12th August ~ St Clare
“Dispose of me as you please; I am yours by having given my will to God. It is no longer my own.”
ST CLARE, Virgin, Foundress of the Poor Clares or Minoresses (A.D. 1253)
“The Lady Clare, shining in name, more shining in life, most shining in conversation, was a native of Assisi, of noble birth and by grace nobler, a maiden most pure in heart, young in years but hoary in determination, most steadfast in purpose, but withal wise and meek and a marvellous lover of Christ”. She was born about the year 1193. Her mother was Ortolana di Fiumi and her father Faverone Offreduccio, and she had a younger sister, Agnes, and another, Beatrice, but of her childhood, adolescence and home-life there are no certain facts. When she was eighteen St Francis came to preach the Lenten sermons at the church of San Giorgio in Assisi; his words fired her, she sought him out secretly, and asked him to help her that she too might live “after the manner of the holy gospel”. Francis spoke to her of contempt for the world and love of God, and strengthened her nascent desire to leave all things for Christ. On Palm Sunday in the year 1212 Clare attended at the cathedral of Assisi for the blessing of palms; when all the rest went up to the altar-rails to receive their branch of olive a sudden shyness kept her in her place, which the bishop seeing, he went from the altar down to her and gave her the branch. In the evening she ran away from home and went a mile out of the town to the Portiuncula, where St Francis lived with his little community. He and his brethren met her at the door of the chapel of our Lady of the Angels with lighted tapers in their hands, and before the altar she put off her fine clothes, and St Francis cut off her hair, and gave her his penitential habit, which was a tunic of sackcloth tied about her with a cord. The holy father not having yet any nunnery of his own, placed her for the present in the Benedictine convent of St Paul near Bastia, where she was affectionately received. It would seem that the relatives of St Clare (her father was probably dead) had proposed a particular marriage that did not recommend itself to her, but that she did not entirely renounce the idea of matrimony in general until the burning words of Francis persuaded her to commit her maidenhood finally to God. Then followed what G. K. Chesterton called this “regular romantic elopement”, in which the bridegroom was Christ and St Francis the “knight-errant who gave it a happy ending”.
No sooner was her action made public but her friends and relations came in a body to draw her out of her retreat. It is said that Clare resisted and held to the altar so fast as to pull its cloths half off when they endeavoured to drag her away; and, uncovering her head to show her hair cut, she said that Christ had called her to His service and that she would have no other husband, and that the more they should continue to persecute her, the more God would strengthen her to resist and overcome them. And God triumphed in her. St Francis soon after removed her to another nunnery, that of Sant’ Angelo di Panzo. There her sister Agnes joined her, which drew on them both a fresh persecution. Agnes’s constancy proved at last victorious, and St Francis gave her also the habit, though she was only fifteen years of age. (It may be noted that in the bull of canonization Pope Alexander IV makes no mention of any violence being used in the attempt to dissuade Clare and her sister from their new life.) Eventually St Francis placed them in a poor house contiguous to the church of San Damiano, on the outskirts of Assisi, and appointed Clare the superior. She was later joined by her mother and others, among whom there were of the illustrious family of the Ubaldini in Florence, who held for truer greatness the sackcloth and poverty of St Clare than the estates and riches which they possessed, seeing they left them all to become humble disciples of so admirable a mistress. St Clare saw founded within a few years monasteries of her nuns at several places in Italy, France and Germany. Bd Agnes, daughter to the King of Bohemia, founded a nunnery of the order in Prague, in which she took the habit, and was called by Clare “my half self”.
