Saint Angela of Foligno is one of the greatest mystics of the Middle Ages — a married woman of Umbria, converted late in life, who became a tertiary of Saint Francis after losing her mother, her husband and all her sons within a few months. From her visions and her interior journey, dictated to her confessor Brother Arnaud, was born The Book of Blessed Angela (Liber), one of the summits of Christian mystical literature. Tradition has bestowed on her a title few men have received: Magistra Theologorum, the “Mistress of Theologians”.[1][2]
Born around 1248 into a wealthy family of Foligno, Angela first led a worldly, dissipated existence. A crisis of conscience, a confession she did not dare make in full, then the apparition of Saint Francis plunged her around 1285 into a radical conversion. When death carried off all her loved ones one after another, she saw in it not a catastrophe but a liberation: nothing now held her back from running to the poor and crucified Christ.[3][4]
“But it is full of God, it is full of God, this universe!” — Angela of Foligno, vision reported in the Memorial[5]
This article traces Angela’s life — the wife of Foligno, the penitent, the widow stripped of everything —, the birth of her Book under the anxious pen of Brother Arnaud, her spiritual doctrine (the “thirty steps”, the way of the Passion, the union “You are me and I am you”, the “great darkness”), and finally her death, her cult and her equipollent canonization by Pope Francis in 2013. It does not retell the history of the town of Foligno or of the Franciscan movement, which have their own entries.
A woman of Foligno seized late in life (1248-1291)
Birth and background: a bourgeoise of Umbria
Angela was born around 1248 in Foligno, a prosperous town of Umbria some twenty kilometres from Assisi.[6][7] Her family was wealthy, probably close to the robe nobility of the Italian communes. Married at about twenty, she became the mother of several sons.[8] By her own admission — recorded later by Brother Arnaud — she first led a worldly, sensual and dissipated life, attached to possessions, pleasures and reputation, practising a façade religion that ill concealed her interior disorder.[9][10]
This brutal honesty about her own past is one of the most striking features of the Book: Angela spares herself nothing, presenting her conversion not as the flowering of an already beautiful soul, but as the tearing of a sinner away from herself.
The earthquake of 1279 and the awakening of conscience
An outward event seems to have shaken her false security: the earthquake that struck Umbria around 1279, followed by wars and famines, showed her the fragility of everything she leaned upon.[11] Fear of death and hell took hold; then began a long struggle between the desire to convert and the shame of confessing her faults.
The sacrilegious confession and the vision of Saint Francis (c. 1285)
The turning point was a drama of conscience. Angela, gnawed by her sins, went to confession but, out of shame, concealed the gravest of them — then, to keep up appearances, received Communion in a state of sin. This sacrilegious Communion plunged her into restless anguish.[12] She then implored Saint Francis to obtain for her the confessor she needed:
“I prayed Saint Francis to have me find the confessor I needed, someone who could understand and to whom I could speak. That same night, the old man appeared to me. ‘My sister,’ he said, ‘had you called upon me sooner, I would have heard you sooner. What you ask is done.’” — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[13]
The next day, in the church of San Feliciano in Foligno, she met a Friar Minor — her kinsman Brother Arnaud — to whom she could finally tell everything. This general confession, around 1285, is the birth certificate of the saint.[14][15]
The “eighteen steps”: the first journey of penance
Angela herself describes the beginning of her conversion as an ascent by degrees, which she calls “steps”. The first eighteen steps led her from the mere knowledge of her sins to a true “sense of God”:
“I, […] entering upon the way of penance, took eighteen steps before knowing the imperfection of life.” — Angela of Foligno, opening of the Memorial[16]
These steps bear names that sum up a whole spiritual theology: knowledge of sins, confession, satisfaction, consideration of mercy, knowledge of self, the sight of the Cross, the way of the Cross, tears, the Passion, prayer, hope, up to the “sense of God”.[17] Already visible here is what will be the heart of her mysticism: everything starts from the Cross and returns to it.
1288: the death of her whole family
Then came the trial that scandalises so many modern readers. In a short time, around 1288, Angela lost her mother, her husband, then all her sons.[18][19] Yet instead of crushing her, this rending set her free: already engaged on the way of penance, she had asked God to be released from the ties that held her back. She admits it with disconcerting frankness — not from hardness of heart, but because nothing now stood between her and Christ.[20]
This episode, often misunderstood, must not be read as contempt for the family: Angela wept for her own, but she had already entrusted everything to God, and she received their departure as the last stage of a stripping bare begun long before.
