J.M.J.
St. Clare
Virgin & Abbess
AUGUST 12
A.D. 1253
ST. CLARE was daughter to Phavorino Sciffo, a noble knight who had
distinguished himself in the wars, and his virtuous spouse called Hortulana.
These illustrious personages, who held the first rank at Assisium for their
birth and riches, were still more eminent for their extraordinary piety.
They had three daughters, Clare, Agnes, and Beatrice. * St. Clare was born
in 1193 at Assisium, a city in Italy, built on a stony mountain called
Assisi; from her infancy she was extremely charitable and devout. It was her
custom to count her task of Paters and Aves by a certain number of little
stones in her lap, in imitation of some ancient anchorets in the East. * Her
parents began to talk to her very early of marriage, which gave her great
affliction; for it was her most ardent desire to have no other spouse but
Jesus Christ. Hearing the great reputation of St. Francis, who set an
example of perfection to the whole city, she found means to be conducted to
him by a pious matron, and begged his instruction and advice. He spoke to
her on the contempt of the world, the shortness of life, and the love of God
and heavenly things, in such a manner as warmed her tender breast; and, upon
the spot, she formed a resolution of renouncing the world. St. Francis
appointed Palm Sunday for the day on which she should come to him. On that
day Clare, dressed in her most sumptuous apparel, went with her mother and
family to the divine office; but when all the rest went up to the altar to
receive a palm branch, bashfulness and modesty kept her in her place, which
the bishop seeing, he went from the altar down to her, and gave her the
palm. She attended the procession; but, the evening following it, being the
18th of March, 1212, she made her escape from home, accompanied with another
devout young woman, and went a mile out of the town to the Portiuncula,
where St. Francis lived with his little community. He and his religious
brethren met her at the door of their church of our Lady with lighted tapers
in their hands, singing the hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus. Before the altar
of the Blessed Virgin she put off her fine clothes, and St. Francis cut off
her hair, and gave her his penitential habit, which was no other than a
piece 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
nunnery of St. Paul, where she was affectionately received, being then
eighteen years of age. The poor Clares date from this epoch the foundation
of their Order.
No sooner was this action of the holy virgin made public, but
the world conspired unanimously to condemn it, and her friends and relations
came in a body to draw her out of her retreat. Clare resisted their violence
and held the altar so fast as to pull the holy cloths half off it when they
endeavored 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 spouse of her soul; and that the more they should continue to
persecute her, the more God would strengthen her to resist and overcome
them. They reproached her that by embracing so poor and mean a life she
disgraced her family; but she bore their insults, and God triumphed in her.
St. Francis soon after removed her to another nunnery, that of St. Angelo of
Panso near Assisium, which was also of St. Bennet's Order. There her sister
Agnes joined her in her undertaking; which drew on them both a fresh
persecution, and twelve men abused Agnes both with words and blows and
dragged her on the ground to the door, whilst she cried out, "Help me,
sister; permit me not to be separated from our Lord Jesus Christ, and your
loving company." Her constancy proved at last victorious, and St. Francis
gave her also the habit, though she was only fourteen years of age. He
placed them in a new mean house contiguous to the church of St. Damian,
situated on the skirts of the city Assisium, and appointed Clare the
superior. She was soon after joined by her mother Hortulana and several
ladies of her kindred and others to the number of sixteen, among whom three
were of the illustrious family of the Ubaldini in Florence. Many noble
princesses held for truer greatness the sackcloth and poverty of St. Clare
than the estates, delights, and riches which they possessed, seeing they
left them all, to become humble disciples of so holy and admirable a
mistress. St. Clare founded, within a few years, monasteries at Perugia,
Arezzo, Padua, that of SS. Cosmas and Damian in Rome, at Venice, Mantua,
Bologna, Spoletto, Milan, Sienna, Pisa, &c., also in many principal towns in
Germany, Agnes, daughter to the king of Bohemia, founded a nunnery of her
Order in Prague, in which she herself took the habit.
