Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy

Creating Clare of Assisi

The Medieval Franciscans General editor

Steven J. McMichael University of St. Thomas

VOLUME 5

Creating Clare of Assisi Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy

By

Lezlie S. Knox

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

Cover illustration: illustration from the xvth century manuscript of Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior in the Museo Francescano, Rome. © Museo Francescano. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Knox, Lezlie S. Creating Clare of Assisi : female Franciscan identities in later medieval Italy / by Lezlie S. Knox. p. cm. — (The medieval Franciscans, ISSN 1572-6991 ; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16651-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Clare, of Assisi, Saint, 1194– 1253. 2. Poor Clares—Italy—History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 3. Monastic and religious life of women—Italy—History—Middle Ages, 600–1500. I. Title. II. Series. BX4700.C6K56 2008 271’.97302—dc22 2008027701

ISSN 1572-6991 ISBN 978-90-04-16651-6 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

For John and Angus

CONTENTS List of Maps ............................................................................... List of Abbreviations .................................................................. Acknowledgments .......................................................................

ix xi xiii

Introduction

The Friars and Sisters ........................................

1

Chapter One

Clare and the Poor Sisters of San Damiano ...

19

Chapter Two

The Order of Saint Clare ................................

57

Beyond Clare: A Franciscan Centered Order

87

Chapter Four

The Clarisses and Observant Reform .............

123

Chapter Five

Writing Female Franciscan Identity ..................

157

The True Daughters of Francis and Clare .........

187

Bibliography ................................................................................ Index ...........................................................................................

191 215

Chapter Three

Conclusion

LIST OF MAPS Map 1: The Damianite Confederation, 1228 ...........................

33

Map 2: Networks of Reformed Clarisses, c. 1420–1500 ..........

130

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Writings by Clare of Assisi ( in chronological order) 1LAg 2LAg 3LAg 4LAg BlCl FlCl TestCl

The First Letter to Agnes of Prague (1234) The Second Letter to Agnes of Prague (1235) The Third Letter to Agnes of Prague (1238) The Fourth Letter to Agnes of Prague (1253) Clare’s Blessing (1253) The Form of Life or Rule of Saint Clare (1253) Clare’s Testament (1247–1253) Franciscan Rules and Rule Commentaries ( in chronological order)

ER LR FLHug FLInn FLCl RUrb EJC

Francis’ Regula Non Bullata ( Earlier Rule) (1209/10–1221) Francis’ Regula Bullata ( Later Rule) (1223) The Constitution of Cardinal Hugolino (1219) The Rule of Pope Innocent IV (1247) The Rule of Saint Clare (1253) The Rule of Pope Urban IV (1263) John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare (1445) Hagiographical Sources

1C 2C BC LCl LMj Mariano PC VLCl

The First Life of Francis by Thomas of Celano (1228) The Second Life of Francis, The Desire of the Remembrance of a Soul, by Thomas of Celano (1247) Bull of Canonization of Clare of Assisi The Legend of Saint Clare (1255) Bonaventure’s Major Legend of Saint Francis (1260–1263) Mariano of Florence, Libro delle degnità et excellentie del Ordine della seraphica madre delle povere donne Sancta Chiara da Asisi [sic] The Canonization Process of Clare of Assisi (1253) Versified Legend of Saint Clare (1254–1255)

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list of abbreviations Other Abbreviations

AASS AF AFH AM BF BF ns CAED CF FF FAED RIS

Acta Sanctorum Analecta Franciscana sive Chronica aliaque varia Documenta ad historiam Fratrum Minorum spectantia edita a Patribus Collegii S. Bonaventurae. 12 vols. Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1885–1983. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum Annales Minorum. Edited by Luke Wadding. 29 vols. 3rd edition. Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1931–1948. Bullarium Franciscanum. 4 vols. Edited by J.H. Sbaralea. Rome: Typis Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1759– 1768. Bullarium Franciscanum. Nova series. 3 vols. Edited by U. Huntemann and J.M. Pou y Marti. Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1929–1949. The Lady. Clare of Assisi: Early Documents. Revised edition. Edited and translated by Regis Armstrong. New York: New City Press, 2006. Collectanea Franciscana Fontes Franciscani. Edited by Enrico Menestò. Medioevo Francescano 2. Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1995. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. 3 Volumes. Edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellman, and William Short. New York: New City Press, 1999–2001. Rerum italicarum scriptores ab anno æræ christianæ quingentesimo ad millesimum quingentesimum quorum potissima pars nunc primum in lucem prodit ex Ambrosianæ, Estensis, aliarumque insignium bibliothecarum codicibus. Edited by Ludovico Antonius Muratori. Milan: Typografia Societatis Palatinae, 1723–1738.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My interest in the late medieval Clarisses began when I started to wonder how the enclosed sisters responded to the friars’ contentious debates over the role of learning and education in the Franciscan Order. This question ultimately led to the exploration of the combined issues of community and identity which became the subject of this book. In the course of researching and writing it, I have drawn on many scholarly communities and it is a pleasure to thank them here and acknowledge their contributions to the formation of my own identity as a historian. I have been fortunate to have enjoyed the support of several institutions. Initial archival work in Italy was funded by a Fulbright Fellowship. Both the Medieval Institute and the Graduate School at the University of Notre Dame were generous throughout my studies. My subsequent institutional homes in the History Departments at California State University at Long Beach and Marquette University also provided research support through summer faculty funding, as well as the stimulation of wonderful colleagues. While making the move from Long Beach to Marquette, I was able to take a year’s leave supported by the American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Junior Faculty. This grant gave me time to rethink the project in critical ways. Sabbatical leave funded by Dean Michael McKinney at Marquette made possible the completion of this book. While financial assistance is critical, of course, I have benefited as much from the advice and support I received from my teachers. John Van Engen directed the dissertation from which this book grew and provided thoughtful advice throughout its long gestation. Mark Jordan went above and beyond his duty as mentor, sounding board, and friend. I also received inestimable guidance from Kathleen Biddick, Edward English, and Daniel Sheerin. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I did my undergraduate work, I am especially grateful for the strong foundation in Medieval Studies and encouragement I received from William Courtenay, Gail Geiger, Christopher Kleinhenz, and Michael Shank. My fellow graduate students at the Medieval Institute formed a community that was a model of collegiality, generosity, and intellectual

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excitement. I especially want to thank Christine Caldwell Ames, Daniel Hobbins, Mark (now Fr. Dominic) Holtz, Rachel Koopmans, Thomas Luongo, David Mengel (who initially created the maps for the book), James Mixson, and Lisa Wolverton for their comments on earlier versions of my arguments. Many others have responded to my work and offered suggestions from which I have benefited greatly. Sean Field read the entire draft, saved me from several errors, and asked useful questions that helped me to improve the clarity of its arguments. I also thank Dorothy Abrahamse, Dorsey Armstrong, George Dameron, Valerie Garver, Jennifer Heindl, Carol Lansing, Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, Deborah McGrady, Robert Meyer-Lee, Anneke Mulder-Bakker, and Darleen Pryds for their advice and friendship. It has been a pleasure to work with everyone at Brill, especially Marcella Mulder whose patience is much appreciated. Thanks as well to Steven McMichael for including the book in the Medieval Franciscans series. As a medievalist, I have been especially lucky to meet a group of people who are not only interested in my work as history, but also as a window on their living tradition. Ingrid Peterson first provided an entrée to the world of Franciscan scholars. She also secured a summer grant from the Franciscan Fund of the Sisters of St. Francis (Rochester MN), for which I am grateful. Other Franciscan women who have assisted and encouraged me include Margaret Carney, Mary Francis Hone, Margaret Klotz, Beth Lynn, Roberta McKelvie, Pacelli Millane, and the Clarisses who spent two days in a seminar on my research at St. Bonaventure University in the summer of 2005. I also thank the fine community of scholars connected with the Franciscan Institute at St Bonaventure’s: Michael Blastic, Michael Cusato, Jean-François GodetCalogeras, Roberta McKelvie, and Mary Meany (surely an honorary Franciscan). I hope this book comes somewhere near repaying their confidence in my research, despite my outsider status. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my family for their support. My parents, James and Kathleen Knox, have always encouraged my intellectual pursuits (no matter how impractical they may seem . . . medieval Latin?). This book is dedicated to the two guys who supported me through its completion. First, to Angus, who spent many hours laying in my study rather than going for a walk in the park or playing ball in the backyard as he would have preferred. And last but not least, to my husband, John Symms, for his love and understanding.

acknowledgments

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A Note on Translations While most of the translations in the book are my own, I also have made use of the standard compilations of sources for the early Franciscan movement. This is because one of the main audiences for this book will be the modern day Franciscans who are the “true daughters [and sons] of Francis and Clare” (but not necessarily academic scholars). For consistency, I ultimately decided to use the familiar English translations when quoting longer passages: Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, edited by Regis Armstrong, et al. (New York: New City Press, 1999–2001) and Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, edited by Regis Armstrong (New City Press, 2006). In each case, the notes cite the source and then indicate its location in the relevant volume, for example, FLCl 6:2 (CAED, pp. 117–118). I have also followed these volumes’ abbreviations. I have used the English names of the major Franciscan chronicles and documents, as well as their commonly used names (thus Clare not Chiara). Papal bulls and infrequently cited sources have been left in their original language.

INTRODUCTION

THE FRIARS AND SISTERS Both men and women were attracted to the fledgling religious movement associated with Francis of Assisi in the early years of the thirteenth century. Preaching in cathedrals and town squares throughout central Italy, Francis called for a new form of religious life based on the Gospel ideals of humility, penance, and voluntary poverty. Men soon joined him to form a fraternity of itinerant preachers modeled after the Apostles. Bishop Jacques de Vitry, who traveled through the Italian peninsula in the summer of 1216, recognized the nucleus of what would become the Franciscan Order. He wrote admiringly to his friends back in Liège about the Lesser Brothers—Fratres Minores—who ministered in towns and rejected a stable life of fixed communities and guaranteed income. He also praised the Lesser Sisters—Sorores Minores—who formed hospices and lived simply from their own labor, accepting nothing that would ease their lives.1 Brother John of Perugia similarly recalled that men and women alike were inspired by Francis and his followers. In his account of the growth of the Franciscan Order composed around 1240, he boasted that the friars’ preaching inspired young men to leave their families and give away their possessions in order to join the Franciscan fraternity. Their sermons also moved women, although it was plain that they could not directly join the brothers. Brother John explained, therefore, that in each city where the friars preached, they established houses for the women, what he called “reclusive monasteries for doing penance (monasteria reclusa ad paenitentiam faciendam).” They also named a brother to serve as their visitator and corrector.2 Both this passage and Jacques de Vitry’s well known testimony frequently have been read as descriptions of the life of Clare of Assisi

1 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. by R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), pp. 75–76. Many of the texts related to the early Franciscan movement may be found in English translation in FAED and CAED. 2 John of Perugia, “De inceptione vel fundamento Ordinis et actibus illorum fratrum Minorum qui fuerunt primi in religione et socii B. Francisci,” in FF, pp. 1344–1345.

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and the Poor Ladies.3 Yet it is significant that neither testimony refers directly to Clare or to her community at San Damiano outside Assisi. Each man was testifying only and more generally to the broad appeal of Franciscan spirituality, which attracted women equally with men. Certainly, Jacques de Vitry and John of Perugia also recognized a critical problem faced by the nascent Franciscan Order. Francis wanted to convert both men and women, but he had given little thought to how the latter could participate in a mendicant way of life. This problem was hardly unique to the Franciscan movement, of course, although the friars’ spiritual ideal of evangelical poverty and mendicant preaching created particular challenges for ministering to female penitents.4 In the early years it was relatively easy to maintain an informal association between the friars and small groups of female penitents. Women’s houses easily resided alongside men’s, as Jacques de Vitry described in his letter. However, as the loosely formed spiritual movement grew into a religious institution increasingly defined by clerical responsibilities, it became less clear how enclosed women could continue to collaborate with the friars. For although John of Perugia recalled mutual inspiration and cooperation between the brothers and the sisters, the decades following Francis’ death in 1226 were conspicuously marked by conflict between the friars and female communities. Stories about the founder’s hostility toward women circulated among those brothers who resented the Order’s growing obligations toward enclosed women. Their opposition has been widely influential in characterizing relations between the male and female branches on the Franciscan Order. Some later Franciscan chroniclers would claim that Francis refused to support any female foundation except for San Damiano. Brother Stephen, a lay brother who had joined the Order in its early years, famously recalled how Francis protested that while God had taken away the friars’ wives, now the devil gave sisters to them!5 Clare of Assisi was Cf. CAED, p. 427 and FAED, vol. 2, p. 54 n. a. See Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: the Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Stephen Rowan (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1995), pp. 89–137. For an introduction to the appeal of Franciscan spirituality among women especially, see André Vauchez, “Female Sanctity and the Franciscan Movement,” in The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel E. Bornstein (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 171–184. 5 Livarius Oliger, “Descriptio codiciis Sancti Antonii e urbe unacum appendice textuum de sancto Francisco,” AFH 12 (1919): 321–401, see the specific passage on p. 383. 3 4

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an exception to his aversion. Brother Stephen reported that she was the only woman to whom Francis showed any affection and that her house of San Damiano was the only community in whose welfare he was concerned.6 A mid fourteenth-century manuscript is the only source for these stories from Brother Stephen, a lay brother who was sent to Syria in 1220 to tell Francis about changes within the Order. So while Francis’ outburst invoking the Devil frequently has been cited as evidence of his hostility toward women, its textual history—perhaps an oral tradition recorded almost a century after the events occurred?—seems to indicate that it is more reflective of contemporary concerns about the place of women in the Order than about Francis’ own “misogyny.”7 This reluctant acknowledgment of Clare’s place in Francis’ affections, combined with the silence about her community in two of the most famous early accounts of female communities, call attention to her complicated status as the first Franciscan woman. This book investigates Clare of Assisi’s ambiguous position in the development of female Franciscanism as an institution throughout the Middle Ages. Parallel to an emphasis on Francis’ hostility toward religious women (or, at least, their communities), there is another long established tradition of viewing Clare as his partner in the foundation of the Franciscan “Second Order.” This narrative presents her as a heroine who fought to preserve the sisters’ right to remain true to Francis’ spiritual ideals, defined primarily as evangelical poverty. She triumphed in this struggle when Pope Innocent IV approved her Form of Life ( forma vitae), although this success was short lived. Her religious constitution was soon suppressed and not widely professed until the Observant Reform movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A newer historiography reduces Clare’s role. It calls attention to the critical role played by Pope Gregory IX and his ecclesiastical colleagues as the real institutional creators of what he called (with deliberate

6 Brother Stephen either ignored or was unaware of Lady Jacoba dei Settesoldi, who also appears as an exceptional example in the early Franciscan sources. She was a widowed Roman noblewoman who became a sort of patron to the brothers after hearing Francis preach. The Assisi Compilation, for example, records how Francis allowed her to visit the brothers and also provided them with cloth for their tunics (see the Assisi Compilation 8 in FF 1477–1480). 7 See for example, John Moorman, The History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 35 and Brenda Bolton, “Mulieres Sanctae” in Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), p. 150.

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confusion) the Order of San Damiano.8 This first papal order was later superseded by the Order of Saint Clare, established by Pope Urban IV in 1263. He confirmed that female Franciscan life would conform to long-established monastic models and relegated Clare to the role of figurehead. The disjuncture between these two perspectives—Clare as foundress and Clare as casualty of ecclesiastical efforts to organize women’s religious life—result not solely from the type of sources emphasized (hagiographic legends and chronicles versus documentary sources). They also arise from the conflict produced by Clare herself and those friars and sisters who would use her writings to define female Franciscan life throughout the Middle Ages. This book argues that Clare of Assisi was neither a purely heroic founder nor a marginalized symbol. Clare herself was a significant figure in the larger contest to define what it meant for women to belong to the Franciscan Order, but her goals were complex, as was her impact on the later sisters. Her image was continually fought over by those who wanted to use her image to define a role for enclosed sisters as followers of Francis of Assisi. While Clare obviously was known throughout the Franciscan Order, the analysis focuses on those who presumably had the greatest stakes in the debates: the medieval Italian women whose religious movement ultimately became the Order of Saint Clare. For some, their devotional orientation was always focused toward Franciscan spirituality. For others, their status was imposed from the outside. Nonetheless, both situations required a confrontation with the legacy of Clare of Assisi and produced varying images of Francis’ first female convert. Assessing the First Franciscan Woman and her Legacy Certainly Clare has become the best known of all medieval Franciscan women.9 In 1978 Rosalind and Christopher Brooke judged that “little 8 For an excellent genealogical reconstruction of the different names used to describe the women’s religious movement in central Italy focusing on the female Franciscanism, see Maria Pia Alberzoni, “Sorores Minores e autorità ecclesiastica fino al pontificato di Urbano IV,” in Giancarlo Andenna and Benedetto Vetere, eds. Chiara e la diffusione delle clarisse del secolo XIII: atti del Convegno di studi in occasione dell’VIII Centenario della nascita di Santa Chiara. Manduria, 14–15 dicembre 1994 (Galatina: Congedo, 1998), pp. 165–194. 9 Parts of this and the following section are based on Lezlie Knox, “Clare of Assisi: Foundress of An Order?” Spirit and Life 11 (2004): 11–29.

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perhaps remains to be discovered about [her] life and works.”10 Happily, their judgment was premature. “Clarian Studies” have flourished over the past quarter century supported by a critical edition of her writings published in 1985.11 Their English translation, accompanied by major biographical texts and other important documents related to early Franciscan communities, is now in its third edition.12 The celebration of her 750th birthday in 1993 further promoted research devoted to her life and influence.13 Detailed studies have confirmed her status as a central member of the early Franciscan community. They also have demonstrated her determination to share and defend Francis’ ideal of Christocentric poverty. Increased interest in medieval women and gender over the past few decades—and particularly religious women and gender—further inspired an entire subfield of Clarian studies. These works are striking for the attention they pay to her “as a woman whose life, writings, personality, spirituality, and theology are integrally connected to her

10 Rosalind B. Brooke and Christopher N.L. Brooke, “St Clare,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek L. Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), p. 275. 11 Claire d’Assise: Écrits, eds. Marie-France Becker, Jean-François Godet, and Thaddée Matura. Sources Chrétiennes 325 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985). (Now reprinted in FF.) 12 The Lady: Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, trans. Regis J. Armstrong (New York: New City Press 2006); earlier editions appeared in 1993 (Clare of Assisi: Early Documents published by Franciscan Institute Publications) and 1985 (Francis and Clare: The Complete Works with co-author Ignatius Brady was published by Paulist Press). Ignacio Omaechevaria’s Spanish translation and edition of the Latin texts also was important for making the related documents better known. See Escritos de Santa Clara y Documentos Complementarios, trans. Ignacio Omaechevaria, 3rd revised edition (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1982). 13 This includes the first critical biographies: Marco Bartoli, Chiara d’Assisi (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1989), Margaret Carney, The First Franciscan Woman: Clare of Assisi and her Form of Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), and Ingrid Peterson, Clare of Assisi (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993). Important conferences associated with the centenary include: Giancarlo Andenna, and Benedetto Vetere, eds. Chiara e la diffusione delle clarisse del secolo XIII; ibid. Chiara e il Secondo Ordine: il fenomeno francescano femminile nel Salento: atti del Convegno di studi in occasione dell’VIII centenario della nascita di Santa Chiara: Nardò, 12–13 novembre 1993 (Galatina: Congedo, 1997), Geneviève BrunelLobichon et al. eds. Sainte Claire d’Assise et sa posterité. VIIIè centenaire de Sainte Claire. Actes du Colloque de l’UNESCO (29 septembre–1èr octobre 1994) (Paris: Les Éditions franciscaines, 1994); Chiara d’Assisi: Atti del XX Convegno internazionale (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1993); and Ingrid Peterson, ed. Clare of Assisi: A Medieval and Modern Woman (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1996), pp. 99–114.

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gender,” as Catherine Mooney noted.14 An underlying feature in many of these studies is a common assumption of Clare’s singularity as a woman who strove to give shape to a female religious order in the face of opposition from masculine authority represented by Francis, the Friars Minor, and the Roman Church. Her struggle to gain approval for her Form of Life is the climax of this story and leads to her ubiquitous epithet: the first woman to compose a monastic rule for other religious women.15 This close focus on her life and writings has meant that for many scholars, Clare of Assisi represents the female Franciscan tradition and her spiritual ideals have been identified with efforts to build the female institution.16 The tradition of a female Franciscan order forming around Clare of Assisi and San Damiano dates back at least as far as the later Middle Ages.17 Mariano of Florence, a Franciscan chronicler who wrote the first history dedicated to the female order at the beginning of the sixteenth century, explained how Francis had sent sisters from Assisi to establish 14 Catherine Mooney, “Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae? Claire of Assisi and her Interpreters” in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters, ed. Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 52–77. For a perspective on this trend broadly, see Elizabeth A. Clark, “Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History,” Church History 70 (2001): 395–426. 15 It is seemingly obligatory to repeat this identification in studies of Clare. The origin seems to spring from Thaddée Matura’s introductory essay in the Sources Chrétiennes edition of Clare’s writings (see Claire d’Assise: Écrits, p. 41). For examples in scholarship see Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, “A Medieval Woman’s Utopian Vision: The Rule of Clare of Assisi,” in her collection, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 66–67 and Nancy Bradley Warren, Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 25. This tendency is not limited to English language scholarship. Leonhard Lehmann recently observed “Per chi voglia studiare le donne nel medioevo, infatti, sarebbe impossibile prescindere dall’unica donna che ha lasciato un testo legislative da lei composto per altre donne, come appunto fu la Regola di Chiara.” See “Le Fonti Francescane Nuova Edizione (2004): Osservazione e Valutazione,” AFH 99 (2006): 319. 16 Surveys of medieval religious history regularly conflate female Franciscanism with Clare. See, for example, C.H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of a Movement on Society: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (London: Longman, 1994), pp. 41–42, Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 304–312, and Patricia Ranft, Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe (New York: St Martins, 1996), pp. 64–68. 17 Such late medieval sources are in part responsible for the assumptions by some modern scholars that Clare founded the “Franciscan Second Order.” See for example the introduction in Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle: A Poor Clare’s Account of the Reformation of Geneva, ed. and trans. Carrie F. Klaus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 7.

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new communities where women could live under the monastic rule that the Poverello had prepared for them. These new foundations were greatly desired: so many women had been inspired by Clare to enter the order that its numbers and fame spread rapidly through all of Italy.18 Several of these foundations he singled out for continuing to live under the ideals of Francis and Clare “all the way to the present day (insino al presente dì ).” This is a favored phase: it appears 35 times throughout the entire work, allowing Mariano to emphasize the continuity of the female order as an institution and as a spiritual ideal. Mariano of Florence’s description of a female Franciscan order growing out of the efforts and ideals of Francis and Clare represent what the newer historiography on the origins of the female Franciscan Order has criticized as anachronistic. For although Roberto Rusconi warned in 1979 that “it is hard to equate the extension of the San Damiano community’s sphere of influence with the spread of a ‘Second Order of Franciscans,’ ” his caution was frequently overlooked in the resulting enthusiasm for Clare’s heroic determination to guarantee the right for her community to live according to Francis’ spiritual ideas.19 These scholars emphasize that the institutionalization of the female Franciscan movement came not from Francis or his followers, but rather the papal curia. (This effort produced the resentment toward religious women reflected in some of the later sources.) Clare, in turn, has been discounted as a major influence on the order outside of those houses most closely connected to her own community near Assisi.20 These arguments offer important corrections to a view of female Franciscanism drawn from later sources that presume a precocious institutional formation.