St Clare and her community practised austerities which till then had scarcely been known among women. They wore neither stockings, shoes, sandals nor any other covering on their feet; they slept on the ground, observed perpetual abstinence from meat, and never spoke but when they were obliged by necessity and charity. The foundress recommended this holy silence as the means to avoid innumerable sins of the tongue, and to preserve the mind always recollected in God and free from the dissipation of the world which, without this guard, penetrates even the walls of cloisters. Not content with the fasts and other mortifications of the rule, she always wore next her skin a rough shirt of hair; she fasted on vigils and all Lent on bread and water; and on some days she ate nothing at all. All Clare’s austerities were on the same scale, and after a time it became necessary for Francis and the bishop of Assisi to oblige her to lie upon a mattress and never pass one day without taking at least some bread for nourishment. Discretion came with experience, and years later she wrote to Bd Agnes of Bohemia: “Since our bodies are not of brass and our strength is not the strength of stone but rather we are weak and subject to corporal infirmities, I implore you vehemently in the Lord to refrain from that exceeding rigour of abstinence which I know you practise, so that living and hoping in the Lord you may offer Him a reasonable service and a sacrifice seasoned with the salt of prudence.”
St Francis wished that his order should never possess any rents or other property even in common, subsisting on daily contributions, and St Clare possessed this spirit in perfection. Pope Gregory IX desired to mitigate this part of her rule, and offered to settle a yearly revenue on the Poor Ladies of San Damiano; but she in the most pressing manner persuaded him by many reasons, in which her love of evangelical poverty made her eloquent, to leave her order in its first rigorous establishment. When the pope offered to dispense from the vow of strict poverty St Clare replied, “I need to be absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ”. Gregory accordingly granted in 1228 the Privilegium paupertatis, that they might not be constrained by anyone to accept possessions: “He who feeds the birds of the air and gives raiment and nourishment to the lilies of the field will not leave you in want of clothing or food until He come Himself to minister to you for eternity.” The convents of Perugia and Florence also received this privilege, but others thought it more prudent to accept a mitigation.* After the death of Gregory IX (who as Cardinal Ugolino had drawn up the first written rule for the Poor Ladies of San Damiano), Innocent IV in 1247 published another recension of the rule which in some respects brought it nearer to Franciscan than to Benedictine observance, but which permitted the holding of property in common; he wrote that he did not wish to force this rule on any community unwilling to accept it. St Clare was unwilling, and she, as the living depository of the spirit and tradition of St Francis
(Thus began the two observances which have ever since been perpetuated among the Poor Clares. The mitigated houses are called “Urbanist” from the modification of the rule given to them in 1263 by Pope Urban IV.)
himself, set to work to draw up a rule which should truly express them, and which unequivocally provides that the sisters shall possess no property, either as individuals or as a community. It was not until two days before she died that this rule was approved for the convent of San Damiano by Pope Innocent IV.
From the time when she was appointed abbess, much against her will, by St Francis in 1215, St Clare governed the convent for forty years. But it was her wish always to be the servant of servants, beneath all, washing and kissing the feet of sick lay-sisters when they returned from begging, serving at table, attending the sick. She had as it were wings to fly wherever St Francis directed her, and was always ready to do anything or to put her shoulders under any burden that was enjoined: ST CLARE
12: ST CLARE, Virgin, Foundress of the Poor Clares or Minoresses (A.D. 1253)
“The Lady Clare, shining in name, more shining in life, most shining in conversation, was a native of Assisi, of noble birth and by grace nobler, a maiden most pure in heart, young in years but hoary in determination, most steadfast in purpose, but withal wise and meek and a marvellous lover of Christ”. She was born about the year 1193. Her mother was Ortolana di Fiumi and her father Faverone Offreduccio, and she had a younger sister, Agnes, and another, Beatrice, but of her childhood, adolescence and home-life there are no certain facts. When she was eighteen St Francis came to preach the Lenten sermons at the church of San Giorgio in Assisi; his words fired her, she sought him out secretly, and asked him to help her that she too might live “after the manner of the holy gospel”. Francis spoke to her of contempt for the world and love of God, and strengthened her nascent desire to leave all things for Christ. On Palm Sunday in the year 1212 Clare attended at the cathedral of Assisi for the blessing of palms; when all the rest went up to the altar-rails to receive their branch of olive a sudden shyness kept her in her place, which the bishop seeing, he went from the altar down to her and gave her the branch. In the evening she ran away from home and went a mile out of the town to the Portiuncula, where St Francis lived with his little community. He and his brethren met her at the door of the chapel of our Lady of the Angels with lighted tapers in their hands, and before the altar she put off her fine clothes, and St Francis cut off her hair, and gave her his penitential habit, which was a tunic of sackcloth tied about her with a cord. The holy father not having yet any nunnery of his own, placed her for the present in the Benedictine convent of St Paul near Bastia, where she was affectionately received. It would seem that the relatives of St Clare (her father was probably dead) had proposed a particular marriage that did not recommend itself to her, but that she did not entirely renounce the idea of matrimony in general until the burning words of Francis persuaded her to commit her maidenhood finally to God. Then followed what G. K. Chesterton called this “regular romantic elopement”, in which the bridegroom was Christ and St Francis the “knight-errant who gave it a happy ending”.
