Virgin Clare

Clare of Assisi, born Chiara Offreduccio in 1194 in Assisi in central Italy, was the eldest daughter of the nobleman Favarone di Offreduccio and his wife Ortolana. She grew up in a wealthy household during the civic strife that marked late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Assisi. Contemporary and near-contemporary sources present her as pious from youth, given to fasting and almsgiving, and expected by her family to make an advantageous marriage. Her mother Ortolana was herself devout and later entered religious life. Clare received the education customary for a noblewoman of her class in that region and century.

In 1212, moved by the preaching and example of Francis of Assisi, she left her family home. On the night of Palm Sunday she was received at the Porziuncola, where Francis cut her hair and clothed her in a rough habit. After brief stays at the Benedictine houses of San Paolo delle Abbadesse and Sant'Angelo in Panzo, she settled at San Damiano, the small church Francis had rebuilt outside Assisi. There she was joined by her sister Agnes and, in time, by other women, including her mother. The community became known as the Poor Ladies of San Damiano and later as the Order of Saint Clare, or Poor Clares. Clare served as abbess from about 1216 until her death, directing a life of enclosure, manual work, prayer, and radical poverty according to the Franciscan ideal.

Throughout her life she insisted on the Privilege of Poverty: the right to own nothing, even in common, and to live by alms. She resisted repeated efforts by popes and cardinal protectors to impose a more conventional endowed rule on her sisters. She composed a Rule, the first monastic rule known to have been written by a woman, which Pope Innocent IV confirmed in August 1253, shortly before her death. Clare was often ill in later years yet remained a spiritual counselor; Francis himself is reported to have sought her advice. Tradition records that around 1240, when imperial troops threatened Assisi, she displayed the Blessed Sacrament from the convent and the attackers withdrew. A later tradition that, confined to her cell, she saw and heard the Christmas liturgy at the church of Saint Francis was cited in the twentieth century when she was named patron of television.

Clare died at San Damiano on 11 August 1253. Pope Innocent IV visited her in her last days. She was canonized by Pope Alexander IV on 26 September 1255, two years after her death. Her body was later translated to the Basilica of Saint Clare in Assisi, built in her honor, where it remains. Her feast is kept on 11 August. She is venerated as a virgin and foundress, the principal female collaborator of Francis of Assisi, and a model of contemplative poverty in the Franciscan tradition.