18 Mariano of Florence, Libro delle degnità et excellentie del Ordine della seraphica madre delle povere donne Sancta Chiara da Asisi, ed. Giovanni Boccali (Florence: Edizioni Studi Francescani, 1986), 51 (all citations from this work refer to paragraph numbers). 19 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, 11–13 ottobre 1979 (Assisi: Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani, 1980), pp. 264–313. 20 For the institutionalization of the female Franciscan Order emphasizing the papal role, see Maria Pia Alberzoni La Nascita di un’Istituzione: L’Ordine di S. Damiano nel XIII secolo (Milan: Edizioni CUSL, 1996). Alberzoni’s work has recently become more accessible to Anglophone scholars with the publication of an English translation of her most important essays, along with a new introduction by her. See Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century, ed. Jean-François Godet-Calogeras (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2004).

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Now renewed attention to questions about her writings and to the Franciscan movement in its larger religious, social, and political context has encouraged a reevaluation of Clare’s direct impact on the female order.21 This reorientation owes much to the research of Italian historians, including especially the work of Maria Pia Alberzoni who has recast our understanding of the women’s order, as well as the new attention paid to individual community studies revealed in local archives.22 This reevaluation of the female Franciscan movement over the first half century of the Franciscan movement had demonstrated in rich detail that the early female response to Francis cannot be understood simply or solely as a Clare-centered movement.23 This work is taking the study of medieval Franciscan women in exciting new directions, although—or perhaps, because—some of the conclusions have caused controversy. The “Franciscan Question”—that is, the analysis of what sources offer the most accurate or authentic presentation of Francis and his Order—has dominated historical studies of Francis of Assisi for over a century.24 Now a full blown “Clarian Question” is also flourishing with all of the polemical implications that one would expect when a “Question” is connected to “Franciscan Studies.” Clare’s influence and her understanding of what it meant for men and women to live out Francis’ spiritual ideals at first may appear under assault. Re-readings of some of the canonical sources, focusing on her corpus of writings, have destabilized her status as architect of a religious order. It is thus necessary to turn to the main sources for her life and their reception throughout the Middle Ages. 21 Cristina Andenna, “Chiara d’Assisi: Alcume riflessioni su un problema ancora aperto,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 34 (1998): 547–579. See also Maria Pia Alberzoni, “Le congregazioni monastiche: le Damianite,” in Dove va la storiografia monastica, pp. 379–401. 22 For example, “Chiara d’Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile,” in Francesco d’Assisi e il primo secolo di storia francescana ( Turin: Einaudi, 1999), pp. 203–235 and Chiara e il papato (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1995). Many of the local studies have grown out of laurea theses, see for example Laura Borelli, Il francescanesimo femminile a Lucca nei secoli XIII e XIV. Il Monastero di Gattiola (Lucca: Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1999). 23 Alberzoni has credited the pioneering, and generally overlooked contributions of Lilly Zarncke, who identified Cardinal Hugolino’s role in shaping this movement into an institution (which Grundmann also recognized). Lilly Zarncke, Der Anteil des Karidnals Ugolino an der Ausbildung der drei Orden des Heiligen Franz, reprint edition (Hildesheim: Dr. H.A. Gerstenberg, 1972 [1930]). 24 A useful orientation to the “Franciscan Question” is Jacques Dalarun, La Malavventura di Francesco d’Assisi: per un uso storico delle Leggende Francescane (Milan: Edizioni Bibiblioteca Francescana, 1996).

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The Clarian Question and the Search for Authenticity One of the reasons that Clare has attracted so much attention from medievalist scholars is due to her status as a female author. Seven texts attributed to her have survived. Most historians working on the early Franciscan movement had accepted their authenticity and recognize how they provide evidence of her spiritual ideals as well as a dramatic account of her struggles to defend her vocation of evangelical poverty. The extent to which they also testify to her status as “foundress of Female Franciscan life” recently has been more debated. Clare’s writings include: four letters sent to Agnes of Prague (written between 1234–1253), a Form of Life (which later became known as the Rule of Saint Clare or the “first rule”) (c. 1251–1253), a Testament (1253), and a Blessing (1253).25 Although Luke Wadding printed a letter from Clare to Ermentrude of Bruges in the Annales Minorum, it seems to be a generic pastiche of several texts rather than her own original composition.26 Other texts must have been lost. She received letters from her sister, Agnes of Assisi, and from Cardinal Hugolino. Did she not write to them in return or send letters to other women like Ermentrude of Bruges or Agnes of Prague? Oral traditions suggest she did, although these claims may reflect a desire to connect more directly with her spiritual charisma. Of the surviving texts, only her rule and the letters addressed to Agnes possess solid manuscript traditions dating to the thirteenth century. For example, since the late nineteenth century scholars have believed that the original bull (Solet annuere) approving Clare’s Form of Life was rediscovered with her body when her tomb was opened at the end of the nineteenth century. This document provided the basis

25 In addition to the critical edition and translations of these writings cited above in n. 11 and n. 12, these texts are available in Fontes Francescani, ed. by Enrico Menestò, Stefano Brufani, and Giuseppe Cremascoli, Medioevo francescano, vol. 2 (Assisi: Porziuncula, 1995), pp. 2263–2324. This collection is not a new edition, but a reprint of existing editions intended to make available in one volume many of the thirteenthcentury sources for the early Franciscan Order (i.e. texts pertaining to both Francis and Clare). Fonti Francescane, ed. Ernesto Caroli, 2nd ed. (Padua: Editrici Francescani, 2004) reprints the Fontes Francescani texts with a facing page Italian translation. This collection is especially useful for the introductory essays before each text which takes into account recent scholarship. 26 AM IV, pp. 8–27; also in Sources Chrétiennes, pp. 192–195. Their correspondence is considered in David de Kok, “De Origine Ordinis S. Clarae in Flandria,” AFH 7 (1914): 234–246.

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for the first critical edition of the text published in 1897.27 However, a new examination of the Assisi parchment by Stefano Brufani and Attilio Bartoli Langeli in May 2006 has demonstrated convincingly that the bull is actually Pope Clement IV’s 1266 reconfirmation of the 1253 bull for the sisters who had now left San Damiano and moved inside Assisi’s town wall.28 The original bull is presumably lost, but this copy does provide early evidence of the text and its varied forms. The earliest copies of Clare’s letters to Agnes were produced in Prague sometime after the younger woman’s death in 1283, probably as part of an effort to support her canonization.29 They ultimately came to circulate throughout the Franciscan Order. The first letter was copied in the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals and a fourteenth-century German translation preserves both it and the others.30 Clare’s Testament and Blessing, however, often have been challenged as forgeries due to the weakness of the manuscript evidence. It is the status of the first text, Clare’s Testament, which has provoked the reevaluation of her status in shaping the early Franciscan movement. In 1995 the diplomatist and papal historian Werner Maleczek reopened the debate over the authenticity of Clare’s Testament.31 Given the importance of this article for shaping debates over her role in shaping female Franciscanism, his arguments need to be addressed at some length. Originally interested in diplomatic problems in the 1216 Privilege of Poverty attributed to Pope Innocent III, he identified its discrepancies with both canon law and contemporary diplomatic practices in the papal chancery. These inconsistencies ultimately led him to conclude

Seraphicae Legislationis Textus Originales (Florence: Quaracchi, 1897). Stefano Brufani and Attilio Bartoli Langeli, “La lettera Solet annuere di Innocenzo IV per Chiara d’Assisi (9 agosto 1253),” Franciscana 8 (2006): 63–106. 29 This earliest manuscript (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana M 10), also included a legend for Agnes’ who canonization process began in 1328. It ultimately was not successful, although Agnes was beatified in the nineteenth century and canonized in 1989. 30 See Walter W. Seton, “The Letters from Saint Clare to Blessed Agnes of Bohemia,” AFH 17 (1924): 509–519 and Some New Sources for the Life of Blessed Agnes of Bohemia (Aberdeen: the University Press, 1915). Now, see also Joan Mueller, Clare’s Letters to Agnes: Texts and Sources (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2001). 31 Werner Maleczek, “Das ‘Privilegium Paupertatis’ Innocenz’ III. Und das Testament der Klara von Assisi. Überlegungen zur Frage ihrer Echtheit,” CF 65 (1995): 5–82. [“Questions about the Authenticity of the Privilege of Poverty of Innocent III and of the Testament of Clare of Assisi,” trans. Cyprien Rosen and Dawn Nothwehr, Greyfriars Review 12 (1998): 1–80.] The English translation follows Maria Pia Alberzoni’s Italian translation of the article, which includes some revisions and Maleczek’s responses to his critics. 27 28

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that the bull was a later fabrication. Although the Legend of Saint Clare refers to privileges that she sought from Pope Innocent III, Maleczek suggested the passage was meant in a general manner rather than in reference to a specific document.32 Furthermore, since San Damiano was but one of many female penitential communities then flourishing in central Italy, he considered Clare’s house unlikely to draw the pope’s particular attention in 1216, especially in order to grant such a radical privilege. These conclusions directed him to Clare’s Testament as the only putatively thirteenth-century source to refer explicitly to the 1216 Privilege of Poverty.33 Franciscan scholars have long questioned the authenticity of her Testament since its manuscript tradition appeared to date only from the mid-fourteenth century.34 Maleczek’s reexamination, however, led him to confirm a later date for its composition. Three manuscripts contain both the Testament and the Privilege and each can be traced to the convents of Monteluce outside Perugia and Santa Lucia in Foligno, both of which had active scriptoria.35 From both this common origin and the text’s direct reference to the spurious Privilege, Maleczek argued that Clare’s Testament similarly must be counterfeit and that both documents could have been falsified in the mid-fifteenth century in one of the Umbrian scriptoria in order to support the sisters’ program of Observant reform. Werner Maleczek’s argument against the legitimacy of the 1216 Privilege is now widely accepted. 36 Forfeiting this document as an Compare LCl 14 and 20. TestCl 42–43 (CAED, p. 62/FF p. 2315). 34 Prior to Maleczek’s article, most Franciscan historians had accepted the document’s authenticity (following the lead of Manselli who had resolved earlier debates). Diego Ciccarelli first established a genealogy for the text in his “Contributi alla recensione degli scritti di S. Chiara,” Miscellanea Francescana 79 (1979): 347–74. See also the discussion of the manuscript tradition in Claire d’Assise: Écrits, pp. 21–27. 35 Both communities are discussed further below in chapters 4 and 5. A brief introduction to both houses may be found in Jeryldene Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For Monteluce’s scriptorium, see most recently Stefano Felicetti, “Aspetti e risvolti di vita quotidiana in un monastero Perugino riformata: Monteluce, secolo XV,” CF 65 (1995): 553–642. 36 For example, Felice Accrocca, “Nodi problematici delle fonti francescane a proposito di due recenti edizioni,” CF 66 (1996): 563–597. Niklaus Kuster, however, challenged his interpretation in “Das Armutsprivileg Innocenz’ III. und Klaras Testament: echt oder raffinierte Fälschungen?” CF 66 (1996): 5–95 [“Clare’s Testament and Innocent III’s Privilege of Poverty: Genuine or Clever Forgeries?” trans. Nancy Celaschi, Greyfriars Review 15 (2001): 171–252.]. Kuster asserted that even if these forgeries were possible, 32 33

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authentic thirteenth-century testimony effectively changes little in our understanding of Clare’s community. Although evidence for early papal recognition of San Damiano’s distinctive embrace of evangelical poverty is lost, the authentic 1228 Privilege issued by Pope Gregory IX remains a papal guarantee of the right for the women to live according to Francis’ ideals.37 Not surprisingly, Maleczek’s claims about Clare’s Testament have been met with greater surprise and significant dismay, given its status as the most personal document among her writings. The text appears to offer an autobiographical testimony to the origins of female Franciscanism, emphasizing poverty as the foundation for her bond with Francis, and by extension between the Poor Ladies and the Friars Minor. As a parallel to Francis’ own Testament, it resonates as a spiritual guide not only for the sisters at San Damiano, but beyond its walls to other communities of women who were inspired by Francis’ ideals to pursue a religious life. Along with her rule, it seems to provide a map for other women to live in fidelity to his ideals. It also may provide evidence of Clare’s intention to extend San Damiano’s model of religious life to other houses. One of the striking characteristics of Clare’s Testament is its conformity with her Form of Life. Together the texts seem to offer a juridical as well as a spiritual orientation to female Franciscanism. Maleczek contended that this fidelity, and indeed the emphasis on Francis and evangelical poverty, is unconvincing and inconsistent with the situation of the Order in 1253. If he is correct and this document is a fifteenth-century fabrication, we thus have lost a crucial piece of evidence for Clare’s efforts to provide direction for the female followers of evangelical poverty. Scholars of the early Franciscan movement rightly have questioned Maleczek’s characterization of Clare and San Damiano as unlikely to attract the attention of the papal curia prior to Francis’ death. But while his claim for the Testament’s forgery has been strongly attacked, many of the challenges have not been particularly convincing since they were based on internal references about what was possible. Emore Paoli, for

it was not probable. He also was more willing to see the Privilege as an innovation on Innocent III’s part and sees evidence for the privilege in contemporary documents (for example, Thomas of Celano’s biographies of Francis). 37 The significance of this document is addressed further below in chapter 1. For background, see Maria Pia Alberzoni, “San Damiani nel 1228: Contributo alla ‘Questione clariana’,” CF 67 (1997): 459–476.

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example, suggested that the Testament was not referring to a specific document and that the reference to Pope Innocent III was intended only as an historical marker, an argument Maleczek rejected as “forced.”38 Ovidio Capitani proposed that the reference to the pope could refer to Innocent IV rather than Innocent III. But this seems unlikely, among other reasons, given that Innocent IV sought to prevent female Franciscan communities from living without material support.39 The most convincing challenge to Maleczek’s work has come recently from Attilio Bartoli Langeli’s studies of the famous Messina codex, one of the three manuscripts containing both the Privilege of Poverty and the Testament. Based on his paleographical analysis of this manuscript, he dated its production to the second half of the thirteenth century and specifically from the hand of Brother Leo to whom Clare may have dictated her Testament.40 He also placed the work in the context of her efforts to record the ideals of the early Franciscan community. From the 1230s, Clare was the most fervent witness to Francis’ ideals in association with several of the members of the early brotherhood including Elias, Ruffino, Juniper, and most significantly, Brother Leo who had been Francis’ closest companion and secretary. He perhaps also served as her secretary in these years.41 San Damiano, and later Santa Chiara in Assisi where the sisters moved in 1260, provided him with an institutional base. He famously left his recollections of Francis in the sisters’ care.42 For these reasons—that is, from both paleography and personal relationship—Bartoli Langeli argued that Leo may have adopted a similar task of transmitting Clare’s ideals, much as he had done for Francis. The Testament in its existing textual state therefore

38 Paoli addressed the controversy in his introductory comments to the reprint edition of Clare’s writings in FF, pp. 2237–2246. See also Maleczek, p. 45, n. 101. It points to the emotional tenor of the debate over the Testament that Paoli accepted Maleczek’s arguments concerning the Privilege of Poverty while strenuously challenging the rest. 39 Ovidio Capitani, “Chiara per Francesco,” in Mario Chessa and Marco Poli, ed. La Presenza Francescana tra Medioevo e Modernità (Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1996), see pp. 106–107 esp. 40 Attilio Bartoli Langeli, Gli autografi di frate Francesco e di frate Leone. Corpus Christianorum Autographa Medii Aevi, vol. 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). 41 For this role, see also Timothy J. Johnson “Clare, Leo, and the Authorship of the Fourth Letter to Agnes of Prague,” Franciscan Studies 62 (2004): 91–100. 42 Bonaventure acknowledged the relationship between Leo and the sisters in a sermon: “Complacentiam suam circa beatum Franciscanum ostendit Dominus, quia noluit loqui ei sicut extraneo, sed sicut amico speciali, ut servatur a sororibus sancti Damiani sermone vocali locuta est ei crux.” Bonaventure, Sermones de Diversis, ed. Jacques-Guy Bougerol, Vol. I (Paris: Editions Françaises, 1993), p. 765.

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may not be a document dictated by Clare on her deathbed, but it at least may be a close representation of her final communications to the sisters and friars at San Damiano as recorded by Brother Leo. This debate over the Testament remains open and may be irresolvable in as much as paleography remains an art more than a science. But if Bartoli Langeli is correct—and I join many Franciscan scholars in finding his analysis plausible—we possess evidence for the thirteenthcentury origins of Clare’s Testament.43 An internal examination of the text, moreover, confirms that its sentiments appear reconcilable with Clare’s activities and emphases in her other writings. It also is consistent with the testimony of her companions at the canonization process. However, whether the text we call The Testament of Saint Clare is an authentic thirteenth-century document produced by her or, at the least, an authentic expression of her sentiments perhaps recorded later by Brother Leo, the key issue is to assess is how medieval Franciscans understood and used the text, along with Clare’s other writings. Is it possible to go beyond her fidelity to Francis’ ideals, which the text stresses, to a desire to shape a female branch of the Franciscan Order? And if so, whose desire does it reflect? Clare’s? Perhaps Leo’s? Or maybe it reflects primarily the desire of Abbess Benedetta, who succeeded Clare as head of the community, or even another sister? In short the critical problem concerns at what point and for whom did the abbess of San Damiano possess charismatic authority as founder of an order? The status of all of Clare’s writings matter because they represent one of the ways in which her image was appropriated by later Franciscans, both the friars and sisters, to shape the women’s spiritual lives. Plan of the Book The book begins with Clare and the foundation of her community at San Damiano. To some extent the first chapter discusses familiar ter-

43 Felice Accrocca has urged that arguments about these texts need to proceed from an internal analysis, rather than these polarizing external debates. See “Nodi problematici,” and also “L’illeterato e il suo testimone: considerzioni sull’autografia di frate Francesco e frate Leone in margine ad un recente volume,” CF 72 (2002): 337–355. See also the comments of Leonhard Lemmens, “La questione del testamento di S. Chiara,” in Clara, Claris, Praeclara. L’esperienza christiana e la memoria di Chiara d’Assisi in occasione del 750 anniversario della morte (Santa Maria degli Angeli-Assisi: Porziuncola, 2004), pp. 257–306.

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ritory: her relationship with Francis and the Early Brotherhood, her spiritual ideals, and the struggle to preserve her vision of female religious life at San Damiano. However, Clare’s efforts must be contextualized with papal efforts to regularize the women’s religious movement in central Italy. In practical terms, her direct influence was limited to a few closely connected houses and this book confirms that the primary responsibility for the institutionalization of the female Franciscan movement came from the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Yet rather than discounting her significance, it brings sharper focus to Clare’s active promotion of a competing form of female Franciscan life. Even in acknowledging that her efforts were more personal than juridical in both intention and result, her writings and the efforts to preserve them, in particular her Form of Life, nonetheless came to serve as a foundation for her later spiritual authority. Like many studies of Clare—too many studies—chapter 1 ends with her death and rapid canonization. However, a main point of emphasis in this book is that to understand her legacy for shaping female Franciscanism, we must go “beyond Clare” to look at the complex ways other enclosed women were a part of the early Franciscan movement. This includes recognizing the ways in which the religious experiences of some women and their foundations could be memorialized as Franciscan by later chroniclers. That is, if we recognize that Clare’s role in providing institutional shape to the female order was much less than pious tradition has claimed, we also need to ask about how religious identity was created. This distinction is particularly important for the later thirteenth through the early fifteenth centuries, which have received much less attention from scholars.44 Chapters 2 and 3 thus investigate the reasons behind the sisters’ relative disinterest in the historical Clare prior to the Observant Reform movement during the fifteenth century. In part this indifference derives from the aftermath of two events. Her canonization in 1255 memorialized her as an enclosed contemplative, a neutral model for all religious women rather than a female example of Francis’ spiritual ideals. Almost a decade later, Pope Urban IV ratified a new constitution for what he would now identify as the Order of Saint Clare but which treated Clare

44 At a recent Italian conference which evaluated the “state of the question” following the explosion of research after Clare’s centenary, only three studies (out of 16) looked explicitly beyond the first half of the thirteenth century. See Clara Claris Praeclara.

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as a mere figurehead similar to the early hagiographical tradition. By the end of the thirteenth century, this rule had become widely adopted, including by the Italian sisters for whom San Damiano had never been an institutional model. These continuing papal efforts to regularize female communities were certainly critical for the institutional shape of the female Franciscan Order, but they are insufficient for explaining whether and how these medieval women viewed themselves as a part of the Franciscan movement. Through case studies of individual women and their houses, it demonstrates how the female movement needs to be understood broadly as centered on connections with the friars. Often overlooked in favor of Clare’s focus on poverty, this book emphasizes the ways in which the participation of the friars was the critical marker of Franciscan identity to these medieval women. The book’s final chapters focus on the rediscoveries of Clare and her spiritual authority beginning in the later Middle Ages—the historical woman, the saint of the hagiographical tradition, as well as Clare as author of a religious rule. By concentrating on the complicated history of these different Clares and the authority of her writings, especially in her Form of Life, this project evaluates how the sisters invoked the authority of the early movement to influence their institutional formation and relationship with the Friars Minor. Some convents continued to observe Pope Urban’s rule, chronicles and devotional writings produced by the sisters make clear the important role women played in spreading Clare’s rule and reform generally. These reforms were promoted by both Observant friars and sisters. They had the effect of increasing interest in the historical Clare and contributed to the growth of her reputation as founder of the eponymous order. Thus while Clare of Assisi was not historically the founder of the order of enclosed Franciscan nuns, she ultimately became a source of charismatic authority for later medieval women who embraced their identity as Clarisses. Some sisters would reimagine Clare in a way that insisted upon her personal authority. Others used her as a model to develop intense rituals of personal prayer and contemplation, as well as liturgical worship. In sum, even as reformers agreed that returning to Clare’s model was the essence of reform, which model was appropriated remained variable and could be applied in ambiguous ways. The implications of this project go beyond the female Franciscan movement to larger issues concerning the medieval Franciscan Order. An important part of the sisters’ religious life throughout the medieval period was their close relationship with the Friars Minor. Tension

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between the two groups often resulted from specific conflicts about pastoral ministry or the sisters’ obligations to their rule. This book demonstrates, however, that the conceptual issue of what it meant for women to be members of an order dedicated to evangelical poverty and mendicant preaching was always larger than those practical concerns and frequently involved competing images of Clare of Assisi. By bringing together the sources written for and especially by the medieval Clarisses, and juxtaposing them with the better known documents for the male Order, this book challenges the sisters’ subordination and segregation within the history of the medieval Franciscan Order.45 Finally, medieval historians have debated to what extent religious order and institutional identity mattered for medieval religious women—this book tries to show some ways in which it did.

