Blessed Angela of Foligno, Gossip and Hedonist

[c. 1248–1309] FEAST DAY: January 4

The thirteenth century was a watershed moment for western Europe. The expansion of international trade was transforming small shopkeepers into merchant princes, making some wealthier than the local barons whose income was still based on agriculture. In Italy especially, success made the merchants bold. In commercial centers such as Florence and Siena the rising middle class began to shake off their old feudal allegiances, taking the first steps toward becoming a republic on the model of ancient Rome.

Changes had come to religious life, too. New religious orders, the Franciscans especially, offered a new ideal in which consecrated men and women did not retreat into a monastery or convent but carried their twofold mission of faith and good works into the streets.

Keeping pace with these shifts in church and society were the notions of what made a saint. Previously a local saint was likely to be a conscientious bishop or a dutiful abbot of a Benedictine monastery—men who occupied the upper echelon of religious life while also wielding authority over temporal matters. In the case of female saints, they also came from the upper ranks of society: queens, abbesses, or members of the most exalted noble families. A thirteenth-century saint, however, was more likely to come from the new middle class and the saint’s reputation for holiness more likely to be based on personal humility and heroic acts of charity. It is interesting to note that in this down-to-earth era, mysticism became a popular sign of sanctity, particularly among women. The history of the thirteenth century is rich with stories of virgins, housewives, and widows who experienced intense visions, private revelations, and uninhibited ecstasies. In every respect, Blessed Angela of Foligno fit this new model of holiness perfectly.

We do not know anything about Angela’s background, but we do know she was beautiful and she married a wealthy member of the town’s middle class, who probably made his fortune during Foligno’s commercial revolution. The cloth trade had made Foligno, a town about ten miles south of Assisi, an economic powerhouse; as the wife of a wealthy merchant Angela enjoyed every comfort and every luxury, and she wallowed in them. Her passions were expensive clothes and flashy jewels, extravagant meals and rare wines. She dressed and acted in ways that would provoke envy among women and sexual desire among men. Wealth and beauty made her proud; pride made her cruel. When she was not indulging herself, she spent hours gossiping with her friends and maligning her neighbors. If anyone crossed her or tried to correct her, she unleashed her vicious temper.

Angela tells us that in 1285 she did something so bad that for the first time she began to live in fear of Hell. Her biographers speculate that Angela committed adultery, and given the intensity of her guilt and shame that seems likely. She went to confession to unburden herself of her sin but in the confessional lost her nerve and purposely concealed her sin from the priest. In Catholic theology, it is a serious offense to make a bad confession, yet Angela compounded it by receiving Holy Communion afterward. Now she could add sacrilege to her list of sins.

Near despair, she prayed to St. Francis of Assisi to direct her to a skilled confessor. As Angela prayed the saint appeared to her and said, “Sister, if you would have asked me sooner I would have complied with your request sooner. Nonetheless, your request is granted.”

That same day Angela went to Foligno’s Cathedral of San Feliciano to pray and found the confessor she was looking for. In the pulpit stood a Franciscan priest, Father Arnoldo, one of the bishop’s chaplains and one of Angela’s relatives. After his sermon, she asked Father Arnoldo to hear her confession, and this time Angela disclosed all her sins.

Angela left the cathedral that day resolved to begin a new life. She sold her fine clothes, her jewels, and her costly toiletries to relieve the poor and suffering of Foligno. It was a good start, but she was still a wealthy woman, with temptations to self-indulgence on every side. Later, as she dictated her autobiography to Father Arnoldo, she recalled that during the first five years of her conversion her spiritual life progressed “only small steps at a time.”

It was a family tragedy that freed Angela. In a very short period her mother, her husband, and all her sons died. As a widow and heiress of a considerable estate she could do as she pleased, so Angela began to sell everything she owned.

Her spiritual directors warned that she was being excessively zealous. They had known other wealthy women who had given away all their property only to discover too late that they had no vocation for a life of poverty. Angela recognized this was sound advice. To give herself time to reflect on what she wanted to do, she made a pilgrimage to Rome. By the time she reached St. Peter’s she was convinced that she was intended for a life of prayer and sacrifice. Back home in Foligno she sold off the rest of her possessions.

She became a Franciscan tertiary, a religious affiliation in which she kept her status as a laywoman while striving to imitate the religious dedication of Franciscan nuns. Soon Angela began to experience intense mystical raptures. As word spread of her ecstasies and the spiritual insights that accompanied them, other tertiaries—male and female—gathered around Angela to learn how to love and serve God better.

It was still early in Angela’s new life when she made another pilgrimage, this time to Assisi. While praying in the Basilica of St. Francis she had a brief vision of Christ. When the Lord vanished Angela shrieked, “Love still unknown! Why? Why? Why?” Collapsing on the church floor, Angela went into convulsions, all the while uttering loud, unintelligible sounds. As it happened her relative Father Arnoldo had been assigned to the basilica; he was among the handful of friars who, hearing the commotion, hurried into the church. When Arnoldo saw a member of his own family writhing on the floor, concern gave way to anger and humiliation. Once Angela was herself again, Father Arnoldo scolded her for giving in to hysteria, making a spectacle of herself and embarrassing him in front of his brother Franciscans. He commanded her never to come back to Assisi.

Angela submitted and stayed away from Assisi, but Angela’s good works among the poor, the sick, and the sinners of Foligno touched the priest’s heart. He joined her circle, acting as a chaplain to the group and serving as Angela’s scribe until her death in 1309.

The people in and around Foligno always venerated Angela as a saint, yet the case for her canonization was never introduced in Rome. Nonetheless, in recognition of her sanctity and three hundred years of veneration, in 1693 Pope Innocent XII confirmed this devotion to Angela by granting her the title “Blessed.”