We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2008
This article examines the canonisation process of Clare of Assisi and seeks to contextualise it within the currents of early Franciscan history. It refutes recent scholarship on Clare that has focused upon her place in the history of medieval women and draws on Italian scholarship to argue for a more nuanced reading of the texts surrounding Clare that takes into account the deep-set divisions between the papacy and the friars about the role of women in the Franciscan order and compares the post-mortem treatment of Clare to that of Francis.
1 Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, Body and soul: medieval women's visionary literature, Oxford 1994, 66–79; Marianne Scholsser, ‘Mutter-Schwester-Braut: zur Spiritualität der hl. Klara’, Laurentianum xxxi (1990), 176; Chiara Augusta Lainati, ‘Santa Clara de Asís, mujer bella’, trans. Juan Oliver, Selecciones de Franciscanismo xxi (1992), 369; Susan Muto, ‘Clare of Assisi: a woman of spirit, a model of strength for today's world’, in Ingrid Peterson (ed.), Clare of Assisi: a medieval and modern woman, New York 1996, 189; Jean-François Godet, ‘Claire et la vie au féminin: symboles de femme dans ses écrits’, Laurentianum xxxi (1990), 150; Pope John-Paul ii in l'Osservatore Romano (English edn), no. 34 (1304), 25 Aug. 1993, 1.
2 Biographies of Clare are numerous. Amongst the most recent in English are Marco Bartoli, Clare of Assisi, Rome 1993, and Ingrid J. Peterson, Clare of Assisi: a biographical study, Quincy, Il. 1993. Also worthy of note is Rosalind Brooke and Christopher Brooke, ‘St Clare’, in Derek Baker (ed.), Medieval women (Studies in Church History, Subsidia i, 1978), 275–87. For a comprehensive bibliography on Clare see Isodoro de Villapadiernne and Pietro Maranesi (eds), Bibliografia di S. Chiara di Assisi, 1930–1993, Rome 1994.
3 Gail Ashton, The generation of identity in late medieval hagiography, London 2000, 45; Catherine Mooney, ‘Clare of Assisi: Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae?’, in Catherine Mooney (ed.), Gendered voices: female saints and their interpreters, Philadelphia 1999, 52–77.
4 Jacques Dalarun, ‘Donna e donne, femminile e femminizzazione negli scritti e le leggende di Francesco d'Assisi', in Chiara d'Assisi: atti del XX convegno internazionale, Spoleto 1993, 239–67, and Francesco, un passagio: donna e donne, femminile e femminizzazione negli scritti e le leggende di Francesco d'Assisi, Rome 1994; Giovanna La Grasta, ‘La canonizzazione di Chiara’, in Chiara d'Assisi, 301–24.
5 Verse legend, xxxiii: ‘Legenda versificata S. Clarae Assisiensis’, ed. P. Benvenutus Bughetti, AFH v (1912), 236–60, 459–81, 621–31; Legend of Saint Clare, xlvii: Legenda Sanctae Clarae Virginis, ed. F. Pennacchi, Assisi, 1910.
6 Gloriosus Deus, 18 Oct. 1253: Pascal Robinson, ‘Inventarium omnium documentorum quae in Archivo Protomonasterii S. Clarae Assisiensis’, AFH i (1908), 418.
7 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1997, 62, 71–4.
8 Bihl, M., ‘Documenta inedita Archivi Protomonasterii S. Clarae Assisiensis’, AFH v (1912), 663–4Google Scholar.
9 Robinson, ‘Inventarium omnium’, 419, 420; Bihl, ‘Documenta inedita’, 664, 666.
10 Regis Armstrong discusses possible dates for its composition, ranging from 1256 to 1261 (the death of Alexander iv), though the dedication in the preface makes the papal impetus in its construction clear: Clare of Assisi: early documents, New York 1993, 158n.
11 Jeryldene Wood, Women, art and spirituality: the Poor Clares of early modern Italy, Cambridge 1996, 31.
12 John Freed, ‘Urban development and the cura monalium in thirteenth-century Germany’, Viator iii (1972), 311–27. See also Ancilla Röttger and Petra Gross, Klarissen: Geschichte und Gegenwart einer Ordensgemeinschaft, Werl 1994, 31–54.
13 Edith Pásztor, ‘I papi del duocento e trecento di fronte alla vita religiosa femminile’, in Roberto Rusconi (ed.), Il movimento religioso femminile in Umbria nei secoli XIII–XIV, Perugia 1984, 31–65.