45 General histories of the Franciscan Order regularly address little attention to the enclosed women. John Moorman’s historical survey devoted only four chapters out of 43 to the nuns (after two chapters on the enclosed sisters in the first half of the thirteenth century, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries each receive a chapter; the pattern is the same for the tertiaries.) Michael Robson’s new history of the medieval Order only discusses Clare (following the series’ guidelines for length and topics); see The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2006).

CHAPTER ONE

CLARE AND THE POOR SISTERS OF SAN DAMIANO One of the most striking indications that there were competing forms of female Franciscanism comes from the late 1230s. Agnes of Prague, sister of the king of Bohemia and founder of a religious community in her native city, had written to Pope Gregory IX seeking permission for the house to adopt the Form of Life which Francis had given to Clare and the sisters at San Damiano.1 First, in the bull De Conditoris omnium, the pope had praised Francis to Agnes as the founder of three orders—the Order of Lesser Brothers, of the Cloistered Sisters, and of Penitents. According to the pope, together they represented an earthly perfection that reflected the Trinity.2 However, two days later, he refused Agnes’ request and dismissed Francis’ Form of Life as baby food. His second bull, Angelis gaudium, explained that it had been suitable for the early years of Clare’s community, just as a child would drink milk as an infant. But as the community matured, the sisters needed more solid food, which his own rule for the Order of San Damiano had provided. Clare’s community once had special permission to follow Francis’ earlier form of life for the sisters, he continued, but the women no longer did so, for they too had adopted his rule. Agnes should do likewise, as it would bring unity to the women’s order and demonstrate her obedience to the pope.3 Agnes of Prague likely would have been surprised by the claim that Clare’s community no longer followed Francis’ Form of Life. In 1234 she had written to the sisters in Assisi for guidance as to how her community should follow San Damiano’s customs, presumably beginning the correspondence between the two houses. Clare certainly responded enthusiastically to Agnes’ letter, demonstrating her unswerving commitment to the manner of life she had established at San Damiano with

1 For Agnes’ biography see Mueller, The Privilege of Poverty, which discusses her role as Clare’s “soul mate;” also Alfonso Marini, Agnese di Boemia (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1991). 2 BF I, 241–242. This bull dates from 9 May 1238. 3 BF I, 242.

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Francis. Her first three letters, written between 1234–1238, simultaneously encouraged Agnes’ own love of evangelical poverty as an organizing principle for the house, while also offering specific guidance to their customs. She explained the sisters’ fasting customs, for example.4 Clare also assured Agnes that she should give preference to the advice of Brother Elias, who had been one of Francis’ first companions, over anyone else who was trying to influence the sisters’ formation.5 Perhaps he or one of the other brothers who carried messages between the female houses wrote out the Umbrian sisters’ customs for Agnes since Gregory refers to receiving such a document along with her appeal.6 The pope’s refusal to grant her request may indicate his growing frustration with Clare’s efforts to extend San Damiano’s way of life to other communities. This chapter discusses the development of competing models of female Franciscan life. Therefore, it is not strictly a biography of Clare and her community, or a study of the institutionalization of the Franciscan Second Order. Rather, it asks to what extent we can identify Clare as the leader—both practically and spiritually—of a religious movement centered on a commitment to evangelical poverty. As noted in the introduction, there is a divide between the European historians of Franciscan institutions, who have identified Clare’s concerns as focusing primarily on her own community of San Damiano, and some Anglophone scholars, who have described a more activist Clare. For example, Joan Mueller’s recent study begins with the idea of Clare as leader of a movement and ends with the intriguing idea that at the end of her life, Clare was not only encouraging Agnes of Prague in her own struggles with the papacy, but also calling on her to take over as leader of the female poverty movement.7 Certainly, even as credit

Cf. LAg 3: 29–41. LAg 2: 15–17. 6 BF I, 242. “. . . in quadam schedula per dilectum filium priorem hospitalis Sancti Francisci Pragensis, virum ubique, discretum et providum, destinati humili supplicatione deposcens, ut praesentatam nobis per eumdem sub sigillo tuo formam et quibusdam capitulis quae in Ordinis Beati Damiani regula continentur confirmari auctoritate apostolica curaremus.” The Ordinis Beati Damiani regula refers to the monastic constitution authored by the pope, see below. 7 Mueller, Privilege of Poverty, pp. 1 and 121. For a European perspective, in addition to the works by Alberzoni, Benvenuti, and Rusconi (among others cited below), see the recent conference proceedings from Italy and Germany, Clara Claris Praeclara and Giancarlo Andenna, Mirko Breitenstein, and Gert Melville, ed. Charisma und religiöse Gemeinschaften im Mittel Alter. Akten des 3.Internationalem Kongresses des “Italianische4 5

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for the institutionalization of a female order attached to Order of Friars Minor belongs with the papal curia, as the European scholars have demonstrated, Clare of Assisi sought to play an influential role in shaping thirteenth-century female Franciscanism. This chapter aims to complicate the dichotomy of these views by recognizing Clare’s agenda, but also its limits. Francis, Clare, and the Foundation of Female Franciscanism Clare always insisted that Francis of Assisi was the founder of the sisters’ way of life, a strategy that gave powerful religious authority to her understanding of female Franciscan life. In 1208 Francis had begun preaching penance and evangelical poverty throughout central Italy. His sermons attracted many listeners, one of whom was a young woman named Clare de Offreduccio de Favarone.8 Francis already had heard of her reputation as a pious young woman and so sought an introduction to her. This was somewhat of a bold move due to the disparity of their status. Clare’s family was part of the minor nobility, while Francis was the recently disinherited son of a merchant who now was calling on his fellow townspeople to reject their comfortable lives and imitate the Poor Christ. His message appealed to Clare who already was living as a penitent in her family’s home, located prominently on the square in front of Assisi’s cathedral. Lord Ranieri di Bernardo of Assisi, who earlier had wanted to marry Clare, told the papal investigators sent to examine the cause for her canonization that she was always speaking of God and giving alms to the poor when she went out into the town.9 Francis and Clare soon began to meet in secret to discuss their religious ideas, with each bringing along a companion for propriety. Clare was accompanied by her neighbor, Pacifica de Guelfuccio, who later joined the community at San Damiano and was the first witness at Clare’s canonization inquest. Sister Pacifica told the inquisitors that Francis repeatedly urged the young woman to leave her family home and enter religious life. On 18 March 1212, Palm Sunday, she finally

deutschen Zentrums für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (Dresden, 10 –12 Juni 2004). Münster: LIT, 2005. 8 On the Offreduccio family see Bartoli, Chiara d’Assisi, pp. 31–36 and Arnaldo Fortini, “Nuove notizie intorno a S. Chiara d’Assisi,” AFH 46 (1953): 29–32. 9 PC 18:3.

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did so, sneaking out of her family home before the others had risen in order to join Francis and the brothers at Santa Maria degli Angeli.10 Francis personally tonsured Clare and accepted her as his first female follower, but her conversion created a problem for the friars. He had given little thought to how women could participate in the friars’ way of life. Prevailing religious and social conventions would not allow Clare to remain with a group of men, so Francis and a few other friars first escorted her to San Paolo delle Abbadesse, a rich Benedictine convent. Her stay there was brief.11 She considered the community too lax to fulfill the life of poverty and penance she desired. In turn, the Benedictine nuns worried that Clare’s noble family would seek to remove her from the cloister because she had not professed their vows. A decade earlier, Pope Innocent III had granted San Paolo generous rights of asylum and made excommunication the penalty for violating the house’s sanctuary. This privilege meant Clare should have been safe from her family’s reprisals in the Benedictine convent. That neither she or Francis nor even the Benedictine nuns thought she was safe there surely indicates her family’s status and power. It also points toward the radical quality of the religious vocation she wanted to pursue. Francis therefore returned with two of the brothers, Philip Longo and Bernard of Quintavalle, and led Clare instead to Sant’Angelo di Panzo, a community of female penitents located near Mount Subasio outside Assisi.12 One of her younger sisters soon joined her there and changed her name from Catherine to Agnes as a sign of her conversion. Their relatives now were determined to retrieve both women. Accompanied by hired thugs, their uncle Monaldo was dragging Agnes by her hair from the church when Clare threw herself to the floor in prayer. The younger woman suddenly became too heavy to be moved any further. Monaldo raised his hand to strike her, but immediately felt a great pain in her arm and was unable to move it. When Clare

PC 1:1–2 and 12:2. The twelfth witness was Clare’s younger sister Beatrice. Bartoli, Chiara d’Assisi, pp. 78–79, discusses San Paolo. See also Marino Bigaroni, “I monasteri benedettini femminili di S. Paolo delle abbadesse, di S. Apollinare in Assisi e S. Maria di Paradiso prima del Concilio di Trento,” in Aspetti di vita benedettina nella stori di Assisi (Assisi: Accademia Prosperziana del Subasio, 1981), pp. 171–231. 12 For Sant’Angelo see most recently Mario Sensi, “La scelta topotetica delle penitenti fra due e trecento nell’Italia centrale,” in CF 68 (1998): 245–275. This article builds on his earlier work, for example “Incarcerate e recluse in Umbria nei secoli XIII e XIV: un bizzocaggio centro-italiano,” in Il movimento religioso femminile, pp. 87–121. The lay penitential movement is discussed further in chapter 3. 10 11

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tore off her veil and revealed her shorn head, their relatives finally accepted the sisters’ determination to profess their religious vocation.13 Francis then led the two women to the church of San Damiano outside Assisi. Other women soon joined them and slowly the community of San Damiano began to grow.14 Clare and Francis would create a new religious foundation there to reflect their spiritual ideals since neither the traditional monastic convent nor the newer, but increasingly common, community of lay penitents had met their needs. San Damiano functioned as a mixed community, in which the brothers and sisters mutually supported each other in their religious vocations.15 When the women first settled there, the brothers did not yet have their own legislative rule or even a formal institutional structure. They had only Pope Innocent III’s oral approval that they might live without a fixed community and to travel throughout Italy preaching. The stable communal life adopted by the women obviously contrasted with the friars’ mendicancy, but a shared commitment to spiritual minoritas—humility in all things—sustained the close connection between the brothers and sisters. San Damiano also provided the friars with a place to rest while traveling or to recuperate when they were ill. Brothers Leo, Rufino, and Angelo, early converts of Francis who later became known as the famous “Three Companions,” were frequent visitors. A small group of friars was established nearby to collect alms for the convent and to provide pastoral care to the women. The sisters’ desire to live on what they received through alms according to their ideal of evangelical poverty often made life difficult. Clare

13 PC 12:4–5 and LCl 8–10, 24–26. Agnes of Assisi’s fourteenth-century vita, printed in the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals also includes this episode, see AM III, pp. 173–182. 14 See Jacques Guy Bougerol, “Il reclutamento sociale delle Clarisse di Assisi,” in Les ordres mendiants et la ville en Italie centrale, v. 1220 –1350. Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Age-temps modernes 89 (1977): 629–32 and Clara Gennaro, “Clare, Agnes and Their Earliest Followers: From the Poor Ladies of San Damiano to the Poor Clares” in Bornstein and Rusconi, eds. Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, pp. 39–55. 15 Although double orders, such as Fontrevault and the Gilbertines, are better known, mixed communities were also common to the Order of the Humiliati as well as the Order of Saint Benedict of Padua. For the former, see Frances Andrews, The Early Humiliati (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and for an overview of double communities in Italy, see Georg Jenal, “Doppelklöster und monastiche Gesetzgebung im Italien des frühen und hohen Mittelalters” in Doppelklöster und andere Formen der Symbiose männlicher und weiblicher Religiosen im Mittelater, ed. by Kaspar Elm and Michel Parisse (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1992), pp. 25–55.

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later acknowledged that to some extent Francis had been testing the sisters’ commitment. After he was assured that they were truly committed to evangelical poverty and that they were not afraid of its challenges, he prepared a form of life ( forma vivendi) especially for them. Its text has not survived outside the brief account Clare incorporated in her own Form of Life, although references to it, such as Agnes of Prague’s request cited at the beginning of this chapter, suggest that at some point the brothers and sisters prepared a longer document recording the community’s customs. Clare only recorded the essential elements that made San Damiano’s observance unique. Because by divine inspiration you have made yourselves daughters and handmaids of the most High, most Exalted King, the Heavenly Father, and have taken the Holy Spirit as your spouse, choosing to live according to the perfection of the Holy Gospel, I resolve and promise for myself and for my brothers always to have the same loving care and special solicitude for you as for them.16

Obviously this text is more a spiritual exhortation than a practical guide to daily life, although Francis seems to promise Clare that he and his successors always would meet San Damiano’s spiritual and temporal needs. But equally important is the underlying reason for this promise. Francis gave them a rule because he understood that the same vocation to live out the gospel ideal of poverty motivated both his male and female followers. An association between them was fitting, he told the friars, because “one and the same spirit had led the brothers and those little poor ladies out of the world.”17 Their shared vocation was practicing penance as each group sought “to live according to the perfection of the holy Gospel.”18 Although the women at San Damiano lived in a fixed community, Francis appeared confident that they too could live out his vocation.19 He believed this all of his life. 16 FLCl 6:3–4 (the previous passage refers to Francis’ test of the sisters’ commitment), quotation from CAED, p. 118. 17 2C 204. 18 Francis’ writings for the brothers emphasized the Gospel foundations of their form of life. For example, “Regula et vita Minorum haec est, scilicet Domini nostri Jesu Christi sanctum evangelium observare . . . (LR 1)” and “. . . ut semper subditi et subiecti pedibus eiusdem sanctae Ecclesiae stabiles in fide catholica paupertatem et humilitatem et sanctum evangelium Domini nostri Jesu Christi quod firmiter promisimus, observemus (LR 12:4).” Compare also Francis’ description of his vocation in his own “. . . quod deberem vivere secundum formam sancti evangelii (FTest 14).” 19 Jacques Dalarun argued that the Franciscan movement appealed to women because it focused on humanity in the broadest terms in Francesco: un passaggio. Donna e donne negli scritti e nelle leggendi di San Francesco (Rome: Viella, 1994).

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His final communication with the nuns—his Last Will for the sisters, which Clare also incorporated into her own Form of Life—urged them always to maintain his standard of poverty.20 Francis’ ideal therefore was also Clare’s; or better, Clare always took care to emphasize that her ideals derived from those of Francis. Specifically, evangelical poverty and mutual support—both temporal as well as spiritual—defined the minoritic community shared by the sisters with the friars at San Damiano during these early years. However, Clare’s community would seem to be an exception. As the anecdotes discussed above in the introduction demonstrate, Francis’ opposition to a female order remains a scholastic commonplace. To understand specifically what he opposed and how his resistance relates to the growth of the female Franciscan movement, it is necessary to consider the larger context of women’s monasticism. In central Italy during the first half of the thirteenth century there were an increasing number of communities whose form of life seemed to mimic San Damiano’s. Medievalists refer to these communities under the rubric of the women’s religious movement: spontaneous groups of penitential women, who rejected traditional religious orders and formed their own communities motivated by the ideal of evangelical poverty. Whether Francis and his friars, or Clare and her followers, inspired or more actively helped shape these houses remains problematic.21 Luigi Pellegrini, echoing other scholars, has cautioned strongly against collapsing the experience of all female foundations under what he called “the single matrix of minorite/Franciscan inspiration.”22 Indeed, Herbert Grundmann, whose work remains foundational for the reconstruction of the relationship between the early female communities and the friars, argued that seeing that the similarity of religious observance

FlCl 6: 6–9. The most thorough examination of San Damiano within the larger context of the women’s religious movement is Alberzoni, La Nascita di un’Istituzione: L’Ordine di S. Damiano nel XIII secolo (Milan: Edizioni CUSL, 1996). See also Anna Benvenuti, “La fortuna del movimento damianita in Italia (saec. XIII): propositi per un censimento da fare,” in Chiara d’Assisi: Atti del XX Convegno (Assisi: Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani,1994), pp. 59–106, Roberto Rusconi, “L’espansione del francescanesimo femminile nel secolo XIII,” in Il Movimento religioso femminile, pp. 264–313, and most recently Jacques Dalarun, “Claire d’Assise et le mouvement féminin contemporain,” in Clara Claris Praeclara, pp. 381–401. 22 Luigi Pellegrini, “Female Religious Experience and Society in Thirteenth-Century Italy,” in Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society. Essays in Honor of Lester K. Little, eds. Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein (Cornell University Press, 2000) p. 120. 20 21

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is the only evidence we have, and since the earliest documents show no institutional link between the Friars Minor and these houses, it is possible that they arose independently in conjunction with the poverty movement, as happened outside Italy.23 A medieval chronicler supports this interpretation. John the Spaniard, who taught in Bologna in the middle of the thirteenth century, wrote that the movement seemed spontaneously generated: it was as if it had arisen very recently from the dust.24 Certainly, the evidence of institutional formation building on the model established by San Damiano is limited during Francis’ lifetime. While Jacques de Vitry’s famous letter of 1216 praising the sorores minores (lesser sisters) who lived in hospices and supported themselves by their own labors is often taken as evidence of Clare’s influence, it only confirms an association between some friars and some sisters rather than broader institutional formation derived from Assisi as the introduction pointed out. Most claims of direct foundation by Clare or Francis, especially for communities outside central Italy, derive from later desires to connect with the charismatic authority of the “founders.” There were a few exceptions. The best known of these is the convent of San Colpersito founded at San Severino in the Marches between 1217–1223. Thomas of Celano’s first biography tells a charming story of how Francis gave a lamb to the sisters. The opening of the story presents the lamb as an allegorical symbol to talk about Francis’ compassion for the poor, but it obviously also was a real animal which he gave to the sisters. Later they sent him a tunic made from its wool which he received with great pleasure.25 Thomas’ later biography also refers to this community as the place where Francis first met Brother Pacifico prior to the latter’s religious profession. Pacifico had come to visit some of his female relatives, while the friars were there to visit their “daughters” (and according to Bonaventure’s later biography, to preach to them).26 Gianmario Borri has argued that this house is the earliest example of

Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, pp. 109–124. “Pynzochere qua de pulvere nuperrime surrexerunt,” quoted in Sensi, “La Scelta Topotetica,” p. 322. 25 1C 78. For San Colpersito see M.C. Marino, “Le Clarisse nelle Marche. Gli insediamenti del XIII secolo,” CF 67 (1997): 105–166. 26 2C 106 and LM 2:29. 23 24

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the friars’ involvement in establishing a female foundation after San Damiano. Its documents confirm that the sisters’ visitors and correctors would be friars chosen by Francis and his successors. They identify a Fra Paolo as the sisters’ procurator, that is, their financial manager. His role suggests that while the friars certainly were involved with the community, it does not seem to have been modeled directly after San Damiano.27 Other examples confirm that individual friars were helping to establish other female communities—a Brother Bartolus helped establish a convent in Faenza in 1224, for example—but their founding documents often indicate connections with papal efforts to reform female religious life, rather than directly to San Damiano.28 Indeed, many of these houses remained under the jurisdiction of the local bishop, even if the friars provided spiritual ministry to the community. There is evidence, however, that Clare was seeking to found other houses following the model of San Damiano (admittedly the number is small). She and four other sisters purchased some land at Carpino, near Foligno, in 1217, presumably for a new foundation; unfortunately, the source of these funds is not clear from the document.29 The convent of Monticelli located outside Florence also adopted San Damiano’s observantiae regulares (regular observance). Monticelli was directly connected to San Damiano by Agnes of Assisi who would live there for several decades beginning about 1219.30 Contemporary documents also confirm that houses in nearby Arezzo, Foligno, Perugia, and Spello were founded on the model of San Damiano and with the assistance of its sisters. Sister Pacifica testified at Clare’s canonization process that a

27 Giammario Borri, “Le pergamene del monastero di S. Salvatore di Colpersito (1223–1292),” in Studia Picena, 64 (1999): 7–84. For example, “Item do et concedo ipsis mulieribus licentiam habendi visitatores et correctores de fratribus Minoribus, illos videlicet quos frater Franciscus vel eius successores vel capitulum ipsorum fratrum constituerint et ordinaverint ad corrigendum et visitandum dictas mulieribus.” 28 Francesco Lanzoni, “Le antiche carte del convento di Santa Chiara di Faenza,” AFH 17 (1924): 261–276, 482–493. For the distinctions between communities of religiosae mulieres who were assisted by the friars, and Clare’s more stable form of community life, see Maria Pia Alberzoni, “Sorores Minores e autorità ecclesiastica fino al pontificato di Urbano IV,” in Chiara e la diffusione delle Clarisse, pp. 165–194. 29 Mario Sensi edited this document in “Le Clarisse a Foligno nel secolo XIII,” CF 47 (1977): 349–363. 30 BF I, 3–5, quotation from p. 4 “Ordo monasticus, qui secundum Dominum et beati Benedicti regulam quam profitemini in eodem loco institutus esse dignoscitur, perpetuis ibidem temporibus inviolabiliter observetur. Observantias nihilominus regulares, quas iuxta Ordinem dominarum Sanctae Mariae de Sancto Damiano de Assisio praeter generalem beati Benedicti regulam vobis voluntarie indixistis, ratas habemus.”

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Sister Balvina (since deceased) had left San Damiano for a time to help establish a community at Vallegloria in Spello.31 Friars also brought San Damiano’s form of life to other female communities. Sant’Apollinare in Milan adopted the “Ordo et regula Beati Damiani de Valle Spolliti iuxta civitatem de Sixi” in 1223, with the assistance of the brothers.32 In sum, by the early 1220s it is possible to identify a small network of “Clarian” houses that were linked to Clare and San Damiano by both personal connections and an adoption of their observances. However, this is also the time when these women and their fraternal supporters collided with ecclesiastical efforts to unify female monasticism. Around 1218 Cardinal Hugolino dei Segni first came into contact with the women’s penitential movement while serving as papal legate in Tuscany and Lombardy. (His broader charge was to bring peace to the warring towns and raise funds for the Crusades, but our concern obviously will be with his encounters with these religious communities.) With Pope Honorius III’s permission, the cardinal began to regularize these groups, first in Lucca, and then shortly afterward in Siena and Perugia.33 As Alberzoni and others have observed, since these are among the first documents printed in the Bullarium Franciscanum, the confusion over their origins and relationship to the Franciscan Order is understandable. Hugolino granted these communities immunity from their local bishops so that their houses were directly dependent to Rome.34 He also insisted upon strict enclosure and imposed a constitution to bring the disparate groups under one set of norms.35 Hugolino thus created the first religious order to consist solely of women, which he called the

31 CP 1:15. For this community, see Zeffirino Lazzeri, “L’antico monastero di Vallegloria vicino a Spello.” La Verna 10 (1912): 49–50 and more recently Mario Sensi, “Il patrimonio monastico di S. Maria di Vallegloria a Spello,” Bollettino della Societ à Umbra di Storia Patria 81 (1984): 77–149. 32 Alberzoni, La Nascità, p. 21. The document was published by Paolo Sevesi in “Il monasteri delle Clarisse in S. Apollinare di Milano (Documenti sec. XIII–XVIII),” AFH 17 (1924), pp. 343–344. 33 Monticelli also could be included as a part of Cardinal’s reform efforts in the sense that the cardinal held the sisters’ property, although Agnes of Assisi refused to accept his constitutions and instead insisted on those of San Damiano (BF I, 3–5), cf. n. 31. 34 See BF I, 10 –15. 35 The sisters also adopted the Rule of Saint Benedict following the requirements of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 that no new religious orders be established. Adopting an existing rule with individual constitutions or statutes sidestepped this requirement. The Latin text of the Hugolinian Constitutions is printed in Omaechevarria, pp. 217–232.

