Journal articles on the topic 'Angela of Foligno'

The article discusses the coexistence of two forms of Christian mysticism – metaphysical and relational – in The Book of Angela of Foligno. The metaphysical type, associated with the Neoplatonic philosophy, is probably inspired by The Soul’s Journey Into God by Saint Bonaventure who describes the experience of God as viewing existence or being (esse). The relational type is focused on the human and personal aspect of Jesus and the experience of love in the I-You relationship. While in many medieval mystics there is only one type of mysticism (e.g. metaphysical in Eckhart, relational in Bernard of Clairvaux), in Angela there is an interesting coexistence of both these types of experience of God.

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) was a central figure within twentieth-century French avant-garde circles, yet the importance of his work for the study of religion is only beginning to be recognized. Between the First and Second World Wars, he not only edited journals(Documents, Acéphale)and engaged in literary and political movements, but also organized (together with Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris) the College of Sociology, which attempted to bring the sociological methods of Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss to bear on the study and pursuit of the sacred. Throughout his work of the 1930s, Bataille sought to reintroduce the sacred into modern industrial, secular societies, which, he argued, believed in God only insofar as they equated God with reason. For Bataille, the power of the sacred lies in its ambiguity and violence. Sacrifice and expenditure mark the antithesis of the instrumental rationality of modern bourgeois society; through sacrifice, then, new sovereign communities might be engendered. Religious questions, for Bataille, were irrevocably political. He thus attempted to theorize and to create a community without authority, one that might counter the authoritarian movements coming to dominate much of Europe in the 1930s.

ABSTRACTThis essay addresses two related challenges facing educators who teach about medieval saints, mystics, and their texts. The first is how to relate to the theologies and spiritualities of people who inhabited cultures radically distinct from the modern and postmodern periods. The second regards the contemporary tendency to evaluate medieval believers in terms of modernist intellectual frameworks, most notably clinical psychological categories. A case study approaching the medieval mystic Angela of Foligno from three disciplinary points of view—clinical psychology, historical theology, and cultural history—illustrates how educators might respond to students' penchant to privilege clinical psychology when considering medieval mystics and saints, and shows not only the complementarity of interdisciplinarity, but also its limitations.

The article presents an analysis of one of the parts of the book of Revelations of blessed Angela of Foligno, which contains the Instructiones (message) to members of the community of the third order of St. Francis. The doctrine proposes to consider the relationship with God as an object/subject of love, to which feelings and emotions are directed. The “presence of the divine Beloved” is “cognition” and can respond by generating sensations of its material presence. The author of the doctrine has practical recommendations (stages of knowledge): how to achieve junction with the divine, what steps should be taken to change the way of life. It is concluded that there was a developed teaching among the members of the community, and its medical aspect is considered.

Michel de Certeau classifica a linguagem mística como “fábula”, isto é, como algo que precisa ser dito e que constitui uma forma especial de enunciação da experiência histórica; como enunciação, a mística constitui uma “prática de escrita” que pretende redefinir os limites do dizível, do real e do verdadeiro; durante a Idade Média, a escrita mística feminina inseriu as mulheres no campo da historiografia, até então marcadamente masculina, pela qual fabricaram uma linguagem específica de enunciação da vida interior que se apresenta sob a forma de narrativas biográficas. Neste texto, serão estudadas Li Vida de la Benaurada Sancta Doucelina eIl Memoriale di Angela da Foligno produzidas por mulheres da Baixa Idade Média desde a perspectiva da narrativa de memória para entender se e como a linguagem mística engendra novas formas de narrar a história e se essas formas indicam novos caminhos para entendermos as noções de objetividade, subjetividade e alteridade na história e na historiografia ocidental.