1291: the Third Order and the gift of her goods
Free of every tie, Angela took the decisive step: she sold her possessions, gave the proceeds to the poor and entered the Third Order of Saint Francis (the Order of Penance) in 1291.[21][22] She did not leave the world for a cloister: after the manner of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary or Saint Margaret of Cortona, she lived evangelical radicality in the heart of the city, in voluntary poverty, service of the sick and prayer, surrounded by a small companion and a few spiritual “sons”.
The cry of Assisi and the birth of the Book
The 1291 pilgrimage and the cry before the basilica
In 1291, Angela went on pilgrimage to Assisi, to the tomb of Saint Francis. On the way, she was seized by a mystical experience so violent that at the entrance of the Basilica of Saint Francis, on seeing a stained-glass window depicting Christ embracing Saint Francis, she collapsed and screamed, unable to contain herself:
“Love, love, love! You are leaving me and I have had no time to know you! Oh! why leave me?” But I could speak no more. […] This happened at the door of the church of Saint Francis. All the people gathered; I roared in the presence of the people.’ — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[23]
This cry of Assisi scandalised the friars present. Among them, Brother Arnaud, ashamed to see a woman of his kinship making such a spectacle of herself, forbade her ever to return.[24][25] But the incident would produce the opposite of what he feared.
Brother Arnaud, the anxious scribe
Intrigued — and at first suspicious, fearing a diabolical illusion — Brother Arnaud ordered Angela to recount what was happening within her, so as to discern whether it came from God or from the devil.[26][27] He took notes, in Latin, as she spoke in Umbrian dialect. Very soon suspicion turned into veneration: the friar understood he had before him a soul of a depth beyond him.
“I who write under her dictation contemplated her face in secret; it was no longer a human face, it was something angelic, it was glorified joy.” — Brother Arnaud, aside in the Memorial[28]
Arnaud himself admits his powerlessness: he grasped only a small part of what Angela confided to him, read back to her what he had noted to check it, and found he had gathered only “a little”, and “very poorly”, of what she had lived.[29][30] This honesty of the scribe is, paradoxically, one of the guarantees of the Book’s reliability.
The Memorial and the Instructions: structure of the Liber
The whole forms The Book of Blessed Angela (Liber), composed of two parts:[31][32]
| Part | Author / form | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Memoriale (Memorial) | dictated by Angela, written down by Brother Arnaud (c. 1292-1296) | autobiographical account of the conversion and the mystical journey in “steps” and “mutations” |
| Instructiones (Instructions) | letters and teachings gathered by her disciples | spiritual doctrine addressed to her “sons”, testament and last words |
The Memorial was submitted, in Angela’s lifetime, to the examination of theologians — including, according to tradition, Cardinal Giacomo Colonna — who guaranteed its orthodoxy.[33][34] This early approval explains the exceptional authority granted very early on to her writings.
A mystic who could neither read nor write
It must be stressed: Angela was, in all likelihood, illiterate.[35][36] Her theology proceeds not from books but from experience — an experience she herself judges incommunicable, whose words, she says, are almost a blasphemy, so betraying of reality:
“What I utter at this moment seems to me like a ruin, and I feel the terror one feels when blaspheming.” — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[37]
The spiritual doctrine: the thirty steps toward union
After the first eighteen steps, Angela describes further steps or “mutations” — an additional series which Brother Arnaud himself struggled to order exactly — leading from penance to transforming union.[38][39] Her whole journey can be read through the three classic ways of spiritual theology: purification, illumination, union.
Everything starts from the Cross: the way of the Passion
The centre of gravity of Angela’s mysticism is the Passion of Christ. Contemplation of the Crucified is for her not one exercise of piety among others: it is a plunge into the very suffering of Jesus, unto physical compassion. She cannot look upon an image of the Passion without swooning; her companion has to hide the paintings from her.[40]
“The secret of the Passion, the secret of the tortures of Jesus […] was shown to me more intimately in the pain of the nerves than in the opening of the wounds, in the inward than in the outward.” — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[41]
This compassion is not dolorism: it is the way by which Angela enters into the love that drove the Son to the Cross. Shared suffering becomes loving knowledge.