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“religion of the Poor Ladies of the Spoleto Valley or of Tuscany.”36 Documents for other houses founded in Faenza in 1224, Milan in 1225, and Verona in 1226 use the same formulary. Alberzoni has suggested that his model seems to have been Cistercian reform, but for practical reasons the Cardinal was interested in associating them with an established order, preferably the Franciscans. When Cardinal Hugolino visited San Damiano at Easter in 1220, he may have tried to persuade Clare and Agnes to bring their houses into his confederation, but they refused. We know about this visit from a warm letter praising the sisters that Hugolino wrote afterwards.37 It has been suggested that he may have been considering how San Damiano might serve as an exemplar for his monastic order. This point needs to be considered carefully, because subsequent events make clear that while the cardinal was interested in San Damiano’s spiritual prestige which derived from its association with Francis and the friars, he did not want its model of religious life to expand any further. Hugolino had appointed a Cistercian as first visitator to the women’s houses. This man died in 1221, however, and Hugolino took advantage of Francis’ absence from Italy to designate Friar Philip Longo holder of that office. This was the first attempt to link the houses he had organized to the Order of Friars Minor, but it was not successful. According to Brother Stephen (who was sent to Syria to share this news and other changes in the Order with Francis), the Poverello was furious when he learned of this appointment.38 He cursed Philip as a destroyer of the Order and an ulcerous tumor, but Francis’ anger was mainly directed toward at Cardinal Hugolino.39 Philip’s assignment was revoked, but it raises the question of why Hugolino wanted to assign the friars to this role. Obviously the answer is partly that he was pragmatic: if the local

36 “Formam vitae vel religionis pauperum dominarum de Valle Spoleti sive Tusciae per dominum Hugnem venerabilem episcopum Hostiensem auctoritate domini pape eidem soroibus traditam.” This name appears in a formulary to be used for other communities in Hugolino’s register, see Guido Levi, ed., Registri dei Cardinali Ugolino d’Ostia e Ottaviano degli Ubaldini (Rome: Forzani, 1890), pp. 153–154. 37 Printed in Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, AM III, p. 183. 38 Jordan of Giano also recounted this story and described Philip Longo as “qui erat zelator dominarum pauperum”). See Chronica Fratris Iordani a Iano Ord. Fratrum Minorum, in AF I, pp. 11–13. 39 “Brother Stephen,” p. 383. Alberzoni suggests that the sources overstate conflict between Francis and Philip because it would have been awkward to recognize conflict between Francis and Hugolino (later Pope Gregory IX). See her “San Damiano nel 1228: Contributo alla ‘Questione clariana’,” CF 67 (1997): 459–476.

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ecclesiastical officials no longer were responsible for the women, than who would provide pastoral care to them? This overlooks, however, the Cardinal’s recognition that there were spiritual similarities between the two groups that supported their affiliation. Most prominent was the ideal of evangelical poverty, which in many cases had been fostered by the ministry of individual friars. Francis’ primary opposition, then, was to his Order assuming pastoral responsibilities for Cardinal Hugolino’s order. His rules for the Friars Minor tried to regulate contact between the brothers and religious women. His first rule (1221) declared “evil relations with women must be avoided.” It forbade the friars to allow any woman to profess obedience to them. They might offer spiritual direction, but should not help establish any convent.40 The Later Rule (1223) combines this warning with an allowance that some brothers could minister to the women, but only if they were explicitly assigned to do so by the Roman Church.41 This exception reflects the influence of Cardinal Hugolino, who had helped Francis to draft a rule that would be acceptable to the entire brotherhood. It allowed for the possibility that the friars would have this responsibility in the future. Francis was concerned with protecting the reputation of his Order— the charge of over-familiarity with women was a common charge against heretics—but there also is evidence to suggest that he was trying to restrain a growing problem. Some brothers recalled that Francis had chastised friars who visited the women’s houses too frequently or willingly. Brother Stephen complained that when he admitted he had entered some of these communities without permission, Francis ordered him to jump into the river fully clothed even though it was mid-December and they still had a two mile walk back to their lodgings.42 As more female communities made demands on the Order, he expected the friars to follow his personal example and remain distant from enclosed women. Toward the end of his life, he even withdrew from contact with San Damiano. He denied that he did not perfectly love Clare’s community, but explained to the brothers that he must demonstrate what a proper 40 ER 12. Francis’ vitae record similar prohibitions, see 2C 114 and Mirror of Perfection 86. Fragments of an earlier version of the rule offer a more forthright opinion: “Let all brothers, wherever they may be or may go, avoid evil glances and association with women. Let no one counsel them (FAED I: p. 89).” 41 LR 11. 42 “Brother Stephen,” p. 384. Compare 2C 206 for a similar rebuke to a different brother.

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relationship between friars and sisters should entail.43 Francis’ strong opposition to strengthening ties between the brothers and these female communities meant that the Cardinal was unable to appoint friars to minister to these houses while Francis was alive. Francis therefore had little to do with organizing a female Franciscan order. Indeed, his behavior toward female adherents of evangelical poverty was inconsistent over the course of his life. His writings reflect his conviction that both men and women were able to live in complete evangelical poverty. He helped Clare found San Damiano, but in comparison to other religious men such as Peter Abelard or Robert d’Arbissel, the founder of the Order of Friars Minor effectively did little to establish female religious life.44 It seems that when his female followers included only Clare and her small number of companions, he saw no reason that the friars and sisters should not have a close relationship. He felt real affection as well for houses like San Colpersito. As he tried to adapt to the rapid growth of his Order and increasing pastoral demands on the brothers, however, Francis withdrew from this position. When the number of convents making claims on the friars increased and the friars grew so numerous that Francis ceased to have personal influence on their formation, he tried to separate the men and women and complained about the friars’ obligations to these convents. San Damiano had a privileged relationship with the brothers because of Francis’ affection for Clare, but there was yet no juridical tie between Clare’s community or any other Clarian house and the Friars Minor. Matters changed considerably when Francis died in 1226 and Hugolino was elected pope the following year. These two events would serve as a turning point not only for the women’s penitential movement, but also for Clare’s efforts to influence female Franciscan life. Clare and the Order of San Damiano In December 1227 Hugolino, now Pope Gregory IX, directed the Franciscan Minister General to appoint friars to provide pastoral care to the pauperes moniales reclusae in the bull Quoties Cordis. In effect, this

43 44

2C 205. Jacques Dalarun makes a similar observation in Francesco. Un passaggio, p. 142.

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bull incorporated the female religious order he had created into the Order of Friars Minor.45 His directive meant that John Parenti, who then held the office of Minister General, had to name a visitator for the women’s order, as well as a minister for each community. Parenti surely was aware of the pope’s intentions since there was little overt protest from the Franciscan Order.46 Up to this point, San Damiano was not a part of the order established by Cardinal Hugolino. Clare and her sisters lived under the form of life which Francis had prepared for them, and continued to view themselves as a part of the Franciscan community. The pope, however, now sought to bring Clare’s house into his order. His reason seems to have been two-fold. On the one hand, San Damiano’s closeness with the friars gave support to the Franciscan Order’s new responsibility to minister to the female houses. If the friars were responsible for the order Gregory had founded, then San Damiano must be a part of that order. But it also provided a regular constitution for Clare and her followers, bringing them closer to monastic norms. Gregory moreover seems to have hoped that other communities would follow San Damiano into the order he had organized. His strategy to make Clare’s house the “model” for this new order is reflected in the 1228 letter sent by Cardinal Rainaldo dei Conti di Segni, the sisters’ new protector, to the twenty four “poor monasteries of San Damiano of Assisi.”47 Clare’s house is first in this list, although she wanted little to do with the pope’s program of increasing monasticization for what he started to call the “Order of San Damiano.” The confusion between Clare’s community at San Damiano and the papal “Damianite” confederation was deliberate. While suggesting fidelity to Francis’s and Clare’s model of religious life, the papal program differed in several key components including strict enclosure, monastic

BF I, p. 36 (14 December 1227, incorrectly dated to November by Sbaraglia). “Propter quod attendentes, Religionem Fratrum Minorum gratam Deo inter alias, et acceptam, Tibi, et successoribus tuis curam committimus Monialium praedictarum in virtute obedientiae districte praecipiendo mandantes, quatenus de illis tamquam de ovibus custodiae vestrae commissis curam, solicitudinem habeatis.” 46 See Alberzoni, “San Damiano nel 1228,” pp. 459–476. The previous year, Brother Pacificus had served briefly as visitator as well. 47 This number derives from a letter to the houses from their new protector (who also was the pope’s nephew). The letter is printed in Omaechevarria, pp. 356–361. For the younger cardinal’s relationship with the Franciscan Order (although focusing on the period after his election to the papacy), see Luigi Pellegrini, Alessandro IV e i Francescani (1254–1261) (Rome: Edizioni Francescane, 1966). 45

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Trent

Milan Verona

Padua

Tortona

Faenza

Lucca Florence Città di Castello Arezzo Siena

Gubbio Cortona

Aquaviva

ASSISI Perugia Spello Todi Foligno Spoleto Terni Orvieto Rieti Narni

The 24 convents (pauper[es] monasterium sancti Damiani de Assisio) addressed by Cardinal Rinaldo of Jenne in 1228. The communities most closely associated with Clare and San Damiano

Map 1: The Damianite Confederation, 1228

silence, and the requirement to have a financial endowment. The pope’s efforts to incorporate San Damiano into the monastic order marked a turning point in his relationship with Clare. While earlier sources suggest that a warm respect had developed between her and Cardinal Hugolino, as pope he became her antagonist. The obvious struggle was her fight to preserve the reality of evangelical poverty for her house, but she fought equally hard to maintain a connection with the Friars Minor for San Damiano and other communities that sought her support, as the letters to Agnes of Prague demonstrate. Clare, however, seems to have made no effort to bring the papal order to this standard, perhaps as a result of the assaults she felt San Damiano faced.

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The Roman Church and Cardinal Hugolino often tried to persuade Clare to accept income for her convent according to several of the sisters who had lived with her at San Damiano.48 Now in 1228 Gregory IX personally visited San Damiano and pressured Clare to adopt the Hugolinian statutes and bring her community into his confederation. She argued that her religious vow prohibited her from accepting any material support. The pope offered to release her from that vow, but Clare rebuffed him, asserting that she was following Christ’s example.49 To persuade her, Gregory agreed to grant an exemption, a Privilege of Poverty, to San Damiano.50 He was careful not to cede too much. The privilege states that no one could force the women to accept endowments, a clever phrasing that left open the possibility that the sisters later would agree to do so.51 Gregory was concerned, moreover, that the exemption for San Damiano would set a precedent for other female communities. Thomas of Celano’s 1228 biography of Francis, which the pope had commissioned, indicates a concern to clarify her status within the Order.52 Clare is praised as Francis’ first female convert and for her character, but the narrative shifts rapidly from the founding of San Damiano to praising the Order founded by Cardinal Hugolino!53 It concluded: For the moment let this suffice for these virgins dedicated to God and most devout servants of Christ. Their wondrous life and their renowned practices received from the Lord Pope Gregory, at the time Bishop of Ostia, would require another book and the leisure in which to write it.54

Since this text was meant to circulate throughout the Franciscan Order, in both male and female communities, it made clear that the women’s order was to follow the papal model, not the Clarian one. In any case, only a few houses were granted similar exemptions to live without endowments. Agnes of Assisi wrote to Clare in 1228

PC, 1:3, 2:22, and 3:14. LCl 14. 50 Claire d’Assise: Écrits, p. 200. 51 Cf. Mueller, Privilege of Poverty, pp. 39–41. 52 Cf. 1C 18–20. 53 Jacques Dalarun clarified this section of Thomas’ work, which has long puzzled scholars for the way it jumps from the restoration of San Damiano to the women (without mention of Francis’ prophecy, which appears in later sources). See Jacques Dalarun, La Malaventura di Francesco d’Assisi. Per un uso storico delle leggende francescane (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1996), pp. 52–61. 54 1 Cel 20 (quotation from CAED, p. 400). 48 49

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to announce that the pope had agreed to extend the privilege to Monticelli in Florence.55 However, his behavior toward the convent of Monteluce outside Perugia during the first half of the thirteenth century demonstrates his reluctance to have female convents without material support.56 The convent was founded in 1218 after a local nobleman gave land to the cardinal for the purpose of founding a house of religious women. Monteluce was one of the earliest houses in the Damianite Confederation, but unsurprisingly there also was influence from nearby Assisi because the Perugian sisters also sought permission to live without guaranteed material support. In 1228 Gregory issued a bull commanding these sisters to not sell the devotional books and portable altar left to them by a Brother Angelo. If they did so, they would be excommunicated.57 Neither books nor an altar represent the same sort of property as land or rents that would guarantee the house’s material support, but the sisters’ reluctance to take these items suggests their desire to be without any non-essential possessions. The following year Monteluce successfully obtained its own exemption from Gregory.58 Two years later, however, the pope imposed lands upon the convent, effectively repealing the privilege and confirming papal intentions that all Damianite convents should have material support.59 Gregory’s insistence that the women hold property was not surprising when the women’s situation is compared to the friars in the years immediately following Francis’ death. The brothers had requested that the curia clarify Francis’ declaration that they live sine proprio—without anything of their own.60 Gregory answered them in the bull Quo elongati in September 1230. He declared by the authority of his office and from his experience in helping Francis to compose the rule that the friars were not meant to interpret sine proprio literally. It was appropriate that they should have the use of things—houses, books, land, and so forth—as long as they were legally owned by someone outside the

AF III, 176. BF I, 13–15. For this community’s early history, see Peter Höhler, “Il Monastero delle Clarisse di Monteluce in Perugia (1218–1400),” in Il Movimento religioso femminile in Umbria nei secoli XIII–XI. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studio nell’ambito delle celebrazioni per l’VIII centenario della nascita di S. Francesco d’Assisi. Città di Castello, 27–28–29 ottobre 1982, ed. by Roberto Rusconi (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1984), pp. 161–182. 57 BF I, pp. 38–39. 58 BF I, p. 50. 59 BF I, p. 73. 60 LR1:1. 55 56

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Order. Gregory also ruled that items purchased for the friars by others might be considered almsgiving.61 His answer pleased those among the friars who thought it fitting that the Order would develop according to monastic custom. Other friars were upset by the papal ruling. They argued the Order should remain true to Francis’ vision of a primitive brotherhood: predominantly lay, without its own houses, and dependent on begging. Thus Clare’s fight for San Damiano and the handful of houses which had adopted its customs to be able to live in complete evangelical poverty was taking place even as the Friars Minor were arguing over the role of poverty in their own order. Considering the shift toward moderation within the friars’ houses, her struggle to preserve the sisters’ God-centered poverty was heroic and likely fated to fail even without the curia’s reluctance to allow female communities to live without material support.62 Quo elongati also caused problems for San Damiano’s unique tie with the Friars Minor. Some friars were protesting that providing spiritual care to female convents would prevent them from carrying out their preaching duties. They asked the pope to define the limits of their obligations to these women. Quo elongati confirmed that the friars were not to enter convents without papal authorization, as Francis’ Later Rule had stated.63 Friars who were already reluctant to undertake this duty interpreted this decree to mean that they did not have to provide pastoral care to the women and so withdrew from their houses. Once again Clare reacted quickly and threatened a hunger strike if the friars no longer came to preach to them. She sent away the friars who begged food for the enclosed community stating that the women had no need of corporal bread if they could have no spiritual bread.64 When Gregory learned of Clare’s rebuff, he asked the Franciscan Minister General to reappoint friars to serve the female communities. To pacify the brothers, however, both he and his successor Innocent IV incorporated no new houses of women into the Order between 1228 and 1245. Clare’s likely ally in this confrontation with Pope Gregory IX was Brother Elias, minister general of the Order from 1232–1239. Later Franciscan sources are extremely hostile toward him, but his importance

BF I, pp. 68–69. In the first letter to Agnes of Prague, Clare referred to “beata paupertas,” “sancta paupertas,” and “pia paupertas.” See 1 LAg 15–17. 63 BF I, p. 70. 64 LCl 37. 61 62

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within the early Franciscan movement and especially his relationship with Francis and Clare needs to be recognized.65 Thomas of Celano’s later biography records that it was Elias’ urging that ultimately persuaded Francis to yield to the sisters’ pleas and to visit them again at San Damiano (although he did not identify Elias by name, only as Francis’ vicar—an early indication of his vilification). This visit became the occasion for the famous “Ashes” sermon, an example of Francis preaching by example.66 After Francis’ death, Elias played a critical role facilitating communication between the enclosed sisters. Agnes of Assisi, then living at Monticelli, asked her sister to send Elias to them more often—it would help her to feel less separated from the other sisters at San Damiano.67 Nonetheless, it was as Minister General that Elias was able to do the most to help Clare spread San Damiano’s form of life to other communities. Alberzoni has argued that we see his role most clearly in the rise of the “Minoresses” following his deposition in 1239.68 In letter dated 21 February 1241, Pope Gregory complained about women who were calling themselves minoretae (among other names) and falsely claiming to belong to the Order of San Damiano. This created confusion, he wrote, for they were obviously not Damianites because they went about with shoes, in a different habit, and worst of all, were uncloistered.69 Gregory ordered the prelates to whom the letter was addressed to compel these women to cease their behavior and stop making the false claims. The problem, however, persisted. Pope Innocent IV would issue similar bulls in 1246, 1250, and 1251 against these women who falsely claimed to be Sorores Minores and who were

65 His reputation varied widely in Franciscan sources. Thomas of Celano’s later biography, for example, reflects the Order’s turn against the leadership of lay brothers like Elias, in favor of clerics. Spiritual sources are particularly critical toward him, identifying his generalship as the period when the Order shifted away from Francis’ ideals. For an assessment of Elias’ stature in the Order, see Giulia Barone, Da Frate Elia agli Spirituali (Milan: Biblioteca Francescana, 1999). 66 2C 207. 67 AF III, pp. 172–181. 68 Alberzoni, “Sorores Minores e autorità ecclesiastica,” pp. 181–189 esp. For her analysis of the Sorores Minores in Italy, see also “Da Pauperes Domine a Sorores Pauperes: la negazione di un modello di santita itinerante femminile?” in Benedetto Vetere, ed., Pellegrinaggi e culto dei santi: santità minoritica del primo e secondo ordine: atti del seminario di studi: Nardò, 28 aprile 2001, pp. 39–59 (Galatina: Mario Congedo, 2004). 69 BF I, 290.

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dishonoring the Fratres Minores by their behavior.70 These complaints seem to indicate the presence of a dissident movement of women who resisted papal attempts at monasticization in favor of a form of religious life closer to the evangelical ideals of the early fraternity. Alberzoni suggests that while Elias was Minister General, he was able to channel these women into Clarian communities. However, like the Sorores Minores, Elias also found himself condemned, perhaps for continuing to help Clare. Thomas of Eccleston wrote that the ex-minister general was excommunicated for visiting the convent of Poor Ladies in Cortona without papal permission.71 This is perhaps evidence of another community in the Clarian network. Clare, of course, had urged Agnes of Prague to listen to Elias’ advice during this period when the younger woman was seeking permission for her foundation to live without material support.72 Pope Gregory IX, however, refused to grant a privilege of poverty to the Bohemian community and instead assigned them profits from a hospital Agnes had founded before she entered religious life.73 Clare learned of this decree and in 1235 wrote to encourage Agnes to remain firm in her vocation. This letter testifies to Clare’s insistence that having no possessions was an essential characteristic of her understanding of how the sisters also followed Francis’ religious vocation. (Elias, as well as Agnes, shared this conviction). She maintained that it was their observance of evangelical poverty that led the women to a life of perfection. Gregory had used the phrase iter perfectionis to describe the women’s religious life and now Clare played with his usage. She wrote that the marks of perfection illuminated Agnes. The Bohemian nun imitated the Father of all perfection so that she herself became perfect and God could see no imperfection in her. Her spousal relationship with Christ also

70 For example, BF II, 67 (18 August 1255). “Petitio vestra Nobis exhibita continebat, quod Moniales quamplurium Monasteriorum, quae Ordinis Sancti Damiani fore se asserunt, Diocesana lege Diocesanis Episcopis subjectorum nostras tunc Osten[sis], et Velletren[sis] Episcopi, cui cura ipsius Sancti Damiani Ordinus a Sede Apostolica erat commissa, ad vos literas impetrarunt.” Another example was Cum harum Rector Satanas (8 January 1257), BF II, pp. 183–184, quotation from p. 184. “Unde frequenter accidit; ut per tales nomen Soroum Minorum, quod nec ipsis etiam Sororibus Ordinis Sancti Damiani ex Regula, seu Juris forma competit, sibi fallaciter usurpantes, infamie nubilo dilectorum filiorum Fratrum Minorum Ordinis puritas offuscetur.” 71 Cited in Alberzoni, “San Damiano nel 1228,” n. 159. Certainly Elias’ relationship with Frederick II also contributed to his excommunication. 72 For Agnes’ efforts, see Mueller, The Privilege of Poverty, pp. 53–88 esp. 73 This letter dates from 1235, BF I, p. 156.