No sooner was her action made public but her friends and relations came in a body to draw her out of her retreat. It is said that Clare resisted and held to the altar so fast as to pull its cloths half off when they endeavoured to drag her away; and, uncovering her head to show her hair cut, she said that Christ had called her to His service and that she would have no other husband, and that the more they should continue to persecute her, the more God would strengthen her to resist and overcome them. And God triumphed in her. St Francis soon after removed her to another nunnery, that of Sant’ Angelo di Panzo. There her sister Agnes joined her, which drew on them both a fresh persecution. Agnes’s constancy proved at last victorious, and St Francis gave her also the habit, though she was only fifteen years of age. (It may be noted that in the bull of canonization Pope Alexander IV makes no mention of any violence being used in the attempt to dissuade Clare and her sister from their new life.) Eventually St Francis placed them in a poor house contiguous to the church of San Damiano, on the outskirts of Assisi, and appointed Clare the superior. She was later joined by her mother and others, among whom there were of the illustrious family of the Ubaldini in Florence, who held for truer greatness the sackcloth and poverty of St Clare than the estates and riches which they possessed, seeing they left them all to become humble disciples of so admirable a mistress. St Clare saw founded within a few years monasteries of her nuns at several places in Italy, France and Germany. Bd Agnes, daughter to the King of Bohemia, founded a nunnery of the order in Prague, in which she took the habit, and was called by Clare “my half self”.
St Clare and her community practised austerities which till then had scarcely been known among women. They wore neither stockings, shoes, sandals nor any other covering on their feet; they slept on the ground, observed perpetual abstinence from meat, and never spoke but when they were obliged by necessity and charity. The foundress recommended this holy silence as the means to avoid innumerable sins of the tongue, and to preserve the mind always recollected in God and free from the dissipation of the world which, without this guard, penetrates even the walls of cloisters. Not content with the fasts and other mortifications of the rule, she always wore next her skin a rough shirt of hair; she fasted on vigils and all Lent on bread and water; and on some days she ate nothing at all. All Clare’s austerities were on the same scale, and after a time it became necessary for Francis and the bishop of Assisi to oblige her to lie upon a mattress and never pass one day without taking at least some bread for nourishment. Discretion came with experience, and years later she wrote to Bd Agnes of Bohemia: “Since our bodies are not of brass and our strength is not the strength of stone but rather we are weak and subject to corporal infirmities, I implore you vehemently in the Lord to refrain from that exceeding rigour of abstinence which I know you practise, so that living and hoping in the Lord you may offer Him a reasonable service and a sacrifice seasoned with the salt of prudence.”
