A biography of Saint Clare of Assisi
This information is taken from the online article on Saint Clare of Assisi by Catholic Encyclopedia online.
You can read a similar biography of Saint Francis by selecting it from the menu above.
Clare
was the eldest daughter of Favorino Scifi, Count of Sasso-Rosso, the
wealthy representative of an ancient Roman family, who owned a large
palace in Assisi and a castle on the slope of Mount Subasio. Such at
least is the traditional account. Her mother, Bl. Ortolana, belonged to
the noble family of Fiumi and was conspicuous for her zeal and piety.
From
her earliest years Clare seems to have been endowed with the rarest
virtues. As a child she was most devoted to prayer and to practices of
mortification, and as she passed into girlhood her distaste for the
world and her yearning for a more spiritual life increased. She was
eighteen years of age when St. Francis came to preach the Lenten course
in the church of San Giorgio at Assisi. The inspired words of the
Poverello kindled a flame in the heart of Clare; she sought him out
secretly and begged him to help her that she too might live "after the
manner of the holy Gospel". St. Francis, who at once recognized in
Clare one of those chosen souls destined by God for great things, and
who also, doubtless, foresaw that many would follow her example,
promised to assist her. On Palm Sunday Clare, arrayed in all her
finery, attended high Mass at the cathedral, but when the others
pressed forward to the altar-rail to receive a branch of palm, she
remained in her place as if rapt in a dream. All eyes were upon the
young girl as the bishop descended from the sanctuary and placed the
palm in her hand. That was the last time the world beheld Clare. On the
night of the same day she secretly left her father's house, by St.
Francis's advice and, accompanied by her aunt Bianca and another
companion, proceeded to the humble chapel of the Porziuncula, where St.
Francis and his disciples met her with lights in their hands. Clare
then laid aside her rich dress, and St. Francis, having cut off her
hair, clothed her in a rough tunic and a thick veil, and in this way
the young heroine vowed herself to the service of Jesus Christ. This
was 20 March, 1212.
Clare was placed by St. Francis
provisionally with the Benedictine nuns of San Paolo, near Bastia, but
her father, who had expected her to make a splendid marriage, and who
was furious at her secret flight, on discovering her retreat, did his
utmost to dissuade Clare from her heroic proposals, and even tried to
drag her home by force. But Clare held her own with a firmness above
her years, and Count Favorino was finally obliged to leave her in
peace. A few days later St. Francis, in order to secure Clare the
greater solitude she desired, transferred her to Sant' Angelo in Panzo,
another monastery of the Benedictine nuns on one of the flanks of
Subasio. Here some sixteen days after her own flight, Clare was joined
by her younger sister Agnes, whom she was instrumental in delivering
from the persecution of their infuriated relatives. Clare and her
sister remained with the nuns at Sant' Angelo until they and the other
fugitives from the world who had followed them were established by St.
Francis in a rude dwelling adjoining the poor chapel of San Damiano,
situated outside the town which he had to a great extent rebuilt with
his own hands, and which he now obtained from the Benedictines as a
permanent abode for his spiritual daughters. Thus was founded the first
community of the Order of Poor Ladies, or of Poor Clares, as this
second order of St. Francis came to be called.
In the beginning
St. Clare and her companions had no written rule to follow beyond a
very short formula vitae given them by St. Francis, and which may be
found among his works. Some years later, apparently in 1219, during St.
Francis's absence in the East, Cardinal Ugolino, then protector of the
order, afterwards Gregory IX, drew up a written rule for the Clares at
Monticelli, taking as a basis the Rule of St. Benedict, retaining the
fundamental points of the latter and adding some special constitutions.
This new rule, which, in effect if not in intention, took away from the
Clares the Franciscan character of absolute poverty so dear to the
heart of St. Francis and made them for all practical purposes a
congregation of Benedictines, was approved by Honorius III (Bull,
"Sacrosancta", 9 Dec., 1219). When Clare found that the new rule,
though strict enough in other respects, allowed the holding of property
in common, she courageously and successfully resisted the innovations
of Ugolino as being entirely opposed to the intentions of St. Francis.
The latter had forbidden the Poor Ladies, just as he had forbidden his
friars to possess any worldly goods even in common. Owning nothing,
they were to depend entirety upon what the Friars Minor could beg for
them. This complete renunciation of all property was however regarded
by Ugolino as unpractical for cloistered women. When, therefore, in
1228, he came to Assisi for the canonization of St. Francis (having
meanwhile ascended the pontifical throne as Gregory IX), he visited St.
