Clare of Assisi

One day, Pope Gregory forbade the Franciscan brothers to visit the sisters without his permission. Clare immediately send all the brothers home: "If we are deprived of spiritual bread, we do not want to have corporeal bread." The story is usually only related to San Damiano and not to the other monasteries of the "Ordo sancti Damiani". However, this is in no way apparent from the text. This article shows that the papal restriction increasingly became an obstacle to the sacramental care of the sisters in all the monasteries. After Gregory's death the provision was gradually lifted.

The term "mercy" appears several times in the Writings of Saint Clare. The analysis of these occurrences makes it possible to deepen the spiritual and community experience of Clare who, using the words of the apostle Paul, likes to designate God as "the Father of mercies". This unique and daily renewed experience of the mercy of God in her vocation and that of her sisters, a daily experience of divine goodness and providence, transforms relations between the sisters and produces a style of fraternal life characterized by mercy.

L’A. inizia la sua ricerca storica istituendo un percorso storico nel quale si accenna ad alcuni aspetti giuridici del tempo in cui nacque e si sviluppò il carisma francescano, evidenziando che non risponde alla realtà storica l’assolutizzazione di un contrasto tra carisma e istituzione; nella seconda parte si sofferma ad esaminare alcuni aspetti essenziali della dinamica carisma/istituzione, sempre con un particolare riferimento al mondo del francescanesimo, concludendo che, parlando di esercizio dell’autorità e di vita fraterna nella ’minorità’ tra sorelle, questo stile di vita è comune sia alla vita delle Sorelle Povere che a quelle delle fraternità monastiche cenobitiche, antiche o riformate nel medioevo.

English version of my farewell lecture on Clare's leadership that is characterised in six scenes: on the basic level providing food and safety; inside the community being an abbess and correcting the sisters; outside San Damiano the relation with the other monasteries of her order and the attitude to the men of authority (the Franciscans and the papal curia). The last part is extensively rewritten; it presents a new interpretation of Clare's hunger strike. 
For copyright reasons, only the first four pages can be read.

In the thirteenth century, the Franciscan movement female, experienced a significant spread in the Abruzzo region. Among the 19 monasteries identified, those surely founded in the thirteenth century are 16. A number compatible with that provided by the Series Neapolitana. The loca sororum oldest in the Province pennensis are: St. Peter de Molito (1228-1230) and St. Silvester (ante 1238) in Pereto. In a few cases we know a sure foundation date, for example: St. Lawrence and St. Nicholas (1254) and St. Mary de Aquili iuxta fontes (1256) at the Aquila, St. Peter at Roccamontepiano (1258). For most of the loca sororum they are beginning to get news from the middle of the thirteenth century and mainly located on the coast. These numbers are very close to those found in studies conducted on female Franciscan foundations in Molise and Puglia. This study has emerged useful also for future paths of research. In particular the existence of a second monastery in Atri, to St. Sabino (ante 1295), absent in studies of Pratesi, Moorman and Benvenuti, and the case of sorores of S. Maria de Viano. About this monastery I’m already preparing a specific study

The study gives a complete description of the codex Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Ripoll 195. It is datable to the last two decades of the 13th century and is an important witness to the Franciscan preaching on saints. The codex contains as many as 211 sermons, subdivided into three series: De proprio sanctorum, De communi sanctorum and De proprio sanctorum. Apart from a few panegyrics attributable to the preachers of the Franciscan Order, among whom Gilbert of Tournai and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, most of the material remains anonymous. Such sermons are only partially reflected in the anonymous collections already known (especially in the codex C.415a of the University Library of Uppsala), while many others remain unknown to date. The appendix gives five anonymous sermons on Franciscan saints, so far unpublished.
KEYWORDS: Medieval preaching − Franciscan preaching − hagiography − codicology − St. Francis of Assisi − St. Antony of Padua − St. Clare of Assisi.

Tommaso da Celano, agiografo di Francesco d’Assisi, si ritrova, negli anni Cinquanta del Duecento, nuovamente chiamato dal papa a scrivere la vita di una grande santa del suo tempo: stessa ritrosia, stessa umile affermazione di incapacità, stesso metodo di lavoro. Attingendo alle testimonianze scritte durante il processo di canonizzazione e a quelle orali raccolte di prima mano, tratteggia l’itinerario di Chiara: le eccezionali virtù, luminose fin dall’infanzia, la radicalità della sua scelta, il percorso spirituale, che si manifesta attraverso l’esercizio ascetico di bontà, umiltà, povertà, carità e preghiera – subito preso a modello dalle prime sorelle – e si radica inscindibilmente nella croce di Cristo, nella contemplazione continua della sua Passione. La narrazione dei miracoli e l’attenzione per la rilevanza ecclesiale e sociale del suo operato, fino alla venerazione popolare, intessono e arricchiscono il quadro: da Gesù viene la vocazione, dalla sua Passione il modello di vita, dall’intimità con lui, nella preghiera incessante, la grazia che, attraverso una giovane donna, opera visibilmente nella Chiesa

N.B. the offprint is a pre-corrected copy. Please get in touch if you would like a 'clean' copy.