St Francis wished that his order should never possess any rents or other property even in common, subsisting on daily contributions, and St Clare possessed this spirit in perfection. Pope Gregory IX desired to mitigate this part of her rule, and offered to settle a yearly revenue on the Poor Ladies of San Damiano; but she in the most pressing manner persuaded him by many reasons, in which her love of evangelical poverty made her eloquent, to leave her order in its first rigorous establishment. When the pope offered to dispense from the vow of strict poverty St Clare replied, “I need to be absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ”. Gregory accordingly granted in 1228 the Privilegium paupertatis, that they might not be constrained by anyone to accept possessions: “He who feeds the birds of the air and gives raiment and nourishment to the lilies of the field will not leave you in want of clothing or food until He come Himself to minister to you for eternity.” The convents of Perugia and Florence also received this privilege, but others thought it more prudent to accept a mitigation.* After the death of Gregory IX (who as Cardinal Ugolino had drawn up the first written rule for the Poor Ladies of San Damiano), Innocent IV in 1247 published another recension of the rule which in some respects brought it nearer to Franciscan than to Benedictine observance, but which permitted the holding of property in common; he wrote that he did not wish to force this rule on any community unwilling to accept it. St Clare was unwilling, and she, as the living depository of the spirit and tradition of St Francis
* Thus began the two observances which have ever since been perpetuated among the Poor Clares. The mitigated houses are called “Urbanist” from the modification of the rule given to them in 1263 by Pope Urban IV.
himself, set to work to draw up a rule which should truly express them, and which unequivocally provides that the sisters shall possess no property, either as individuals or as a community. It was not until two days before she died that this rule was approved for the convent of San Damiano by Pope Innocent IV.
From the time when she was appointed abbess, much against her will, by St Francis in 1215, St Clare governed the convent for forty years. But it was her wish always to be the servant of servants, beneath all, washing and kissing the feet of sick lay-sisters when they returned from begging, serving at table, attending the sick. She had as it were wings to fly wherever St Francis directed her, and was always ready to do anything or to put her shoulders under any burden that was enjoined: “Dispose of me as you please; I am yours by having given my will to God. It is no longer my own.” Whilst her sisters took their rest she watched long in prayer, and tucked the nuns up when their bed-clothes had come loose; she was the first that rose, rang the bell in the choir, and lighted the candles. She came from prayer with her face so shining (like that of Moses coming down from conversing with God) that it dazzled the eyes of those that beheld her; and she spoke with such a spirit of fervour as to enkindle those who did but hear her voice. She had a wonderful devotion towards the Blessed Sacrament, and even when sick in bed (she ailed grievously for the last twenty-seven years of her life) she made fine linen corporals and cloths for the service of the altar, which she distributed among the churches of Assisi.
The powerful force and efficacy of St Clare’s prayer is well illustrated by a story told by Thomas of Celano. In 1244 the Emperor Frederick II ravaged the valley of Spoleto, because it was the patrimony of the Holy See. He had in his army many Saracens, and these infidels came once in a body to plunder Assisi, and as San Damiano stood without the walls they first assaulted it. St Clare, though very sick, caused herself to be carried to the wall and the Blessed Sacrament to be placed there in a pyx in the very sight of the enemies; prostrating herself before it, she prayed saying, “Does it please thee, O God, to deliver into the hands of these beasts the defenceless children whom I have nourished with thy love? I beseech thee, good Lord, protect these whom I am now not able to protect.” And she heard a voice like the voice of a little child saying, “I will have them always in my care.” Then Clare prayed for the city of Assisi, and again the voice came, reassuring her, and she turned to the trembling nuns and said, “Have no fear, little daughters; trust in Jesus.” Terror at the same time seized the assailants and they fled with such precipitation that several were hurt without being wounded by any enemy. Shortly after a general of the same emperor laid siege to Assisi for many days. St Clare said to her nuns that they, who received corporal necessaries from that city, owed it all assistance in their power in its necessity. She therefore bid them cover their heads with ashes, and in this suppliant fashion to beg of Christ the deliverance of the town. They continued this with many tears a whole day and night, till “God in His mercy so made issue with temptation that the besiegers melted away and their proud captain with them, for all he had sworn an oath to take the city”.
