Overview

THE reading of the lives of the Saints has been at all times recommended by the Church. God, in fact, raised them up to bring back to him, by the spectacle of their example and miracles, the nations among which they lived. In permitting public honors to be paid to them, the Holy Ghost, who directs the Church, has wished their virtues to be thus perpetuated in the memory of men. Hence the numervus panegyrics of our Christian orators: hence, too, the immense labors undertaken by the learned of every age to elucidate and recount their wonderful works. Some among them have shone with a brighter light, like the stars of heaven, whom the Supreme Ruler of all things had set differently in the vast expanse of the firmament. Angela Merici, whose life we write, was evidently raised up by God to serve as a light to her age, to revive faith, then almost extinct, and to found an order of virgins, till then unknown in the Church. This institute, whose origin dates from the revival of learning in Europe, has spread with astonishing success, and diffused Catholic doctrines at a time when a struggle was going on between the religious parties that divided whole kingdoms. The order of Ursulines, founded by Saint Angela, has fulfilled this mission with ever increasing happiness, especially in France, till the period of the unhappy Revolution in that country. Then the many monasteries that had been created in its provinces were suppressed; but scarcely was religion restored to the soil of France, when new communities arose in almost every diocese. In 1801, Pope Pius VII. canonized the Blessed Angela Merici: this was an encouragement for the Ursulines who had survived the revolution. Aided by the bishops, and even by the civil authorities, they formed new establishments for the instruction of youth. A few years sufficed to restore more than a hundred communities, now very flourishing. A complete life of Saint Angela was needed among them, and we have undertaken this. The authors that have aided us in its composition, all bear the approbation of the ecclesiastical authority. The chief are Father Quarre, of the Oratory; a life inserted in the History of the Order of Saint Ursula, printed at Paris in 1516, in two volumes; a short life issued at Rome in 1118, and a nearly complete life published at Fougeres in 1837. We have besides consulted Alban Butler, the Journal of the illustrious nuns of the Order of Saint Ursula, and the brief of her canonization.

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