Detail of Madonna and Child with saints (ca. 1481)

attributed to Pierantonio Mezzastris, Sant’ Anna. Foligno

Angelina was born in Montegiove, near Orvieto, probably in 1357.  She was the youngest of the four children of the noble Giacomo di Binolo da Montegiove.   Nothing is known about her early life, except that her parents died when she was a child.  (Local legends about her marriage to a Neopolitan noble and her expulsion from Naples after his death are not supported by documentary evidence).   Her sister Francesca married Trincia di Rinalduccio de' Trinci in ca. 1380.  He died in 1383, and she subsequently moved to the Monastero di Sant' Anna, a community of female Franciscan tertiaries that the Blessed Paolucccio de' Trinci founded in ca. 1390. 

It seems that Angelina's two brothers died during an epidemic of plague in 1394, at which point she probably joined her sister at Sant' Anna.  She is first recorded as a "professa" of this community in a will dated 1400 and subsequently became its leader.  Its status was unclear because the sisters did not observe clausura.  However, she secured approval of their way of life from Pope Boniface IX in 1403, no doubt helped by her Trinci relatives.

Angelina's achievement offered a route to legitimacy for similar female communities in central Italy, and Sant' Anna became the centre of a federation of a group of them that included establishments in Assisi (Monastero delle San Quirico), Todi (Monastero delle Lucrezie) and Perugia (Sant’ Antonio da Padova).  In 1428, Pope Martin V approved the union of these communities as a Congregation, with Angelina as its first Minister General.  (The Bull was addressed to Sister Angelina and (inter alia) Sister Caterina of San Giovanni Battista, Todi and Sister Tommasa of San Quirico, Assisi.)

Life became difficult for Angelina in 1430 when the Observant Franciscans of Foligno imposed strict enclosure on the Congregation, a move that Angelina was unable to resist.  She was deposed for a short period but was able to resume her post after she formally revoked the obedience that she had promised to the Franciscan Order. 

Angelina died in 1435 and was buried in San Francesco (as was usual for the sisters at Sant' Anna).  After a miracle that occurred in 1492 at her original grave, her body was exhumed and found to be in tact.  Her relics were then placed in a new reliquary opposite that of the Blessed Angela of Foligno.  Her cult was confirmed for Foligno in 1825.