Another popular story, namely, of St Clare and one of her nuns leaving the cloister of San Damiano and going to the Portiuncula to sup with St Francis, and of the marvellous light which radiated from the room, is less deserving of credence. The event, in itself exceedingly unlikely, is mentioned by no contemporary or by any writer for at least one hundred and fifty years; and Thomas of Celano, who often heard St Francis warning his followers to avoid any injudicious association with the Poor Ladies, states categorically that St Clare never left the walls of San Damiano. Unhappily even during her life, and for long after her death at intervals, there was disagreement between the Poor Clares and the Friars Minor as to the relations of the two orders: the observant Clares maintaining that the friars were under obligation to serve them in things both spiritual and temporal. In this connection Thomas of Celano has a story which, if it be the source of much trouble to historians, at least is illuminating on the subject of the stalwart and inflexible character of Clare. When Pope Gregory IX in 1230 forbade the friars to visit the convents of nuns without his special licence, she feared that this would mean a loss of the spiritual help to be obtained from the friars and a severing of the ties St Francis had wished should subsist between them. She thereupon dismissed every one of them attached to the convent, saying, “Now that he has deprived us of our spiritual almoners, let him also take them that serve our material needs”: if she couldn’t have the one, she wouldn’t have the other.
St Clare bore years of sickness with sublime patience, and at last in 1253 the long-drawn-out agony began. Twice during its course she was visited by Pope Innocent IV, who gave her absolution, saying, “Would to God I had so little need of it”. For the last seventeen days she was able to eat nothing, “and during that weary time of labour the faith and devotion of the people increased more and more. Every day prelates and cardinals came to call on her, for all men were firmly convinced that this dying woman was truly a great saint.” Her sister St Agnes was there, and three of the companions of St Francis, Leo, Angelo and Juniper, who read aloud to her the passion of our Lord according to St John as they had done at his death-bed twenty-seven years before. And when Brother Reginald exhorted her to patience, she replied, “Dear brother, ever since by means of His servant Francis I have known the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have never in my whole life found any pain or sickness that could afflict me”. Seeing her spiritual children weep, she comforted them and tenderly exhorted them to be constant lovers and faithful observers of holy poverty, and gave them her blessing, calling herself the “little plant” of her holy father Francis. And to herself she was heard to say, “Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear, for He that created you has sanctified you, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Blessed be thou, O God, for having created me.” “Thus was the passing of blessed Clare. It was on the morrow of blessed Laurence that she received her laurel crown, for on that day the temple of her body was dissolved, her most holy soul went forth and, exulting in its freedom, soared on the wings of gladness to the place which God had prepared for it.” It was the forty-second year after her religious profession, and the sixtieth of her age. She was buried on the day following, on which the Church keeps her festival. Pope Alexander IV canonized her at Anagni in 1255.Dispose of me as you please; I am yours by having given my will to God. It is no longer my own.” Whilst her sisters took their rest she watched long in prayer, and tucked the nuns up when their bed-clothes had come loose; she was the first that rose, rang the bell in the choir, and lighted the candles. She came from prayer with her face so shining (like that of Moses coming down from conversing with God) that it dazzled the eyes of those that beheld her; and she spoke with such a spirit of fervour as to enkindle those who did but hear her voice. She had a wonderful devotion towards the Blessed Sacrament, and even when sick in bed (she ailed grievously for the last twenty-seven years of her life) she made fine linen corporals and cloths for the service of the altar, which she distributed among the churches of Assisi.