“The world is full of God”: the vision of Presence
One of the summits of the Memorial is the vision in which Angela sees the presence of God overflowing the whole universe. The “eyes of the spirit” open within her, and all creation appears to her filled with divine power:
“The eyes of the spirit were opened in me; I saw a divine fullness in which I embraced the whole universe […] and I saw nothing anywhere but the divine power. […] ‘But it is full of God, it is full of God, this universe!’ At once the universe seemed small to me.” — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[42]
This intuition — God present and overflowing in all things — is no pantheism: the creature is not God, but it is wholly traversed by the power of Him who holds it in being. It is the vision of a soul at last seeing the world as it is before its Creator.
“You are me, and I am you”: the transforming union
The term of the journey is the transforming union, in which Angela feels identified with Christ to the point of hearing from him the boldest words in all Christian mysticism:
“Coming out of the darkness, I begin to see the God-Man again; he draws my soul to him gently, and he says at times: ‘You are me, and I am you.’” — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[43]
This utterance takes up, in its own way, Saint Paul’s cry: “I live, but it is no longer I; Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20), which Benedict XVI places precisely on Angela’s lips.[44][45] Union does not abolish the creature; it completes her by conforming her fully to the Beloved.
The “great darkness”: God beyond good
The most original — and loftiest — trait of Angela’s mysticism is what she calls the great darkness (tenebra). At the summit of union, God is no longer perceived under any image, name or concept: he gives himself in a luminous obscurity surpassing even the idea of good.
“I see nothing, I see all: certainty is drawn from the darkness. The deeper the darkness, the more the good exceeds all; it is the reserved mystery. […] He who is there, above all, surpasses even the absolute good.” — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[46]
Here we recognise the great tradition of apophatic theology (Dionysius the Areopagite): God is so infinitely above all that can be said of him that he is truly reached only by renouncing every representation. Angela, the illiterate woman, rejoins by pure experience the summits of negative theology.
The Eucharist, the “Book of Life” and the poor Christ
Angela’s eucharistic faith is intense: it is in Communion that she receives her greatest graces. She calls the very life of the poor, humble and suffering Christ — to be read and imitated — the “Book of Life”, an expression the whole Franciscan spirituality would take up.[47] Poverty, self-denial and suffering are, she says, the “companions” of Christ, to be embraced in order to follow him truly.[48]
True love and lying love
Angela distinguishes with great finesse between true love — which comes from God and proves itself in works and suffering — and lying love, sentimental and sterile. A word of Christ, reported in the Memorial, sums up her whole doctrine on the seriousness of divine love:
“It is not for a joke that I have loved you.” — Word of Christ to Angela, reported in the Memorial[49]
It is the antidote to all false mysticism: God’s love is not a sweet, easy consolation, but a reality engaging the whole being and passing through the Cross.
“Mistress of Theologians”: reception and influence
The title Theologorum Magistra
Angela’s doctrinal depth so struck the learned that posterity bestowed on her the title of Theologorum Magistra, “Mistress of Theologians”.[50][51] The expression, used by the Jesuit Maximilian Sandaeus in the 17th century, was taken up by the Bollandist Jean Bolland in the Acta Sanctorum.[52] That an illiterate woman, with no scholastic training, should be proclaimed mistress of those whose profession is to teach sacred science says enough about Angela’s unique place in the history of spirituality.
An influence on the Franciscan Spirituals and beyond
In Angela’s own lifetime, friars and laypeople came to seek counsel and light from her: these were her spiritual “sons”. The Franciscan Ubertino of Casale, a major figure of the Spirituals current, acknowledged his debt to her.[53] Her Book, circulated from the 14th century onward, would nourish generations of contemplatives.
