St. Clare of Assisi - mother of the Poor Sisters
In 1193, while the builder John of Gubbio was completing the new cathedral of St. Rufinus, patron of Assisi, the eldest of the three daughters of Lord Favarone Offreduccio and Lady Ortolana Fiumi was born nearby: Clare. The Offreduccio family was one of the noble families of Assisi belonging to the "maiores", the "great ones".
In 1198 the "minores", the common people of Assisi, rose up against imperial rule. They seized and destroyed the castle, the Rocca, and one by one captured the castles and palaces of the imperial feudal lords. Many of the "maiores" fled to Perugia, the Offreduccio family among them, and stayed there until 1209. Clare grew into a noble young woman. She was devoted to prayer and generous to the poor. She made friends with other girls of noble birth.
The civil war in Assisi turned into a war between Perugia and Assisi, in which Assisi was defeated. In 1205 the warring sides reached an agreement, thanks to which the exiles returned to Assisi and recovered their homes and property.
Clare grows into a beautiful and good young woman. She is noble and wealthy. Her father intends to marry her to one of the powerful noblemen of Assisi. Clare keeps putting off the question of marriage, because she wants to give herself to God. At that very time all of Assisi talks of no one but Francis, son of the merchant Bernardone. Francis walks the squares and streets of the town, preaching the Gospel, proclaiming peace and inviting people to poverty for the love of God.
Having received from Pope Innocent III permission for a new way of life strictly according to the Gospel, he and his companions set up their first dwelling, first at Rivotorto and then at the Portiuncula. They are joined by Rufino, Clare's cousin, who exchanges the wealth of his home for a life of poverty and penance.
Clare listens eagerly to Francis preaching in the cathedral. Through Rufino she meets Francis to learn about the Gospel way of life and her own vocation. She wonders whether God is not calling her, too, to give herself entirely to Him, as Francis did. Without compromise! Francis advises her to make this complete offering of herself, the way of penance, in prayer and poverty...
On 18 March 1212, after Palm Sunday, Clare slips out of her family home through a side door and, with one companion, comes to the Portiuncula, where Francis and his brothers are waiting for her. He cuts her hair as a sign of her complete consecration to God. Clare exchanges her rich secular clothes for a poor tunic tied with a cord and a veil on her head. The brothers take her to the Benedictine abbey of St. Paul at Bastia.
Her family reacts violently, but Clare is unyielding. At the decisive moment of the dispute, holding on to the altar, she lifts her veil and shows her shorn head, the sign that she belongs to Christ. Her relatives lose their illusions and leave her in peace.
She moves to another Benedictine abbey, Sant'Angelo in Panzo, on the eastern slope of Mount Subasio. Sixteen days later, on 14 April, her younger sister Agnes runs away from home and joins Clare with the same intention: to give herself to God with her in a new life according to the Gospel.
The intervention of the family is of no avail. A few days later Francis cuts Agnes's hair and clothes her in the religious habit. With the consent of the Bishop of Assisi he obtains a dwelling for them beside the little church of San Damiano, which he had rebuilt not long before, prophesying that handmaids of God would one day live there.
St. Clare writes in her Testament: "God deigned to work in us through His beloved servant, our holy father Francis, not only after our conversion, but even while we were still living among the vanities of the world. For the Saint himself, right after his conversion, when he had neither brothers nor companions, was busy repairing the church of San Damiano, and it was there that he received the visitation of the Lord which filled him with heavenly consolation; there he felt the decisive impulse to leave the whole world, and in a surge of joy and enlightenment by the Holy Spirit he foretold about us what the Lord later fulfilled.
For, standing on the wall of that church, which was indeed about to collapse, he called out in a clear voice and in French to the poor people who stopped there: 'Come and help me in this work on the monastery of San Damiano, because ladies will soon live here who by their renown and the holiness of their life will give glory to our heavenly Father throughout His holy Church'" (Early Franciscan Sources, vol. 2, Warsaw 1981, p. 319, translated from the Polish edition).
Soon other young women from Assisi and Perugia joined Clare and Agnes and formed the first community of the "Poor Ladies", called the Damianites. In the same Testament St. Clare recalls: "Afterwards, when the most high heavenly Father deigned in His mercy and grace to enlighten my heart, so that I began to do penance after the example and teaching of our blessed father Francis, shortly after his conversion, I, together with a few sisters whom the Lord had given me soon after my conversion, freely promised him obedience, according to the inspiration the Lord had given us through his glorious life and teaching" (ibid., p. 320).