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was perfect since Agnes had rejected secular marriage to obtain holiest poverty as a follower of the Poor Christ.74 Clare’s understanding of perfection thus demanded poverty. She called upon Agnes to become another Rachel. Medieval exegesis usually understood the Old Testament figure as a representation of contemplative life. Clare certainly was referring to the life of prayer and contemplation the nuns followed in the cloister, but significantly, she also intended another aspect of Rachel’s symbolism. She urged Agnes to “that you always be mindful of your commitment like another Rachel always seeing your beginning.”75 Clare thus invoked the image of Rachel in order to encourage Agnes’ steadfastness to her vocation, a calling that achieved perfection by having no possessions.76 She placed so much emphasis on the place of poverty in their vocation that she even recommended that Agnes resist the Pope’s decree.77 With Clare’s support, Agnes finally did gain an exemption in 1237, but it required the intervention of her brother, whose political support the pope desperately needed during his struggles against Frederick II.78 Pope Gregory IX’s successor, Innocent IV continued the earlier strategy of seeking both to monasticize the women and to secure pastoral care from the Order of Friars Minor. In 1245 Crescentius of Iesi, the friars’ Minister General, petitioned the pope to release the friars from their responsibilities toward the women. Innocent refused and in 1246 incorporated 14 new convents in Italy, France and Spain.79 In his constitution for the Order of San Damiano promulgated the following year, Innocent placed these houses under the Minister General’s jurisdiction and required their visitators be Friars Minor. To assuage the men’s protests, he allowed the General Chapter to approve of new foundations before their incorporation into the Order.80 Nonetheless, the friars continued to complain about their obligations to the women

2 LAg 5–7; compare also lines 18–22. 2 LAg 11 (this and the following quotations come from CAED, pp. 48–49. Compare the Ordinary Gloss (marginal) on Genesis 29: “Unde lya interpretatus laborans. Rachel visum principium vel verbum ex quo videtur principium.” See Biblia Latina cum Glossa Ordinia (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), p. 75. 76 2 LAg 14. 77 2 LAg 17. 78 BF I, pp. 236–237. Clare expressed her gladness in a later letter (again with reference to Christ’s poverty), see 3 LAg 3–4. For the political intrigue, see Mueller, The Privilege of Poverty,” pp. 85–88. 79 Grundmann, p. 116. 80 Compare FLInn 1, 8, and 12. 74 75

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and in 1250 they gained a new papal bull exempting them from further obligations of visitation or pastoral care.81 Pope Innocent also sought to address some of the women’s concerns with Hugolino’s constitution. In 1247 he composed a new rule for the enclosed nuns of the Order of San Damiano which was designed to regularize their observance and incorporate new legislation promulgated since the earlier rule’s publication.82 The pontiff also accommodated a common protest against the earlier constitution by removing all references to the Benedictine Rule. In its place he confirmed that two Franciscan texts—the friars’ Later Rule and Francis’ Form of Life for San Damiano—were the basis of their observance. Innocent acknowledged that this was what (some? many?) of the sisters had requested (“acceding to your pious prayers” and “according to which you have particularly decided to live”). However, he also qualified this adoption by noting that the earlier rules applied only in their decrees on obedience, the renunciation of property, and chastity.83 The revised constitution was not widely accepted. Its recognition of the Franciscan affiliation in many of the Damianite houses could reflect Clare’s influence, but it is equally likely that he made this connection to discredit the claims by the heretical Sorores Minores’ that they were inspired by Francis.84 Clarian houses objected that the new rule still required each community to hold communal property.85 There also were complaints from those houses not as closely aligned with Clare and San Damiano, which nonetheless preferred the greater autonomy allowed to them by the earlier constitution. Few communities accepted it and by 1250 Innocent admitted to the nuns’ protector, Cardinal Rainaldo, that the legislation was not binding on any community.86 Clare seized upon the pope’s capitulation and took advantage of the legislative void to seek approval for the Form of Life she compiled to document San Damiano’s customs.

BF I, p. 538. BF I, pp. 476–483. (It was addressed to:) “Dilectis in Christo filiabus universis abbatissis et monialibus inclusis Ordinis Sancti Damiani. . . .” 83 FLInn 1 (quotations are from CAED, pp. 89–90). 84 Giovanna Cassagrande, “La regola di Innocenzo IV,” in Clara claris praeclara, pp. 71–82. 85 FLInn 11. The pope also appointed a procurator for the women. 86 Epitome et supplementum Bullarii Franciscani, p. 249 cited in Grundmann, Religious Movements, p. 335, n. 188. 81 82

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Clare’s “rule” is a hybrid text. She explicitly adopted the model of Francis’ Later Rule, but also incorporated passages from the Rule of Saint Benedict and earlier papal legislation for the Damianite Order.87 These texts may reflect the contribution of Cardinal Rainaldo, who granted his own approval to the text in 1251 and surely helped persuade Innocent IV to also grant his approval on Clare’s deathbed. But in spite of these borrowings, in many cases necessary to create a juridical text, Clare’s ideas about religious life are nonetheless clear. Evangelical poverty was literally and spiritually the heart of this rule.88 Following the Later Rule, she titled the middle section “the lack of possessions (De non habendis possessionibus).”89 The autobiographical nature of this chapter makes it stand out from the other more formal regulations in the rest of the rule where Clare borrowed heavily from Francis’ prose. It narrates the history of her Order beginning with the story of her own conversion and the growth of the community. Although the phrasing in this chapter was mostly Clare’s, this chapter did not turn away from the founder of the Franciscan Order and his ideal of poverty. This was the section where she incorporated Francis’ Form of Life and Testament composed for San Damiano. This chapter thus dictates the essential character of the life of Franciscan women according to Clare. It stands with her Testament as a declaration of her ideals of poverty in common with Francis’ vocation and achieved with the support of the friars. It is remarkable that Clare insisted on legal recognition of her Order’s right to live without any material support and without any ownership. When the friars accepted modification to their observance, she might

87 The identification and relationship of the borrowed passages has become clearer thanks to a new study by a team of Clarisses, see Federazione delle Clarisse S. Chiara d’Assisi di Umbria-Sardegna. Chiara di Assisi e le sue fonti legislative: Sinossi cromatica (Padua: Edizioni Messaggero, 2003). 88 FlCl 6: 10 –15. 89 The Assisi parchment of Clare’s Form of Life is unusual among the text’s medieval manuscripts in that it is not divided into chapters but presents the rule in a continuous text (this is the copy that Brufani and Bartoli Langeli have now dated to 1266). The other early manuscripts, including the Messina Codex which has been attributed by Bartoli Langeli to Leo’s hand, have this division but it is not clear when the rule was divided into chapters or by whom. Because the rule is usually presented with chapters, it will be cited in that manner, but it seems possible that different versions of her Form of Life were circulating in the 1250s and early 1260s. For more about the implications of the structure of Clare’s rule, see Lezlie Knox, “The Rule of Saint Clare,” in Michael Blastic, ed. Handbook of Franciscan Sources, vol. 1 (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, forthcoming).

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have capitulated.90 Clare could have accepted the Church’s grants of land and other goods, or simply put them aside. She did not. Her refusal arose from her understanding that evangelical poverty was the core of their vocation and necessary to the evangelical life.91 Her Form of Life declared that the professed sisters could not even give a novice advice on disposing of her belongings.92 The women who testified at the canonization process recalled that Clare did not want her sisters to speak of worldly things or even to remember them. They should always be thinking of God.93 Moreover, she insisted until the end of her life that the sisters’ poverty complemented the friars’ own evangelical vocation.94 Her insistence on evangelical poverty created a problem—and not only because few believed women could live without any means of support. Her tenacity served as a reproach to the men involved with her Order. When she wrote in her Testament—accepting that the document at least conveys her sentiments—that Francis’ commitment to poverty was based on his desire to imitate Christ, Clare was criticizing the friars who now used property owned by others on their behalf.95 Her challenge to the pope and cardinal protector was more subtle. She placed her trust in the church hierarchy and appealed to their sense of integrity to allow the women to live out their religious ideals.96 Nonetheless, by calling upon their sense of honor she adroitly rebuked the curia for previously not allowing the women to live in complete poverty. Clare’s Form of Life also insisted on the connection with the Friars Minor. Her rule sought to compel the friars’ participation in their communities by asking that the Order assign a chaplain to each house as well as two lay brothers who could gather alms for the sisters.97 The final chapter also proclaimed that their visitator should always be a friar. These passages demonstrate Clare’s insistence that the women’s

90 After Quo Elongati, Ordinem Vestrem (1247) also confirmed modifications to the friars’ observance, see BF I, pp. 400 –402. 91 PC 1:13. 92 FlCl 2:7 and 9. 93 PC 2:10. 94 As the imitative structure of her monastic legislation makes clear. See also TestCl 5, 19–20, 23. In TestCl 5 Clare had explained that their vocation was the way of life established for them by Francis. 95 TestCl 36. 96 TestCl 44–47. 97 FlCl 12: 1, 5–7. This passage is based on Pope Innocent’s rule.

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goal of living in complete evangelical poverty was intrinsically linked to their legal connection with the Friars Minor. She was asking for their spiritual care “in support of our poverty.” She also was claiming that it should extend to houses beyond San Damiano, since she refers to a visitator and later to the Cardinal Protector, whose responsibilities extended to all of the female communities.98 Sister Filippa, another woman who had lived at San Damiano since the early years, told the investigators at the official canonization process how she had learned that the pope had granted approval to Clare’s Form of Life. At the end of her life, after calling together all of her sisters, she entrusted the Privilege of Poverty to them. Her great desire was to have the Form of Life of the Order confirmed with a papal bull, to be able one day to place her lips on the papal seal, and, then, on the following day, to die. It occurred just as she desired. She learned a brother had come with letters bearing the papal bull. She reverently took it even though she was very close to death and pressed that seal to her mouth in order to kiss it. On the following day, Lady Clare passed from this life to the Lord—truly clear without a stain, with no darkness of sin, to the clarity of eternal light.99

To Clare, the confirmation of her rule indicated that Pope Innocent IV at last recognized San Damiano’s unique status: the sisters’ vocation demanded that they live without material endowments, sustained solely on alms and pastoral ministry from the Friars Minor. It was a radical formula for a female monastic community. For almost three decades, Clare had resisted ecclesiastical efforts to regularize San Damiano and sought exemptions confirming their commitment to evangelical poverty. Now, on her deathbed, she seemed to have succeeded. Considering the obstacles placed in her way, however, it should be asked why Clare insisted on incorporation into an Order that was rapidly moving away from the ideal of evangelical poverty that she had shared with Francis. The first reason for Clare’s determination is straightforward: there could not be an independent order of women in the thirteenth century. The second is more complex. Clare insisted on legal recognition as a Franciscan because she shared Francis’ religious ideals. She proclaimed that women could equally live out the poverty ideal. For this reason, she could not separate her two goals: evangelical 98 Alfonso Marini also accepts this idea, “’Ancilla Christi, Plantula sancti Francisci.’ Gli scritti di Santa Chiara e la Regola,” in Chiara: Atti, p. 116. 99 PC 3:32 (quotation from CAED, p. 162).

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poverty and a juridical tie to the Order of Friars Minor. Clare asserted “time and again we willingly bound ourselves to our Lady, most holy Poverty, that after my death, the sisters, those present and those to come, would never turn away from her.”100 She also believed the friars and sisters should form one Order because they shared a mission to reform the Church and the faithful. For Clare, the women’s contemplation and necessary enclosure complemented the friars’ preaching and mendicancy.101 Moreover she intended her form of life to reproach the friars and recall them to Francis’ vocation. Unfortunately for the sisters who shared Clare’s ideas, the Church and friars were unprepared to accept her representation of Franciscan life and early call to reform to the Franciscan Order’s primitive ideals. Ultimately, their problems with Clare and her ideals would impact her canonization. Saint Clare of Assisi Clare’s apparent legislative success was fleeting. The friars did not want her rule to spread beyond San Damiano. They correctly perceived it as a condemnation of their modified observance of poverty and they continued to protest their pastoral obligations to the enclosed women which her Form of Life demanded. Furthermore, the Roman Curia did not intend other houses to adopt this legislation. The Church was reluctant to have an order of women, now comprising around 110 communities, without any material support.102 Yet even as the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Friars Minor were acting to suppress her Form of Life, Pope Innocent IV initiated the process that might lead toward declaring her sainthood. The curia had great need of a saintly model for religious women and saw in Clare of Assisi the opportunity to create such a paradigm. The time between her death and canonization two years later thus became a crucial period for reworking Clare’s legacy both for her closest followers and the wider Order of San Damiano.

TestCl 39 (quotation from CAED, p. 62). Ibid., 19–20. 102 For this estimate see Riccardo Pratesi, “Le Clarisse in Italia,” in S. Chiara d’Assisi. Studi e Cronaca del VII Centenario 1253–1853 (Assisi: Comitato Centrale per il VII Centenario morte S. Chiara, 1953), pp. 339–377. Only those communities most closely related to Clare received permission to adopt her Rule: Agnes of Prague’s house, its daughter house in Bratislava, and Monticelli. Monteluce’s success was fleeting as seen above. 100 101

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The funeral of Clare of Assisi in August 1253 was a major event. Her hagiographical legends describe how Assisi appeared deserted since everyone had gone to San Damiano in order to view the body of the woman who already was being called a saint.103 Their ardor toward Clare was so great that the podestà had to appoint seven armed soldiers to stand guard and prevent relic theft. Pope Innocent IV, accompanied by a retinue of cardinals and other prelates, came to preside over the funeral. Like the citizens of Assisi, the Roman curia treated the deceased with reverence and viewed her as the possessor of supernatural powers.104 Nearly absent from this description of adoration and devotion, however, are the Friars Minor. One of her hagiographical legends admits that an entourage of friars attended the pope. Another records that the Franciscan friars began the liturgy, but in neither example do the brothers display grief or reverence for the deceased.105 Of course, those who were grieving most—the cloistered sisters at San Damiano—were not at the public funeral. But this absence of recorded emotion in an otherwise ardent description signals the tension between Clare and the Franciscan Order which had developed over the three decades between the deaths of Francis and Clare. Clare’s death arguably had a greater effect on the enclosed women than Francis’ had had on the Friars Minor. He had already withdrawn from the friars’ governance in 1221 but San Damiano’s abbess was still fighting to define the sisters’ way of life up to her death. At first, however, the sisters appear to have been unaware of the political stakes of her potential canonization as Clare’s death provoked a deeply personal outpouring of grief. One of the sisters hurriedly composed a letter announcing Clare’s death to which they addressed to “all of the sisters in the Order of San Damiano throughout the world.”106 The letter’s awkward expression and its unpolished style eloquently demonstrate their sorrow and difficulty reconciling their loss. LCl 47–48 and VLCl 1395–1460. VLCl 1405–1411. 105 LCl 47 and VLCl 1413. 106 A new edition of the letter was recently published by Giovanni Boccali, ed. Santa Chiara di Assisi. I primi documenti ufficiali: Lettera di annunzio della sua morte, Processo e Bolla di canonizzazione (Santa Maria degli Angeli-Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 2002), pp. 25–33 from the copy preserved in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Fondo Landau Finaly ms. 17. Zeffirino Lazzeri thought the letter was composed with the curia in mind, but as my discussion below makes clear, I do not believe that was the sisters’ first intent. See his “La lettera di partecipazione della morte di S. Chiara,” in AFH 20 (1927): 494–499. 103 104

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chapter one Her festive and celebrated ascent from earth to heaven, from the shadow of darkness to brilliance, although spiritually it suggests joy to the senses, temporally it has, nevertheless, confounded our light with an overflowing of grief. While she took our steps from the slippery path of worldly cravings, directed us on the path of salvation, alas she has left our sight.107

Brother Elias’ letter announcing Francis’ death may have provided the sisters with an immediate model for their announcement.108 A comparison of their texts, however, indicates that a different motive ultimately inspired the women to write. Elias’ letter proclaims Francis’ sanctity. There is no description of his final hours or words even though Elias had attended the deathbed. Rather, he concentrated on Francis’ miracles, most notably the stigmata and the pliable nature of his limbs even after death. Elias intended his letter to arouse excitement for the canonization of the founder of the Franciscan Order.109 In contrast, Clare’s companions appear less interested in declaring her sainthood. Rather than Elias’ tone of exaltation, their letter is a lament. It does praise Clare’s virtues as it commends her lack of complaint during her long illness, but it is significant that the sisters did not include any miraculous examples of Clare’s holiness in their announcement of her death. The letter ends abruptly after saying that Clare shone with miracles although it does not detail her deathbed visions of the Christ Child or of a heavenly choir, although

Quotation from CAED, p. 136. Lazzeri, “La lettera,” p. 494. Jordan of Giano stated that Elias “per totum Ordinem litteras consolatorias destinavit (AF 1:16).” Whether totum Ordinem can be interpreted as including the female houses seems doubtful since the curia had not yet incorporated them into the Order; it is possible, however, that sympathetic friars shared the notice with these convents. Elias and Clare were friends so he may have sent a copy of the letter to San Damiano. A spotty manuscript tradition leaves it unclear, however, whether a single exemplum was sent to each province or if there were multiple copies, see Michael Bihl, “De epistola encyclica Fr. Heliae circa transitus S. Francisci,” in AFH 23 (1930): 413, n. 8. The authenticity of this letter had been challenged, see Felice Accrocca, “Un apocrifo la ‘Lettera enciclica di frate Elia’ sul transito di S. Francesco?” CF 65 (1995): 473–509. It is probably true that the form the letter exists in today is not a text composed by Elias on the afternoon of Francis’ death as Bihl had supposed. For the purposes of the comparison with the sisters’ letter, however, it is enough to note that the encyclical letter clearly insists upon Francis’ sainthood even if the surviving form was modified and perhaps intensified from Elias’ original text. 109 Elias’s account of Francis’ crucifixion seems particularly designed for canonization. See “Epistola Encyclica de Transitu Sancti Francisci” in FF pp. 253–255, lines 15–19. 107

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they occurred during her final hours in the company of her sisters.110 Instead of a picture of a miracle-wielding saint, Clare’s personal role as abbess of the Order dominates the sisters’ letter. The women eulogize her as “our Lady Clare, our leader, venerable mother and teacher . . . .” They call her “the instrument of our profession.” She is the woman who cared for them and consoled them spiritually and physically.111 But if the sisters were not immediately aware of the importance of canonizing Clare, others were. Clare’s sainthood was a topic of great and immediate interest to the Roman Church. At her funeral mass, Pope Innocent IV revealed his belief in Clare’s sanctity when he began to recite the Office of Virgins in place of the accustomed Office of the Dead. His substitution effectively would have claimed that her sainthood was as undeniable as that of Francis for whom a process was deemed unnecessary.112 Cardinal Rainaldo, the sisters’ Cardinal Protector, interrupted the pope and warned him that they should proceed more slowly.113 The Cardinal’s intervention suggests the extraordinary nature of Innocent’s action. The pope’s behavior was even more remarkable considering that his commentary on the Decretals had established proper procedures for canonization which his declaration at Assisi would have violated.114 Beyond legal considerations, however, Rainaldo recognized that some friars would protest the sainthood of the woman who had insisted on a strict interpretation of Francis’ ideals. Nonetheless, both pope and cardinal understood the significance of a Saint Clare for the Roman Church. Since the beginning of the thirteenth century, Rome had canonized only three women, but not one who was connected to the new and popular religious movement centered on evangelical poverty.115 The pope and his cardinal realized

These visions were described in PC 9:10 and 11:3. The many miracles attested to by the witnesses at the process make clear that the sisters could have included them in the letter if they were already focused on her canonization. 111 See especially the opening of the letter, in Boccali, I primi documenti ufficiali, pp. 24–26. 112 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. by Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 337. See also Michael Bihl, “De canonizatione S. Francisci,” in AFH 21 (1928): 468–514. 113 LCl 47. 114 Giovanna La Grasta, “La canonizzazione di Chiara,” in Chiara: Atti, p. 303, n. 4. 115 Between 1198 and Clare’s successful canonization, there were five processes investigating women of which three were successful: St. Cunegund, Hildegard of 110

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that Clare could fill their need of a female model for their reform of enclosed religious life generally, but also project saintly authority upon the Order of San Damiano.116 The curia returned to Rome and Pope Innocent IV initiated a process of enquiry toward Clare’s canonization. There were no postulators either from among the enclosed women or (less surprisingly) the friars asking for a process; the initiative was the pope’s alone.117 Innocent presented Clare’s sainthood as self-evident. Both her pious deeds and her miracles rendered her worthy of devotion from the faithful.118 The process moved forward at a rapid pace.119 The enquiry took place in Assisi over a six-day period beginning on 24 November 1253. Fourteen of the sisters from San Damiano and four citizens of Assisi who had known her before her profession testified about her youth, conversion, life within the convent, and miracles.120 The process was successful. Clare was canonized in August 1255, although not by Innocent IV who had died the previous December. The canonization was the act of Cardinal Rainaldo, now Pope Alexander IV. A Saint Clare of Assisi had the potential to create some of the same problems as the living Clare since the relationship between a Franciscan vocation and the life lived by enclosed women remained unresolved. These tensions already were clear in Thomas of Celano’s second biography of Francis, The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul (1245–1247), which lacked the praise for the sisters present in the earlier life. It no longer mentions Clare by name. It does not refer to the Order of Poor Ladies, but instead identifies the sisters more commonly as an “order Bingen, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Margaret of Scotland, and Rose of Viterbo. Only Hildegard was cloistered, but her spirituality was affiliated with monastic tradition. Elizabeth of Hungary obviously was associated with the Franciscans, but more with the lay movement so she did no offer a monastic exemplar as Clare could be made to do. See Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, Table 9, pp. 252–255 and pp. 268–271. 116 The bull of canonization, Clara claris praeclara, originally expressed this idea, for example, in its focus on enclosure and Clare’s hidden silence. 117 BF I, pp. 684–685. The bull calling for the canonization process dates to 18 October 1253 or just over two months after her death on 11 August. 118 BF I, p. 685. 119 For the relative length of time before enquiry and the respective length of the process, see Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, Table 9. 120 The notary who recorded the process commented: “Unde andando io, Bartholomeo predicto, personalmente al monastero de Sancto Damiano, ricevvj li testimonij sopra la vita, conversione, conversatione et miraculi de la sancta memoria de madonna Chiara, abbadessa già del monastero de Sancto Damiano de Assise . . . (Boccali, I primi documenti ufficiali, p. 79).”

