Writings of Blessed Angela of Foligno
Writings of Blessed Angela of Foligno (mirror)
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"After this came pride. Then was I filled with wrath
and vanity, with melancholy and bitterness, and all puffed
up with pride. Thereto was added another bitterness
concerning the benefits which God had bestowed upon
me, because I remembered no more any good thing of
them whatsoever, but only remembered injuries and
dolorous grief, marvelling that there had been any virtue
whatsoever in me and doubting whether in truth there
had ever been any. Neither did I perceive any reason
wherefore God should have permitted this, and for this
cause was all goodness shut away from me and hidden.
The temptation of this thought did make me to be filled
with pride and anger, most bitter sadness and affliction
and a grief greater than I can declare, so that if all the
wise men of the world and all the saints of paradise had
given me every assurance to comfort me and had pro
mised me every blessing which could be named, not even
they could have done aught for me or rendered me any
help, if God had not changed my soul and worked
differently within it. Neither should I have believed in
them, but all would have worked together to increase
mine anger, affliction, sadness, and pain more than I could
possibly declare. Wherefore, if God would but have
liberated me from these torments and temptations, in lieu
thereof would I willingly have suffered every ill and would
have borne all the infirmities and suffering which have
ever been known, and verily do I believe that they would
have been less hard for me to bear than were the aforesaid
torments. Wherefore have I ofttimes said that, if only I
might be set free from them, I would gladly have endured
every form of martyrdom. This state of torments and
temptations did begin some little while before the time of
the pontificate of Celestino and did last more than two
years, during the which I was ofttimes tormented, nor am
I even yet entirely freed, albeit I do now feel it but
seldom, and that only outwardly, not inwardly as hereto
fore. But when I am in that state I do perceive that in
betwixt that evil humility and that pride there is a great
purging and purifying of the soul, by which and through
which is acquired that true humility without which none
can be saved ; so that the greater the humility, the
greater is likewise the purification. Thus came I to know
that betwixt those two aforesaid extremes my soul must
be burned and martyred, and through the knowledge of
mine offences and my sins (which knowledge it did obtain
through that same true humility) my soul became purged
both of pride and of demons. For the which reason doth
it come that the poorer the soul is made and the more pro
foundly humiliated, the more doth it abase and purify
itself in order that it may be cleansed. And in no other
way can a soul be cleansed save by deep humiliation and by
being most profoundly implanted and rooted in veritable
and true humility."