St. Clare remained in this place until her death. She spent 42 years in prayer, silence, poverty, penance and service to her sisters and to people outside the monastery.
The First Order of St. Francis made a great outward effort in the apostolate among Christians and in missionary work among unbelievers. The Second Order, following St. Clare, made a great inward effort in the apostolate of prayer, poverty, penance and joy.
Clare, the "little plant", was worthy of Francis the "gardener". The quiet life she and her sisters led within the "prison" of the enclosure complemented the evangelising work of Francis and his Friars Minor, and in the Church of the 13th century it became a spiritual fragrance through an experience that was both mystical and social.
Francis's devotion to the Child Jesus, to Jesus Crucified, to Christ in the Eucharist and to the Virgin Mary reached in Clare the fullness of wonder and miracle. Poverty and mortification, but also joy, these inseparable signs of Franciscan love, shaped her life and in a special way confirmed its purpose and vocation. On the threshold of death she pressed to her heart the bull of Pope Innocent IV approving her rule, founded on truly Gospel poverty, with greater joy and happiness than any bride before her wedding. She went in a "beautiful procession" to the wedding feast of her most beloved heavenly Bridegroom.
Hidden in the small and cramped convent of San Damiano, among olive trees and cypresses, St. Clare was the first disciple of St. Francis and at the same time his wise counsellor. She was the quiet inspiration of Francis's Canticle of the Sun; a trusted helper of Pope Gregory IX, a sure guide for those first companions of Francis who outlived their Master, and the effective deliverer of Assisi from the imperial troops and the Saracen hordes...
At San Damiano she created a new type of women's monastery, in which the enclosure and choral prayer of the Benedictine nuns were joined with Gospel poverty and all that it entails, such as humble manual work and contentment with little in a spirit of mortification. The alms and gifts of benefactors were generously repaid with prayer of thanksgiving and intercession for their needs, with self-sacrificing penance, with the good and edifying example of life, and with care for the sick, the lepers and the poor...
At the same time Clare and her sisters knew how to admire God's work with joy: the mountains, the trees, the flowers...; to sing hymns of praise...; to live truly in the spirit of the holy Poverello!
From the beginning the Second Order has been, and still is, a highly valuable source of inner life for the Franciscan world, a precious treasury of prayer, sacrifice and poverty, to which men of action from the First and Third Orders, as well as lay faithful who love St. Francis, have turned and still turn today.
St. Clare of Assisi died on 11 August 1253, a Monday, on the feast of St. Rufinus, patron of her town of Assisi. Her canonisation process began as early as November of that year, and in August 1255 Pope Alexander IV, formerly Cardinal Protector Rinaldo, proclaimed her a saint of the Catholic Church in the cathedral of Anagni.
In the bull of canonisation of 26 September 1255, filled with great admiration and enthusiasm, he wrote among other things: "She was like a tall and slender tree with spreading branches, which bore sweet fruits of piety in the field of the Church. To its pleasant shade many pupils of the faith hastened, and still hasten, from all sides to taste its fruits.
She was a clear spring in the Spoleto valley, giving new and refreshing water for the benefit and comfort of souls. It flowed out in many streams across the Church, bringing its religious life to new vigour.
She was like a tall candlestick of holiness, shining brightly in the sanctuary of the Lord. To this great light many virgins hastened, and still hasten, to light their lamps from its flame.
Truly she planted in the field of faith the vineyard of poverty, from which fine fruits of salvation are gathered. She planted in the soil of the Church the garden of humility, where despite the lack of earthly goods a great abundance of virtues is found.
She built in the realm of religious life the fortress of strict abstinence, in which a rich meal for the spirit is laid out. She was the leader of the poor, the guide of the humble, the teacher of the continent and the abbess of the penitent" (Early Franciscan Sources, vol. 2, p. 411, translated from the Polish edition).
In his bull of canonisation Pope Alexander IV, in solemn words and with biblical images (the tree, the spring, the candlestick, the vineyard, the fortress), expressed the real state of the new Order of the Poor Ladies of St. Clare and its spread already during the Saint's lifetime, and even more after her canonisation.
From a letter which Alexander IV, then Cardinal Rinaldo, protector of the male and female Orders of St. Francis, addressed to the Damianite Sisters on 18 August 1228, we know that there were already 24 monasteries of the Poor Ladies in Italy at that time. Soon they spread beyond Italy, first to Spain, then to France, and shortly afterwards to Bohemia, Poland and Silesia.