Poor Clares Order
The Poor Clares constitute the enclosed female branch of the Franciscan Order. Their name honors Clare of Assisi (1193/94-1253), whom pious tradition credits as their founder in association with Saint Francis (1181/82-1226). The actual formation of female Franciscanism was considerably more complex. Clare’s insistence that women could follow Francis’ spiritual ideals, including apostolic poverty, conflicted with the papal curia’s intention to standardize women’s religious life. Their efforts to impose stability initially produced a monastic order that consisted solely of women prior to its incorporation into the Franciscan Order. Thus, it is somewhat ironic that the Order of Saint Clare and the identification Poor Clares, terms created by papal legislation in 1263, honor a woman whose spiritual ideals challenged traditional female religious life.
The Origins of Female Franciscanism
It is necessary to distinguish the foundations connected with Clare and Francis from those outside Franciscan inspiration that were first brought together by the papal curia. Shortly after Clare’s conversion in 1212, Francis brought her and her sister Agnes to the church of San Damiano outside Assisi’s walls. Other women soon joined them to form the first community of Franciscan women. San Damiano also served as a base for the itinerant friars to whom Pope Innocent III had granted permission to preach penance and live supported by alms alone (1209). The stable communal life adopted by the women obviously contrasted with the friar’s wandering mendicancy, but a shared commitment to spiritual minoritas, humility in all things, sustained their close connection.
At first San Damiano had no formal monastic rule. Oral directions from Francis, including his promise of perpetual care and spiritual exhortations, were the foundation of their religious life. A 1219 document addressed to the Florentine community of Monticelli, which Agnes of Assisi had helped establish, allowed them to adopt San Damiano’s observantiae regulares (regular observance). Contemporary documents confirm that houses in nearby Arezzo, Foligno, Perugia, and Spello were founded on the model of San Damiano and with the assistance of its sisters. Some evidence suggests that individual friars helped establish other female communities, but their connection to San Damiano is not explicit. While Jacques de Vitry’s famous letter of 1216 praising the sorores minores (lesser sisters) who lived in hospices and supported themselves by their own labors is often taken as evidence of Clare’s influence, it only confirms an association between some friars (fratres minores, lesser brothers) and sisters rather than broader institutional formation derived from Assisi. Most claims of direct foundation by Clare or Francis, especially for communities outside central Italy, derive from later esires to connect with the charismatic authority of the “founders.
At the time of Francis’ death in 1226, only San Damiano and a handful of other houses had been incorporated into the Franciscan Order. They now faced pressure from ecclesiastical efforts to normalize the women’s religious movements. Beginning in 1218, Cardinal Hugolino dei Segni had begun to regularize communities of female penitents in central Italy. Although many of these groups had been motivated by apostolic poverty (albeit not directly inspired by Francis), Hugolino imposed a constitution modeled after the Benedictine rule that required material support. He also sought to link these houses more closely to the Franciscan Order. He named a friar to serve as their visitator in 1220. This appointment was short lived and the friars’s antipathy toward new female communities led the Cardinal to assign Cistercians. This situation changed after Francis’ death and Hugolino’s elevation to the papacy as Gregory IX (1227-1241). He now directed the Franciscan Minister General to appoint a minister for these houses, which the papal curia began to identify as the Order of San Damiano.
The confusion between Clare’s community at San Damiano and the Order of San Damiano was deliberate. While suggesting fidelity to Francis’s and Clare’s model of religious life, the papal program differed in several key components including strict enclosure, monastic silence, and financial endowment. Over the next two decades, Clare would resist pressure to conform to these standards. In 1228 Gregory IX granted a “Privilege of Poverty” to San Damiano that allowed the women to live without guaranteed income. Other houses that sought similar privileges were generally refused. An exception was Agnes of Prague, who only obtained permission to give up property held in common toward the end of her life. From the 1230s onward most Damianite houses, including those foundations originally established by San Damiano’s sisters, accepted property. Pope Innocent IV’s constitution for the Order (1247), issued to resolve ambiguities in earlier legislation, also mandated ownership. Clare rejected this rule and instead composed her own formula vitae (form of life), which modified Francis’ rule for the friars to meet the needs of a stable female community. Pope Innocent IV approved the text on her deathbed (1253). Certain provisions suggest that she intended it to govern all Damianite houses, but it did not circulate beyond a few affiliated communities. Some houses adopted the 1247 Rule, others kept the Hugolinian constitution, and most had individual provisions concerning their observance. Pastoral care from Franciscan friars linked these diverse houses, an institutional relationship that contributed to the papally-constituted order increasingly coming to identify itself with the movement initiated by Francis of Assisi. During the same period, the newly canonized Saint Clare (1255) was memorialized as an enclosed contemplative, a model for all religious women rather than a female example of Francis’ spiritual ideals.
