Note 181 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
‘Angela de Foligni.’ See Beatæ Angelæ Fulginio Visionum et Instructionum Liber; (recens. J. H. Lammertz; Cologne, 1851.)—The account of the wonderful star is given by Arnold in his Prologue, p. 12. At one time it is promised by the Lord that the ‘whole Trinity shall enter into her,’ (capit. xx.); at another, she is transported into the midst of the Trinity.—(Capit. xxxii.) In chapter after chapter of monotonous inflation, she wearies and disappoints the curious reader by declaring her ‘abysses of delectation and illumination’ altogether unutterable,—such as language profanes rather than expresses—‘inenarrabiles,’ ‘indicibiles,’ &c. So the miraculous taste of the host to her favoured palate was not like bread or flesh, but a ‘sapor sapidissimus,’—like nothing that can be named.—Capit. xl.
The following act of saintship we give in the original, lest in English it should act on delicate readers as an emetic. She speaks of herself and a sister ascetic:—‘Lavimus pedes feminarum ibi existentium pauperum, et manus hominum, et maxime cujusdam leprosi, qui habebat manus valde fœtidas et marcidas et præpeditas et corruptas; et bibimus de illâ loturâ. Tantam autem dulcedinem sensimus in illo potu, quod per totam viam venimus in magnâ suavitate, et videbatur mihi per omnia quod ego gustassem mirabilem dulcedinem, quantum ad suavitatem quam ibi inveni. Et quia quædam squamula illarum plagarum erat interposita in gutture meo, conata sum ad diglutiendum eam, sicut si communicassem, donec deglutivi eam. Unde tantam suavitatem inveni in hoc, quod eam non possum exprimere.’—Capit. l. p. 176.
In her ‘Instructions,’ she lays it down as a rule that none can ever be deceived in the visions and manifestations vouchsafed them who are truly poor in spirit,—who have rendered themselves as ‘dead and putrid’ into the hands of God. (Capp. liv. lv.) She says that when God manifests Himself to the soul, ‘it sees Him, without bodily form, indeed, but more distinctly than one man can see another man, for the eyes of the soul behold a spiritual plenitude, not a corporeal, whereof I can say nothing, since both words and imagination fail here.’ (Capit. lii. p. 192.) Angela died in 1309.