St. Clare and her community practiced austerities, which, till
then, had scarce ever been known among the tender sex. They wore neither
stockings, shoes, sandals, not any other covering on their feet; they lay on
the ground, observed a perpetual abstinence, and never spoke but when they
were obliged to it by the indispensable dunes of necessity and charity. The
foundress in her rule extremely recommends this holy silence as the means to
retrench 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 the walls of cloisters. Not content with the
four Lents, and the other general mortifications of her rule, she always
wore next her skin a rough shift of horse hair or of hog's bristles cut
short, she fasted church vigils and all Lent on bread and water, and from
the 11th of November to Christmas Day, and during these times on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays ate nothing at all. She sometimes strewed the ground
on which she lay with twigs, having a block for her bolster. Her
disciplines, watchings, and other austerities were incredible, especially in
a person of so tender a constitution. Being reduced to great weakness and to
a very sickly state of health, St. Francis and the bishop of Assisium
obliged her to lie upon a little chaff, and never pass one day without
taking at least some bread for nourishment. Under her greatest corporal
austerities her countenance was always mild and cheerful, demonstrating that
true love makes penance sweet and easy. Her esteem of holy poverty was most
admirable. She looked upon it as the retrenchment of the most dangerous
objects of the passions and self-love, and as the great school of patience
and mortification, by the perpetual inconveniences and sufferings which it
lays persons under, and which the spirit of Christ crucified teaches us to
bear with patience and joy. It carries along with it the perfect
disengagement of the heart from the world, in which the essence of true
devotion consists. The saint considered in what degree Christ, having for
our sakes relinquished the riches of his glory, practiced holy poverty, in
his birth, without house or other temporal convenience, and during his holy
ministry without a place to lay his head in, and living on voluntary
contributions; but, above all, his poverty, nakedness, and humiliation on
the cross and at his sacred death were deeply imprinted on her mind, and she
ardently sought to bear for his sake some resemblance of that state which he
had assumed for us to apply a proper remedy to our spiritual wounds, and
heal the corruption of our nature.
St. Francis instituted that his order should never possess any
rents even in common, subsisting on daily contributions. St. Clare possessed
this spirit in such perfection, that when her large fortune fell to her, by
the death of her father, after her profession, she gave the whole to the
poor, without reserving one single farthing for the monastery. Pope Gregory
IX desired to mitigate this part of her rule, and offered to settle a yearly
revenue on her monastery of St. Damian's; 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. Whilst others asked riches, Clare presented again her most
humble request to pope Innocent IV that he would confirm in her Order the
singular privilege of holy poverty, which he did, in 1251, by a bull written
with his own hand, which he watered at the same time with tears of devotion.
* So dear was poverty to St. Clare chiefly for her great love of humility.
Though superior, she would never allow herself any privilege or distinction.
It was her highest ambition to be the servant of servants, always beneath
all, washing the feet of the lay sisters and kissing them when they returned
from begging, serving at table, attending the sick, and removing the most
loathsome filth. When she prayed for the sick, she sent them to her other
sisters, that their miraculous recovery might not he imputed to her prayers
or merits. She was so true a daughter of obedience, that she had always, as
it were, wings to fly wherever St. Francis directed her, and was always
ready to execute any thing, or to put her shoulders under any burden that
was enjoined her; she was so crucified to her own will, as to seem entirely
divested of it. This she expressed to her holy father as follows: "Dispose
of me as you please; I am yours by having consecrated my will to God. It is
no longer my own."
Prayer was her spiritual comfort and strength, and she seemed
scarce ever to interrupt that holy exercise. She often prostrated herself on
the ground, kissed it, and watered it with many tears. Whilst her sisters
took their rest, she watched long in prayer, and was always the first that
rose, rung the bell in the choir, and lighted the candles. She came from
prayer with her face so bright and inflamed (like that of Moses descending
from conversing with God), that it often dazzled the eyes of those that
beheld her, and every one perceived by her words that she came from her
devotions; for she spoke with such a spirit and fervor as enkindled a flame
in all who did but hear her voice, and diffused into their souls a great
esteem of heavenly things. She communicated very often, and had a wonderful
devotion towards the blessed sacrament. Even when she was sick in bed, she
spun with her own hands fine linen for corporals, and for the service of the
altar, which she distributed all the churches of Assisium. In prayer she was
often so absorbed in divine love as to forget herself and her corporal
necessities. She on many occasions experienced the all-powerful force and
efficacy of her holy prayer. A remarkable instance is mentioned in her life.
The impious emperor Frederick II cruelly ravaged the valley of Spoletto,
because it was the patrimony of the holy see. He had in his army many
Saracens and other barbarous infidels, and left in that country a colony of
twenty thousand of these enemies of the church in a place still called Noura
des Moros. These banditti came once in a great body to plunder Assisium, and
as St. Damian's convent stood without the walls, they first assaulted it.
Whilst they were busy in scaling the walls, St. Clare, though very sick,
caused herself to be carried and seated at the gate of the monastery, and
the blessed sacrament to be placed there in a pix in the very sight of the
enemies, and, prostrating herself before it, prayed with many tears, saying
to her beloved spouse, "Is it possible, my God, that thou shouldst have here
assembled these thy servants, and nurtured them up in thy holy love, that
they should now fall into the power of these infidel Moors? Preserve them, O
my God, and me in their holy company." At the end of her prayer, she seemed
to hear a sweet voice, which said, "I will always protect you." A sudden
terror at the same time seized the assailants, and they all fled with such
precipitation, that several were hurt without being wounded by any enemy.