In modern times, her rediscovery owes much to the writer Ernest Hello, whose French translation (1868) made The Book of Visions and Instructions known, and to Léon Bloy, who saw in Angela one of the highest voices of Catholic mysticism.[54]
Authentic mysticism, not illuminism
The boldness of Angela’s language — the union “You are me and I am you”, the “great darkness” beyond good — could, read out of context, lend itself to pantheist or quietist deviations. But the Church has on the contrary received her as a model of orthodox mysticism, for three reasons: her absolute anchoring in the Passion of Christ and in the humanity of Jesus; her fidelity to the Church, to the sacraments and to obedience; and her insistence on works and penance as proof of true love.[55][56] Far from dissolving the creature in God, her transforming union completes it; far from scorning ecclesial mediation, she submits to it. That is the whole distance between Catholic mysticism and illuminism.
Death, cult and canonization
Death (4 January 1309)
Surrounded by her spiritual sons, Angela died in Foligno on 4 January 1309, aged about sixty-one.[57][58] The Instructions report her last exhortations and the promise she is said to have received from Christ on the threshold of death, assuring her of the Father’s expectation. Her end was that of a soul no longer fearing separation, because it already possessed, in the darkness, the One she loved:
“In Him is the whole good. I can fear neither his departure, nor mine, nor any separation.” — Angela of Foligno, Memorial[59]
Relics and cult at Foligno
Angela’s body was buried in the Church of Saint Francis in Foligno, where it is still venerated. The cult developed at once, sustained by the Franciscans, and the reputation for holiness of the Magistra Theologorum never ceased to grow over the centuries, in Umbria first, then throughout the Church.[60]
The beatification of 1701
Angela’s immemorial cult was officially recognised by Pope Clement XI, who beatified her on 11 July 1701.[61][62] Her feast was fixed on 4 January (sometimes 30 March or 7 January in old Franciscan calendars). For more than three centuries Angela remained “blessed” — a status that yet did not exhaust the authority recognised in her doctrine.
The equipollent canonization of 2013
On 9 October 2013, Pope Francis proceeded to the equipollent canonization of Angela of Foligno, inscribing her in the catalogue of saints of the universal Church.[63] So-called equipollent (or “equivalent”) canonization is an ancient path, distinct from solemn canonization: the pope extends the cult of a blessed to the whole Church, with no additional miracle process or ceremony, when three conditions are met — an ancient and constant cult, a unanimous reputation for holiness, and a continuous witness of virtues or doctrine.[64][65]
For Angela these conditions were fully verified: her Book had carried authority for seven centuries, and her title of Mistress of Theologians alone was worth recognition of doctrine. Pope Francis — who had chosen his name in homage to the saint of Assisi — thus inscribed among the saints one of the purest voices of the mysticism of the Cross.
Benedict XVI, in his catechesis, invited us to retain from her the essential: eyes fixed on the Cross of Jesus and a heart seized by his love.[66]
To go further
- Primary source: The Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno — the Memorial (Memoriale) dictated to Brother Arnaud and the Instructions (Instructiones). Classic French edition: trans. Ernest Hello, Le Livre des visions et des instructions de la bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno (1868); modern critical editions of the Liber (L. Thier and A. Calufetti, Grottaferrata, 1985).
- Magisterium: Benedict XVI, General Audience of 13 October 2010 (catechesis on Angela of Foligno), vatican.va; decree of equipollent canonization by Pope Francis (9 October 2013).
- Notices and studies: Wikipedia (“Angèle de Foligno” / “Angela of Foligno”); the Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum (life by Brother Arnaud); studies on Angela and the Franciscan Spirituals.
- Related articles on Ignispedia: Saint Francis of Assisi, whose way of penance Angela followed; Saint Clare of Assisi, another great Franciscan woman; Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Saint Margaret of Cortona, tertiaries and penitents; Saint Bonaventure and Saint Anthony of Padua, Franciscan doctors; Pope Francis, who canonized her in 2013.
Notes and References
Benedict XVI, General Audience of 13 October 2010, vatican.va: full catechesis on Angela of Foligno — birth around 1248 in Foligno to a wealthy family, marriage at about twenty and several sons, upheaval after the 1279 earthquake, general confession and vision of Saint Francis around 1285, death of mother, husband and sons around 1288 experienced as a liberation, entry into the Franciscan Third Order in 1291, journey in “steps” or “mutations”, transforming union (“I live, but it is no longer I; Christ lives in me”), role of Brother Arnaud as scribe of the Memorial, death on 4 January 1309. Benedict XVI stresses the Christocentric and ecclesial anchoring of her mysticism.