Uno de los temas más fascinantes de la historia hispanoamericana del siglo XVII es el de las beatas, mundo religioso del cual Santa Rosa de Lima formó parte. La figura de la santidad, en el lapso que va desde 1580 a 1620, ha sido un fenómeno virreinal que, mayormente, ha originado reflexiones piadosas y muy pocas desde la perspectiva científica. Es claro que en dicho lapso, en el Virreinato del Perú se originó un movimiento místico que hizo ingresar a Lima virreinal en una tradición de santidad que comenzó en el Occidente cristiano en la Edad Media, cuando Clara de Montefalco (1268-1308), Angela de Foligno (1248-1309), Brígida de Suecia (1302-1373) y Catalina de Siena (1347-1380) revolucionaron el papel de la mujer dentro del cristianismo. La existencia de estas devotas, provocó un impacto en la sociedad limeña, lo cual se refleja en la figura de Santa Rosa de Lima (1586-1617) y en la influencia que ella ejerció en sus contemporáneas.

This article considers the social and cultural contexts of the two lives of Margherita Colonna (c.1254–1280) to reveal her traditional, monastic Franciscan piety that originated with her baronial Roman background. To her family, Margherita Colonna represented a moderate type of Franciscan piety that did not conflict with elite patriarchal expectations of women, and one that differed from the radical penitence of Clare of Montefalco, Angela of Foligno, and Margherita of Cortona. Her hagiographers structured their respective renditions of her life to promote their own agendas, choosing and omitting saintly virtues as they saw fit. Margherita's first life, written by her brother Giovanni Colonna, extolled her humility, nobility, and almsgiving. Her second life, written by Stefania, her relative and the successor of her spiritual community, focused on Margherita's mysticism and concern for her cloistered community. Both of these works diverge from the lives of radical female Franciscans who practiced contempt for the world and rigorous poverty. For this reason, this article argues that Margherita's pious type broke from that of Clare of Assisi, and more closely resembled the traditional monastic religiosity practiced by her family before the arrival of St. Francis. Such an approach to hagiography reveals the social context from which it arose, as well as gendered notions of holiness, thereby contributing to the fields of medieval sanctity, gender, and society.