Clare at San Damiano and pressed her to so far deviate from the
practice of poverty which had up to this time obtained at San Damiano,
as to accept some provision for the unforeseen wants of the community.
But Clare firmly refused. Gregory, thinking that her refusal might be
due to fear of violating the vow of strict poverty she had taken,
offered to absolve her from it. "Holy Father, I crave for absolution
from my sins", replied Clare, "but I desire not to be absolved from the
obligation of following Jesus Christ".
The heroic unworldliness
of Clare filled the pope with admiration, as his letters to her, still
extant, bear eloquent witness, and he so far gave way to her views as
to grant her on 17 September, 1228, the celebrated Privilegium
Paupertatis which some regard in the light of a corrective of the Rule
of 1219. The original autograph copy of this unique "privilege"--the
first one of its kind ever sought for, or ever issued by the Holy
See--is preserved in the archive at Santa Chiara in Assisi.
That
St. Clare may have solicited a "privilege" similar to the foregoing at
an earlier date and obtained it vivâ voce, is not improbable.
Certain it is that after the death of Gregory IX Clare had once more to
contend for the principle of absolute poverty prescribed by St.
Francis, for Innocent IV would fain have given the Clares a new and
mitigated rule, and the firmness with which she held to her way won
over the pope. Finally, two days before her death, Innocent, no doubt
at the reiterated request of the dying abbess, solemnly confirmed the
definitive Rule of the Clares (Bull, "Solet Annuere", 9 August, 1253),
and thus secured to them the precious treasure of poverty which Clare,
in imitation of St. Francis, had taken for her portion from the
beginning of her conversion. The author of this latter rule, which is
largely an adaptation mutatis mutandis, of the rule which St. Francis
composed for the Friars Minor in 1223, seems to have been Cardinal
Rainaldo, Bishop of Ostia, and protector of the order, afterwards
Alexander IV, though it is most likely that St. Clare herself had a
hand in its compilation. Be this as it may, it can no longer be
maintained that St. Francis was in any sense the author of this formal
Rule of the Clares; he only gave to St. Clare and her companions at the
outset of their religious life the brief formula vivendi already
mentioned.
St. Clare, who in 1215 had, much against her will
been made superior at San Damiano by St. Francis, continued to rule
there as abbess until her death, in 1253, nearly forty years later.
There is no good reason to believe that she ever once went beyond the
boundaries of San Damiano during all that time. It need not, therefore,
be wondered at if so comparatively few details of St. Clare's life in
the cloister "hidden with Christ in God", have come down to us. We know
that she became a living copy of the poverty, the humility, and the
mortification of St. Francis; that she had a special devotion to the
Holy Eucharist, and that in order to increase her love for Christ
crucified she learned by heart the Office of the Passion composed by
St. Francis, and that during the time that remained to her after her
devotional exercises she engaged in manual labour. Needless to add,
that under St. Clare's guidance the community of San Damiano became the
sanctuary of every virtue, a very nursery of saints. Clare had the
consolation not only of seeing her younger sister Beatrix, her mother
Ortolana, and her faithful aunt Bianca follow Agnes into the order, but
also of witnessing the foundation of monasteries of Clares far and wide
throughout Europe. It would be difficult, moreover, to estimate how
much the silent influence of the gentle abbess did towards guiding the
women of medieval Italy to higher aims. In particular, Clare threw
around poverty that irresistible charm which only women can communicate
to religious or civic heroism, and she became a most efficacious
coadjutrix of St. Francis in promoting that spirit of unworldliness
which in the counsels of God, "was to bring about a restoration of
discipline in the Church and of morals and civilization in the peoples
of Western Europe". Not the least important part of Clare's work was
the aid and encouragement she gave St. Francis. It was to her he turned
when in doubt, and it was she who urged him to continue his mission to
the people at a time when he thought his vocation lay rather in a life
of contemplation. When in an attack of blindness and illness, St.
Francis came for the last time to visit San Damiano, Clare erected a
little wattle hut for him in an olive grove close to the monastery, and
it was here that he composed his glorious "Canticle of the Sun". After
St. Francis's death the procession which accompanied his remains from
the Porziuncula to the town stopped on the way at San Damiano in order
that Clare and her daughters might venerate the pierced hands and feet
of him who had formed them to the love of Christ crucified--a pathetic
scene which Giotto has commemorated in one of his loveliest frescoes.
So far, however, as Clare was concerned, St. Francis was always living,
and nothing is, perhaps, more striking in her after-life than her
unswerving loyalty to the ideals of the Poverello, and the jealous care
with which she clung to his rule and teaching.
