Angela da Foligno's Memoriale: the male scribe, the female voice, and the other

Italica, Winter, 2005 by Dino S. Cervigni

Angela da Foligno was born either in 1248 or 1249 and died in 1309. Capable of reading but unable to write (Thier-Calufetti, "Introduzione" 26-27), most likely between 1292 and 1296 she dictated her spiritual experiences to a Franciscan, who, as Pozzi writes, "si nasconde dietro la sigla di A. ["fratre A."], sciolta tradizionalmente in Amaldo senza alcuna prova documentaria" (Angela, Il libro, "Introduzione" 15). (1) Although no doubt can be raised about the identity of Angela da Foligno, the name of Angela never appears in the text: she is always referrred to as "fidelis Christi" and in the Testificatio as "cuiusdam famulae Christi" (126, line 2).

While the fidelis Christi related her experiences in the vernacular of her native Umbria, the Franciscan scribe--according to his written statement in Il libro--wrote at her presence and translated her words into Latin: a Latin as distant from Cicero's language as it is from the contemporary Florentine vernacular of Dante's Vita nuova. Fra Arnaldo's socalled first redazione of Angela's mystical experiences was then presented to the ecclesiastical authorities and to a group of Franciscan theologians for their approval. This official approval or testificatio, marks the beginning of what is currently called the second redazione. (2)

The original transcription of Angela's experiences is lost, and the reconstruction of the critical text has been most difficult. The tradition of Angela's writings has been divided into no fewer than eight families with twenty-nine manuscripts (Thier and Calufetti, "Introduzione" 51-73). The oldest manuscript, which is in Assisi, is a copy of an exemplar of another exemplar, being thus three times removed from the original text, according to Thier and Calufetti; for Pozzi, instead, the Assisian codex "non rappresenta per nulla 'un terzo testo', come vogliono gli editori [Thier and Calufetti], bensi trasmette la redazione piu prossima all'archetipo" (Angela, Il libro, "Nota al testo" 245). (3) The title assumes no fewer than six different appellations in the tradition of the manuscripts and in printed editions, and to call it Memoriale is only a conjecture. (4) In fact, one might even submit that the book has no title, and thus ask with Pozzi:

    Perche questo 'senza titolo'? E il libro per antonomasia, audacemente    eretto a paragone col solo che possa presentarsi tale? O lo e per    omologazione a un contenuto che si autopropone come un nichil    incognitum [unnulla nascosto]? Il fascino dell'imprendibile e    indefinibile turba o allieta fin dai prodromi questo percorso di    lettura. (Angela, Il libro, "Introduzione" 15) 

Thus, in the case of Angela da Foligno's Memoriale, the mystic to whom the writing is attributed finds herself at some remove from her own life account, since she was not involved directly in the physical act of writing. Furthermore, the issue of authorship becomes further complicated because of the peculiar nature of mystical experiences described first through the spoken word and second through the written word by means of a scribe.

An element characteristic of every mystical experience is the mystic's "radical passivity": God is always the principal agent, while the creature assumes a secondary role. (5) In brief, confronted with experiences inherently ineffable because they are by nature utterly transcendent, the mystics find themselves in the particular situation of seeking to describe them through the human word, which, although it is founded on knowledge, is nevertheless unable to fulfill its task. (6) Consequently, as Pozzi writes, the readers are therefore urged to reflect "su come il dicibile, che 6 un sapere, si colleghi con un fare ineffabile" ("Patire e non potere" 2). Further complicating the issue of communication, Angela's mystical experiences can be known to us only through written records, whose scribes differ from their author. What concerns me here centers on the ways in which Angela da Foligno's experiences, communicated orally to her scribes, are recorded through writing and have thus reached us. (7) Thus what scholars of mysticism view as a hindrance in their analysis of medieval mystical experiences--namely, the impossibility of having any direct access to those experiences except through texts--provides the literary critic with a written text worth analyzing. (8)

Just as many medieval and Renaissance mystical texts, the Memoriale, as Karma Lochrie suggests, lies "outside medieval taxonomies of authorship and textual production" (60). (9) In fact, that the Memoriale was not physically penned by Angela emphasizes a frequent characteristic of authorship throughout classical antiquity and also the Middle Ages: the physical act of writing was often seen as a skill separate from the act of composing, which was associated with reading and thus with orality (Clanchey 41; 90; 97; 219; Lochrie 102-04; Carruthers 194-96; Fleischman; Murphy; Ong). At the same time, however, Angela da Foligno cannot be viewed as a typical dictator. In fact, just as she was not free to speak or not to speak, the scribe, as we shall see, finds himself in a condition utterly subservient to the mystic.