Saint Clare of Assisi

Italian abbess

• Born: July 16, 1194
• Birthplace: Assisi, Duchy of Spoleto (now in Italy)
• Died: August 11, 1253
• Place of death: Assisi, Duchy of Spoleto (now in Italy)

Saint Clare, the first abbess of San Damiano, founded the Poor Ladies of Assisi, better known as the Poor Clares, and wrote the order’s directives. The Poor Clares was the first women’s religious order to be based on the Franciscan, not Benedictine, rule.

Early Life

Clare of Assisi (klauhr uhv uh-SIHS-ee) was the eldest child of Ortolana and Favarone Offreducio di Bernardino, wealthy members of the nobility in Assisi. Her father was a younger son in a well-established family. Her mother was well known for her charity and piety; she even made pilgrimages, including one to the Holy Land. Clare was educated as befitting her status as the daughter of a local aristocratic household. Evidence given by long-standing family friends at her canonization hearings indicates that Clare was both beautiful and virtuous as a girl.

Clare demonstrated her piety and charity from a young age. For example, even as a girl, she gave whatever she could to the poor of Assisi. Her good works earned her a reputation as a virtuous and generous person and probably also brought her to the attention of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was in the early stages of preaching and living his doctrine of radical poverty. Because Francis was from a merchant family and several years older than Clare, it is unlikely that they would have met earlier in their lives. However, Francis’s public renunciation of his father occurred in the public square near Clare’s house, so Clare most likely had heard of him before she began listening to his preaching. In her later teen years, she sought out this radical preacher, and for about two years, she was secretly instructed by him.

During the night of Palm Sunday, 1212, when she was about eighteen years old, Clare secretly left her father’s house and went to Porziuncula, a small chapel near Assisi, where Saint Francis and his followers were centered. There, Clare renounced worldly goods, and Francis formally accepted her as a follower of Christ. To signify this, Clare was given simple robes and her hair was cut by Francis. The tonsure, the shorn hair, is the mark of a person newly accepted into a religious lifestyle. Clare’s receiving the tonsure from Francis himself signified her deep-rooted belief in Francis’s principles. Clare quickly entered her new life of poverty, selling her entire inheritance and distributing all the proceeds among the poor.

Life’s Work

As the first female disciple of Francis, Clare did not immediately have a place to live. Briefly she was part of two different monasteries in the area, and then Francis advised her to settle into the monastery of San Damiano. The monastery became the gathering place for the women who would eventually come to be known as the Poor Ladies of Assisi. Clare’s sister Catherine, renamed Agnes, was the first to join.

The Bernardino family was infuriated by Clare’s actions. Clare was not expected to carry her charity and piety into a religious life; rather, she was expected to do as her mother had and carry those practices into her future household. Clare, however, had balked at a marriage arranged for her, then ran off to be part of the radical, poverty-focused Franciscan movement. Several times, the family, using both promises and force, had attempted to persuade Clare to return. When her sister Agnes ran away, the men of the family pursued her, and when they caught her, they attempted to carry her back home. By her prayers, Clare made Agnes weigh so heavily on them that the men were unable to carry her any farther; this is considered one of Clare’s earliest miracles. Defeated, the men put Agnes down and retreated to the city. Just as he had for Clare, Francis himself gave Agnes the tonsure.

In giving Clare and Agnes the tonsure, Francis demonstrated the relationship between the women at San Damiano and the Franciscans, and in particular between Clare and Francis himself. Generally, the Poor Ladies of Assisi followed the principles of Francis’s nearby Friars Minor: complete poverty and charitable works of manual labor carried out by the members themselves as well as the contemplation typical of most religious orders of the time. Many other orders not only focused on prayer and contemplation but also had accrued significant wealth, as permitted under the Benedictine Rule for religious orders.

This combination of being both wealthy and focused on prayer usually meant that the orders were insulated from the immediate problems of the poor. Frequently, the members who performed charitable actions were considered to be lesser members of the order. Although Francis also encouraged contemplation, he both preached and practiced that the members of the order should work with the poor and that they should be as poor as the people they helped. These two ideas are fundamental to the Franciscan way of life. Francis believed the religious person who practiced these ideas most truly approximated Christ in his treatment of the needy and in his poverty.

The personal relationship between Francis and Clare is reflected in Clare’s description of herself as “a little plant of our holy Father Francis.” She saw herself as sharing his approach to how the Gospels should be lived, and she saw herself nurtured, protected by, and growing in his example. For example, the Church of San Damiano, where Francis settled Clare and her companions, was the place where Francis believed he was given a unique mission by God. Francis ordered Clare to eat two ounces of bread a day, contradicting her wish to fast completely, and she obeyed. Francis appointed Clare the abbess of the cloister, despite her objections to being given any authority over others. Francis wrote the original principle by which the women of San Damiano were organized, and he regularly preached there.