Another time, Vitalis Aversa, a great general of the same emperor, a cruel
and proud man, laid sedge to Assisium for many days. St. Clare said to her
nuns that they who had received corporal necessaries from that city, owed to
it all assistance in their power in its extreme necessity. She therefore bid
them cover their heads with ashes, and in this most suppliant posture beg of
Christ the deliverance of the town. They continued pressing their request
with many tears a whole day and night, till powerful succors arriving, the
besiegers silently raised the siege, and retired without noise, and their
general was soon after slain.
St. Francis was affected with the most singular and tender
devotion towards the mysteries of Christ's nativity and sacred passion. He
used to assemble incredible numbers of the people to pass the whole
Christmas night in the church in fervent prayer; and, at midnight once
preached with such fervor and tenderness, that he was not able to pronounce
the name Jesus, but called him the little child of Bethlehem; and, in
repeating these words, always melted away with tender love. St. Clare
inherited this same devotion and tenderness to this holy mystery, and
received many special favors from God in her prayers on that festival. As to
the passion of Christ, St. Francis called it his perpetual book, and said he
never desired to open any other but the history of it in the gospels, though
he were to live to the world's end. The like were the sentiments of St.
Clare towards it; nor could she call to mind this adorable mystery without
streams of tears, and the warmest emotions of tender love. In sickness
particularly it was her constant entertainment. She was afflicted with
continual diseases and pains for eight and twenty years, yet was always
joyful, allowing herself no other indulgence than a little straw to lie on.
Reginald, cardinal of Ostia, afterward pope Alexander IV, both visited her
and wrote to her in the most humble manner. Pope Innocent IV paid her a
visit a little before her death, going from Perugia to Assisium on purpose,
and conferring with her a long time on spiritual matters with wonderful
comfort.
St. Clare bore her sickness and great pains without so much as
speaking of them, and when brother Reginald exhorted her to patience, she
said, "How much am I obliged to my sweet Redeemer! for since, by means of
his servant Francis, I have tasted the bitterness of his holy passion, I
have never in my whole life found any pain or sickness that could afflict
me. There is nothing insupportable to a heart that loveth God; and to him
that loveth not, every thing is insupportable." Agnes, seeing her dear
sister and spiritual mother draw near her end, besought her with great
affection and many tears, that she would take her along with her, and not
leave her here on earth, seeing they had been such faithful companions, and
so united in the same spirit and desire of serving our Lord. The holy virgin
comforted her, telling her it was the will of God she should not at present
go along with her; but bade her be assured she should shortly come to her,
and so it happened. St. Clare seeing all her spiritual children weep,
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 St. Francis. The passion of
Christ, at her request, was read to her in her agony, and she sweetly
expired amidst the prayers and tears of her community, on the 11th of
August, 1253, in 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 Innocent IV came again from Perugia, and
assisted in person with the sacred college at her funeral. Alexander IV
canonized her at Anagnia in 1255. Her body was first buried at St. Damian's;
but the pope ordered a new monastery to be built for her nuns at the church
of St. George within the walls, which was finished in 1260, when her relics
were translated thither with great pomp. A new church was built here
afterward which bears her name; in which, in 1265, pope Clement V
consecrated the high altar under her name, and her body lies under it. The
body of St. Francis had lain in this church of St. George four years when in
1230, it was removed to that erected in his honor, in which it still
remains. Camden remarks that the family name Sinclair among us is derived
from St. Clare.
The example of this tender virgin, who renounced all the
softness, superfluity, and vanity of her education, and engaged and
persevered in a life of so much severity, is a reproach of our sloth and
sensuality. Such extraordinary rigors are not required of us; but a constant
practice of self-denial is indispensably enjoined us by the sacred rule of
the gospel, which we all have most solemnly professed. Our backwardness in
complying with this duty is owing to our lukewarmness which creates in every
thing imaginary difficulties, and magnifies shadows. St. Clare,
notwithstanding her continual extraordinary austerities, the grievous
persecutions she had suffered, and the pains of a sharp and tedious
distemper with which she was afflicted, was surprised when she lay on her
death-bed, to hear any one speak of her patience, saying that from the time
she had first given her heart to God, she had never met with any thing to
suffer, or to exercise her patience. This was the effect of her ardent
charity. Let none embrace her holy institute without a fervor which inspires
a cheerful eagerness to comply, in the most perfect manner, with all its
rules and exercises, and without seriously studying to obtain, and daily
improve in their souls, her eminent spirit of poverty, humility, obedience,
love of silence, mortification, recollection, prayer, and divine love. In
this consists their sanctification; in this they will find all present and
future blessings and happiness.
From her authentic life, written soon after her death, by order of pope
Alexander IV, who had
pronounced her funeral panegyric whilst cardinal of Ostia, and who canonized
her two years
after. See also the annals of the Franciscan Order, compiled by the learned
F. Luke Wadding
her life published in English; F. Sbarala, &c.
----------------
From "Butler's Lives of the Saints on CD ROM" (Harmony Media, Inc.)
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