Mysticism, Orthodoxy and Polemics Angela of Foligno’S Spiral Pattern of Prayer

MYSTICISM, ORTHODOXY AND POLEMICS ANGELA OF FOLIGNO’S SPIRAL PATTERN OF PRAYER

Diane V. Tomkinson

Introduction

Sometime in the final decades of the thirteenth century, a widowed lay penitent named Angela made a pilgrimage from her native town of Foligno to the basilica of St. Francis in nearby Assisi. The events of this pilgrimage led to a literary collaboration between the woman named Angela and various Franciscan friars who recorded her mys- tical experiences and teaching in a collection of texts known as the Liber or Book of Angela of Foligno.1 Some seven hundred years later, Angela’s book continues to offer a distinctive expression of a Franciscan relational theology and spirituality that can enter into fruitful dia- logue with contemporary insights and needs. The Memorial is the longest and most autobiographical of the Liber’s texts. It was written down in Latin by a single Franciscan friar, who served as translator, scribe and editor for Angela’s dictated vernac- ular account of her spiritual life. The resulting text depicts Angela’s life of prayer through diverse extrinsic and intrinsic patterns. Close study of the Memorial indicates that the numerical patterns of sequen- tially ordered steps, which structure its narrative, reflect the editor- ial influence of Angela’s friar scribe, while the intrinsic pattern of Angela’s mysticism is better described as a spiral. Previous scholars who have remarked upon the spiral quality of Angela’s mysticism include Antonio Blasucci, Giovanni Benedetti, and Paul Lachance, O.F.M.; however, none of their studies com- prehensively explored the spiraling dynamic within Angela’s texts.2

1 Memorial Prologue 20, p. 128, in Il Libro della Beata Angela da Foligno (edizione critica), eds. Ludgar Thier, O.F.M. and Abele Calufetti, O.F.M. (Grottaferrata, 1985). 2 See Antonio Blasucci, Il cristocentrismo nella vita spirituale secondo la B. Angela da Foligno (Rome, 1940), p. 208; Giovanni Benedetti, “Elementi per una teologia spirituale nel Libro della Beata Angela,” in Vita e Spiritualità della Beata Angela da Foligno: Atti del convegno di studi per il VII centenario della conversione della Beata Angela da Foligno (1285–1985), Foligno 11–14 dicembre 1985, ed. P. Clément Schmitt, O.F.M. (Perugia, 1987), p. 29; Paul Lachance, O.F.M., “Introduction,” Angela of Foligno: Complete Works