Angela of Foligno

c.1248-1309. Umbrian mystic. Born into a wealthy family at Foligno, she spent most of her life there. She married and, when nearly forty, underwent sudden conversion and became a Franciscan tertiary.* After the death of her husband and children she lived an austere, cloistered life surrounded by disciples. It is recorded that she received frequent visions, which she dictated later to her confessor Arnold and circulated eventually as Liber Visionum et Instructionum. She analyzed the “twenty steps of penitence” by which she was initiated into the mystical life, culminating in a vision of herself in God. She was beatified by Innocent XII in 1693.