“The Fifth is, that a soul beholds what God is, and His Goodness, by Divine Light. She sees the Will, by the spreading illumination of Divine Light, the which light gives her the will again to put in God this will; which she may not without this light yield, that may not her profit unless she departs from her own will. Thus departs the soul from her will, and the will departs from this soul, so she again puts it and gives and yields it in God, where it was first.
“Now is this soul fallen of love into nought, without the which nought, she may not all be. The which falling is so perfectly fallen, if she be fallen aright, that the soul may not arise out of this deepness, nor she ought not to do it. Within she ought to dwell. And then leaves the soul pride and play, for the spirit has become bitter, that suffers her no more to be playing nor jolly; for the spirit is departed from her that made her oft love in the highness of contemplation, and in the fourth estate fierce and dangerous.” Here the spirit of the mystic experiences that terrible and characteristic reaction from the exalted joys of contemplation which is sometimes called the “mystic death” or “dark night of the soul,” and destroys in it the last roots of selfhood. In this stage she completes the abandonment or “self-noughting” which initiate her into that which the German mystics called “the Upper School of the Holy Spirit.” Thence she passes to the Sixth Estate, of union with the Divine life, in so far as it can be achieved by those still in the flesh. The Seventh is that indescribable state of “glory” or super-essential life, which constitutes the beatific vision of the Saints, known only of those that “be fallen of love into this being.”
“The Sixth is, that a soul sees neither her nought by deepness of meekness, nor God by highful bounty. But God sees it in her of His Divine Majesty that illuminated her of Him. So that she sees that none is, but God Himself. And then is a soul in the Sixth Estate of all things made free, pure and illuminated. Not glorified, for gloryfying is in the Seventh Estate, that we shall have in glory that none can speak of. But, pure and clarified, she sees nor God nor herself: but God sees this of Him, in her, for her, withouten her, that shows her that there is none but He. Nay, she knows but Him, nor she loves but Him, nor she praises but Him, for there is but He. And the Seventh keeps He within Him, for to give us in everlasting glory. If we wit it not now, we shall wit it when the body our soul leaves.”
II
THE BLESSED ANGELA OF FOLIGNO
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 short-lived; 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. Its 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 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 disorderly 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 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 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.”