Saint Angela Merici

Italian religious leader

• Born: March 21, 1470 or 1474
• Birthplace: Desenzano, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: January 27, 1540
• Place of death: Brescia, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)

Angela Merici, noted for her ministry to the poor, the disabled, the sick, and the orphaned, founded the Order of Saint Ursula, the first Catholic teaching order for girls. The Ursuline order, as it came to be called, has been instrumental as an institution devoted to girls’ and women’s literacy, general education, and well-being.

Early Life

Angela Merici (AHN-jay-lah may-REE-chee) was born to a prosperous and literate farmer, who read to her regularly. Angela later credited her father with inspiring her early devotion to a contemplative way of life. Her mother was from the minor nobility, the Biancosi, a well-connected family important for Angela’s later upbringing. Angela also enjoyed the company of several siblings.

When still a young girl, Angela suffered the loss of her parents and a sister and was sent to live with a maternal uncle in Salò, a relatively prosperous town nearby. She did not receive formal schooling but lived in comfort while humbly performing her share of domestic chores. While still an adolescent, Angela had a vision that was to change the course of her life. Merici was praying in the fields at harvest time and looked up to see a group of angels, and among them was her deceased sister. Accounts of the vision vary, but all are consistent in attributing to this event Angela’s devotion to a spiritual calling.

It was around the time of this vision that Angela was admitted to the Third Order Franciscans , which afforded her more frequent communion and introduced her to a vocation devoted to caring for the poor, sick, and disadvantaged. Until the end of her life, Angela referred to herself as Suor Angela Terziaria and wore the habit of this Franciscan order.

Life’s Work

In 1516, the Franciscans approved sending Angela Merici to Brescia, an important city in northern Italy that had been suffering the effects of social disruption caused by war and political conflicts. Though assigned originally to comfort a bereaved widow, Angela soon broadened her mission to minister more generally to the suffering and needy in the city. She also became acquainted with a group of individuals active in a charitable organization. Through this charity, Angela helped care for women and young girls who had sexually transmitted diseases, had been abused, or had been orphaned during the political conflicts.

Angela involved herself with these charitable activities in a way that was both self-effacing and completely devoted. Contemporaries describe her during these missions as “on fire with the love of God.” She never slept in a bed, using instead a straw mat on the ground with a piece of stone or wood for a pillow. She slept little, in any case, and spent most of each day in charitable work, in prayer, or in reading. She received constant visitors and eventually acquired the appellation Mother Angela.

During this period, Angela traveled regularly for spiritual benefit. Her most eventful trip was a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1524, a journey filled with mysterious and miraculous episodes, including her temporary loss of sight and enduring threats from storms, pirates, and hostile Turks. A visit to Rome in 1525 culminated in a meeting with Pope Clement VII , and a trip in 1532 to Varallo, an important pilgrimage site in northern Italy, marked Angela’s last major journey.

Thereafter, Angela devoted most of her energy to the formation of a revolutionary new religious company in Brescia to address the needs of young women, the first of its kind anywhere. Angela’s following would become the Ursuline order. Key elements in her original vision are that her companions would follow a life of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and that they would live with their families rather than being cloistered. The notion that unmarried girls could lead chaste spiritual lives outside the cloister was a radical idea, and it was symptomatic of the practical and progressive company that Angela began.

In 1535, on November 25, the feast day of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Angela Merici and twenty-eight companions attended mass in a small oratory and signed their names in the book of the Company of Saint Ursula, thus founding the company and devoting themselves to God. The day was an auspicious one, being the eleventh anniversary of Angela’s return from the Holy Land and the feast day of a virgin martyr, Saint Catherine, whose own erudition, chastity, and devotion to Christ would become a model for the Ursulines. The founding of the company is celebrated in a famous early sixteenth century painting by Girolamo Romanino, now in the Memphis Brooks Museum, entitled The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine. This masterpiece, symbolizing the Ursulines’ spiritual betrothal to Christ, includes a portrait of Angela Merici, an image of Saint Ursula, the company’s patron saint, and a depiction of Saint Lawrence, which honors Lorenzo Muzio, vicar general of Brescia, who gave the company its initial approbation in 1536.

Under Angela’s leadership, the company prospered and held a unique status as an uncloistered religious community of women integrated with families and workplaces. Progressive for its time, the community was hard pressed to follow Angela’s original vision after her passing in Brescia on January 27, 1540, by which time the company numbered about 150 members. Pope Paul III formally approved the company in 1544, and shortly thereafter it was recognized as the Ursuline order. Angela Merici was beatified in 1768 by Pope Clement XIII and eventually canonized as a saint on May 24, 1807, by Pope Pius VII.

Significance

The Ursulines developed into the first female teaching order within the Catholic Church. From the sixteenth century onward, the Ursulines had a major impact on education throughout Europe and later continued their work in North America. The achievements in North America have been particularly profound, and include the first female missionaries, the first Catholic school for girls, and, in many communities, the first schools for girls or colleges for women.

The Ursuline order has seen much change since the death of its founder. In the mid-sixteenth century, a split began over the degree to which Angela’s original rule should be followed, especially regarding the issue of enclosure. The original idea of the Company of Saint Ursula spread to several cities in northern Italy before the time of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). The reforms of the Council of Trent included the directive that publicly vowed women should live in cloistered convents as nuns, a directive followed by some Ursulines. Others, particularly in Italy, elected to continue to live with their families or in small groups as women with private vows; these women became known as Angelines, after Angela Merici.

As new companies were introduced in France in the early seventeenth century, they tended to be founded as monasteries with enclosure. It was monastic enclosure that led to the long tradition of Ursuline education, and it was in seventeenth century France that Ursuline schools flourished. From France, Ursuline convents and their girls’ boarding schools spread throughout Europe and to North America between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

Today there are Ursulines throughout the world who, with public vows, live in religious communities, many of whom continue the mission of women’s and girl’s education. Angelines, a secular institute with private vows, live alone, with their families, or in small groups. Both branches seek to live in close harmony with Angela’s original vision.

Bibliography

Caraman, Peter. Saint Angela: The Life of Angela Merici, Foundress of the Ursulines (1474-1540). London: Farrar, Straus, 1963. The most widely available and easily read biography of Merici.

Coonin, Arnold Victor, ed. Old Masters in Context: Romanino’s Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine. Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 2003. This exhibition catalog includes useful essays on Angela Merici, Saint Ursula, and Saint Catherine, and discusses Merici in the context of the visual arts.

“Follow the Spirit”: Angela Merici and the Ursulines. Rome: Éditions du Signe, 1998. A brief, informative booklet published by the Ursuline community, which covers both historical and modern events.

Ledóchowska, Therese. Angela Merici and the Company of St. Ursula. 2 vols. Rome: Ancora, 1967. A definitive monograph on both Angela Merici and the later history of the order. Translated from the French, with original sources and documents.

Waters, Peter Maurice. The Ursuline Achievement: A Philosophy of Education for Women. Victoria, Australia: Colonna, 1994. Discussion of the Ursulines in the context of general educational theory. Also includes a translation of important Ursuline documents and a comprehensive bibliography.