1 3 6 8 11 14 18 20 21 24 26 29 36 38 44 51 55 57 66Title Theologorum Magistra (“Mistress of Theologians”): bestowed on Angela on account of the doctrinal authority of her writings, approved very early by theologians (tradition cites Cardinal Giacomo Colonna). The expression was used by the Jesuit Maximilian Sandaeus (17th c.) then taken up by the Bollandist Jean Bolland in the Acta Sanctorum. Cf. English Wikipedia “Angela of Foligno”. Angela was in all likelihood illiterate, which makes this title all the more remarkable.
2 34 35 50 52 56Angèle de Foligno, French Wikipedia; Angela of Foligno, English Wikipedia: biographical notices (birth c. 1248 in Foligno, wealthy family, marriage and sons, conversion c. 1285, death of the family c. 1288, Third Order 1291, pilgrimage and cry of Assisi, role of Brother Arnaud, Memoriale/Instructiones structure, death on 4 January 1309, beatification 1701 by Clement XI, equipollent canonization on 9 October 2013 by Francis, feast on 4 January); facts corroborated by Benedict XVI’s catechesis and the Memorial.
4 7 10 15 19 22 25 33 53 58 60 62Angela of Foligno, Memorial, chap. XXII “Power”, trans. Ernest Hello, Le Livre des visions et des instructions de la bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 81: vision in which the “eyes of the spirit” open and Angela sees the whole universe filled with divine power — “But it is full of God, it is full of God, this universe! At once the universe seemed small to me.” Primary source (local library; full text: Project Gutenberg no. 66894; digitisation of the 1921 Tralin reprint on archive.org).
5 42Angela of Foligno, Memorial, trans. Hello: admission of the worldly, dissipated life before conversion; the first “step” is knowledge of sins. Angela spares herself nothing in the account of her past.
9Angela of Foligno, Memorial, 2nd Step “Confession”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 38: shame at confessing her grave faults, Communion received “with her sins” (sacrilegious Communion), prayer to Saint Francis to find a confessor, and the nocturnal apparition of the “old man” (Saint Francis): “My sister, had you called upon me sooner, I would have heard you sooner. What you ask is done.”
12 13Angela of Foligno, Memorial, opening sentence (1st Step “Angela comes to know her sins”, p. 37), trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921): “I, […] entering upon the way of penance, took eighteen steps before knowing the imperfection of life.” Followed by the list of the eighteen steps (knowledge of sins, confession, satisfaction, consideration of mercy, knowledge of self, sight of the Cross, way of the Cross, tears, Passion, prayer, hope, sense of God, etc.).
16 17Angela of Foligno, Memorial, chap. XX “Pilgrimage”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 75: the “cry of Assisi” during the 1291 pilgrimage, at the door of the Basilica of Saint Francis — “Love, love, love! You are leaving me and I have had no time to know you! […] I roared in the presence of the people.” Episode that scandalised Brother Arnaud but triggered the writing of the Memorial.
23Brother Arnaud (Arnaldo da Foligno), Angela’s kinsman and confessor, Friar Minor: witness of the Assisi “cry”, he first orders her to recount her experiences in order to discern whether they come from God or from the devil, then becomes the writer of the Memorial, writing in Latin under Angela’s dictation (she speaking in Umbrian dialect). He admits having gathered only “a little”, and imperfectly, of what she lived. Brother Arnaud’s life of Angela is preserved in the Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum.
27 30 32Brother Arnaud, personal aside in the Memorial, chap. XLVII “The Degrees” (note by the writing friar), trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 169: contemplating Angela’s face while writing under her dictation — “it was no longer a human face, it was something angelic, it was glorified joy.” The scribe’s testimony to the mystic’s transfiguration in prayer.
28Structure of the Liber: The Book of Blessed Angela consists of the Memoriale (autobiographical account dictated to Brother Arnaud, c. 1292-1296) and the Instructiones (letters and teachings gathered by her disciples). The mystical journey is described there in “steps” and “mutations” (the whole being traditionally designated as the “thirty steps”: the first eighteen steps of penance, then the steps and “mutations” leading to union, which Brother Arnaud struggled to order). Critical ed.: L. Thier and A. Calufetti, Il Libro della beata Angela da Foligno, Grottaferrata, 1985.
