Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/27

 CLARE

CLARE:

pontifical throne as Oregon,- 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 coimnunity. But Clare firmly refused. Oregon,', thinking that her refusal might Ije 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 ab- solved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ".

The heroic unworldUness 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 Paupcrtatis 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 arcliive at Santa Chiara in Assisi. The text is as follows: "Gregory Bishop Scn'ant of the Servants of God. To our be- loved daughters in Christ Clare and the other hand- maids of Christ, dwelHng together at the Church of San Damiano in the Diocese of Assisi. Health and ApostoUc benediction. It is evident that the desire of consecrating yourselves to God alone has led you to abandon every -nish for temporal things. Wherefore, after having sold-all your goods and hav- ing distriliuted them among the poor, you propose to have absolutely no possessions, in order to follow in all tilings the example of Him Who became poor and Who is the way, the truth, and the life. Neither does the want of necessary things deter you from such a proposal, for the left arm of your Celestial Spouse is beneath your head to sustain the infirmity of your body, which, according to the order of charity, you have subjected to the law of the spirit. Finally, He who feeds the birds of the air, and who gives the lilies of the field their raiment and their nourishment, will not leave you in want of clothing or of food until He shall come Himself to minister to you in eternity, when, namely, the right hand of His consolations shall embrace you in the plenitude of the Beatific Vision. Since, therefore, you have asked for it, we confirm by ApostoUc favour your resolution of the loftiest poverty and by the authority of these present letters grant that you may not be constrained by any- one to receive possessions. To no one, therefore, be it allowed to infringe upon this page of our concession or to oppose it with rash temerity. But if anyone shall presume to attempt this, be it kno\vn to him that he shall incur the wrath of Almighty God and his Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul. Given at Peru- gia on the fifteenth of the Kalends of October in the second year of our Pontificate."

That St. Clare may have solicited a "pri\'ilege" similar to the foregoing at an earlier date and ob- tained it rivA voce, is not improbable. Certain it is, that after the death of Orcgorj' 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. Inno- cent, no doubt at the reiterated request of the dying abbess, solemnly confinned 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 F"riars Minor in 122.S, seems to have been Cardinal Rainaldo, Bishop of Ostia,;md 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 fonnal 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 compara- tively few details of St. Clare's hfe 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 cruci- fied 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 Da- miano 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 Orto- lana, and her faithful aunt Bianca follow Agnes into the order, but also of ^^•itnessing 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 liigher aims. In particular, Clare threw around poverty that irre- sistible charm which only women can communicate to rehgious 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 bhndness and illness, St. Francis came for the last time to visit San Damiano, Clare erected a little wattle hut for him in an oUve grove close to the monasten,', and it was here that he composed liis glori- ous "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 \enerate 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 Povcrcllo, and (lie jealous care with which she clung to his rule and teaching.

When, in 1234, the army of Frederick II was devas- tating the valley of Spoleto, the soldiers, preparatory to an .assault upon Assisi, scaled the walls of San Damiano l)y night, spreading terror among the com- munity. 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 lad- iler. It is related that, as she raised the Blessed Sac- rament on high, (he sokhers 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 ciboriuoj,