The Chronology of the Instructiones of St. Angela of Foligno

Abstract

The Chronology of the Instructiones of St. Angela of Foligno Mateusz Stróżyński (bio) Introduction Angela of Foligno was certainly born in the middle of the 13th century, in a rich family. Most scholars accept, at least to a certain extent, a more exact chronology of her life, proposed by Martin-Jean Ferré.1 According to him, Angela, born in 1248, experienced a conversion in 1285 and lost her entire family – husband, children, and mother – in a few subsequent years. In this time she also sold all of her possessions. At the beginning of 1291 she entered the Third Order of St. Francis and went on a pilgrimage to Assisi, during which she experienced powerful mystical graces, hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit and conversing with him almost the whole way. During her stay in Assisi, she caused a scandal, screaming in the basilica of St. Francis, when the divine presence withdrew from her soul, and (unexpectedly, but fortunately) drawing the attention of her relative, Franciscan friar to which the Liber refers as "brother A." He first reacted with outrage and forbade her to return to Assisi ever again, but then, having come back to Foligno, reached out to her in an attempt to understand what had happened in the basilica. When he began to learn more about her spiritual life, he became her secretary, working together with her on what later was to become Memoriale, the first part of the Liber. As the years went by, Angela became a spiritual "mother" not only to brother A., but also to a circle of Franciscans to whom the Liber refers as her "sons" and who played a crucial role in the creating of it. She died surrounded by them on the 4th of January 1309 in Foligno and the local devotion led eventually to her beatification (without a formal process) in 1701 by pope Clement IX and, finally, to her canonization (again, without a process) in 2013 by pope Francis. The documents collected in the [End Page 159] Liber beatae Angelae (or the Liber sororis Lelle, as the oldest manuscript has it) are one of the most interesting testimonies of mystical experience in the Western tradition.2 Nevertheless, we still do not know very much about the mystic herself, about the authors involved in the writing of her dossier, the chronology of particular documents or their relationship to Angela's actual experience and teaching. The scarcity of the external evidence led Jacques Dalarun to a provocative suggestion that, since everything we know about Angela (except for a brief passage in the first prologue to Ubertino of Casale's Arbor vitae crucifixae Iesu3), comes from the Liber itself, we may doubt whether Angela was not an invention of those Franciscans who claimed to be her spiritual "sons" and disciples.4 An exaggeration, for sure, but even if we assume a less skeptical and a more "trusting" approach to studying the relationship between the Liber and its historical context, we still have to struggle with various problems. In this article I would like to address one of those problems, namely, the chronology of the Liber, particularly, its second part, labeled the "Instructiones" by Ludger Thier and Abele Calufetti, the authors of the critical edition of 1985. Both parts of the Liber (Memoriale and Instructiones) contain some hints, enabling us to advance at least some hypotheses concerning the time of their composition. The second part is, however, [End Page 160] much more problematic, it has been studied less and has given birth to more contradictory views than the first. So it is the chronology of the Instructiones that will be the object of my focus in this article. Why is the chronology of the Instructiones important? It seems there are two reasons. First, the collection contains information which enriches our understanding of the relationships between the Liber and such contemporary heterodox currents as the spiritual Franciscans and the Free Spirit heresy. Second, establishing, as far as it is possible, the internal chronology of the collection may help us to suggest some hypotheses concerning which of the documents are closer to the original experience and teaching of Angela and which...

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