The Franciscan Monastery of St Domnius at Kraj on the island of Pašman houses an incunable edition of Augustine’s The City of God (De Civitate Dei) which was printed in Venice by Nicolas Jenson in 1475. The incunable features beautiful Renaissance multi-coloured illuminations painted in tempera, sepia, ink and water colours while gold foils and gold dust were used on fol. 17 (the page number is not original but was subsequently added in pencil; this folio contains the beginning of Book 1) and a number of other folios. The illumination on fol. 17 consists of two phytomorphic initials, a decorative border and independent figural scenes while a number of other folios are decorated with phytomorphic initials of the littera notabilior type, the height of which corresponds to two lines, painted in red or blue. The top and left margin of the first page of Book 1 are filled with a decorative border terminating in trilobes on each end. The ornamental scheme of the border consists of a band made up of five thin lines which undulates in a spiral and thus forms circles. These are filled with flowers, leaves and berries painted in blue, green and cyclamen purple but also with gold stylized burdock flowers (Lat. Arctium lappa; some scholars call them gold dots, that is, bottoni dorati). The remaining fields are filled with bent scrolls. In the upper left corner of the frame is a goldfinch. The initial I, composed of phytomorphic motifs in blue, green and cyclamen purple and their shades, is painted against a gold background of the rectangular field situated at the beginning of the text column on the left-hand side. Inside the decorative border, placed at the height which corresponds to the centre of the initial, is a medallion with the bust of St Augustine depicted in the open sky with elongated white clouds and no other details. The illusion of the spatial depth was achieved through the use of tonal gradations: the shades of blue are darker at the top and lighter in the lower half of the sky. St Augustine is dressed in a white robe and a red cloak with a black hood. He is wearing a white mitre with a horizontal and perpendicular band highlighted with gold dust. The shadows and folds of his clothes were articulated with black and white lines. His right hand is pointing to the open book which was painted at the height of his chest. The fingers on his right hand are elongated and thin. St Augustine’s gold nimbus was painted as a full circle the left half of which was outlined in white and the right half in black. St Augustine is directing his gentle and sad gaze upwards. His head is slightly bent. His round and bony head is marked by the large round eyes with prominent sclera and dark circles underneath while the arched eyebrows are thinner at their ends. The nose is small and the mouth is turned downwards. The plasticity of the face and its complexion were articulated with white and pink shades. The trimmed dark beard is depicted with short lines in lighter and darker shades. The ornamental frame which fills the top margin corresponds to the one in the left margin but was decorated more modestly because the miniaturist placed the scroll bearing the printer’s name and the scroll identifying the text as belonging to Book 1 at the centre of the frame which left only the beginning and the end of the frame to be decorated. The scroll with the printer’s name is emphasized by a golden burdock flower at the top of the frame and a golden teasel flower (Lat. Dipsacus fullonum) at the bottom. The lower margin features two symmetrical angels, rendered in a somewhat imprecise drawing, who kneel on the ground painted in the shades of green and brown. The physiognomy of the angels is similar to that of St Augustine. Their round heads have small eyes and noses, shaded circles under the eyes and arched eyebrows. The mouths are depicted as thin lines with pronounced ends and are further accentuated by a dot beneath the lower lip. The plasticity of their faces was achieved through the tonal gradation of pink and white. The angels’ hair, ochre in colour and highlighted with gold dust, is thick and short and covers the tops of their heads like a helmet. The outspread wings were painted in dark and light shades of blue. Two wide red scrolls with white highlights emerge symmetrically from behind the angels at their waist height. Wavy tendrils and gold stylized teasel flowers extend from the red scroll. The angels hold a laurel wreath between them. The colour of the circular field inside the wreath is cyclamen purple. The wreath is formed by three rows of leaves which are bound by four regularly spaced ties. The leaves’ edges and tips were painted in light and dark shades of green. Inside the wreath is a Renaissance crest surrounded by thin white wiggly tendrils with sprouting leaves. The shield, in the shape of a horse’s head, is divided horizontally into the dark blue upper half and the red lower half. It features a gold lion with his mouth wide open who is facing right and holding a tree with his front paws. The tree’s pyramidal top is decorated with small dots indicating leaves and fruit. The shield’s right half is outlined in white and the left one in black. The second text column on the first page of Book 1 is decorated with the painted initial letter G. It consists of phytomorphic motifs in blue, red, yellow and cyclamen purple and their shades. Two small leaves are attached to the initial on its left-hand side. As is the case with the crest, the initial was additionally decorated with elegant white tendrils sprouting leaves and highlighted with gold dust. The background is also gold while the rectangular field around the initial is outlined in a thin black line. Two wavy tendrils and two gold stylized teasel flowers emerge from the corners of the frame on the left-hand side while a green leaf appears at the centre. Apart from these illuminations and initials on fol. 17, the incunable contains other initials, one for the beginning of each of the remaining twenty one book, and all of them consist of blue, green and cyclamen pink phytomorphic motifs painted against a gold background inside a black rectangular