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of holy virgins.”121 Thomas now emphasized Francis’ withdrawal from the enclosed women at the end of his life when he came to resent the friars’ obligations toward convents.122 It is probable that the Franciscan Order’s new official biography of Francis strove to obfuscate the still living Clare because of her insistence on complete poverty and her fight to incorporate the women’s houses into the Order against the friars’ intentions. Certainly, neither the friars nor the curia intended her sainthood to be a testimony to Francis’ ideal of complete poverty. The Order may even have delayed the declaration of her sainthood. Her prose Legend suggests that it was popular acclaim and the spread of Clare’s cult that finally provoked Alexander IV to bring about her canonization.123 Moreover, even after her canonization, many friars still did not readily accept Clare. Her feast would not become an official part of the Order’s liturgical celebrations until 1260. In that same year, Pope Alexander wrote to the German Provincial Minister directing him to investigate and punish the friar who was publically preaching that Clare was not a saint.124 The friars’ libraries would not be required to have a copy of Clare’s legend until the Lyons Chapter in 1272.125 It seems that to help the friars accept St. Clare, hagiographical writers would have to suppress not only her insistence on evangelical poverty, but also deemphasize her links to both Francis and the Friars Minor. The uncensored testimony of Clare’s sisters at the canonization process contrasts with her official presentation in bulls and hagiographical legends. This difference demonstrates how her life was neutralized.126 Since she could not be presented as a moral authority on Francis’ spiritual ideals, Clare’s life was refashioned according to the paradigm of a

2C 204. 2C 204–207. 123 LCl 62. 124 BF II, p. 398. 125 For examples of the friars’ resistance see Bartoli, Chiara, p. 247. 126 LaGrasta, p. 317. There are five thirteenth-century legends; three are minor hagiographical texts and will not be considered here. The important legends are the Versified Legend, composed by an anonymous member of the papal court after the process but before her canonization, and the official Latin Legend, attributed incorrectly to Thomas of Celano, which Pope Alexander IV commissioned to celebrate her canonization. Much important new work on Clare’s hagiographical tradition is beginning to be published. Some of the most remarkable research has been done on the manuscript tradition of both Latin and vernacular texts and especially by Giovanni Boccali. See his working catalogue, “Tradizione manoscritta delle legende di Santa Chiara di Assisi,” in Clara Claris Praeclara, pp. 419–501. 121 122

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consecrated virgin.127 The authors of her hagiographical legends had no interest in how she participated in the renewal of evangelical poverty and relatively little concern for her visionary experiences and miracles. They instead focused on the claim that she had rejuvenated female religious life.128 Her Versified Legend proclaims “[Clare] . . . gave new life to the Order of Virgins which had almost died.”129 Alexander IV’s bull of canonization, Clara claris praeclara, declared “by this Clare, the sweet lily of virginity is offered among the heavenly delights.”130 The prose Legend of St. Clare commissioned by the pontiff similarly proclaimed “Let the men follow the new male disciples of the incarnate word [and] the women imitate Clare, the footprint of the Mother of God, a new leader of women.”131 Two other strategies helped transform San Damiano’s abbess into a general model: a de-emphasis of her connections to the Franciscan Order and a refashioning her life according to traditional paradigms of female hagiography. Francis, the friars, and their way of life receive little attention in narratives of Clare’s life. Indeed, Francis hardly figures in the texts once she has settled at San Damiano.132 Neither the bull of canonization nor the hagiographical legends cite the Form of Life he composed for San Damiano or any of the other texts of consolation he wrote for Clare and her companions. They refrain from discussing his visits to the sisters or the counsel he gave them.133 Besides turning attention

127 Catherine M. Mooney has demonstrated how the hagiographical sources turned Clare’s emphasis on following Christ, into an imitation of the Virgin, a more acceptable female model. See her “Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae?” Contemporary visual images of Clare echo this literary transformation. See for example, Dominique Rigaux, “Claire d’Assise: Naissance d’une image XIIIè–Xè siècles,” in Sainte Claire d’Assise et sa posterité, pp. 155–185. 128 There are similar claims in sermons on Clare. Compare Stefano Brufani, “I sermoni latini in onore di S. Chiara,” in Chiara: Atti, p. 348. On this point see also Clara Gennaro, “Il francescanesimo nel XIII secolo” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 25 (1989): 259–80. 129 VLCl 168–69. 130 BC 2. 131 LCl, preface (quotation from CAED, p. 279). 132 Clare’s Legend mentions Francis 38 times, much more than his legends cited her. On this imbalance see Dalarun, Francesco: un passagio, pp. 141–142. See also Stefano Brufani, “La memoria di Chiara d’Assisi,” in Clara Claris Praeclara, pp. 501–524. 133 Passing references as in LCl 31–33 are typical: Francis orders Clare to eat at least once daily, he sends a mentally ill brother to her to be healed, and Clare prays the Office of the Cross composed by Francis. One story that was left out of the legends was Clare’s eroticized vision of nursing from Francis’ breast, see PC 3:29 for the

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away from Francis, the lives also obscure Clare’s fight to secure the participation of the Friars Minor in her community. Aside from the threatened hunger strike of 1230, neither legend addresses her later struggles with the Friars Minor to guarantee pastoral care to the women. Their presence is seemingly accidental and directs the focus away from tension between the friars and nuns.134 Clare’s hagiographical legends equally obscure her efforts to spread San Damiano’s constitution to other communities. Most significantly, they avoid mentioning her Form of Life and her insistence that women could live out Francis’ spiritual ideals.135 When describing Cardinal Rainaldo’ visit to her deathbed, the prose Legend only states that she asked him to secure a Privilege of Poverty for her community and never refers to the Pope Innocent’s approval of her rule as Sister Filippa did in the testimony at the inquest cited above.136 Papal bulls addressing Clare’s canonization also obscure her insistence on evangelical poverty. In Gloriosus Deus, which had initiated the canonization enquiry, Innocent IV only mentioned poverty in connection with her spousal relationship to the Poor Christ.137 Alexander IV represented poverty as a rejection of personal wealth and possessions as well as the giving away of alms in Clara claris praeclara.138 The hagiographical legends do acknowledge Clare’s fight to refuse endowments for San Damiano, but they more often present poverty as a matter of being frugal rather than going without any material support. Thomas of Celano’s First Life had already testimony as well as an analysis by Marco Bartoli, “Analisi storico e interpretazione psicanalitica d’una visione di S. Chiara d’Assisi,” AFH 73 (1980): 449–472. Catherine Mooney recently has been reexamining this episode and will soon be publishing a new interpretation of it. 134 Brufani, p. 351. For example, Clare’s Legend describes the presence of Brothers Angelo, Rufino, and Leo at Clare’s death bed (LCl 44–45) and Philip Longo’s sermon to the convent (LCl 37). The brothers who lived at the convent permanently are referred to in LCl 15–16. 135 Similarly, the “Assisi Retable” the earliest panel painting showing a cycle of scenes from Clare’s life (1281–1285), excludes the image of papal confirmation of her rule. See Jeryldene Wood, “Perceptions of Holiness in Thirteenth Century Italian Painting: Clare of Assisi,” Art History 14 (1991): 312. 136 LCl 40. 137 BF I, 684. “Moxque abnegans se, suosque, et sua, Christum pauperum Regem Regum adamavit in sponsum adolescentula jam regalis; seque ipsi in humilitatis spiritu mente, et corpore totaliter devovens, haec duo praecipue bona pro dote quasi spopondit eidem paupertatis donum, votumque castimoniae virginalis.” 138 BC 3 and 5.

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provided a model for this rewriting: Francis’ first official biography presented poverty in terms of food and dress.139 In place of testimony concerning Clare’s poverty and connection with the Friars Minor, the legends focus instead on her embodiment of traditional saintly virtues. Her life was constructed according to the model of female sanctity the Church wanted other cloistered women to follow: enclosed, silent, and penitential.140 The texts proclaiming Clare’s sainthood focus on these characteristics and give them an importance lacking in her own writings. In fact, the bull of canonization explicitly linked her virginity to these characteristics.141 Personal asceticism receives increased attention. The legends borrow testimony from the witnesses at the canonization process to stress the strictness of San Damiano’s practice and ignore examples of Clare’s own moderation and emphasis on other virtues–particularly poverty and humility. The legends control Clare by stressing her enclosure both physically and spiritually within the cloister walls.142 Her Form of Life prescribes moderate enclosure and silence, with reasonable allowances, in contrast with the earlier papal legislation composed for the Damianite Order.143 But while she had accepted enclosure, her writings make clear that she did not consider it an individual or defining virtue for her Order. Furthermore, Clare indicated no connection between these practices and the spiritual ideal of virginity. She did not consider her followers’ virginity to be a virtue for its own sake. It was important because it facilitated the sisters’ union with Christ as their Bridegroom, as she wrote in a letter to Agnes of Prague.144 The hagiographical legends similarly underscore her penitential practices in order to represent Clare as a type of ascetical sanctity that achieved heroism through surpassing the strict limits of their lives.145 The Versified Legend praises her for “tormenting her body with different

1 Cel 19. Cf. LCl 7 and 12. Vauchez emphasizes these characteristics as part of the later medieval model of sainthood. According to Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell’s quantative analysis, they are part of the so-called androgynous model, see their Saints and Society: the Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 100 –1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 141 BC 12–14 and 16 esp. 142 For example, LCl 10 and 36. 143 FlCl 2:12 and 5:2–4. Compare FLHug 4 and 13 where the regulations are longer and more detailed. The only words that Clare’s text borrowed from earlier legislation was the prohibition: exire non liceat. 144 1 LAg 7–8. 145 Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 349–352. 139 140

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afflictions.”146 The Latin Legend describes how Clare wore a hair shirt under her own clothing, used a rock for a pillow while she slept on the floor, and fasted so severely that Francis had to order her to seek nourishment.147 The legends did not incorporate the sisters’ testimony that she intended these practices for herself alone. Sister Benvenuta testified that Clare wore a shirt made from a boar’s skin, but admitted that she had never seen this shirt because the abbess had worn it very secretly and had not intended the sisters to endure similar harshness.148 The sisters, to be sure, did not view their abbess or these episodes in the same way as the curia. Sister Filippa, after testifying to Clare’s penitential practices, concluded that their abbess never seemed disturbed, but was always rejoicing in God.149 As their testimonies to the papal investigators indicate, the sisters were more interested in the results than in the activity itself. It could be argued that Clare’s hiding of these practices is still evidence of her saintliness, but the legends omit another important clarification made by the sisters’ testimony. Clare herself had urged discretion in ascetical practices.150 Her sisters understood her asceticism as evidence of humility and they recounted these stories in order to demonstrate the lack of pride and vanity in their abbess. To them she was a woman who considered herself so low that she washed the feet of the serving sisters. When one woman accidentally kicked her, Clare kissed the foot.151 They viewed her actions as saintly, it is true, for they also had come to recognize the stakes involved in her canonization. It seems that by the time of the canonization process (several months after Clare’s death) the sisters now understood that they needed to describe her life in such a way as to make her palatable to the Roman Curia. The testimony of Clare’s natural sister Beatrice reveals their discernment, as much as a tired notary’s desire to summarize. Asked in what Lady Clare’s holiness consisted, she replied: in her virginity, humility, patience and kindness; in the necessary correction and sweet

VLCl, 1170 –71. LCl 17–18 which is marked by the rubric De mortificatione carnis. Also LCl 39. Compare PC 2:4–5, 3:4, and 10:1 (clothing); 1:7 (bed); and 1:6–8, 2:8, 3:5, 4:5, 6:4, 10:4 (severe fasting). The summarized testimonies of later witnesses make clear that the inquisitors were looking for statements of Clare’s asceticism. PC, 6:7, 7:4, and 13:4. 148 PC 2:6. 149 PC 3:3–6 150 For example, 3LAg 31. 151 PC 2:3. 146 147

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The curia was most heartened by the first part of Beatrice’s description. The Virgin Clare who fasted, prayed, and disciplined her body offered a saintly model for all religious women. Unfortunately for Clare’s companions who shared her spiritual ideas, the Church turned attention away from the last characteristic: Clare’s insistence that religious women could live out the vocation of Francis of Assisi in a community without any material support. Conclusion The institutionalization of a female branch of the Franciscan Order, the Order of San Damiano, was achieved by Pope Gregory IX and his successors. Nonetheless, Clare of Assisi’s contributions to the formation of an order of Franciscan nuns were significant. Francis’ support, affection, and ultimately spiritual authority helped her to draft her own Form of Life. With the assistance of friars like Elias, she spread San Damiano’s model to other communities in central Italy and a few in the Empire. As the stories told by her companions to the papal investigators at her canonization process make clear, there was a determined woman fighting to define a particular expression of female Franciscan life even as the papacy worked to regularize the women’s religious movement. Most scholars stress Clare’s commitment to evangelical poverty as the most critical aspect of her ideals, but equally important was her insistence on a strong connection with the Friars Minor. As much as her Form of Life details the sisters’ observance of poverty, it more directly confirms their links to Francis and his successors. Nonetheless, Clare’s “success” did not outlast her lifetime and the activist recalled by her sisters at the canonization process, was replaced by the more neutral picture of Saint Clare in the hagiographical legends. The goodwill and sense of shared vocation so important to Clare soon was limited primarily to those brothers who were a part of

152

PC 12:6 (quotation from CAED, p. 184).

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the early Franciscan movement. As most friars accepted modifications to their observance of poverty, they begrudged Clare’s insistence that communities of enclosed nuns could live without material support. The friars increasingly complained about their pastoral responsibilities to the women and fought the incorporation of new houses into their Order. Papal intervention secured spiritual care from the Friars Minor, but it also required the women to accept property and other sources of income, something many of the Damianites were willing to do. Institutionalization, nonetheless, appeared to restrict the rights of the Order of San Damiano and Clare’s hagiographical legends did not present a model for how women could live out their Franciscan vocations. These would become significant lacks as the women continued to struggle to secure their place in the Franciscan Order as the next chapter will show.

CHAPTER TWO

THE ORDER OF SAINT CLARE Clare of Assisi’s canonization did not resolve the long standing issue of the status of women within the Franciscan Order.1 The papal curia had intended her official legend to promote her as a female figurehead for the Order of San Damiano, but this text alone was unable to create an institutional identity for the women’s order when they still lacked a common rule. Moreover, by valorizing Clare they had validated her desire for a tight bond between the sisters and friars, which continued to be a source of tension between the two groups. The Damianites were interested in strengthening their connections to the Franciscan Order even as the friars sought to constrain the growth of the female order and thus their obligations to minister to the sisters’ houses. Part of the problem for the brothers was that some demands for pastoral care were coming from women who falsely claimed—so said the friars—to be sisters of the Order of San Damiano. They complained that although these women wore a Damianite habit, they were not cloistered and that the responsibility for their pastoral care properly belonged to the diocesan clergy. To a certain extent, this depiction seems a-historical. Alexander IV’s denunciation repeated verbatim the earlier condemnation of Pope Innocent IV against the Sorores Minores.2 This is not an indication of laziness on the part of the papal chancery. Rather, it indicates the continuing presence of a dissident movement

1 Parts of this chapter appeared in a different version as “Audacious Nuns: Conflict between the Franciscan Friars and the Order of Saint Clare,” Church History 41 (2000): 41–62. 2 Alexander had reissued Innocent IV’s bull from 20 April 1250, see BF I, p. 541. Both bulls were addressed to local bishops, on behalf of the Friars Minor, directing the clerics to give no consequence to the claims of these women calling themselves Minoresses. The Sorores Minores were primarily an Italian and southern French phenomenon (in the sense of the group against which the Franciscan Order protested at this time). However, when Pope Alexander approved a rule written by Princess Isabelle of France for the community she founded outside Paris, he rejected her preferred name—Soeurs mineures—because of its association with the heretical sisters. See Sean L. Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Identity and Franciscan Sanctity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 66–73.

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of women who resisted papal efforts to regularize their communities.3 In some cases, these women had strong local support, but under the leadership of Minister General John of Parma the Franciscans resisted their claims on the Order.4 That Alexander repeatedly assured the friars they could not be compelled to minister either to existing or newly founded communities suggests that the brothers nonetheless felt compulsion to do so. These pressures would become open hostilities during the pontificate of his successor, Urban IV (1261–1264), when for the first time the two orders each had their own cardinal protector. In 1263 the Order’s Minister General, Bonaventure of Bagnorea, complained about recent turmoil between the two groups in a letter addressed to the Provincial Minister of Aragon. You are undoubtedly aware, dear Brother, just how much our Order has been plagued up to now with threats, troubles, and litigation occasioned by the monasteries of the Order of St. Clare. This has come to the point where they have petitioned the court of the Supreme Pontiff, alleging, among other charges against us, that the customary services provided for them by our brothers are in fact prescribed by law; thus our brothers have proposed to have nothing more to do with them unless they first recognize our complete freedom by public written documents sent to said Holy Father.5

Bonaventure wrote these comments at the end of a bitter altercation that had seen the friars withdraw from the sisters’ houses. Although the legal obligation to provide pastoral care to the enclosed women defined this specific altercation, there always continued to be more at stake in conflicts between the Friars Minor and the sisters. The decade between 1253 and 1263, from Clare’s death to the promulgation of a new constitution for what was now named the Order of Saint Clare, was crucial for defining the status of enclosed women within the Franciscan Order. By the time matters reached a confrontation at the beginning of the 1260s, the disputes between

3 See the fuller discussion of this phenomenon in Maria Pia Alberzoni, “Sorores Minores e autorità ecclesiastica,” pp. 165–194. 4 For an example of local support for a group of Sorores Minores, see Giancarlo Andenna, “Le Clarisse nel Novarese (1252–1300),” AFH 67 (1974): 185–267. 5 Etudis Franciscans 37 (1926): 112–14, quotation from p. 112 (hereafter cited as “Aragon”). (Quotation from Bonaventure, “A Letter To The Provincial Minister Of Aragon,” in St. Bonaventure’s Writings Concerning the Franciscan Order, trans. by Dominic Monti (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, 1994), pp. 192–193).

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the friars and sisters had relatively little to do with poverty or the role of endowments for female communities. Most of the Damianite sisters had moved away from the spiritual ideals of Clare of Assisi (to the extent that they had mattered for the communities first organized by the papal delegates). Rather, what unified the sisters was their fight for ties to the Friars Minor. The result was that the competing images of Clare presented in her hagiographical legend and in her Form of Life continued to be used to define and authorize the sisters’ status as Franciscans. Bonaventure, Reform, and the Sisters When the General Chapter meeting at Rome in 1257 unanimously elected Bonaventure of Bagnorea to the office of minister general, he faced an Order in a state of crisis.6 In addition to internal dissension, the friars’ troubles included the forced resignation of the Minister General John of Parma, threatened papal sanctions, and attacks on the mendicant charism by secular masters at the University of Paris.7 As regent master at Paris since 1254, Bonaventure already was involved in protecting the friars and must have appeared as a strong candidate to lead the Order.8 The new Minister General would continue to defend

6 Useful overviews of Bonaventure’s generalship are provided by Rosalind B. Brooke, Early Franciscan Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959): 247–285 and “St Bonaventure as Minister General,” in S. Bonaventura Francescano: 14–17 ottobre 1973 (Todi: Accademia Tudertina, 1974), pp. 77–105. For a review of different interpretations of his significance, see E. Randolph Daniel, “St. Bonaventure: a Faithful Disciple of St. Francis? A Reexamination of the Question.” in S. Bonaventura 1274–1974 (Rome: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1974), 2: 171–187. 7 These causes have received much attention in the scholarly literature, including survey’s of the Order’s history by Moorman, Nimmo, and Robson, and do not need to be summarized here. For the broader context of the secular-mendicant conflict, see Decima Douie, The Conflict between the Seculars and Mendicants at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century (London: Blackfriars, 1954) and Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: an Institutional and Intellectual History (NY: Wiley, 1968). 8 For Bonaventure’s participation in the Parisian conflict see Roberto Lambertini, Apologia e crescita dell’identità francescana (1255–1279) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1990), pp. 11–24. Lambertini convincingly demonstrates that Bonaventure’s writings actually predate Hugh of Digne’s commentary on the Later Rule, contrary to earlier scholars’ assumptions. This discovery indicates that Bonaventure played a greater and more active role in the friars’ defense even before his election as Minister General than had previously been realized.

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how the brothers chose to live out their vocation, ultimately coming to clarify their responsibilities toward Francis’ legacy and to redefine what it meant to be a Friar Minor.9 Although his interpretation of the Franciscan charism primarily addressed the friars’ way of life, these institutional changes also came to affect both the sisters of the Order of San Damiano and the other women who sought an affiliation with the Franciscan Order. Bonaventure was determined to initiate a program of reform inspired by devotion to Francis. Soon after his election he wrote to all provincial ministers and custodians both to gain their support and to establish control over an insecure Order.10 He identified ten violations of their profession—including the use of money by brothers, outrageous expenses, and over-familiarity with women—that had led to the Order’s diminished reputation. To correct these faults, he called upon the friars to rededicate themselves to a strict observance of the Later Rule. Bonaventure urged the ministers to stir up devotion among the brothers and eliminate transgressions. He insisted that the friars were not being asked to do anything new, but merely to do what they had already vowed.11 Bonaventure realized, however, that to achieve a stricter observance, the Order needed a clear exposition of their legislation, especially the decrees promulgated by the papacy and their own General Chapters after the Later Rule had been approved (1223). To aid their understanding, he presented the Order with its first systematic constitution at the General Chapter meeting in 1260.12 The Constitution 9 By viewing his reforms in their immediate context, it becomes clearer that if Bonaventure was not the innovator, neither was he the willful vanquisher of the earlier tradition. He emerges instead as the codifier of existing practices already initiated during earlier generalships. For a summary of different constructions of Bonaventure, see Monti, pp. 1–8. 10 Bonaventure, Opuscula varia ad Theologiam Mysticam et Res Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Spectantia, Opera Omnia. Vol. 8 (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1898), pp. 468–469 (this volume is hereafter cited as Opuscula Mystica). An English translation of the letter is available in Monti, pp. 57–62. 11 Bonaventure criticized those who tried to excuse their faults, see Opuscula Mystica, p. 469. 12 Michael Bihl, “Statuta generalia Ordinis edita in capitulis Generalibus Celebratis Narbonae an. 1260, Assisii an. 1279 atque Parisiis an. 1292,” in AFH 34 (1941): 13–94 and 284–358 (hereafter Narbonne). According to Salimbene, the first spate of constitution writing had occurred around 1239 after the ousting of Elias from the generalship. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Scalia, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis vol. 125 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), p. 245. Brooke’s Early Franciscan Government is the best overview of the governance of the Order prior to Narbonne. Her reconstruction of the earlier constitutions (which Bonaventure ordered destroyed) has

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of Narbonne focused on organizing earlier decrees and avoided creating new legislation. While points of observance seem to have been clarified during the generalship of Haymo of Faversham, the new rulings were not presented in a systematic manner until Bonaventure. The Constitution of Narbonne illustrates how the Order had changed over several decades. Bonaventure proclaimed that the Later Rule had primary importance even while he accepted papal modifications (as articulated in Quo elongati and other papal bulls). Famously, the constitution confirmed that the Order’s transformation from the early days when it consisted of Francis and a few other brothers into a sophisticated international order. It claimed that the friars did not actually own any possessions, but only used things as the papal rulings allowed them.13 When questioned whether the friars engaged in study against the form of their vocation, the Minister General insisted that the Later Rule in no way prohibited literate brothers from studying.14 Indeed, he compared the Order to the simple structure of the Early Church which had grown to include the most learned scholars.15 These examples illustrate how Bonaventure redefined the friars’ vocation in terms of their function. Franciscan identity became what the friars were doing. Francis had intended his followers to live out the gospel ideal of poverty; now Bonaventure was proclaiming that the Order of Friars Minor had become an order of preachers.

received criticism, although a recent manuscript discovery has supported her arguments. See Cesare Cenci, “De Fratrum Minorum constitutionibus praenarbonensis,” AFH 83 (1990): 50 –95. 13 Narbonne 3 De observantia paupertatis. Bonaventure had expressed this point of view earlier (c. 1254–1255) in his “Epistola de tribus quaestionibus ad magistrum innominatum,” in Opuscula Mystica, pp. 331–336, see especially p. 332. 14 Opuscula Mystica, p. 334 (discussing the implications of LR 5:1). Bonaventure also claimed that Francis’ statement in LR 10:7 illiterate brothers should not be taught to read was not a prohibition of study amongst the educated brothers, but applied only to the illiterate serving brothers. This text seems a clear response to the secular-mendicant controversy and the University’s declaration in 1254 that the friars had violated the precept “be not called masters,” cited in Monti, p. 51, n. 37. 15 Opuscula Mystica, p. 336. Bonaventure’s final work, the Collationes in Hexaemeron returned to this issue. In that text, he acknowledged that Francis was suspicious of learning, but explained that since only Francis was a part of the Seraphic Order, other friars had to rely on theological study. See Collation 22.21 in Bonaventure, Opuscula Varia Theologica, in Opera Omnia Vol. 5 (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1891), pp. 329–449. See also Bernard McGinn, “The Influence of St. Francis on the Theology of the High Middle Ages. The Testimony of St. Bonaventure,” in Bonaventuriana. Miscellanea in onore di Jacques Guy Bougerol (Rome: Edizioni Antonianum, 1988): 97–118.