The community at San Damiano grew, although its members had to accept radical poverty and a strict work ethic. Ortolana, the mother of Clare and Agnes, joined after she became a widow. As the community expanded, it retained its focus on poverty and charitable service. For example, to demonstrate how much she valued the work of the members who aided the needy, Clare waited on them after they returned to the cloister, helping them wash their feet and serving them their meal. The members of the community who remained in the cloister were active in charity as well. For example, they worked wool given them into altar cloths that they then donated.

Clare’s spiritual influence grew as Assisi accepted the vibrant San Damiano community and as similarly minded women around Europe sought Clare’s counsel. Assisi’s acceptance is best demonstrated by its turning to the women of San Damiano on two different occasions when the city was being invaded. Both times, Clare’s prayers are credited with repelling the invaders and thus saving the city. The city came to look at the monastery as its special protector. Sisters from San Damiano established convents elsewhere in Italy as well as in Spain, France, and Bohemia. Meanwhile, women who had already begun developing communities similar in spirit to San Damiano wrote to Clare for encouragement and guidance. Clare’s correspondence reveals her support of their efforts to persevere in poverty.

The Catholic Church, however, did not support these efforts, by Clare or anyone else. Cardinal Ugolino, later Pope Gregory IX, wrote a rule in 1219 for Clare and her followers, formalizing all their principles except that of poverty. Ugolino did not permit Clare to reject all possessions because he felt that cloistered women could not beg enough for their support. Ugolino had good intentions; he wanted to channel this surge of people, particularly women, interested in radical spirituality into the existing structure of religious orders, but his efforts undermined the uniqueness of their interests. As Francis resisted Church efforts to shift his Friars Minor more toward the existing orders, Clare resisted Ugolino’s rule for her community, explaining that poverty was fundamental.

For years, Ugolino, now Pope Gregory IX, pressured Clare to accept possessions in common for her cloister. When in Assisi for the canonization of Francis in 1228, Gregory even offered to absolve her from her vow of poverty. To this, Clare responded, “I crave absolution for my sins, but I desire not to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus.” The pope replied in turn by granting Clare and her women the privilegium paupertatis, or the formal privilege of poverty, the only such privilege ever sought or granted. This privilege, granted in 1228, modified the rule of 1219 by permitting the women of San Damiano to continue in their poverty.

After Gregory IX’s death, the next pope, Innocent IV, took his turn drafting a rule for the women. In 1247, he prepared a rule based on Franciscan, not Benedictine, principles, but that still emphasized the importance of having community possessions. This emphasis, like its earlier counterpart in Ugolino’s first rule, threatened the central tenet of San Damiano. This time, though, Clare responded openly, by writing her own rule.

Clare drafted her rule between 1247 and 1251; bedridden since 1226, she wrote it while her illness was worsening. Her rule blended Franciscan principles, such as the importance of the order members who serve the poor, with principles from the earlier rules, such as having a porter at the gate of the community. Francis gave the community at San Damiano their initial guidance in a brief letter. Clare’s rule provided a guide for perpetuating this community centered around poverty.

Clare wrote her rule primarily to secure poverty as an integral part of women’s religious life rather than as a privilege subject to revocation. She submitted it for papal consideration in 1251. In 1252, Cardinal Rainaldo, who was responsible for overseeing the order as Ugolino had been, notified her that he, as protector of the order, accepted Clare’s rule. However, the pope still had concerns. Another year passed, and Clare’s health radically declined. In the last days of her life, Pope Innocent IV visited her while en route from Lyon to Rome. Innocent wrote the papal bull approving her rule on August 9. It was delivered to her on August 10, and, on August 11, 1253, Clare died. She was canonized in 1255.

Significance

Clare was the first Franciscan sister, both because she was Saint Francis’s first female spiritual companion and because she was the first woman to follow his principles. She also became the first abbess of her community at San Damiano. She wrote the rule for the Poor Ladies of Assisi, the first religious rule written for women by a woman.

Bibliography

Bartoli, Marco. Clare of Assisi. Translated by Sister Frances Teresa. Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1993. This scholarly biography places Clare in the larger context of later medieval Italy. In particular, her accomplishments are set against the cultural currents.

Bornstein, Daniel, and Roberto Rusconi, eds. Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Translated by Margery J. Schneider. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. This collection examines varied aspects of the role of religious women in Italy. An essay on the early days of San Damiano is included.

Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. Translated by Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. This edition of the writings of both Assisi saints contains comprehensive introductions to the life of each and clarifies the audience for and purpose of the different writings.

The Legend and Writings of Saint Clare of Assisi. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1953. Although an older work, this book contains the text of the “Life of Saint Clare” written by Thomas of Celano, the biographer appointed by the pope for the canonization of Saint Clare. Celano’s work is the earliest known biography of Saint Clare.

Peterson, Ingrid J. Clare of Assisi: A Biographical Study. Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1993. Scholarship has begun to uncover the history of women of the Middle Ages. For Clare, much of this work has been done in conjunction with the 800th anniversary of her birth.

Thomson, John A. F. The Western Church in the Middle Ages. New York: Arnold, 1998. This general survey of medieval Christianity places the Franciscan movement, of which Clare was an important early member, in the larger frame of contemporaneous religious development.