frame. The plasticity of these initials was achieved through tonal gradation and the use of yellow while thin white undulating tendrils with variations in width and highlights in gold dust enriched the decoration. Some sentences in the text were emphasized by numerous initials in red or blue of the littera notabilior type the height of which corresponds to two lines of the text. The illuminations of this incunable edition of the De Civitate Dei belong to north Italian or Venetian Renaissance painting and they demonstrate numerous significant similarities with the works of the well-known Venetian miniaturist whom the scholarly literature identified as Maestro del Plinio di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Maestro del Plinio di Pico or, more commonly, Maestro di Pico). The attribution of the illuminations in this incunable to Maestro di Pico, who may have been helped by his workshop and assistants especially during the painting of the decorative frame and initials, is based on the figure of St Augustine and the angels who support the crest. Their features display the same typology which characterizes the works of Maestro di Pico. Identical angels appear in the bottom margin of Brunetto Latini’s Il Tesoro (Gerardus de Lisa, Treviso, 1474; Cambridge, Mass., Harvard, Houghton Library, Inc. 6459, c. 7). The figure of St Augustine shows pronounced similarities with the figure of a Dominican monk, set inside the initial O of the littera historiata type, in Nicolaus de Auximo’s Supplementum (Franciscus Renner et Nicolaus de Frankofordia, Venice, 1474; Biblioteca Marciana, Inc. Ven. 494, c.2). Identical angels and putti can be found in the bottom margins of Strabo’s Geographica (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesotta Library, Ms. 1460/f St., c.1), and in two copies of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis (Venice, N. Jenson, 1472, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Vèlins 498 and Venice, N. Jenson, 1472, San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, n. 2289). A beautiful comparative example is the Biblia Latina (Franciscus Renner & Nicolaus de Frankfordia, 1475, Dallas, Texas, Southern Methodist University, Bridwell Library) and its first page which has a similar composition to that in the incunable from Kraj. The figure of St Jerome, depicted inside a littera historiata provides a plethora of specific Morellian details which are essential for the attribution of the illuminations in the incunable from Kraj to Maestro di Pico. Striking similarities in the depictions of saints, phytomorphic initials and decorative frames can also be found in two psalters (one in Venice, Biblioteca Querini Stampaglia, Inc. 6, the other in Siena, Biblioteca S. Bernardino del Convento dell’Osservanza) and in the first page of the Psalms in a breviary from Paris (Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève, OE XV 147 Rés). Similar saints and angels all of which belong to the same figural typology were used to decorate three copies from the Commissioni series made for Doge Agostino Barbarigo (Commissione del doge Agostino Barbarigo a Girolamo Capello, 1487, Venice, Bib. Del Museo Correr, MS Cl. III. 33 (fig. 15); Commissione del doge Agostino Barbarigo a Paolo di Canale, 1489, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 4729, c.2, and Commissione del doge Agostino Barbarigo a Tommaso Loredano, 1490, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 4730, c.1). Further parallels can be found in the illuminations of a breviary from Augsburg (c. 1480, Universitätsbibl., Cod. I.2.2o 35) the first page of which has a lettera istoriata with the figure of St Paul whose physiognomy closely resembles that of St Augustine in the incunabule from Kraj, while the bottom margin features centrally placed angels which are identical to those at Kraj. Equally important comparative material is found in three Paduan incunables (Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile) which contain illuminations attributed to Maestro di Pico. The distinctive features of the angels, putti and saints as well as the type of decoration used in the margins of these incunables also demonstrate striking similarities with the illuminations from Kraj. Other examples include Lattanzi’s Opera (Giovanni da Colonia and Johannes Manthen, Venice, 1478; Forc. M. 3.2), Jacopo da Varagine’s Legenda aurea (Gabriele di Pietro, Venice, 1477, with a likely contribution of his workshop; Forc. M. 2.22) and Cipriano’s Opera (Vindelino da Spira, Venice, 1471; Forc. K. 2.12). On the basis of the comparative analyses outlined above and the similarities which have been noted, it can be concluded that the illuminations in the incunable of St Augustine’s De Civitate Dei (Nicolas Jenson, Venice, 1475), housed in the Monastery of St Domnius at Kraj, were painted by the well-known Venetian Renaissance miniaturist Maestro di Pico. Regardless of the possible input of his workshop and assistants during the painting process of the decorative frame and initials, these illuminations help expand the catalogue of Maestro di Pico’s works and represent valuable contribution to the painting in Renaissance Dalmatia.

Recent work on political theology – most notably that of J. Kameron Carter – has turned to eucharistic theology and its notion of the ‘corpus mysticum’ to explain the political theology undergirding nationalism, white supremacy, and fascism. This article builds on this approach to articulate an anti-fascist sacramental theology through a reading of Georges Bataille’s Summa Atheologica. Against fascism’s fantasy of a pure and purifying sovereign body that can secure the redemption of the threatened body of the nation, Bataille’s Summa risked a ‘new theology’ of the irremediably lacerated body of Christ which might ground a non-sovereign community of fragmentation, dispossession, and vulnerability. By rethinking the Summa’s relationship to one of its main influences – the eucharistic theology of St Angela of Foligno – I argue that it is possible to rethink sacramental theology in a Bataillean key, against political theology and its eucharistic structure.