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This interpretation reflects how some friars’ attitude toward Francis had changed by the middle of the thirteenth century. These men represented a new generation of brothers who had never known Francis personally. For them, the Poverello had ceased to be a literal model and instead had evolved into a source of spiritual inspiration. Bonaventure’s Major Legend, recognized as Francis’ official biography in 1263, crystalizes this alteration.16 The Legend did not suppress information about the early development of the Franciscan Order. For example, it presents the early brotherhood as a group who lived by begging, worked hard with their hands, prayed continually, and whose only “book” was a crucifix. Elsewhere, it recounts Francis’ belief that in order to practice perfect poverty, the brothers must renounce worldly good and secular learning. Bonaventure fairly represented Francis’ ideals and never concealed that the Order had changed since the days of the early brothers.17 Nonetheless, his biography was not particularly interested in Francis as a man, but rather more in the saint who offered inspiration to the contemporary Order.18 The brothers’ admiration for Francis should inspire their vocation, but not directly model the way they would live their lives. Bonaventure therefore appears to have seen no inconsistency between insisting on devotion to Francis and his rule, and at the same time constructing a way of life based on the modified observance of poverty and the practice of academically trained preaching, as codified within his Constitution.19

16 The Major Legend is in Opuscula Mystica, pp. 505–564. New evidence about Francis’ life had come to light following the publication of Celano’s second biography (1247). Hence, the 1260 General Chapter commissioned Bonaventure to compose a new life of the founder. He presented the completed text at the next chapter meeting in Pisa in 1263. Earlier lives were ordered destroyed at the following meeting and the Bonaventure’s Legend became the Order’s official biography in 1266. This censorship suggests that there was some resistance to his presentation of Francis or at least to the Order’s attempt to establish a definitive account of their founding saint. 17 These examples occur in LMj 4:3 and 7:2. 18 This is suggested in the Prologue where Bonaventure presented Francis as a “Confessor Saint” and informed his readers that he would not proceed chronologically through his life. Most scholars accept the idea that the legend offers a “theologized” Francis more than a historical portrait of the man. 19 On learning, see particularly Narbonne 1:9, 4.11 and 16; and 11.27. Most of the legislation concerning academic study comes within the sixth rubric De occupationibus fratris. Already during the generalship of Haymo of Faversham (1240 –1244) the Order had a policy against recruiting illiterate laymen (compare the testimony in the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, AF III, p. 251). See Jacques Guy Bougerol, “Le origini e la finalità dello studio nell’ordine francescano,” Antonianum 53 (1978): 405–33 and

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Bonaventure’s program of reform created problems, however, for the friars’ relationship with the enclosed women attached to the Franciscan Order. If the Franciscans’ vocation had come to be defined by preaching—which orthodox thought defined as an explicitly male role in the thirteenth century—it was unclear how the enclosed women fit into the Order. Preaching and studying drew them away from providing pastoral care to the sisters. When the standard for the Friars Minors had come to include communal property, academic study, and service in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the defining characteristic of the sisters’ vocation could not be living out Francis’ ideal of poverty as Clare had claimed in her Form of Life. That her legislation appeared to criticize the friars’ present way of life that Bonaventure was so concerned to defend offered an other reason for suppressing that text and promoting a generic image of Clare as an enclosed virgin. Understanding what Bonaventure knew about Clare and her ideals represents a key problem for identifying the Minister General’s attitude toward the female order attached to the Friars Minor. Bonaventure’s attitude toward the enclosed women was complex.20 While resident in Paris, he had become acquainted with Isabelle, sister of King Louis IX of France. Often their relationship has been characterized as an affectionate friendship in which Bonaventure and Isabelle seem to be a spiritual pair following the model of Francis and Clare. He is regularly cited as a spiritual advisor to the convent she founded at Longchamp in 1259 (first sisters entered the following year). He also has been credited as author of the community’s rule.21 There are several problems with this characterization. Isabelle never entered the convent

Raoul Manselli, “St. Bonaventure and the Clericalization of the Friars Minor,” Greyfriars Review 4 (1990): 83–98. 20 This is not a subject which has received much critical attention. See, however, Sophronius Clasen, “Franziskanische Christusbrautschaft. Die Stellung des hl. Bonaventura zum Orden der hl. Klara,” Franziskanische Studien 39 (1953): 296–317. Recently, several scholars have considered Clare’s influence on Bonaventure’s theological ideas (moderated through Brother Leo). See Jay M. Hammond, “Clare’s Influence on Bonaventure,” Franciscan Studies 62 (2004): 101–118 and Timothy J. Johnson, “Clare, Leo, and the Authorship of the Fourth Letter to Agnes of Prague,” pp. 97–99 esp. 21 Isabelle’s vita (composed by Agnes of Harcourt, a nun at Longchamp) describes Bonaventure’s involvement. No medieval copy of this text is extent. Although the Acta Sanctorum prints the Bollandists’ version of this life (AASS 6), a seventeenth-century French edition is closer to the medieval original. See The Writings of Agnes of Harcourt: The Life of Isabelle of France & the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp, ed. and trans. by Sean L. Field (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), pp. 24–33 and 37–40 esp.

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herself as a professed sister, much less abbess but instead lived the life of a royal penitent in a modest residence constructed on the convent grounds where she met regularly with her Franciscan confessors. Moreover, Sean Field has demonstrated recently that Bonaventure’s involvement with Longchamp was more negligible than Franciscan tradition credits. Isabelle herself was the author of Longchamp’s rule (a first verion in 1259 with a revision in 1263) and Bonaventure’s treatise, On the Perfection of Life Addressed to the Sisters, was unlikely to have been written for Isabelle as is regularly claimed (although its addressee is clearly a Franciscan sister).22 Certainly to some extent his role as an advisor to Longchamp (in the company of other friars) meant that Bonaventure already had some experience, presumably positive, with the women affiliated to his Order. As Minister General, however, Bonaventure had to temper affection with official concern for the nature of the relationship between the friars and nuns. Three texts composed at the beginning of his generalship—a letter addressed to San Damiano in 1259,23 On the Perfection of Life,24 and the Constitutions of Narbonne from 1260—help reveal his sentiments toward the sisters and their place within the Franciscan Order. The first two are particularly important as they directly address the spiritual identity of the women. In 1259 Bonaventure visited Italy for only the second time since his election to the office of Minister General. He spent part of the period in contemplative retreat on Mount Alverna, having been drawn to the place where Francis had received the stigmata, for a period of contemplation before entering fully into the Order’s governance. While there he wrote to the sisters at San Damiano in Assisi. They may have received his letter with some surprise. Bonaventure had never met Clare and it seems unlikely that he personally knew any of the women then

The basis for this claim seems to Bonaventure’s address to the recipient as “Deo devota, dilecta mihi, reverenda mater” (Opuscula Mystica, p. 107). Since Isabelle never professed religious vows, much less lived in the cloister it would be odd to refer to her as a “reverend mother”) The most important study on this royal patron and her foundation is now Sean Field, Isabelle of France; for the origin of this treatise see pp.198, n. 52 esp. 23 Opuscula Mystica, pp. 473–474. 24 On the Perfection of Life (De perfectione vitae ad sororum) in Opuscula Mystica, pp. 107–127. Bonaventure composed the treatise, a guide to spiritual perfection through contemplation, sometime after October 1259 (during the same period as he was writing The Mind’s Journey to God ). While this treatise was written for a specific community, it came to circulate throughout the Order. 22

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living in her former convent (he would not visit the community until the following year to celebrate the translation of Clare’s body).25 Regis Armstrong has suggested that Brother Leo had called his attention to the friars’ responsibilities to the enclosed women but this specific supposition, as opposed to general conversations about Clare or the enclosed sisters, cannot be proven by the letter or any other account of Bonaventure and Leo’s interactions.26 Nonetheless it is striking that while concerns with the friars’ governance and Francis’ spiritual legacy to the Order were occupying Bonaventure, he wrote to the women. It is worth quoting at length: My dear daughters in the Lord, when recently I learned from our dearest brother Leo, one time companion of our holy Father, how intent you are on serving the poor crucified Christ in all purity, as spouses of the eternal King, I rejoiced greatly in the Lord because of it. I now wish through this letter to offer every encouragement to this devotion of yours, so that you might follow earnestly the virtuous footprints of your holy Mother, who was instructed by the Holy Spirit through that little poor man, Saint Francis.27

He recommends that they love Christ and be humble, obedient, and patient. Invoking sponsal imagery from the Song of Songs as well as the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, Bonaventure thus focuses on their devotional lives and concludes by asking for their prayers. While he calls on them to follow Clare’s example, his engagement with the sisters is rather general and it is difficult to see the Minister General really thinking about the place of women in the Franciscan Order in this brief letter. His longer treatise, On the Perfection of Life, also recommended that prayer and spiritual exercises should shape enclosed life. The woman who wished to advance in perfection must train herself to be constantly

His sermon from this event has not survived. See Regis Armstrong, trans. Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 2nd. ed. (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1993), p. 340. (This letter was not included in the third edition of the Clare sourcebook.) Hammond argues that the letter shows evidence of Leo instructing Bonaventure on Clare’s teachings on the Crucified Christ and use of mirror imagery (Hammond, pp. 109–117). He identifies several suggestive connections, but there is no direct evidence of this “instruction.” Anton Rotzetter has claimed that Bonaventure knew Clare’s letters to Agnes of Prague, but there also is no evidence for this knowledge, see his Klara von Assisi: Die erste franziskanische Frau (Freiburg: Herder, 1993), p. 337 cited in Hammond, p. 109 n. 30. 27 Epistola VIII, in Opera Mystica, pp. 473–474 (quotation from Monti, p. 68). 25 26

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in a state of devotion.28 The treatise offered moral instructions and an explicit structure to guide their meditation, effectively acting out the spiritual direction that medieval clerics were accustomed to provide to enclosed nuns. Each chapter introduced a stage of spiritual progression, provided examples or exercises for the reader’s contemplation, and finished with an exhortation or lesson.29 The first chapter is exemplary. Identifying self-knowledge as the first necessary step—for without it, Bonaventure wrote, there was no way she would come to appreciate God—he recommended that she examine herself. The sister should look inwardly and accuse herself of sinning through negligence, concupiscence and malice in turn. Not surprisingly, both texts invoked themes present in his other contemporary works. He particularly urged the sisters to nurture their love for the Crucified Christ. Topics such as the soul’s progress, the presence of God in all creation, and a focus on the Passion and humanity of Christ link these texts to Bonaventure’s other spiritual treatises such as The Soul’s Journey to God and The Triple Way.30 Within the context of Bonaventure’s writings addressed to the Franciscan Order, these common characteristics suggest his recognition that the friars and nuns shared one spiritual foundation. Nonetheless, while Bonaventure’s tone was affectionate, it was unspecific. His appreciation for the sisters was constructed within the traditional paradigms of female monasticism—that is, as consecrated virgins—rather than within a specifically Franciscan framework. 31 Characteristics that can be identified as Franciscan are certainly within Opuscula Mystica, p. 117. Ibid., p. 108. Bonaventure’s Soliloquy offers similar advice; see Opuscula Mystica, p. 28. 30 These themes also appear in Tree of Life (Opuscula Mystica, pp. 68–87) and the Major Legend whose principle of organization relates to Francis’ spiritual progress. On the Perfection of Life is explicitly linked to the Breviloquium and the Soliloquium by the closing quotation from Anselm’s Proslogium. For an overview of Bonaventure’s spirituality, see Ignatius Brady’s preface in Ewert Cousins, ed. Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, the Tree of Life, the Life of St. Francis. Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), pp. 8–46. 31 Jeryldene Wood makes a similar point in Women, Art and Spirituality, pp. 23–24. I therefore differ from Monti, who reads in Bonaventure’s letter an appreciation for the “distinctive women’s expression of Franciscan religious life initiated by [Clare] (p. 67).” Nor am I convinced by Armstrong’s observation that “when [the 1259 letter] is placed beside Bonaventure’s treatment of Saint Clare and the Poor Ladies in his Major Life of Saint Francis, it is clear that from this point he became aware of their prominent place in the unfolding of franciscan [sic] ideals (Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 2nd ed., p. 340).” Both of these viewpoints seem to presume that the female Order descended from Clare. 28 29

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the treatise, but it is more difficult to see evidence of Bonaventure specifically engaging with the topic of how the sisters were a part of the Franciscan Order because of shared spiritual ideals. References to ideals such as poverty and humility are so brief in his letter to San Damiano, for example, as to be easily overlooked in favor of standard characterizations of female spirituality from the Song of Songs. On the Perfection of Life similarly invokes traditional female virtues: virginity, enclosure, and humility.32 These texts could be compared with an earlier letter to San Damiano from Alexander IV (dated to 17 October 1257). The Pope urged the nuns to follow in Clare’s footsteps, but said nothing about her Form of Life or its ideal of poverty.33 He never mentioned the Friars Minor or their connection to Clare’s community, a topic that Bonaventure also did not directly engage. There are few references to Clare in either text, reflecting the limited reach of her spiritual authority in the eyes of the friars at this time. In the letter Clare is alluded to as the sisters’ mother. There are only three references to her in all of On the Perfection of Life. Bonaventure never denied her importance to the sisters but he clearly presented her as a source of spiritual inspiration rather than a model for their lived experience. He might link Francis and Clare as founders of the Order—in the way that Thomas of Celano’s earlier biography talked about Clare as the foundation of the female order—but he shied away from her claim that women could live out Francis’ evangelical vocation. This is revealed in the opening of his letter to San Damiano where Bonaventure emphasized it was the Holy Spirit, not Francis, who taught Clare. His evocation of humility linked Francis and Clare as models, but on a spiritual rather than practical plane.34 These texts do reveal sincere appreciation for the sisters’ spiritual lives. There also is ambivalent approval for the women, but on terms other than Clare’s. It is worth emphasizing that it is not just radical poverty, but also the importance of a link with the friars that is missing. Passing references in his devotional treatise for the sisters suggest that Bonaventure may have been interested in a general sense in how

32 Like Clare’s hagiographical legends, he connected these virtues. For example, Opuscula Mystica, p. 112. “Consulo ergo tibi, dilecta mater, consule filibus tuis, consule virginibus Deo sacratis, ut virginitatem in humilitate et humilitatem in virginitate conservent.” 33 BF II, p. 252. 34 Opuscula Mystica, p. 112.

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the nuns’ contemplative vocation might complement the friars’ active vocation.35 The prologue expresses doubt as to whether he could write a spiritual guide for enclosed women. Bonaventure claimed that he himself had more need to be taught about contemplation since his academic study and reputation had not prepared him for this task.36 This apology—which the contemporary Soliloloquy and The Triple Way lack—appear to be more than a mere rhetorical trope. Both the apologies and structure of On the Perfection of Life may suggest that religious women as contemplatives had greater access to that divine understanding than he, the academically trained university master. Perhaps Bonaventure also believed the sisters could support the friars’ preaching vocation through their prayers.37 The contemporary Dominican Order may offer a parallel and supporting example. Jordan of Saxony’s letters to Diana d’Andalò (which present an interesting juxtaposition of spiritual advice and tales of academic success) show how he sought her convent’s support by requesting that they pray for the brothers’ success at recruiting students.38 If something similar motivated Bonaventure, this presentation would create a privileged position for the Clarisses, albeit one within the traditional paradigms of female monastic life. The brevity of these references, however, renders this interpretation only a supposition.39 Ultimately, Bonaventure’s writings addressed directly 35 For the “unity of purpose,” of active and contemplative vocations (gendered masculine and feminine) proclaimed by medieval canonists, see Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators 1298–1545, (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), p. 15. 36 Opuscula Mystica, pp. 107–108. Later he would return to this theme; Opuscula Mystica, p. 117. 37 His letter to San Damiano closes by asking for the sisters to pray for him as Minister General, see Opuscula Mystica, 474. 38 See Beati Iordani de Saxonia Epistulae, ed. by Angelus Walz (Istituto Storico Domenicano, 1951). Jordan of Saxony explicitly expressed this idea in a letter written to Diana from Paris: “Nolo etiam et ignorare, carissima, gratiam, quam facit Dominus ordini, quomodo fratres nostri crescunt numero et merito. Post introitum enim nostrum Parisiis infra quattuor septimanas viginti et unus fratres intraverunt, intra quos erant sex magistri artium et alii erant baccalarii et habiles ad ordinem et competentes. . . . Haec ideo tibi scribo, filia, ut Dominum nostrum pro his et aliis bonis laudes et glorifices et similiter a sororibus tuis facias agi, sicut iustum est, gratias incessanter. Valete. Facias orare pro me (pp. 38–39).” 39 The relationships between learned preachers and their female charges has received much attention in recent years, see Anna Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati e le donne,” in In castro poenitentiae: Santità e società femminile nell’Italia medievale (Rome: Herder, 1990), pp. 119–140 and John Coakley, “Gender and the Authority of the Friars: the Significance of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans,” Church History 60 (1991): 445–461. Several of the essays in the collection Gendered Voices: Medieval

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to the sisters ultimately do little to establish concretely what it meant for women to live out a distinctly Franciscan vocation. As spiritual exhortations, they also avoid the problem of the relationship between the brothers and sisters. This is a topic that the friars’ legislation had to address. The Constitution of Narbonne expresses reservation about contact with enclosed women. It incorporated all of the Later Rule’s conditions with little additional comment: the friars should not accept professions from women, they should avoid long conversations with sisters, and they should not enter a cloister without their companion. The constitution did clarify the penalty for transgressions: violators were sentenced to three days fasting on bread and water.40 By repeating the prohibitions of the 1223 rule, the Constitution of Narbonne seems to suggest that there were no women receiving pastoral care from the Franciscan friars in the 1260s even though that was clearly contrary to fact. Indeed, new houses continued to be incorporated in spite of the brothers’ continued protests.41 Bonaventure’s constitution nonetheless stated “no brother is to care for any monastery of nuns or any other women’s community for any reason.”42 The only indication that the friars had obligations to the convents appears in brief references to the sisters’ visitator (visitatores Dominarum Pauperum) and an allowance for friars who live at Damianite convents to participate in the Order’s elections.43 The 1260 constitution thus signaled the friars’ continuing reluctance to provide pastoral care to female houses or to address their place in the Franciscan Order. Although Bonaventure respected the sisters’ spiritual life, as Minister General he appeared unwilling to encourage the brothers to deepen their relationship with the women or to create a space for them within the Franciscan Order. He was forced to confront their place soon after

Saints and their Interpreters consider the relationship between religious women and their male advisors and interpreters, as does Coakley’s recent book, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and their Male Collaborators (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). Most of these studies have focused on individual relationships (even partnerships) rather than the community. 40 Cf. Narbonne 6:5–6 and 7:8. 41 See for example, BF II, p. 279 (a house near Ypres) or pp. 309–310 (Aragon). 42 Narbonne 6:6. 43 Narbonne 8:25 and 10:3. Alexander IV had commanded the friars to allow these privileges the previous year, see Zeffirino Lazzeri, ed. “Duae Bullae ineditae Alexandri IV et addenda quaedam circa controversiam inter Fratres Minores et Sorores S. Clarae,” AFH 6 (1913): 389–391.

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writing these texts, however, when existing tension between the friars and nuns turned into an outright conflict. Pastoral Care and the Crisis of 1261–1263 It is a fairly simple matter to lay out the details of the concentrated legal battle that erupted between the Friars Minor and the Order of San Damiano between 1261 and 1263.44 What is more difficult to understand, however, is why the long resistant friars failed to remove themselves completely from their obligations to the female convents in 1261. They seemed to have missed an opportunity to do so just when the Order was protesting most vehemently against any obligation to female communities. It was not only a matter of the allegedly heretical Sorores Minores. Some of the women making demands on the friars at that time may have been seeking legitimate incorporation into the Order of San Damiano, which would have given them pastoral care from the Friars Minor and thus strengthened their ties to the Franciscan Order. Cardinal Rainaldo continued to act as protector of both the Friars Minor and the Order of San Damiano even after he ascended the papal throne as Pope Alexander IV in December 1254. During his tenure it became customary for the friars to provide pastoral services, including annual visitations, to convents incorporated into the Franciscan Order. Some Damianite communities were almost like double monasteries with friars living adjacent to the cloister to care for the women’s needs.45 This situation changed, however, when Alexander’s successor, Pope Urban IV, appointed separate protectors for each group. At the friars’ request, the new pontiff assigned Cardinal John Caetano Orsini to be their protector. He named Cardinal Stephen of Hungary to hold the

44 The existing documents are printed in Zeffirinus Lazzeri, ed. “Documenta Controversiam inter Fratres Minores et Clarissas Spectantia (1262–1297),” AFH 3 (1910): 664–679 and 4 (1911): 74–94 (hereafter cited as Documenta Controversiam). 45 The bull, Inter personas (discussed below) printed in BF II, pp. 574–575 (from 19 August 1262, not 1264) describes the customary relationship between the friars and Clarisses prior to the crisis: “. . . ac nonnulli ex eisdem Fratribus a Monasteriis ejusdem Sancti Damiani Ordinis, in quibus Ecclesiastica Sacramenta inibi degentibus ministrabant.” There also is a suggestion of a double monastery where the bull describes how the brothers had come to remove themselves from the convents: “et ipsorum Monasteria, quae sine cohabitatione aliquibus exhibentur Monasterii memorati Ordinis, eisdem Monasteria sint subtracta.”