14 Herbert Grundmann, Religious movements in the Middle Ages, trans. Steven Rowan, Notre Dame 1995, 89–138.
15 Constitution 13 (‘Ne nimia … monasteriis praesidere’), Disciplinary decrees of the general council text, trans. and comm. H. J. Schröder, New York 1937, 255.
16 Roberto Rusconi, ‘L'espansione del Francescanesimo femminile nel secolo XIII', in Movimento religioso femminile e Francescanesimo nel secolo XIII: atti del VII convegno internazionale, Assisi 1980; Anna Benvenuti, ‘La fortuna del movimento Damianita’, in Chiara d'Assisi, 59–106.
17 John Moorman, A history of the Franciscan order from its origins to the year 1517, Oxford 1968, 208–9.
18 Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. Johannes Sbaralea, i, Rome 1758, passim. Some of these are reproduced in Clare of Assisi: early documents, 347–88.
19 Nostro decet Provenire: Bullarium Franciscanum, i. 601.
20 Example are the houses of Monteluce in Perugia and Monticelli in Florence: Rusconi, ‘L'espansione del Francescanesimo femminile', 188–9.
21 Walter W. Seton, Some new sources for the Life of Blessed Agnes of Bohemia, Aberdeen 1915, 9–11.
22 Moorman, History of the Franciscan order, 206; Livaro Oliger, ‘De origine regularum ordinis S. Clarae’, AFH v (1912), 414; Bullarium Franciscanum, i. 38–9, 73, 82, 259.
23 From the Codex S. Antonio de Urbe, a fourteenth-century text about Thomas of Pavia, minister-provincial for Tuscany: Oliger, ‘De origine regularum’, 418–19.
24 P. Zefferino Lazzeri, ‘Il processo di canonizzazione di S. Chiara d'Assisi', AFH xiii (1920), 403–507, esp. pp. 408–9; English translation in Clare of Assisi: early documents, 132–85.
25 Giovanna Casagrande, ‘Le compagne di Chiara d'Assisi’, in Chiara d'Assisi, 383–425. The Verse life seems to have been written after her funeral in August 1253, but before her canonisation two years later as it makes no mention of the latter occasion. The Legend of Saint Clare was commissioned by Alexander iv at some point after the canonisation before his death in 1261: Clare of Assisi: early documents, 186–7, 246–9.
26 ‘ad ciò che de questo se ne facessero cinquanta lesche, saria necessario quello miraculo del Signore, de'cinque pani et doi pesci': PC vi.16.
27 Ibid.ii.18; iv.7–11; v.1; vi.8; xi.1, etc.
28 Ibid.xvi.4.
29 Vauchez, Sainthood, 499–526.
30 Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and society: the two worlds of western Christendom, 1000–1700, Chicago 1982, passim, esp. pp. 23, 57.
31 PC iii.28; vi.12.
32 Ibid.i.2–6; xii.2–5. Several of the townsfolk testifying also have something to say about the conversion: xvi.6; xvii.4–6; xviii.2–3; xx.2–7.
33 Ibid.iii.14,32; vii.8; xii.6.
34 Bernard McGinn, The flowering of mysticism, London 1998, 136–51.
35 Rule of Saint Clare, iii.14, in Claire d'Assise, Écrits, ed. and trans. Marie-France Becker, Jean-François Godet and Thaddée Matura, Paris 1985, 132–3. On the importance of the eucharist to other religious women see Caroline Bynum, Holy feast, holy fast, Berkeley 1987, passim; Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi, Cambridge 1991, 316–19; and McGinn, Flowering of mysticism, passim.
36 Clare advises Agnes of Prague ‘quibus de quibuscumque cibariis omnem discretionem quam possemus facere’ (show all the discretion you can in such matters of food): ‘Third letter to Agnes’, 31, Écrits, 100–9, a sentiment also echoed in her Rule, iii.8–11. See Bynum, Holy feast, 101–2. According to her hagiographers, Clare's rejection of food was so extreme that on at least one occasion Francis was summoned to command her to eat because she would listen to his word alone: Legend of Saint Clare, xvii, vl, xv.
37 PC ix.2.
38 Ibid.ix.4,10. On ‘The child in the Host’ see Rubin, Corpus Christi, 135–9.
39 PC x.8.
40 Legend of Saint Clare, xxxi, xxxvii.
41 ‘che da la Vergine Maria in qua, niuna donna fusse de magiure merito che epsa Madonna’: PC vii.11; ‘che tucto quello che se trovava de sanctità in alcuna sancta che sia de po la Vergine Maria, se pò veramente dire et testificare de la sancta memoria de madonna Chiara’: ibid.xv.1b.
42 ‘nel grembio de epsa Madonna Chiara, innanti al pecto suo un mammolo bellissimo, in tanto che la belleçça sua non se poteria esprimere’: ibid.ix.4.
