Maria degli Angeli

Marianna Fontanella, known in religion as Maria degli Angeli, was born in Turin on 7 January 1661, in what was then the Duchy of Savoy. She was the daughter of Giovanni Donato Fontanella, Count of Santena, and of Maria Tana, and belonged to the Piedmontese nobility. Raised in a large and devout household, she showed from childhood a strong inclination to prayer and to consecrated life. In 1675 she entered the monastery of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Santa Cristina in Turin. She received the Carmelite habit under the name Maria degli Angeli and made her religious profession in 1676, taking up the reformed rule associated with Saint Teresa of Ávila.

In the cloister she became known for strict observance, austerity, and a contemplative life that contemporary accounts describe as accompanied by mystical graces, which she treated with reserve. She served as novice mistress, forming younger sisters in Carmelite spirituality, and was elected prioress of her community on several occasions. During those years of office she worked to maintain Teresian observance and took part in establishing a Discalced Carmelite foundation at Moncalieri, extending the order’s presence in Piedmont. Though she lived in enclosure, her reputation for holiness and spiritual counsel spread beyond the monastery walls.

Members of the House of Savoy, including Duke Victor Amadeus II, are recorded as having held her in high regard and as having sought her prayers in both private and public affairs. Period sources credit her with prophecy and with miracles, and she was regarded in Turin as a spiritual support during a time of war and political change in northern Italy. After more than forty years of Carmelite life she died in her monastery in Turin on 16 December 1717.

Devotion to her continued after her death. Her cause was taken up in the nineteenth century, and she was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1865. She has not been canonized and is therefore venerated as Blessed Maria degli Angeli. Her feast is kept on 16 December, especially in Carmelite calendars and in the Archdiocese of Turin. She is remembered as a representative of Discalced Carmelite life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Piedmont, a strictly enclosed nun whose cult became closely associated with the city of Turin and the Savoyard court.