The powerful force and efficacy of St Clare’s prayer is well illustrated by a story told by Thomas of Celano, which may well be true. In 1244 the Emperor Frederick II ravaged the valley of Spoleto, because it was the patrimony of the Holy See. He had in his army many Saracens, and these infidels came once in a body to plunder Assisi, and as San Damiano stood without the walls they first assaulted it. St Clare, though very sick, caused herself to be carried to the wall and the Blessed Sacrament to be placed there in a pyx in the very sight of the enemies; prostrating herself before it, she prayed saying, “Does it please thee, O God, to deliver into the hands of these beasts the defenceless children whom I have nourished with thy love? I beseech thee, good Lord, protect these whom I am now not able to protect.” And she heard a voice like the voice of a little child saying, “I will have them always in my care.” Then Clare prayed for the city of Assisi, and again the voice came, reassuring her, and she turned to the trembling nuns and said, “Have no fear, little daughters; trust in Jesus.” Terror at the same time seized the assailants and they fled with such precipitation that several were hurt without being wounded by any enemy. Shortly after a general of the same emperor laid siege to Assisi for many days. St Clare said to her nuns that they, who received corporal necessaries from that city, owed it all assistance in their power in its necessity. She therefore bid them cover their heads with ashes, and in this suppliant fashion to beg of Christ the deliverance of the town. They continued this with many tears a whole day and night, till “God in His mercy so made issue with temptation that the besiegers melted away and their proud captain with them, for all he had sworn an oath to take the city”.
Another popular story, namely, of St Clare and one of her nuns leaving the cloister of San Damiano and going to the Portiuncula to sup with St Francis, and of the marvellous light which radiated from the room, is less deserving of credence. The event, in itself exceedingly unlikely, is mentioned by no contemporary or by any writer for at least one hundred and fifty years; and Thomas of Celano, who often heard St Francis warning his followers to avoid any injudicious association with the Poor Ladies, states categorically that St Clare never left the walls of San Damiano. Unhappily even during her life, and for long after her death at intervals, there was disagreement between the Poor Clares and the Friars Minor as to the relations of the two orders: the observant Clares maintaining that the friars were under obligation to serve them in things both spiritual and temporal. In this connection Thomas of Celano has a story which, if it be the source of much trouble to historians, at least is illuminating on the subject of the stalwart and inflexible character of Clare. When Pope Gregory IX in 1230 forbade the friars to visit the convents of nuns without his special licence, she feared that this would mean a loss of the spiritual help to be obtained from the friars and a severing of the ties St Francis had wished should subsist between them. She thereupon dismissed every one of them attached to the convent, saying, “Now that he has deprived us of our spiritual almoners, let him also take them that serve our material needs”: if she couldn’t have the one, she wouldn’t have the other.
St Clare bore years of sickness with sublime patience, and at last in 1253 the long-drawn-out agony began. Twice during its course she was visited by Pope Innocent IV, who gave her absolution, saying, “Would to God I had so little need of it”. For the last seventeen days she was able to eat nothing, “and during that weary time of labour the faith and devotion of the people increased more and more. Every day prelates and cardinals came to call on her, for all men were firmly convinced that this dying woman was truly a great saint.” Her sister St Agnes was there, and three of the companions of St Francis, Leo, Angelo and Juniper, who read aloud to her the passion of our Lord according to St John as they had done at his death-bed twenty-seven years before. And when Brother Reginald exhorted her to patience, she replied, “Dear brother, ever since by means of His servant Francis I have known the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have never in my whole life found any pain or sickness that could afflict me”. Seeing her spiritual children weep, she comforted them and tenderly exhorted them to be constant lovers and faithful observers of holy poverty, and gave them her blessing, calling herself the “little plant” of her holy father Francis. And to herself she was heard to say, “Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear, for He that created you has sanctified you, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Blessed be thou, O God, for having created me.” “Thus was the passing of blessed Clare. It was on the morrow of blessed Laurence that she received her laurel crown, for on that day the temple of her body was dissolved, her most holy soul went forth and, exulting in its freedom, soared on the wings of gladness to the place which God had prepared for it.” It was the forty-second year after her religious profession, and the sixtieth of her age. She was buried on the day following, on which the Church keeps her festival. Pope Alexander IV canonized her at Anagni in 1255.
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints