her sins in the face, or confess them. But
having prayed to St. Francis, she was led by a dream — the
form under which her unconscious mind most frequently
controlled her — to seek a Franciscan friar and make a general
confession of her sins. She performed his penance loyally,
and became increasingly contrite for her faults: the sense of
Divine Mercy touching her, and evoking an ever more humble
and repentant grief. By the eighth step this contrition had
become love, the passion for perfection triumphing over the
hatred of imperfection. By that contemplation of the Cross
which was specially dear to Franciscan devotion, and is the
subject of one of Jacopone's most splendid poems, she was led
into an ever deeper understanding of the mystery of redemption by pain. Angela was now definitely committed to the
mystic way. "In this beholding of the Cross," she says, "I
burned with the fire of love and remorse: so that standing
before that Cross I divested myself of everything and offered
myself to Him. . . and the aforesaid fire compelled me, and
I had no power to resist." The special form which her renunciation took — that of a vow of chastity in deed and thought
— suggests the direction in which her chief temptations lay;
and this deduction is made more probable by the emotional
quality of her visionary experience, in which the repressed
ardours of her temperament found relief.
At the ninth step, this instinct for renunciation achieved
more complete expression. "Enlightened and instructed" —
doubtless by some member of the spiritual group — she learned
that nothing less than a total sacrifice of friends, kindred,
possessions, her very self, would serve her if she wished to
tread the Way of Holy Cross. But in her acceptance of
this bitter truth we still see something of the vanity, self-importance and narrow egotism of the old Angela. This
[page 169]
is the one passage in all her writings which every one knows,
and by which she is generally, and most unfairly, judged.
"I elected to walk on the thorny path which is the path of
tribulation. So I began to put aside the fine clothing and
adornments which I had, and the most delicate food, and also
the covering of my head. But as yet, to do all these things
was hard, and shamed me, because I did not feel much love
for God, and was living with my husband. So that it was
a bitter thing to me when anything offensive was said or done
to me; but I bore it as patiently as I could. In that time,
and by God's will, there died my mother, who was a great
hindrance to me in following the way of God; my husband
died likewise; and in a short time there also died all my
children. And because I had begun to follow the aforesaid
way, and had prayed God to rid me of them, I had great
consolation of their deaths, although I also felt some grief;
wherefore, because God had shown me this grace, I imagined
that my heart was in the heart of God and His will and His
heart in my heart."
This unfortunate paragraph outweighs for many minds
the whole of Angela's subsequent life and achievements. I
do not deny that, taken alone, it appears to be a monument of
spiritual egotism. But we must remember that it represents,
not Angela the peaceful mystic, but Angela the worried and
storm-tossed penitent at the most difficult moment of her
career. The emotional centre of her life had shifted. An
inexorable inner voice now urged her to a total concentration
on God, and she knew that the way of penance and renunciation
was her only hope. Yet living in a thoroughly discordant,
thoroughly unspiritual environment, hemmed in on all sides
by conventional existence and unsympathetic surroundings,
this way seemed impossible to follow in its completeness; for she
was not one of those who are able to harmonize the demands
of both worlds. Moreover, these words were written by one
who had long outlived the human sorrow which, as she says
[page 170]
here and in another place, she felt at these accumulated bereavements. Now, looking back and seeing her past existence
spread out before her, she recognized even this awful and
drastic series of deprivations as a necessary factor in the life to
which she was called.
After all, it is fair to acknowledge that family affection
is not the strongest point in the character of the mystical
saints. In the interests of their vocation, they are always
ready to leave father, mother, brothers, and sisters; and moreover there is evangelical authority for this attitude. They
are specialists, and are therefore bound, in the interests of
the race, to give up many things which other men must
develop and preserve. Artists are under much the same
necessity. The vitality which we diffuse amongst many
interests and loves, these must concentrate on the one object
of their quest. Hence St. Francis himself flung his family
aside without scruple when it came to the parting of the ways.
Hence Jacopone da Todi was warned that even spiritual
friendships must be held lightly by the pilgrim on the way of
the Cross. Angela was only following in their footsteps,
though she doubtless expressed herself with unnecessary and
ill-regulated vigour, when she recognized human ties and
human affections as possible impediments of the spiritual
life. An easy capitulation to love and friendship in their
most engrossing aspects seems always to have been her standing danger. It caused her in later life to say that she "feared
love more than all other things"; even regarding with
suspicion the deep affection which unites teacher and disciples,
or two fellow-initiates of the contemplative life.
It was after her release from the duties of family life, and
her more complete concentration on the ascetic life, that
her visionary powers began to develop. At first they were
little more than waking dreams of a commonplace kind;
imaginary pictures of the Passion, the Crucifix, the Sacred
Heart, such as have been experienced by innumerable Catholic
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saints. These vivid symbolic presentations of Divine love
moved Angela to greater and more heroic heights of penitential
love; and the passion for complete evangelical poverty came
on her with renewed force. Her possessions enchained her,
and she knew it. She made many efforts to screw herself up
bit by bit to those heights of renunciation which St. Francis
seems to have reached almost without effort." For this cause — namely, to have the liberty of poverty
I journeyed to Rome, to pray the Blessed Peter that he would
obtain for me the grace of true poverty. It seemed to me at
last that I could not sufficiently do penance whilst I was possessed of worldly things . . . so I determined to forsake
everything. In my imagination I had a great desire to become
poor, and such was my zeal, that I often feared to die before I
attained this state of poverty. On the other hand, I was
assailed by temptations, which whispered to me that I was
still young, that begging for alms might lead me into shame and
danger; that if I did this, I should die of hunger, cold, and
nakedness. Moreover, all my friends dissuaded me from it.
But at last Divine mercy sent a great illumination into my
heart, which, as I believed then and do now, I shall never lose
even in eternity. . . . So then I did resolve in good earnest."
Here is the final, deliberate act of will: the turning once
for all from the unreal to the real — under whatever form the
charms of unreality appear to the growing self — which all
mystics have to make. It was Angela's eleventh step. Her
mystical powers were now developing rapidly. They showed
themselves in visions, dreams, and ecstasies. Not all of these,
it is true, can be accepted as marks of spiritual growth: for
some clearly represent the re-emergence under religious symbols
of old emotions and desires. But the deep and vivid intuitions
of spiritual realities which came to her more and more frequently, show that a steady sublimation of those emotions
and desires was in progress, and that they tended more and
more towards supersensual ends.
[page 172]
At the fifteenth step, with truly Franciscan thoroughness
— though, oddly enough, the Friars Minor whom she consulted forbade her to do it — she distributed the whole of her
possessions amongst the poor. "Because methought I
could not keep anything for myself without greatly offending
Him who did thus enlighten me." With this crucial act she
seems to have attained at last the true and full state of illumination. "Then," she says, "I began to feel the sweetness of
God in my heart": that which other mystics have called
the "sense of the Presence." Also, "I began to have understanding of the visions and the words"; a new spiritual
lucidity running side by side with the symbolic pictures and
imaginary voices that she saw and heard with the inner eye
and ear. This, too, is normal and characteristic. From this
point, then, we must read the book of Visions and Consolations side by side with the book of Penances if we would
understand Angela's inner life; for these two forms of experience, which she has unfortunately chosen to treat separately,
alternated with one another.
In the time of her total acceptance of holy poverty, Angela
seems to have been living in a state of almost hermit-like
simplicity with one companion, the Blessed Paschalina of
Foligno; whom at first she found a "weariness," but afterwards discovered to be a fellow traveller on the Mystic Way.
Some years had now passed since her conversion; and she
was already accepted — perhaps indeed celebrated — as a
religious teacher among the members of the Spiritual group.
Definitely vowed to the service of the Franciscan Order, she
seems soon to have become like St. Catherine of Siena, St.
Catherine of Genoa, and many other women mystics, the centre
of a group of adoring disciples or "spiritual sons." Yet her
inner life was still in a state of confusion, the remaking of her
character was still in progress. She was flung perpetually
to the extremes of joy and anguish. She would rise to great
heights of mystical passion " filled with the fire and fervour
[page 173]
of Divine love," only to fall back to her old temptations. The
repressed instinctive life began to take its revenge, and
tortured her by vicious suggestions which she had never
known before. "I would have chosen rather to be roasted
than to endure such pains." Also the great strain put upon
her nervous system by the growing spiritual faculties resulted
in absolute physical illness, as has been the case with many
of the mystical saints. "The torments of my body," she
says, "were veritably numberless. There remained not one
of my members that was not grievously tormented, nor was I
ever free from pain, infirmity, or weariness."
We need not be afraid to recognize in this struggle a reflection
of the stresses and difficulties — some physical — which attend
on the complete sublimation of man's psychic life; especially
in persons of a strongly emotional temperament. In Angela's
case the visions and dreams that accompanied it assure us
of the character of the crisis through which she was passing.
Many of her symptoms at this time were undoubtedly hysterical. She cried aloud when she heard the name of God, and
fell into a fever on seeing a picture of the Passion of Christ.
Her tears were perpetual, and often she longed to tear herself
in pieces. Unfortunately Franciscan piety of the more
extreme sort encouraged emotional extravagances of this
kind, as we may see by the account of Angela's contemporaries
given in the "Little Flowers," and failed to appreciate
Jacopone's profound distinction between ordered and disordered love. It also gave unqualified approval to those
public and grotesque acts of self-abasement which play so
large a part in the legend of his penitence; and here again,
Angela was true to type. Still grieved by the memory of her
old hypocrisies, made more poignant by the reverence she
received from her disciples, she went through the city and
open places with meat and fishes hanging from her neck, and
crying, "I am that woman full of evil and dissembling, slave
of all vices and iniquities, who did good deeds that she might
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obtain honour among men; and especially when I caused
those bidden to my house to be told that I ate neither fish nor
meat, and — being the while greedy, gluttonous, and drunken —
feigned to desire nought but what was needful."
Those familiar with the lives of the mystics will remember
many parallels to this state of conflict: the ups and downs
of Suso, his alternate illumination and despair, his great
self-denials balanced by foolish little sins: the thirty years
during which Teresa — already, like Angela, regarded as a
great example — swayed between her mystical vocation and
the claims of a more normal life. In Angela this inward
battle culminated, she says, "some little while before the
time of the pontificate of Celestino" — that is to say about
1294, when she was forty-six — and endured for more than two
years. In it, in addition to bodily and mental agony, she
was humiliated by recurrent temptations to sensual indulgence. Her depression was extreme, and her intellect often
so clouded that she could not even recall the idea of God to
her mind. It was her last lesson in humility and self-knowledge — an excellent antidote to the dangers of professional
sanctity — and answered to that terrible period of final purification which other mystics have called the "Dark Night of the
Soul."
From this last purgation, in which all the elements of
her character seemed flung back into the melting-pot, she
emerged into that condition of spiritual equilibrium, of perfect
harmony with transcendent reality, which is known to mystic
writers as the Unitive Way. "A divine change," she says, "took place in my soul, which neither saint nor angel could
describe or explain. Wherefore I say again that it seems
to me evil speaking or blasphemy if I try and tell of it."
Again, "I came not to this state of my own self, but was
led and drawn thereto by God; so that though of my own
self I should not have known how to desire or ask for it, I
am now in that state continually." Though the capacity for
[page 175]
pain never left her, and is implied in many of her greatest
revelations — for, like all the great Catholic mystics, she
found the Christian paradox of joyous suffering at the very
centre of truth — yet the last twelve years of her life seem to
have been years of profound inward peace. " He hath placed
within my soul," she said, "a state which changes little, and
I possess God in such fullness that I am no longer in the
state in which I used to be; but I walk in such perfect peace
of heart and mind that I am content in all things."
It was that state of which Jacopone has written:
"La guerra a terminata
de le virtú battaglia,
de la mente travaglia
cosa nulla contende.
La mente è renovata
vestita a tal entaglia,
de tal ferro a la maglia
feruta no l'offerende."
Angela has two claims to the title of a great mystic: that
of her life, which we have briefly considered, and that of the
revelations and experiences which she reports; our chief evidence of the unique nature of her consciousness. What
then was the nature of these visions and revelations? There
are signs in her book that she ran through the whole gamut
of mystical experience. She practised, and described, all
those degrees of contemplative prayer which are analyzed
by St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross. She heard interior
voices. She saw visions. She was an ecstatic. Moreover,
at least after her achievement of spiritual equilibrium — for
it would be unfair to take into account the morbid states from
which she suffered during the period of readjustment — her
ecstasies were of that rare and supernal kind which, far
from being signs of mental or nervous disease, actually renew
and invigorate the physical life of those who experience them.
There is a beautiful passage in the life of St. Catherine of Genoa
in which she is described as coming joyous and rosy-faced
[page 176]
from the ecstatic encounter with God's love. So Angela
says: "Because of the change in my body, therefore I was
not able to conceal my state from my companion, or from other
people with whom I consorted; because at times my face
was all resplendent and rosy, and my eyes shone like
candles. When the soul is assured of God and refreshed by
His presence, the body also receives health, satisfaction, and
nobility."
Her revelations were of two kinds. First we have a long
series of "imaginary visions": pictures, no doubt representing
deep and imageless intuitions, resulting as it were from
some communion with reality, but taking their form — as distinct from their content — from the memory and imagination
of the visionary. Though many of these must he classed as
dreams, and some indeed were received in sleep, others were
definite experiences; seen, as she says, with the eyes of the
mind, far more clearly than anything can be seen with the
eyes of the body. Nevertheless we are bound to consider
them less as objective revelations than as vivid artistic
reconstructions; symbols of something that she has felt and
known. Angela's religious beliefs and romantic leanings are
both clearly reflected in them. Some deal with the physical
accidents of the Passion — always a favourite subject of the
mediæval visionary — and these closely resemble the series
of Passion-pictures seen by Julian of Norwich. Others are
inspired by her devotion to the Eucharist. One or two
seem, like the visions of St. Gertrude, to anticipate the later
cult of the Sacred Heart. In virtue of these visions Angela
belongs to the great family of women Catholic mystics; women
possessing a rich emotional life, and, largely by means of that
emotional life, actualizing and expressing their communion
with the spiritual world.
We see this emotional character clearly in one of Angela's
most celebrated experiences; the one of all others which seems
to have set the seal on her career as a religious teacher, and
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which is placed at the beginning of her book of visions and
revelations, though there was no vision involved in it. I mean
the beautiful scene in which she talked with the Holy Ghost,
walking on "the narrow road which leads upward to Assisi,
and is beyond Spello." That sense of heavenly intimacy, of
divine communion, of a destiny pressed upon her from the
spiritual sphere, which then took possession of her consciousness, was translated by the surface-mind of the natural Angela
— whose nearest parallels to such an experience were found
amongst the emotional incidents of human love — into the
wonderful imaginary conversation in which, as she climbs the
path between the vineyards, she is wooed by the Holy Spirit,
and assured of His peculiar interest and affection. " I will
bear thee company and speak with thee all the way," He says
to her. " I will make no end to My speaking, and thou wilt
not be able to attend to anything save Me." "Then did He
begin to speak the following words to me, which persuaded
me to love after this manner, 'My daughter, who art sweet
to Me, My daughter who art My temple, My beloved daughter,
do thou love Me, for I love thee greatly, and much more than
thou lovest Me.' And very often He said to me, ' Bride and
daughter! sweet art thou to Me; I love thee better than any
other in the valley of Spoleto.' These and other similar
things did He say to me. Then when I heard these words, I
counted my sins, and I considered my faults; how that I was
unworthy of so great a love. And I began to doubt these
words; for which cause, my soul said to him who had spoken
to it, 'If thou wert indeed the Holy Spirit, thou wouldest not
speak thus; for it is not right or proper, because I am weak and
frail and might grow vainglorious thereat.' He answered,
'Think and see if thou couldst become vainglorious because
of the things for which thou art now made glad. . . Then I
tried to grow vainglorious, that I might prove if He spoke
truth; and I began to look at the vineyards, that I might
learn the folly of my words. And wherever I looked, He said
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to me, 'Behold and see! this is My creation': and at this
I felt ineffable delight."
This is the poetry of mysticism, an artistic reduction of
supernal intuitions, and is to be interpreted in poetic terms.
But there is another, and rarer, form of spiritual perception: that imageless intuition of pure truth, which St. Teresa
and other mystics call intellectual, but which would be
better named metaphysical vision. Angela's real importance
amongst the mystics comes from the fact that she possessed
this power in a high degree of development. In virtue of her
immediate apprehensions of transcendent reality, she belongs to the rarest and highest type of mystic seer: a class
in which Plotinus holds perhaps the first place, and of which
Ruysbroeck is the most conspicuous mediaeval example.
The poetry of Jacopone da Todi shows us that he too knew
the secret of those strange astounding regions, "beyond the
polar circle of the mind," where Angela tasted of unconditioned reality, and the language in which he describes them
often reminds us of her. It is an interesting question, whether
these two great Franciscan contemplatives directly influenced
one another, or must be regarded as the twin stars of a school
of "Seraphic wisdom" which taught the deepest mysteries
of the spiritual life.
There are eight of these great visionary experiences recorded in Angela's book. In them she says that she apprehended God successively under the attributes of Goodness,
Beauty, Power, Wisdom, Love, Justice; and that after this
she beheld the totality of the Godhead "darkly " — a way of
describing her perceptions which is of course traceable to the "Divine darkness" of Dionysius the Areopagite. Finally she
beheld it, " as clearly as is possible in this life." All these
visions seem to have come to her when she was in a state of
ecstasy or trance. She speaks of being " exalted in spirit,""rapt to the first elevation"; lifted to wholly new levels of
consciousness. She describes them as well as she can, yet
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plainly she is only able to tell us a fraction of her experience.
Over and over again she declares the hopeless inadequacy
of human speech, the impossibility of "speaking as she
saw." Her state is like that of Dante at the end of the
Paradiso, save that her wings were fitted for these flights.
"I beheld the ineffable fullness of God; but I can relate
nothing of it, save that I have seen the fullness of Divine
Wisdom, wherein is all goodness." Again, "inasmuch as this
was a supernatural thing, I cannot express it in words." " Many other things were clearly set forth to one; but I neither
can nor will relate them." " All that I say of this, seems to
me to be nothing. I feel as though I offended in speaking of it,
for so greatly does the Good exceed all my words that my
speech seems to be but blasphemy."
Those things, however, which she does contrive to relate,
have an astonishing suggestive quality, a great philosophic
sweep, combined with an intimate appeal to our own deepest
intuitions, which place them, so far as mystical history is
concerned, on a level with some of the greatest passages in
Jacopone da Todi and in Ruysbroeck; and in my opinion
far beyond the more celebrated intellectual visions of St.
Teresa.
Thus she says, " the eyes of my soul were opened and I
beheld the plenitude of God, by which I understood the whole
world both here and beyond the sea, the abyss, and all other
things. And in this I beheld nothing save the Divine Power,
in a way that is utterly indescribable, so that through the
greatness of its wonder the soul cried with a loud voice, saying, 'The whole world is full of God.' Wherefore I understood that the world is but a little thing; and I saw that the
power of God was above all things, and the whole world was
filled with it."
Here we are reminded of Julian of Norwich — " He showed
me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel nut. I looked
thereon with the eye of my understanding and thought; What
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may this be? and it was answered generally thus: It is all
that is made."
"After I had seen the power of God, His will and His
justice," says Angela, again, "I was lifted higher still; and
then I no longer beheld the power and will as before. But I
beheld a Thing, as fixed and stable as it was indescribable;
and more than this I cannot say, save that I have often said
already, namely, that it was all good. And although my soul
beheld not love, yet when it saw that indescribable Thing, it
was itself filled with indescribable joy, so that it was taken
out of the state it was in before, and placed in this great and
ineffable state. I know not whether I was then in the body or
out of the body. It is enough to say that all the other visions
seemed to me less great than this."
Again, " One time in Lent . . . the eyes of my soul were
opened, and I saw Love advancing gently towards me, and I
saw the beginning but not the end. There seemed to me
only a continuation and an eternity thereof, so that I cannot
tell its likeness nor colour; but directly this Love reached
me I beheld all these things more clearly with the eyes of
the soul than I could do with the eyes of the body. This
Love came towards me after the manner of a sickle. Not
that there was any actual and measureable likeness; but
when first it appeared to me it did not give itself to me in
such abundance as I expected, but a part was withdrawn,
Therefore I say, after the manner of a sickle. Then I was
filled with love and a great satisfaction, but although it satisfied me, it generated within me so great a hunger that all my
members were loosened; and my soul fainted with longing
to attain to the All."
I give one more, particularly interesting to English students
because of its parallels with our own great mystical work, The
Cloud of Unknowing: "There was a time when my soul was
exalted to behold God with so much clearness that never before
had I beheld Him so distinctly. But I did not here see Love so
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fully; rather I lost that which I had before, and was left
without love. Afterwards I saw Him darkly, and this darkness
was the greatest blessing that could be imagined, and thought
can conceive nothing equal to this. . . . Here likewise I see
all Good. . . . The soul delights unspeakably therein, yet
it beholds nothing that can be spoken by the tongue or conceived by the heart. It sees nothing yet sees all, because it
beholds the Good darkly; and the more darkly and secretly
the Good is seen, the more certain it is, and excellent above
all things. Wherefore all other good that can be seen or
imagined is doubtless less than this, and even when the soul
sees the Divine wisdom, power and will of God (which I have
seen marvellously at other times), it is all less than this most
certain Good. Because this is the whole, and those other
things are but part of the whole. . . . But seen thus darkly,
the Good brings no smile to the lips, no fervour of love to
the heart; for the body does not tremble or become moved
and distressed as at other times; because the soul sees, and
not the body, which rests and sleeps, and the tongue is dumb
and speechless. All the many ineffable kindnesses which God
has shown me, all the sweet words and divine sayings and
doings, are so much less than this that I saw in the darkness,
that I put no hope in them. . . . But to this most high
power of beholding God ineffably through great darkness,
my spirit was uplifted three times only and no more."
"This cloud," says The Cloud of Unknowing, of that same
Divine Dark, "is evermore between thee and thy God . . .
therefore shape thyself to abide in this darkness so long as
thou mayest, evermore crying after Him whom thou lovest,
for if ever thou shalt feel Him or see Him (in such sort as He
may be seen or felt in this life) it behoveth always to be in this
cloud or darkness." So Angela: " When I behold and am
in that Good, although I seem to see nothing yet I see all
things." In this achievement she reaches the goal of the mystic
experience, the ecstatic communion with the Absolute One.
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I have called her a Franciscan mystic. If by Franciscan
mysticism we mean that exquisite sense of the Divine immanence in nature, that poetic temperament, that peculiar and
elusive charm, which we associate with St. Francis himself;
then, perhaps, there seems little that is characteristically
Franciscan in Angela. But if, looking past the special character of the Founder, we try to seize the essence of that secret
he was seeking to impart, then, allowing for the inevitable
development which any idea undergoes when it enters the
world of change, we may regard her as a typical Franciscan
of the second generation. She was indeed conditioned at
all points by the Franciscan environment in which her religious
life developed; that ardent society of " Spirituals," mostly
recruited from the devout laity, which sprang up in her time
in the Italian cities. This society, with its advanced contemplative tradition, its demand for a close imitation of Christ,
was a forcing-house of the mystical life. Angela shows her
close connection with it in the character of her penitence,
in her passionate devotion to the Cross and Passion, and also
in the metaphysical quality of her greatest mystical apprehensions. These three outstanding characteristics, corresponding in a general sense to the three great phases of the
mystical life, are again seen in the poetry in which her contemporary Jacopone discloses to us the stages of anguished
contrition and of uncontrolled fervour through which he moved
to the heights of union with God. These two great converts
and initiates of love illuminate and explain one another: for
in them we see an identical tradition of the spiritual life
interpreted by different temperaments. For each the Way is
an education in love, and Jacopone speaks for both of them
when he says of it:
"Distinguese l'amore en terzo stato:
bono, meglio, sommo, sublimato;
to sommo si vole essere amato
senza compagnia."
END
