This is the poetry of mysticism, an artistic reduction of supernal intuitions, and is to be interpreted in poetic terms. But there is another, and rarer, form of spiritual perception: that imageless intuition of pure truth, which St. Teresa and other mystics call intellectual, but which would be better named metaphysical vision. Angela’s real importance amongst the mystics comes from the fact that she possessed this power in a high degree of development. In virtue of her immediate apprehensions of transcendent reality, she belongs to the rarest and highest type of mystic seer: a class in which Plotinus holds perhaps the first place, and of which Ruysbroeck is the most conspicuous mediæval example. The poetry of Jacopone da Todi shows us that he too knew the secret of those strange astounding regions, “beyond the polar circle of the mind,” where Angela tasted of unconditioned reality, and the language in which he describes them often reminds us of her. It is an interesting question, whether these two great Franciscan contemplatives directly influenced one another, or must be regarded as the twin stars of a school of “Seraphic wisdom” which taught the deepest mysteries of the spiritual life. There are eight of these great visionary experiences recorded in Angela’s book. In them she says that she apprehended God successively under the attributes of Goodness, Beauty, Power, Wisdom, Love, Justice; and that after this she beheld the totality of the Godhead “darkly”—a way of describing her perceptions which is of course traceable to the “Divine darkness” of Dionysius the Areopagite. Finally she beheld it, “as clearly as is possible in this life.” All these visions seem to have come to her when she was in a state of ecstasy or trance. She speaks of being “exalted in spirit,” “rapt to the first elevation”; lifted to wholly new levels of consciousness. She describes them as well as she can, yet plainly she is only able to tell us a fraction of her experience. Over and over again she declares the hopeless inadequacy of human speech, the impossibility of “speaking as she saw.” Her state is like that of Dante at the end of the _Paradiso_, save that her wings were fitted for these flights. “I beheld the ineffable fullness of God; but I can relate nothing of it, save that I have _seen_ the fullness of Divine Wisdom, wherein is all goodness.” Again, “inasmuch as this was a supernatural thing, I cannot express it in words.” “Many other things were clearly set forth to me; but I neither can nor will relate them.” “All that I say of this, seems to me to be nothing. I feel as though I offended in speaking of it, for so greatly does the Good exceed all my words that my speech seems to be but blasphemy.”