43 ‘una grande multitudine de vergine, vestite de biancho le quale havevano tucte le corone sopra li capi loro, che venivano et intravano per l'uscio de quella stantia dove giacieva la predicta matre sancta Chiara': ibid.xi.4.
44 Mooney, ‘Clare of Assisi’, 56–7.
45 On such traditions see Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as mother, Berkeley 1984; Jean Leclercq, Monks and love in twelfth-century France: psycho-historical essays, Oxford 1979; and Bernard McGinn, The growth of mysticism, London 1994, 149–418.
46 ‘[perfectio], qua te sibi Rex ipse in aethero thalamo sociabit, ubi sedet stellato solio gloriosus’: ‘Second letter to Agnes of Prague’, 5, Écrits, 92–100.
47 ‘ad haesisti vestigiis, cuius meruisti connubio copulari’: ibid. 7.
48 ‘Sic et ista, quantumvis proficiat, quamlibet promoveatur, cura, providentia atque affectu ab his, quas in Evangelio genuit, nunquam amovetur, numquam aus viscera obliviscetur’ (‘So too the Bride, no matter how much she advances, how much she moves ahead is never removed from the care, providence and love of those to whom she gave birth in the Gospel; she never forgets her offspring’): Bernard of Clairvaulx, Sermon on the Song of Songs 23.1, trans. in McGinn, Growth of mysticism, 178–9.
49 ‘ipsius dulcissimae matri adhaeras, quae talem genuit Filium, quem caeli capere non poterant, et tamen ipsa parvulo claustro sacri uteri contulit et gremio puellari gestavit’: ‘Third letter to Agnes of Prague’, 18–19.
50 ‘Sicut ergo Virgo virginum gloriosa materialiter, sic et tu, sequens eius vestigia, humilitatis praesertim et pauperitatis, casto et virgineo corpore spiritualiter semper sine dubietate omni portare potes, illum continens a quo tu et omnia continentur’: ibid. 24–6. Mooney's suggestion that ‘eius’ refers to him and that the phrase should be read ‘following in His footprints’ is at best speculative. She ignores the syntactical likelihood that ‘eius’ seems to agree most readily with ‘Virgo’, the subject of the previous phrase. She further argues that because the biblical passage (1 Peter ii.21) refers to ‘him’, it follows that Clare's does the same, although it seems pedantic to disallow such a small contextual adaptation. We should still, however, be open to the possibility that Clare may have been ambiguous, either deliberately or by accident: Mooney, ‘Clare of Assisi’, 60–2.
51 PC ix.4.
52 (Regem Coeli), Verse legend, xxxii; Legend of Saint Clare, xlvi.
53 Clifford Lawrence, Medieval monasticism, London 1989, 184–5, 215; Grundmann, Religious movements, 96.
54 Clare of Assisi: early documents, 313–14.
55 Dalarun, Francesco, un passagio, 23.
56 Regula non bullata, xii, in François d'Assise, Écrits, ed. Theophile Desbonnets, Thaddée Matura, Jean-François Godet and Damien Vorreux, Paris 1981, 146.
57 Ibid. 42–4.
58 ‘huc usque fistula fuit in carne, spesque curationis erat, ex nunc autem in ossibus radicata incurabilis prorsus erit’, quoted in the Codex S. Antonio de Urbe by Thomas of Pavia on the authority of Friar Stephanus: Oliger, ‘De origine regularum’, 419; Grundmann, Religious movements, 114.
59 Jordan of Giano, Chronica, xiv, in Thirteenth-century chronicles, trans. Placid Hermann, Chicago 1961, 29–30.
60 Moorman, History of the Franciscan order, 109.
61 Compilatio assisiensis, xiii: Compilatio assisiensis dagli scritti di Fr. Leone e Compagni su S. Francesco d'Assisi, ed. Marino Bigaroni, Assisi 1975, 40; Legend of the three companions, 109, in Scripta Leonis, ed. Rosalind Brooke, Oxford 1970, 278–9.
62 Rosalind Brooke, Early Franciscan government, Cambridge 1959, 40.
63 Grundmann, Religious movements, 115.
64 Oliger, ‘De origine regularum’, 181–209, 413–47. For a translation of the Innocentine rule see Clare of Assisi: early documents, 113–28.
65 Moorman, History of the Franciscan order, 214.
66 Dalarun, Francesco, un passagio, 61–108; Mooney, ‘Clare of Assisi’, 71–5.
67 ‘gloriosa religio et excelentissimus ordo Pauperum Dominarum et sanctarum virginum’: Vita prima S. Francisci, xviii, ed. Edward d'Alençon, Analecta Franciscana v (1906), 3–117.