In this chapter, I complicate the image of women religious as either authoritative and agentive or submissive and oppressed, with reference to the relationships between royal women, the papacy, and the Franciscan order in Bohemia and the Polish duchies. Using the thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century evidence for these relationships, I argue that situating discussion of women’s spiritual authority within the confessor-penitent dynamic and increased role of the papacy in the lives of women religious post Lateran IV allows us to see women exercise spiritual authority even as they perform submission to male superiors. In doing so, I also begin to draw out where the women under examination may have unconsciously reinforced mechanisms for their own oppression through participating in performances of submission that were central to their own spiritual vocation. Finally, in the context of histories of the Franciscan order(s), I use this discussion to query the entrenched myth of defiance of papal authority as a quality inherent to an ‘authentic’ Franciscan identity.

At the dawn of the 13th century the male monasticism was living a new era, marked by the advent of St. Francis and St. Dominic and characterized by a return to the poorest and humble roots of Christianity as well as by greater openness towards the believers, more than the closed dimension of the monastery. A new female religious movement, known as ‘the Poor Ladies’, was born in Central Italy in the same years, under the guidance of St. Clare of Assisi. The movement did not join any of the existing monastic rules at the beginning, even though it was strictly bound to the Franciscan experience and had total poverty as its highest and exclusive aspiration. The Church of Rome saw a possible critical issue in the movement and in its lack of control. It tried to regulate it at the Council of Lateran IV in 1215, especially with the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia Ugolino dei Segni (the future Pope Gregory IX), an essential figure for the history and evolution of the female monasticism who imposed the cloistered life on all female monastic orders. The analysis of the architecture of the so-called ‘PoorLadies’ is, therefore, fundamental in order to understand the consequences of this imposition. New liturgical spaces for females only, in fact, started to be created in both the existing convents and in the newly built ones with the aim of protecting the daily life of the nuns. The arrangement of the preexisting spaces in St. Damianoin Assisi — the cradle of the order of St. Clare — was purely random but led anyway to the creation of proper architectural models, later exported in other convents of the same order. The nuns’ choir in St. Damiano, infact, is located outside the ecclesiastical perimeter in order to preserve the cloistered dimension. However, this peculiar position of the choir made it quite difficult for the nuns to assist to the liturgical functions from the beginning, but the issue was solved only during the 14th century with the ‘migration’ of this liturgical space to a new position, after a series of different solutions.

Nere Jone Intxaustegi Jauregi, "Rebelión de las clarisas vizcaínas frente al Concilio de Trento", en Labrador Arroyo, Felix (ed.), Líneas recientes de investigación en Historia Moderna,  Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, pp.93-104, (2015)

Resumen:
El Concilio de Trento resultó vital en la nueva estructuración de la Iglesia Católica, no dejando su legislación indiferente a nadie. Uno de los muchísimos aspectos sobre los que legisló fue la clausura de las religiosas femeninas, hecho que despertó unas olas de indignación que tardaron más de un siglo en apaciguarse. En este contexto, se localiza este artículo que versa sobre la actitud opuesta y disgustada presentada por las clarisas vizcaínas ante la legislación tridentina con respecto a la clausura de las religiosas; postura que no fue algo específica del Señorío vizcaíno ya que fue ampliamente compartida en los centros religiosos femeninos del mundo católico.

This paper was delivered at Duke University at the invitation of Caroline Bruzelius, April 2005. It compares the two very different ways in which Clare of Assisi and Elizabeth of Hungary, both inspired by Francis,  expressed their quest for "evangelical poverty."

La storia di Chiara è comprensibile solo a partire da quella di Francesco. È soprattutto Chiara a raccontarci della loro relazione umana e cristiana. Dai suoi testi compare con molta evidenza che il sogno evangelico di Francesco di diventare un “frate minore” costituì lo stesso ideale di Chiara ad essere “sorella povera”. Dallo stesso sogno però nasce però in lei una forma propria, adeguata e necessaria al suo stato femminile, mediante la scelta della clausura a San Damiano. Dunque: due volti di uno stesso sogno evangelico.

Because of the remarkable thematic density of their contents, the frescoes in S. Maria inter Angelos near Spoleto offer intriguing opportunities for an extensive iconographic examination. Despite the existence of a considerable secondary literature on this monument1, however, very few art historians have chosen to focus specifically on iconography. There is no doubt that the dispersal of most of the scenes among various museums and institutions, and the consequent disruption of the original program, have thus far discouraged most scholars from attempting an iconographic analysis of the cycle and have promoted instead a more traditional, formalist approach. Nevertheless, with the help of the virtual reconstruction prepared in conjunction with the present volume, it is now possible to bring some new perspectives to the study of S. Maria inter Angelos. The purpose of the present contribution is to provide an iconographic analysis focused specifically on the motif of the Crucifixion, which appears to have played a pivotal role in the decorative system of this church.

The paper discusses a particular exemplar of the canonization letter of Clare of Assisi, which is kept in the State Archive of Ascoli Piceno. This document shows a number of diplomatic peculiarities: first of all, it is one of the rare surviving examples of the papal canonization bull Clara claris preclara; at the same time it contains diplomatic elements, e.g. dating and address, differentiating it from the rest of the textual tradition. Through an analysis of both, internal and external features of the document concerned, as well as of the relationship between the Apostolic See and the institutions of the municipality and bishopric of Ascoli around the middle of the 13 th century, the paper interprets the canonization bull as part of a close cooperation between the papacy and the local mendicant orders. The appendix comprises an edition of the canonization bull and eight further unpublished papal documents directed at the municipality and diocese of Ascoli.