St Clare of Assisi

Clare was born around 1193 or 1194 in Assisi, a hill town in central Italy. She was the daughter of Favarone di Offreduccio and Ortolana, members of a wealthy and influential noble family. Her upbringing gave her material security and placed her within the social expectations of medieval aristocratic life.

The surviving evidence for Clare is unusually rich for a medieval woman. It includes her own Rule, Testament, Blessing and four letters to Agnes of Prague, together with an early biography and the sworn testimony gathered during the process for her canonisation shortly after her death.

Clare grew up during a period of political conflict between Assisi’s noble families and its rising merchant class. Her family experienced displacement during these struggles, and the instability of her early life formed part of the world in which she later chose a radically different kind of security.

Even before entering religious life, Clare was remembered for prayer, generosity towards people in need and a reluctance to accept the marriage her family planned for her. She became increasingly interested in the preaching and way of life of Francis of Assisi, whose fraternity had embraced poverty, penance and direct obedience to the Gospel.

Clare met Francis privately with the assistance of trusted companions and gradually discerned whether she was being called to follow the same evangelical path. Their relationship became one of spiritual friendship rather than simply that of a passive pupil and an unquestioned master.

On the night following Palm Sunday in 1212, when she was approximately eighteen, Clare left her family home. Tradition states that Clare left using the Door of the Dead - a second door to be used for removing a coffin from the house - signifying the renouncement of her former life and the material world. Accompanied by her friend Bona di Guelfuccio, she travelled to the small church of St Mary of the Angels at the Portiuncula, where Francis and his brothers received her.

Francis cut Clare’s hair as a sign of her new consecrated life, and she exchanged her fine clothing for a simple penitential habit. This public renunciation of wealth, status and an expected marriage placed her outside the future her family had prepared for her.

Because the young Franciscan fraternity had no established women’s monastery, Clare first stayed briefly with Benedictine communities. Her relatives attempted to persuade or force her to return, but she remained committed to her vocation.

She eventually settled at San Damiano, the small church outside Assisi that Francis had previously repaired. This became Clare’s home for more than forty years and the centre of the new community developing around her.

Her younger sister Caterina soon followed her and received the religious name Agnes. Other women joined them, including members of Clare’s extended family. Her mother, Ortolana, later entered the community as well.

The women were initially known as the Poor Ladies or Poor Sisters of San Damiano. They lived through prayer, manual work, mutual service and voluntary poverty. Their goal was not deprivation for its own sake but freedom to follow the poor and humble Christ without dependence upon property, wealth or social privilege.

Clare eventually accepted responsibility as abbess. She exercised authority through service rather than social superiority. Canonisation witnesses remembered her caring personally for sick sisters, undertaking ordinary work and washing the feet of those she served.

The community’s poverty created serious practical and canonical questions. Medieval women’s monasteries were normally expected to possess lands and income so that enclosure could be maintained securely. Clare instead wanted her sisters to live without permanent possessions, relying upon work, alms and divine Providence.

She therefore sought what became known as the Privilege of Poverty: formal protection allowing San Damiano not to possess property. This was an extraordinary exception to the normal expectations placed upon women’s religious communities.

Clare’s commitment should not be understood as romanticising involuntary poverty. She had known privilege and freely surrendered it. Her writings present poverty as participation in the self-emptying love of Christ and as freedom from the power that possessions can exercise over the heart.

Francis remained an important spiritual brother and friend. He provided the sisters with an early form of life and promised continuing care from the friars. Clare, in turn, supported Francis and the developing Franciscan movement through prayer, counsel and practical care.

Their relationship was not romantic. It was a spiritual friendship between two people united by a shared call to live the Gospel through poverty, fraternity, contemplation and service.

After Francis’s death in 1226, Clare remained responsible for preserving the form of life they had begun. She did not merely repeat his ideas. She developed a specifically female, communal and contemplative expression of Franciscan spirituality.

Clare’s surviving correspondence with Agnes of Prague reveals the reach of her influence. Agnes was a royal woman who rejected politically advantageous marriage proposals and founded a religious community in Prague. Clare encouraged her to remain faithful to poverty and to contemplate Christ as a mirror in which the believer is gradually transformed.