31 39Angela of Foligno, Memorial, chap. XXVII “The Ineffable”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 104: on the impossibility of uttering the experience of union — “What I utter at this moment seems to me like a ruin, and I feel the terror one feels when blaspheming.” Mystical ineffability reduces language to almost nothing.
37Angela of Foligno, Memorial, end of the 18th Step “The sense of God”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 54: physical compassion for the Passion such that she cannot look upon an image of the suffering Christ without swooning — “if I saw the Passion of Christ depicted in painting, I could barely hold myself up; […] my companion hid the paintings of the Passion from me.”
40Angela of Foligno, Memorial, chap. XXXIV “The Cross and the Blessing”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 133: contemplation of the Passion grasped “in the inward” — “The secret of the Passion, the secret of the tortures of Jesus […] was shown to me more intimately in the pain of the nerves than in the opening of the wounds.” Compassion as a way of loving knowledge of Christ.
41Angela of Foligno, Memorial, chap. XXVI “The great Darkness”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 98: Christ’s word in transforming union — “Coming out of the darkness, I begin to see the God-Man again; he draws my soul to him gently, and he says at times: ‘You are me, and I am you.’”
43Saint Paul, Galatians 2:20: “I live, but it is no longer I; Christ lives in me.” Benedict XVI places precisely this Pauline word on Angela’s lips to characterise her transforming union (audience of 13 October 2010).
45Angela of Foligno, Memorial, chap. XXVI “The great Darkness”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 96: the apophatic summit of her mysticism — “I see nothing, I see all: certainty is drawn from the darkness. The deeper the darkness, the more the good exceeds all; it is the reserved mystery. […] He who is there, above all, surpasses even the absolute good.” Also: “In Him is the whole good. I can fear neither his departure, nor mine, nor any separation.”
46 59Angela of Foligno, Instructions, end of chap. LVII “Knowledge of God and of self” (p. 218) and chap. LVIII “The Book of Life” (p. 221), trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921): the “Book of Life” designates the very life of the poor and crucified Christ, to be read and imitated — a central Franciscan theme taken up by Angela.
47Angela of Foligno, Instructions, chap. LIX “First Companion of Jesus Christ: Poverty” (p. 228), LX “Second Companion: Self-denial” (p. 233) and LXI “Third Companion: Suffering” (p. 239), trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921): the “companions of Jesus Christ” (poverty, self-denial, suffering) to be embraced in order to follow Christ truly. Evangelical poverty at the heart of Angela’s spirituality, in the line of Saint Francis.
48Word of Christ to Angela, reported in the Memorial, chap. XXXIII “True Love and Lying Love”, trans. Hello (Poussielgue, 1868; reprint A. Tralin, Paris, 1921), p. 128 (vision of the fourth day of Holy Week; cited by French Wikipedia as “Book of Revelations, chapter XXXIII”): “It is not for a joke that I have loved you” (Italian: Non ti ho amata per burla). Warning on the seriousness and demands of divine love, which passes through the Cross and not through easy consolation.
49Ernest Hello, Le Livre des visions et des instructions de la bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno, French translation (1868): the edition that brought Angela back to light in the 19th century; Léon Bloy counted Angela among the greatest voices of Catholic mysticism. Hello’s translation is the primary source used for the quotations in this article (local library).
54Beatification of Angela of Foligno: Pope Clement XI confirms her cult and beatifies her on 11 July 1701. Feast fixed on 4 January (old variants: 30 March, 7 January in some Franciscan calendars). Cf. French Wikipedia.
61Equipollent canonization of Angela of Foligno: Pope Francis inscribes her in the catalogue of saints of the universal Church on 9 October 2013, by equipollent canonization (no ceremony or additional miracle required). Cf. Zenit announcements and Vatican media (October 2013).
63 64Equipollent (or “equivalent”) canonization: an ancient procedure, theorised notably by Benedict XIV, by which the pope extends to the whole Church the cult of a blessed, without a full canonization process or additional miracle, when three conditions are met: an ancient and constant cult, a unanimous reputation for holiness, and a continuous witness of heroic virtues or doctrine. Pope Francis resorted to it on several occasions (Angela of Foligno, Peter Faber, José de Anchieta, etc.).
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