The Order of Saint Clare
Following an intense legal battle over the friars’ obligations to provide pastoral care (1261-1263), Pope Urban IV ratified a new constitution for the Order of Saint Clare in 1263 that effectively confirmed their place within the Franciscan Order. Like earlier papal legislation, it incorporated traditional monastic requirements, including adequate material support. By the end of the thirteenth century, this rule was widely adopted, especially by Italian Poor Clares. In parts of France and throughout England, however, Franciscan nuns professed a rule composed by the royal princess Isabelle of France (1259; revised 1263). There is also evidence of women who refused to conform to these organized forms of female Franciscanism. Both Innocent IV and his successor, Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261), railed against certain “Minoresses” who lived outside of a cloister and made demands on the friars. It seems likely these were women who chose not to become Poor Clares as the order moved away from the ideals of Francis’ early movement into traditional female monasticism.
Later sources commonly identify the fourteenth century as a period of relaxed observance before the Franciscan Order entered a period of renewal. In Italy, fifteenth-century reformers encouraged the Poor Clares to profess their “first rule,” that is, Clare’s formula vitae. While some convents continued to observe the Urbanist rule, chronicles and devotional writings produced by the sisters make clear the important role these women played in spreading Clare’s rule and reform generally. Contemporary sisters who were praised as spiritual models included the French reformer, Colette of Corbie (1381-1447) and the Italian devotional author and artist, Caterina Vigri (1413-1463). These reforms also increased interest in the historical Clare and contributed to the growth of her reputation as founder of the eponymous order. While Clare of Assisi was not historically the founder of the Poor Clares, she ultimately became a source of charismatic authority for female Franciscan life.
Franciscan Penitent Women
Institutional forms of female Franciscan life were not limited to the Poor Clares. Friar Hugh of Digne prepared a rule for his sister Douceline (c. 1215-1274), who lived in a beguine community in Marseilles. Hagiographical legends describe how some women who were refused admittance to Damianite convents became penitents (sorores de penitentia or sometimes bizzoche or reclusae) and lived in small, semi-religious communities close to Franciscan friaries. Other penintent women were able to remain independent while developing a pastoral relationship with individual friars, such as Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297) and Angela of Foligno (1248-1309). Along with their pastoral bond with Franciscan friars, the desire to follow a life of evangelical prayer, penance, and charity while remaining in the world united these women.
The Roman Curia sought to regularize these lay penitents in a manner similar to what occurred with other women’s religious movements. They encouraged the idea of Francis as founder of a Third Order of Penance, although this legislation derived from outside the Order. A member of Cardinal Hugolino’s circle wrote the earliest constitution, the Memoriale Propositi (1221), to govern mixed penitential communities. A new rule was confirmed by Pope Nicholas IV (a Franciscan friar) in the bull Supra Montem (1289) during the same period as a rule was authored for Dominican tertiaries. Communities of female penitents were increasingly obligated to live according to a monastic rule after the bull Periculoso (1298) imposed enclosure and some houses were even transferred into the Order of Saint Clare. Others maintained their status as members of the Franciscan Third Order. One of the most influential was the community of Santa Anna in Foligno whose sisters helped spread reform ideas throughout Italy under the leadership of Angelina of Montegiove (c. 1357-1435).
The female Franciscan movement during the Middle Ages is thus characterized by its diversity. While the Poor Clares mostly followed traditional monastic forms of life, other women established different forms of communal life while maintaining an association with the Franciscan friars or an affiliation with the spiritual ideals of Francis of Assisi.
Lezlie Knox
References and Further Reading
Alberzoni, Maria Pia. Clare and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century, ed. by Jean-François Godet-Calogeras. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2004.
Regis Armstrong, Ed. Clare of Assisi: Early Documents. Revised and Expanded. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1993.
------. The Lady. Clare of Assisi Early Documents. New York: New City Press, forthcoming.
Carney, Margaret. The First Franciscan Woman: Clare of Assisi and Her Form of Life. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993.
Grundmann, Herbert. Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: the Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. 2nd rev.ed. Trans. Stephen Rowan. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.
Franciscan Women: History and Culture. A Geographical and Bio-Bibliographical Internet Guide. http://franwomen.sbu.edu/franwomen/women.aspx
Knox, Lezlie. “Audacious Nuns: Institutionalizing the Franciscan Order of Saint Clare.” Church History.69:1 (2000): 41-62.
Pellegrini, Luigi. “Female Religious Experience and Society in Thirteenth-Century Italy.” In Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society. Essays in Honor of Lester K. Little. Ed. Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. pp. 97-122.
Wood, Geryldene. Women, Art and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy. Cambridge: University Press, 1996.
See also:Agnes of Prague; Angela of Foligno; Beguines; Caterina Vigri; Clare of Assisi; Colette of Corbie; Dominican Order; Douceline of Digne; Isabelle of France; Laywomen, Religious; Margaret of Cortona; Monastic Enclosure; Monastic Rules; Monasticism and Nuns; Pastoral Care; Poverty, Religious; Sister Books and Convent Chronicles; Tertiaries; Women’s Monasticism: Papal Policy.
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