These letters demonstrate that enclosure did not make Clare disconnected from the wider Church. She maintained spiritual friendships, offered counsel and participated in an international network of women pursuing forms of evangelical religious life.

Clare’s contemplation centred upon the whole mystery of Christ: his poverty in the manger, humility in human life, suffering on the Cross and glory in heaven. She invited Agnes to gaze upon Christ, consider him and contemplate him so that her whole life might become conformed to his.

The Eucharist also occupied an important place in Clare’s spirituality. According to testimony preserved during her canonisation process, troops serving Emperor Frederick II approached San Damiano during a period of conflict. Though seriously ill, Clare had the Eucharist brought to the entrance and prayed for the protection of the community.

Later art commonly shows her holding a large monstrance. The early accounts instead describe a small silver or ivory container holding the Eucharist. The monstrance is therefore a later devotional symbol rather than a precise reconstruction of the event.

Canonisation testimony also credits Clare’s prayer with helping to protect Assisi during another military threat. Such accounts belong to the sworn religious testimony and hagiographical understanding of her contemporaries and should be presented within that context rather than as modern military documentation.

Clare experienced serious illness for much of her later life. Her physical limitations did not remove her from leadership or prayer, although they required her community to care for her as she had cared for them.

Her own earlier ascetic practices had sometimes been extremely severe. Francis and the local bishop reportedly encouraged greater moderation. Her mature Rule reflects increased attention to physical weakness, individual need and the care of sick sisters.

Clare also performed fine needlework for churches, including the making of corporals used during Mass. Her contemplative vocation included practical labour and care for the Church’s worship rather than prayer detached from ordinary work.

In 1252, when illness prevented her from joining the community’s Christmas worship, Clare reportedly experienced the celebration at a distance, hearing and seeing what occurred as though she were present. This tradition later contributed to her designation as patroness of television.

During her final years, Clare worked to secure papal approval for a Rule that preserved her community’s Franciscan poverty. Other forms of religious legislation had been proposed or imposed, but she remained determined that the distinctive vocation of San Damiano should not be lost.

Her Rule begins by declaring that the form of life of the Poor Sisters is to observe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It combines poverty with prayer, enclosure, community decision-making, leadership, fasting, manual work, silence and compassionate care for sisters who are ill or weak.

Clare became the first woman in Church history known to have written a Rule for her community that received papal approval. Pope Innocent IV approved it on 9 August 1253, only two days before her death.

Clare died at San Damiano on 11 August 1253. She was approximately fifty-nine or sixty years old. Her final words, preserved through early testimony, expressed gratitude to God for creating her.

Pope Alexander IV canonised Clare on 15 August 1255, only two years after her death. Her life and writings had already inspired communities far beyond Assisi.

A basilica dedicated to her was constructed in Assisi, and her remains were transferred there in 1260. The San Damiano crucifix associated with Francis and Clare is also preserved in the basilica.

The community Clare founded eventually became known as the Order of Saint Clare, whose members are commonly called Poor Clares. Different reforms and branches developed over the centuries, but Clare’s Rule and writings remain foundational to the wider Clarian tradition.

In an apostolic brief signed in 1957 and published in 1958, Pope Pius XII proclaimed Clare the heavenly patroness of television. He connected the patronage with the Christmas experience in which she reportedly saw and heard worship occurring at a distance.

Clare’s association with television is therefore not a modern joke added without religious meaning. It reflects the belief that communication technology should transmit truth and virtue rather than manipulate, isolate or degrade its audience.

Her continuing importance rests not only upon her connection with Francis. Clare was a spiritual author, founder and leader in her own right. She defended a distinctive vocation, shaped a community, advised women across Europe and left the Church a written vision of poverty, contemplation and mutual love.

The principal historical evidence includes Clare’s own writings, the testimony of women who lived with her, Thomas of Celano’s early biography and the canonisation proceedings. Vatican and Poor Clare sources confirm her departure from home, settlement at San Damiano, spiritual friendship with Francis, struggle for the Privilege of Poverty and approval of her Rule shortly before her death.

The Eucharistic defence of San Damiano and the Christmas vision are transmitted through early religious testimony and hagiography. John Paul II noted that the popular image of Clare with a monstrance is a later visual development from an account involving a smaller Eucharistic vessel.