68 ‘pretiossisimarum margaritarum nobilis structum’: ibid.xx.
69 Ibid.cxvi-cxvii.
70 Vita secunda S. Francisci, cciv, ed. Edward d'Alençon, Analecta Franciscana x/1 (1926), 129–268.
71 ‘licet pater illis paulatim suam praesentiam corporalem subduxerit, affectum tamen in Spirito Sancto ad ipsarum curam extendit’: ibid.
72 ‘mellita toxica, familiaritates vidilicet mulierum, que in errorem inducunt etiam viros sanctos’: ibid.cxii.
73 Chiara Frugoni, Francesco: un'altra storia, Genoa 1955, 8–9.
74 (‘prima plantula’): Legenda maior S. Francisci, iv.6, ed. Michel Bihl, Analecta Franciscana 10, 557–652. On several occasions Clare describes herself as ‘plantula’: Blessing, 6; Testament, 37, 49; Rule, i.3.
75 Legenda maior, v.5; Oliger, ‘De origine regularum’, 418.
76 Claire d'Assise, Écrits, 120–65 (rule), 166–85 (testament), 186–9 (blessing). The Rule, though generally accepted as authentic, is disjointed and contains lengthy passages copied wholesale from earlier documents. Of course, this is not incompatible with Clare's authorship, and may have been intended by Clare to reinforce the validity of the new rule: ibid. 22–4; Clare of Assisi: early documents, 25.
77 ‘Ex causis manifestis michi et protectorii mon[asterii] fiat ad instar.’ This is in addition to the initial, customary ‘Ad instar fiat!’: Robinson, ‘Inventarium omnium documentorum’, 417; Écrits, 20.
78 ‘et aliae sorores teneantur simper successoribus beati Francesci et sorori Clarae et aliis abbatissis canonico electis ei succedentibus obedire’: Rule of Saint Clare, i.5.
79 Ibid.vi.3–4, 7–9.
80 Ibid.iv, xii.
81 ‘vidilicet in non recipiendo vel habiendo possessionem vel proprietatem per se neque per interpositam personam … nisi quantum terrae pro honestate et remotione monasterii necessitas requirit’ (namely by not receiving or holding possessions or property either through themselves or an intermediary … except as much land as necessity requires for the integrity and seclusion of the monastery): ibid.vi.12–14.
82 The authorship of both the Verse life and the Legend of Saint Clare is unattributed and contested. Potential authors suggested have included Bonaventure, Br Mark and Thomas of Celano. No modern scholar seems in doubt as to the works' Franciscan origins, although there is no direct evidence for this. It would, however, fit with the interpretation proposed in this paper: Clare of Assisi: early documents, 246–9.
83 PC i.15; ii.14.
84 Ibid.ii.15.
85 Ibid.vi.15.
86 Legend of Saint Clare, viii. Clare's sister, Beatrice, also testifies to this: PC xii.4.
87 iii.29; vi.13; vii.10. This kind of lactation miracle was particularly associated with Bernard of Clairvaux, whose influence on Clare's writings has already been noted. See Cécile Dupeux, ‘L'Exemple de la lactation', and Patrick Arabeyre, ‘La Lactation à Châtillon-sur-Seine’, in Jacques Berlioz, Vies et légendes de Saint Bernard de Clairvaux, Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux 1993, 152–66, 173–95.
88 Quo Elongati, 28 Sept. 1230. See Oliger, ‘De origine regularum’, 421–2.
89 Verse life, xxix; Legend of Saint Clare, xxxvii.
90 Wood, Women, art and spirituality, 31. The dossal is reproduced at figs 3, 9.
91 Max Weber, The sociology of religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff, Boston 1965, 60–1.
92 Lester Little, Spiritual poverty and the profit economy, London 1978.
93 Bynum, Jesus as mother, 91.
94 Malcolm Lambert, Medieval heresy, Oxford 1992, 41–2; Lawrence, Medieval monasticism, 132–3; Little, Religious poverty, 89.
95 Chiara Frugoni, Francesco e l'invenzione delle stimmate, Turin 1993, and ‘Saint Francis: a saint in progress’, in Sandro Sticca (ed.), Saints: studies in hagiography, New York 1996, 161–90.
96 Apostolic brief, Miranda Prosus, 14 Feb. 1958. The story is found in PC iii.30; iv.16; viii.9; Verse life, xxv; and Legend of Saint Clare, xxix. See also Clare of Assisi: early documents, 283n., and Bartoli, Clare of Assisi, 121.
