The Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248 – 4 January 1309) was a Christian author, Franciscan tertiary and mystic. She was noted not only for her spiritual writings, but also for founding a religious community which refused to accept becoming an enclosed religious order.
Angela was born into a wealthy family in the city of Foligno, Italy (near Assisi). She married at an early age, and had a family. Traditional accounts state that she lived "wildly, adulterously, and sacrilegiously" in her early years. However, Angela's lifestyle abruptly changed around 1285. She prayed to St. Francis of Assisi, who then appeared to her in a dream and offered to help. The death of her family happened suddenly about 1288.
Some time after her conversion Angela had placed herself under the direction of a Franciscan friar named Arnoldo, who would serve as her confessor. It was to Arnoldo that Angela dictated the account of her conversion, known as the Memoriale, taking dictation in her Umbrian dialect. This work, in Latin was complete by 1298; it has come to us as the Book of Visions and Instructions. Further, it was under Arnoldo's instruction that Angela joined the Third Order of St. Francis. For a time she had stigmata wounds on her body, and during this period she ate very little food.
In the course of time, the fame of her sanctity gathered around her a number of other tertiaries, both men and women, who strove under her direction to advance in holiness. Later she established at Foligno a community of Sisters, who added to the Rule of the Third Order a commitment to a common life without, however, binding themselves to enclosure, so that they might devote their time to works of charity.
Angela died surrounded by her community of disciples. Her remains repose in the church of St. Francis at Foligno. Many people attributed miracles to her, which were accomplished at her tomb. Pope Clement XI approved the veneration paid to her in her beatification on 11 July 1701. Her feast day is celebrated by the Order on January 4.
Blessed Angela's authority as a spiritual teacher may be gathered from the fact that Bollandus, among other testimonials, quotes Maximilian van der Sandt, of the Society of Jesus, as calling her the "Mistress of Theologians", whose whole doctrine has been drawn out of the Book of Life, Jesus Christ, Our Lord."