Pius XII formally proclaimed Clare patroness of television because of the tradition that she heard and saw Christmas worship occurring at a distance while confined by illness.

Clare lived during the rapid growth of medieval Italian towns. Assisi was divided by tensions between older noble families, emerging merchants and neighbouring political powers.

Women of Clare’s class were normally expected to strengthen family alliances through marriage. Her decision to reject wealth, inheritance and an arranged social future therefore challenged both domestic expectations and the political role assigned to noblewomen.

Regarding the 'Door of the Dead'. Homes in Assisi were often built with two doors. One door was for regular use whilst the second door was to be opened only for removing a coffin from the house - known as the Door of the Dead. Historians note that these structures likely served defensive and practical purposes especially during the violent Middle ages. This secondary door is narrow and raised from the street level, requiring a removable ladder to access the home. The entryway would also be too slim for multiple attackers to breach simultaneously. During a nighttime lockdown, the main ground-floor door would be bolted heavily from inside. Once the ladder of the second door was pulled inside, it could be bolted securely and the home becomes a mini-fortress.

The early thirteenth century also saw widespread movements seeking a more visibly evangelical Christianity. Some remained within the Church, while others entered conflict with ecclesiastical authority. Francis and Clare pursued radical Gospel poverty while remaining committed to communion with the Church.

Women’s religious life was undergoing significant development. Many women sought new forms of penitential, communal or contemplative life, but Church authorities were concerned about security, governance, enclosure and financial support.

This helps explain the tension surrounding Clare’s insistence that her community possess no permanent property. Church leaders were not only resisting poverty as an ideal; they also questioned whether a community of enclosed women could survive without stable income.

Clare’s achievement involved preserving evangelical poverty while creating a sustainable form of prayer, leadership, mutual care and communal responsibility.

Her world was also marked by conflict between papal and imperial forces. The military threats remembered in her canonisation testimony occurred within these larger struggles rather than as isolated attacks directed solely against her monastery.

Clare’s Rule and Privilege of Poverty were highly unusual within the canonical assumptions of her period. Benedict XVI highlighted both the substantial role played by medieval women and Clare’s determination to protect a form of life that differed from the normal economic structure of women’s monasteries.

St Clare speaks powerfully to people who feel trapped by expectations built around status, income or family approval. Her vocation required her to distinguish between what others expected and what she believed God was genuinely asking of her.

She is especially relevant to women discerning religious life, contemplative vocation or forms of leadership that may not fit conventional expectations. Clare did not hold influence through public office or travel, yet she formed communities across Europe through prayer, writing and example.

Her poverty challenges consumerism and the belief that security or personal worth depends upon possessions. At the same time, her voluntary renunciation should not be used to romanticise involuntary poverty or dismiss the suffering of people who lack food, housing or financial stability.

Clare can accompany people simplifying their lives, reducing consumption or trying to use resources more responsibly. Her goal was not owning as little as possible for competitive or aesthetic reasons, but becoming freer to love Christ and other people.

Her contemplative life is relevant to people exhausted by noise, constant notifications and pressure to remain publicly visible. She demonstrates that hidden prayer can serve the Church and the world without needing recognition.

Her patronage of television gives her a particularly modern connection with broadcasters, filmmakers, producers, online creators and communications workers. It invites them to ask whether their work transmits truth, dignity and hope or merely captures attention.

Clare is also meaningful to people living with chronic illness or restricted mobility. Her later years were marked by substantial physical weakness, but she remained a writer, leader, intercessor and spiritual mother.

She speaks to founders and organisational leaders defending a clear mission against pressure to become something safer, wealthier or more conventional. Her determination to secure approval of her Rule required patience, diplomacy and decades of perseverance.

Her relationship with Francis provides a model of spiritual friendship between a man and woman centred upon a shared love of God rather than possession, romance or competition.

Her community life also prevents contemplative spirituality from becoming individualistic. Clare’s Rule includes decision-making, care of the sick, work, leadership and preservation of mutual love.

Clare’s Eucharistic imagery should not be reduced to a magical defence story. Its deeper meaning is that fear, violence and political power do not possess the final authority over a Christian community.

Her enclosure should not be interpreted as a universal expectation that women withdraw from society. It was the specific vocation through which Clare and her sisters believed they could serve the whole Church through prayer, poverty and communal witness.