When, in 1234,
the army of Frederick II was devastating the valley of Spoleto, the
soldiers, preparatory to an assault upon Assisi, scaled the walls of
San Damiano by night, spreading terror among the community. Clare,
calmly rising from her sick bed, and taking the ciborium from the
little chapel adjoining her cell, proceeded to face the invaders at an
open window against which they had already placed a ladder. It is
related that, as she raised the Blessed Sacrament on high, the soldiers
who were about to enter the monastery fell backward as if dazzled, and
the others who were ready to follow them took flight. It is with
reference to this incident that St. Clare is generally represented in
art bearing a ciborium.
When, some time later, a larger force
returned to storm Assisi, headed by the General Vitale di Aversa who
had not been present at the first attack, Clare, gathering her
daughters about her, knelt with them in earnest prayer that the town
might be spared. Presently a furious storm arose, scattering the tents
of the soldiers in every direction, and causing such a panic that they
again took refuge in flight. The gratitude of the Assisians, who with
one accord attributed their deliverance to Clare's intercession,
increased their love for the "Seraphic Mother". Clare had long been
enshrined in the hearts of the people, and their veneration became more
apparent as, wasted by illness and austerities, she drew towards her
end. Brave and cheerful to the last, in spite of her long and painful
infirmities, Clare caused herself to be raised in bed and, thus
reclining, says her contemporary biographer "she spun the finest thread
for the purpose of having it woven into the most delicate material from
which she afterwards made more than one hundred corporals, and,
enclosing them in a silken burse, ordered them to be given to the
churches in the plain and on the mountains of Assisi". When at length
she felt the day of her death approaching, Clare, calling her sorrowing
religious around her, reminded them of the many benefits they had
received from God and exhorted them to persevere faithfully in the
observance of evangelical poverty. Pope Innocent IV came from Perugia
to visit the dying saint, who had already received the last sacraments
from the hands of Cardinal Rainaldo. Her own sister, St. Agnes, had
returned from Florence to console Clare in her last illness; Leo,
Angelo, and Juniper, three of the early companions of St. Francis, were
also present at the saint's death-bed, and at St. Clare's request read
aloud the Passion of Our Lord according to St. John, even as they had
done twenty-seven years before, when Francis lay dying at the
Porziuncula. At length before dawn on 11 August, 1253, the holy
foundress of the Poor Ladies passed peacefully away amid scenes which
her contemporary biographer has recorded with touching simplicity. The
pope, with his court, came to San Damiano for the saint's funeral,
which partook rather of the nature of a triumphal procession.
The
Clares desired to retain the body of their foundress among them at San
Damiano, but the magistrates of Assisi interfered and took measures to
secure for the town the venerated remains of her whose prayers, as they
all believed, had on two occasions saved it from destruction. Clare's
miracles too were talked of far and wide. It was not safe, the
Assisians urged, to leave Clare's body in a lonely spot without the
walls; it was only right, too, that Clare, "the chief rival of the
Blessed Francis in the observance of Gospel perfection", should also
have a church in Assisi built in her honour. Meanwhile, Clare's remains
were placed in the chapel of San Giorgio, where St. Francis's preaching
had first touched her young heart, and where his own body had likewise
been interred pending the erection of the Basilica of San Francesco.
Two years later, 26 September, 1255, Clare was solemnly canonized by
Alexander IV, and not long afterwards the building of the church of
Santa Chiara, in honour of Assisi's second great saint, was begun under
the direction of Filippo Campello, one of the foremost architects of
the time. On 3 October, 1260, Clare's remains were transferred from the
chapel of San Giorgio and buried deep down in the earth, under the high
altar in the new church, far out of sight and reach. After having
remained hidden for six centuries--like the remains of St. Francis--and
after much search had been made, Clare's tomb was found in 1850, to the
great joy of the Assisians. On 23 September in that year the coffin was
unearthed and opened, the flesh and clothing of the saint had been
reduced to dust, but the skeleton was in a perfect state of
preservation. Finally, on the 29th of September, 1872, the saint's
bones were transferred, with much pomp, by Archbishop Pecci, afterwards
Leo XIII, to the shrine, in the crypt at Santa Chiara, erected to
receive them, and where they may now be seen. The feast of St. Clare is
celebrated throughout the Church on 12 August [later changed to 11
August -- Ed.]; the feast of her first translation is kept in the order
on 3 October, and that of the finding of her body on 23 September.