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same office for the nuns.46 Urban left no record as to why he made this decision. Perhaps as an outsider to Franciscan Order politics—unlike Gregory IX and Alexander IV he had never held the office of cardinal protector—he saw no reason not to grant the friars’ appeal.47 His own sister was a nun at Monteluce, but the surviving texts do not demonstrate either positively or negatively how she may have influenced his attitude toward the Damianite sisters or indeed whether he had prior knowledge of the hostility caused by the sisters’ pastoral demands.48 The separation of the office of cardinal protector, however, ignited a brutal legal battle between the Friars Minor and the Clarisses over the custom of the brothers’ spiritual responsibilities to the sisters’ houses. Although he was protector only of the Order of San Damiano, Cardinal Stephen’s commission apparently allowed him (or was perceived to allow him) to compel the Friars Minor to provide spiritual care to the women’s houses.49 It is not known whether this entitlement was inserted independently in the papal chancery or whether the women caused it to be written. The latter situation seems possible: Philip of Perugia writing four decades after the resolution of the conflict disparaged the nuns’ audacity in seeking to attach the friars to them.50 In any case, Cardinal Stephen’s ability to require them to minister to the Damianite houses infuriated the brothers. In response, the friars recalled their brothers assigned to the convents and the Franciscan Order refused These bulls of commission do not survive. Contemporary chroniclers viewed Urban as an outsider to the curia and the politics of the Italian court. See Sophia Menache, “Réflexions sur quelques papes françaises du bas moyen âge: un problème d’origine,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 81 (1986): 117–130; esp. p. 119. The new pope previously had acted as papal legate in Germany and the Baltic Lands, and since 1255, had served as Patriarch of Jerusalem. He was in Italy in the summer of 1261 lobbying the curia to reduce the power of the Knights Hospitaller when he came to the attention of the College of Cardinals and was elected pontiff. See Étienne Georges, Histoire du Pape Urbain IV et de son temps, 1185–1264 (Arcis-sur-Aube: Frémont-Chaulin, 1866); also important for his early career is Jacques Foviaux, “Les Sermons donnés à Laon, en 1242, par le Chanoine Jacques de Troyes, futur Urbain IV,” Recherces Augustiniennes 20 (1985): 203–56. 48 His 1261 letter to her describing the demands of the papal office and his concerns regarding his capabilities survives, see AM IV, pp. 191–192. For an overview of his relations with the women’s order, see Giancarlo Andenna, “Urbano IV e l’Ordine delle Clarisse,” in Andenna and Benedetto Vetere, ed. Chiara e la diffusione delle clarisse del secolo XIII: atti del Convegno di studi in occasione dell’VIII Centenario della nascita di Santa Chiara. Manduria, 14–15 dicembre 1994. Galatina: Congedo, 1998, pp. 195–218. 49 Inter personas revoked this right: BF II, p. 575. 50 Philip’s Catalogo Cardinalium, qui fuerunt Ordines Protectores provides the earliest account of this confrontation (1306), in AF 3:708–12. Later chronicles, such as the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals (c. 1369), incorporated Philip’s description, compare AF III:329–331. 46

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to provide any spiritual ministries to the sisters.51 They protested that their privileges (libertas) had been impinged upon since they no longer had the freedom to decide to whom they would minister.52 The friars petitioned Pope Urban to allow them to withdraw completely from all responsibilities to the Order of San Damiano. The pope, though unwilling to alienate the friars by forcing their return to the sisters’ houses, could not allow the female order to be abandoned. Urban instead sought a compromise between the two groups. The bull Inter personas (promulgated in August 1262) asked the friars to reinstate their customary association with the sisters’ houses for one year until the next General Chapter. At that time their affiliation with the Order of San Damiano could be deliberated. He promised that if they would agree to provide pastoral care to the women, their ministry would not create a legal obligation and their service would be recognized as voluntary. If an agreement could not be reached, he would allow the friars to recuse themselves.53 Pope Urban then began a campaign to persuade the friars to resume a pastoral relationship with the sisters. On 15 May 1263, he sent a letter, Spiritus Domini, to the General Chapter meeting in Pisa, which he hoped would act as moral persuasion. He entreated the friars to protect and guide the sisters, to nourish them with spiritual attention, and to aid them however they could. They should not be reluctant, he urged, but rather find glory in this service.54 The pope made clear that his petition stemmed not merely from expediency, but equally from his understanding that these men and women shared a spiritual origin. He compared the friars to farmers who had sown flowers throughout the world.55 Urban argued that the friars must be aware of what had grown from the seeds they had scattered. Nor should you wonder, my sons, that you are such remarkable farmers, when you follow in the footsteps of the nurturing Confessor who founded your order, who fostered your mission, and who brightened your pasture by the light (claritate) of his blessing. For certainly, among the abundant fruits which your order has brought forth assiduously, it has produced the devoted maidservants of Christ, the Sisters of the Order of San Damiano.

51 52 53 54 55

BF II, p. 575. Ibid., pp. 574–575. Ibid., p. 575. Documenta Controversiam, p. 672. Ibid., p. 671.

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With you they are limbs of the same body. They serve manifestly, they shine with a beauty of merits, and they render their vows devotedly to the Lord.56

Spiritus Domini seems to be the first time in an official document that the curia recognized Clare’s assertion that the sisters shared a common genealogy of vocation with the friars building off the earlier but less specific claim that Francis was the founder of three orders.57 Allusions to her name within the bull (clare, claritate) invoke her example, as well as the imagery of her Bull of Canonization.58 Urban did not rely solely on this moral argument, however, but instead proceeded with other reasons why the friars should resume their customary relationship with the women. He warned that without their involvement and guidance, the women they had inspired to enter religious life would become dissolute. The resulting scandal would be great since they had encouraged the daughters of kings and magnates to enter the Order. 59 Having reminded the brothers of their responsibilities, Urban concluded by asking them to continue to provide spiritual care to the women in the accustomed manner (more solito) out of respect for himself and for the papal office.60 The Pisa Chapter of 1263 failed, however, to resolve the conflict as the pope had requested. The friars were unable to come to an accord or issue legislation concerning the sisters; the chapter’s surviving statutes are exclusively liturgical.61 Bonaventure’s life of Francis, composed during these years of crisis and approved at the Pisa Chapter, provides

Documenta Controversiam, p. 671. For example, FLCl 1:1, 6: 3–4. This follows from earlier papal claims of Francis as founder of the order of enclosed women (e.g. Gregory IX’s Angelis gaudium or Pope Innocent IV’s rule) as discussed in the previous chapter. 58 Claritate in the passage cited above; also: “Gaudete igitur, quod studio clare devotionis hunc agrum solerter excolitis. . . .” Compare Clare’s bull of canonization (redolent with “light” imagery—fulgor, relucere, clarere, etc. throughout the bull), for example BC 2. “Clara claris praeclara meritis, magnae incaelo claritate gloriae, ac in terra splendore miraculorum sublimium clare claret.” 59 Documenta Controversiam, p. 672. In addition to Isabelle of Longchamp and Agnes of Prague, Bartolomeo of Pisa identifies Polish, Hungarian, and imperial princesses who entered the Franciscan Order during the first half of the thirteenth century; see his Book of Conformities in AF 4: 359–60. Bartolomeo, of course, is incorrect that Isabelle became a professed sister but he represents the historical understanding during the fourteenth century. 60 Ibid., 672. 61 See S.J.P. van Dijk, “The Liturgical Legislation of the Franciscan Rules,” Franciscan Studies 12 (1952): 176–195 and 241–262. 56 57

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additional evidence of the rift between the two orders. As in Thomas of Celano’s second biography of Francis, also written during a period of tension between the friars and nuns, Clare and her followers are almost completely absent from the Major Legend.62 In this text there is no mention of Francis’ involvement with San Damiano or any other references to his relationship with the enclosed nuns in this text.63 Bonaventure instead incorporated stories of Francis’ avoidance of women following the pattern of Thomas of Celano’s second biography.64 The brothers seem not to have wanted their official biography of Francis to draw attention to the women from whom they were seeking to separate themselves. Given the enmity that had grown up between the two groups, it is not surprising that the only resolution achieved at Pisa was the naming of a commission headed by the Minister General to bring closure to the conflict.65 Pope Urban again served as catalyst in the negotiations. On 14 July 1263, he removed Stephen of Hungary from his position as the sisters’ protector and replaced him with Cardinal Orsini. Governance over the Orders of San Damiano and of the Friars Minor thus was reunited under one Cardinal Protector. Once again we can only speculate about the pope’s reasons. The friars’ customary sustenance of the sisters must have been regarded as a binding precedent.66 Some credit must be 62 Bonaventure’s Major Legend provides a succinct description of Clare as Francis’ first female convert and mother of the Poor Ladies, cf. LMJ 4:6. For other references to her and the sisters see LMJ 12:2, 13:8, and 15:5. 63 LMJ 2:7 discusses how Francis repaired San Damiano but makes no reference to his prophecy concerning the Poor Ladies. 64 Compare LMJ 5:5. 65 There are no records of this commission other than Bonaventure’s reference in the letter to Aragon, “me ac fratres mecum missos de pissis a Capitulo generali obnixe rogavit (Aragon, p. 112).” 66 Humbert of Romans, Minister General of the Dominican Order between 1254–1263, would recognize a similar argument in his treatise De eruditione praedicatorum (composed between 1263–1277). Concerning the Dominican nuns he wrote: “Sicut in generatione carnali solet accidere, quod quidam decedunt sine liberis, quidam autem relinquunt liberos, et inter istos, quidam non solum filios, sed et filias interdum relinquunt, iuxta illud quod dicitur in Genes. de partibus antiquis, genuit filios, et filias, ita in generatione spirituali accidit. Fuerunt enim aliqui sancti, qui non creaverunt aliquem ordinem in quo relinquerent liberos. Alii fuerunt qui creaverunt ordinem aliquem in quo relinquerent filios. Alii vero qui non solum huiusmodi filios relinquerunt, imo filias in ordinibus a se creatis. Poor inter istos ultimos, vel tertios fuit Beatus Dominicus, qui non solum ordinem fratrum creavit. sed et ordienm sororum.” His following chapter recognized a similar origin for the sorores de cura fratrum Minorum (c. 49). See the treatise in Maxima Biblioteca Veterum Patrum, Vol. 25 (Lyons: Anissonios, 1677), pp. 480 –481. The Dominicans had faced similar conflicts over the spiritual care of nuns attached to

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given, moreover, to Urban’s recognition expressed in Spiritus Domini that the friars and nuns shared a common origin and thus deserved a more formal association. Whatever factors motivated him, the pope now was prepared to force the friars to fulfill their responsibilities toward the nuns. He requested that Orsini assign Franciscan friars to provide the convents with that spiritual care as allowed by the Later Rule. If they refused, Orsini should compel them.67 The Cardinal in turn commissioned Bonaventure to return friars to the women’s communities. The Minister General recognized that the friars would have to yield to papal wishes. Between July and October 1263 Bonaventure sent out letters to the provincial ministers directing them to resume pastoral care to the Damianite communities. Two of these letters survive: the letter to the Provincial Minister in Aragon quoted in the introduction above and a letter to the visitator of the Tuscan Province, a Brother Lothario. The letters are slightly different in their presentation but include the same requirements. That Bonaventure personally named Brother Lothario as visitator for the Tuscan province and addressed a letter to him underscoring his confidence in that brother may suggest that the relationship between the friars and sisters was more hostile in central Italy than in other provinces.68 These letters were surprisingly triumphant in tone, proclaiming that the friars had won their independence from the Damianites. Through the effort of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the strenuous effort and considerable pains of venerable father [Cardinal Orsini], we have fully achieved that independence. The Lord Cardinal, the father of our Order, for the sake of achieving peace has taken upon himself the governance of the said Order of St. Clare and thus has earnestly entreated me and the brothers delegated with me by the General Chapter to get the friars to assist him in this burden which he cannot carry alone. He

their Order which the papacy likewise resolved between 1257–1262, see Grundmann, pp. 92–109 and pp. 124–130. For the parallel developments of the Dominican and Franciscan sisters’ legislation, see also the discussion in Alberzoni, “Curia Romana e Regolamentazione delle Damianite e delle Domenicane,” in Christina Andenna and Gert Melville, ed. Regulae—Consuetudines—Statuta: Studi sulle fonti normative degli oridini religiosi nei secoli centrali del Medioevo. Atti del I e del II Seminario internazionale di studio del Centro italo-tedesco di storia comparata degli ordini religiosi (Münster: LIT, 2005), pp. 501–537. 67 BF II, pp. 474–475. 68 These two letters were printed in Documenta Controversiam, pp. 678–679; the second is hereafter cited as “Lothario.” Presumably, the Minister General considered Lothario a skilled diplomat: “de tua itaque providentia et probitate confisus,” see “Lothario,” p. 678.

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chapter two recalled all how faithfully he labored to cast off our chains of servitude and how, through his mediation, we now are free from the perpetual bonds of obligation; all of this he has done because he has tenderly cherished our Order from his childhood. I, with all my brothers, cannot or should not put out of mind such favors; it is therefore entirely right that we should trouble ourselves to assist our venerable father in providing spiritual services for the monasteries of the said Order as a special favor at least until the next general chapter.69

Bonaventure gave credence to established custom when he told the brothers that it was “fitting and reasonable” that they continue their association with the sisters.70 He evaded Urban’s claim in Spiritus Domini, however, that the friars and nuns shared a common spiritual origin. Bonaventure furthermore insisted that the sisters must state publically that the friars offered their services voluntarily and without establishing either legal precedent or obligation.71 Cardinal Orsini supported Bonaventure’s terms. In letters sent both to the sisters72 and to their visitator,73 he confirmed that this association would be voluntary and establish no precedent. Bonaventure’s proclamation that the brothers had gained their freedom from the women was more significant rhetorically than in practice. The friars were not legally obligated to provide pastoral care to the women, but his directives followed the Order’s established customs.74 Provincial ministers were asked to assign two ministers to each convent for which the Order was responsible.75 These ministers were responsible for hearing confessions on a monthly basis and offering communion to the sisters. They would provide spiritual care to bedridden nuns, including final unction and burial rites as necessary. These ministers also should hear the confessions of chaplains assigned permanently to these convents.76 The provincial minister was expected to appoint “Aragon,” pp. 112–113 (quotation in Monti, p. 193). Parallel to his “omnino decuit” in the letter to Aragon, Bonaventure wrote to Brother Lothario both “dignum est et consonum” and “conveniens est et decens” that the friars provide care to the nuns. “Lothario,” p. 678. 71 “Aragon,” pp. 113–114. 72 A letter from 11 December 1263 in Documenta Controversiam, pp. 77–80. 73 From 13 December 1263 in Documenta Controversiam, pp. 80 –83. 74 Compare Narbonne, 6:5–6, 7:8, and 8:25. 75 “Aragon,” p. 113. In mid thirteenth-century Aragon they would have to care for ten convents, see Jill R. Webster, El Menorets: The Franciscans in the Realm of Aragon from St. Francis to the Black Death (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1993): pp. 220 –240. 76 “Aragon,” pp. 113–114 and “Lothario,” pp. 678–679. 69

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a visitator and to send preachers to the women twelve times a year.77 Bonaventure reminded the friars that only those who were assigned to that duty should enter female communities. These brothers should remain always with their companion, take no gifts from the women, and avoid remaining overnight within the cloister.78 None of these requirements would have appeared new to the Friars Minor. They could receive some satisfaction that they had avoided legal obligation to the sisters’ communities, but in practice, their service remained the same as before the crisis. Nonetheless, there was some resistance to this agreement. In 1271, Bonaventure wrote to the friary in Pisa requesting that the brothers provide “special services” ( gratiam specialem) to the Convent of Ognissanti. Most of the requirements were those of a normal visitation, but the Minister General also requested that the friars counsel the women in times of danger and send carpenters to their convent. Bonaventure may have been asking them to fulfill what had been customary.79 The Sisters and the Urbanist Rule The surviving documents from the 1261–1263 controversy demonstrate how the papacy negotiated with the Friars Minor to secure pastoral care for the nuns. What they do not show overtly, however, are the accommodations sought from the sisters. While it was the Damianites’ bold attempt to bind the friars to them legally that initiated the conflict, these documents do little to reveal the sisters’ ongoing concerns and attempts to safeguard their interests. For these matters, it is necessary to turn to the next confrontation between the sisters and the papacy. On 18 October 1263, during the same period in which the pastoral relationship between the friars and sisters was being worked out, Pope Urban IV published a new constitution for the women.80 Two reasons motivated his decision to promulgate new legislation. First and most 77 Attendat confirmed the visitator’s duties. It effectively functioned as a gloss on the Urbanist Rule (see below), see Documenta Controversiam, pp. 88–90. He also described the forma visitationis in his 13 December 1263 letter, consult Documenta Controversiam, pp. 81–82. 78 “Aragon,” pp. 113–114 and “Lothario,” p. 679. 79 See Opuscula Mystica, p. 471. 80 See the Urbanist Rule (RUrb) in BF II, pp. 509–521. For an overview of the text, see Giulia Barone, “La regola di Urbano IV,” in Clara Claris Praeclara, pp. 83–96 and

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immediately, he sought to reassure the friars by giving the sisters a rule that did not require the Order of Friars Minor to provide spiritual care as earlier rules had done. The new legislation adopted the provision from the Hugolinian Constitution that the Cardinal Protector would be responsible for the sisters’ spiritual care. The protector was encouraged to appoint Friars Minor to see to that duty, but the choice was discretionary. Nonetheless, since the 1263 legislation also required that the friars and sisters share one Cardinal Protector, the brothers’ appointment again appeared to be an advantageous solution.81 The new legislation thus seemed to be a clever compromise designed to insure the brothers’ participation without provoking anew their earlier protests. Pope Urban, however, had a second reason for promoting the new statute: legislative unity. The Franciscan nuns were living under different rules: some communities had continued to follow Hugolino’s Constitution of 1218 (or one of its later revisions), while others had adopted Pope Innocent IV’s Rule of 1247, and a very few convents with close ties to San Damiano had been allowed to profess Clare’s Form of Life of 1253, as the previous chapter discussed. Furthermore, on 27 July 1263, the pope had granted approval to a newly revised rule authored by Isabelle of France for the convent she founded at Longchamp (replacing her earlier rule of 1259).82 The diversity of statutes among the Franciscan nuns had created confusion: houses had different obligations and degrees of observance, most notably concerning poverty. Clare had intended all her followers to live without material support, but the papacy was reluctant to expand this right beyond San Damiano. Individual houses were forced in practice to seek exemptions on their own if they wanted them. However, bulls from this period demonstrate that most houses had material support.83 Indeed, the more separated they were from personal contact with Clare or San Damiano, the less likely they were to seek a right to live without any possessions. With the new legislation, Pope Urban superseded Clare’s ideal of female evangelical poverty by requiring each house to have material support following the model of earlier papal legislation.

Francesco Costa, “Le Regole clariane. Genesi e confronto,” Miscellanea Franciscana 98 (1998): 812–835. 81 RUrb 25. Compare also RUrb 7. 82 Field discusses the earlier rule in Isabelle of France, pp. 61–94. 83 Compare BF II, p. 207 for the grant of a hospital to a Pisan convent.

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Urban’s Rule of 1263 thus seized an opportunity to set the demarcating ideals for Franciscan nuns. As a symbol of this change, the pope renamed the sisters the Order of Saint Clare (Ordo Sanctae Clarae).84 This new institutional designation proclaimed that the enclosed Franciscan nuns were no longer the “Poor Ladies ( povere donne),” as Clare’s first followers were known. Neither were they Minoresses or Sorores minores—a name that emphasized that they were members of the Franciscan Order—nor even Poor Enclosed Sisters or Damianites, as the communities that had been incorporated into the Order via the efforts of the papal curia were known. Rather they were Clarisses, enclosed women for whom Clare was meant to be a source of spiritual inspiration, but not a literal model for religious life. The pope’s desire to regularize monastic legislation among the sisters thus proved an attempt to separate the sisters from their unique spiritual heritage. In effect, the pope was seeking to make them act like other Orders through central governance (exercised by the Cardinal Protector) and legal coherence (symbolized by their changed name). The women were pressured to profess the Urbanist rule. On 11 December 1263 Cardinal Orsini sent a letter urging them to adopt it at once. Not only would their Order be united under one rule, he advised them, but the new constitution would protect them from future pastoral crises since he would assign ministers to their convents. Moreover, he told them, the brothers could no longer refuse to provide care by citing the variety of constitutions.85 Since most sisters were not adherents of radical poverty, this rule seemed more than acceptable to the papal curia.86 However, the majority of the sisters in the 1260s still sought complete incorporation into the Franciscan Order. And like the Friars Minor, they would not accede docilely to papal attempts to direct their way of life. Rejection of the Urbanist Rule appears to have been widespread among the women’s houses throughout central Italy. Cardinal Orsini appealed to the Tuscan visitator to determine how many nuns were refusing to profess the new rule and for what reasons.87 Their resistance endured beyond the initial promulgation of the new constitution.

84 Ibid., p. 509. “. . . ipsum de Fratrum nostrorum consilio de coetero decrevimus Ordinem Sanctae Clarae uniformiter nominandum.” 85 Documenta Controversiam, p. 79. 86 Compare RUrb 21. 87 Documenta Controversiam, pp. 83–84.

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Urban’s successor, Clement IV, twice issued bulls addressing the refusal of many sisters to profess the rule.88 In 1265 he warned sisters in the Umbrian Province that they would lose the Cardinal’s protection if they refused to profess the new rule.89 They would be expelled from the Order and lose all rights to pastoral care from the Friars Minor.90 Clement urged the sisters to profess the Urbanist Rule with proper humility. He assured them that the Cardinal Protector would guarantee that they received pastoral care and visitations. In the event that their opposition was a matter of conscience, the pope also released the nuns from earlier vows in order to profess the 1263 constitution.91 Urban commissioned the Umbrian visitator to promote the rule throughout his province. If after eight days the women still had not professed the Urbanist Rule, he allowed another ten days for a procurator to make a report to the Cardinal listing the reasons for the women’s refusal. The Cardinal Protector, in turn, would make a report to the pope who would ultimately decide the women’s status.92 There are no records extant as to whether he tried to carry out his threat to excommunicate those sisters who still refused to profess his new legislation. Presumably he did not proceed immediately because three months later in March 1266, Clement wrote to Cardinal Orsini about further opposition from the Clarisses. In his letter, the pope complained that a delegation of sisters from the Order of Saint Clare had come to his palace at Viterbo, all with one declaration: they would not profess the Urbanist Rule. They were demanding either to return to the original form of their profession or be allowed to adopt the new rule that Isabelle of France had composed for Longchamp.93 No records survive to report who these women were, how many of them had traveled to the papal palace and from where (they are described as sisters from many lands), who presented their demands to the court, and most importantly, what specifically motivated

88 Ut Ordo Beatae Clare from 11 December 1265 in BF III, pp. 62–68 and De statu tuo from 31 May 1266 in BF III, p. 82. 89 Ibid., p. 63. This is the province in which Assisi is located; perhaps their resistance in part indicates a greater fidelity to Clare’s ideals. 90 Ibid., p. 64. 91 Ibid., p. 62. 92 This clause presumably would allow for exceptions, as in the case of San Damiano and the privilege of poverty. See BF III, pp. 64–67. 93 Ibid., p. 82.

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them to organize a protest before the curia. It is difficult to reconstruct their dissent based only on Clement’s brief complaint.94 The stakes involved in the sisters’ bold protest become clearer, as do the risks they saw in adopting Urban’s legislation, however, by comparing the two proposals set before the papal court. At first their request to adopt the “primitive” rule might seem to be a clever ploy designed to allow them to profess Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life. They had asked to return to their original profession (statutum . . . pristinum). Her rule was the only record of Francis’ oral form of life for the sisters at San Damiano, the earliest constitution prepared for women connected to the Friars Minor. As the last chapter demonstrated, Clare had gained approval for her rule in part because she presented it as Francis’ regulations for the Poor Ladies. But if their goal were to make Clare’s (not widely adopted) Form of Life standard, why did they offer as an alternative the rule composed by Isabelle of Longchamp? The right to live in complete poverty could not be their motivation since the French constitution required communal property.95 One of the revisions Isabelle made in the 1263 version of her rule was to clarify that it could apply to communities beyond Longchamp.96 Indeed, there was already a precedent for other houses adopting it. In June 1264 Urban had allowed the house of St. Catherine in Provins to profess the French Rule. This bull made clear that Orsini would be the protector, as for other Damianite houses.97 The sisters who came to the papal palace to protest therefore must have proffered the Isabelline Rule because it explicitly tied their Order to the Friars Minor by requiring the brothers to provide pastoral care, the major difference between the two rules. That rule called upon the friars to supply a visitator and confessors (who would live at the community), and made clear that the sisters who professed the rule were subject to the Minister

94 Clement’s letter is the only testimony that could be located concerning the sisters’ protest; there is no record in the Annales Minorum. 95 BF II, p. 485. Ubertino of Casale’s fourteenth-century Arbor Vitae, however, not surprisingly (for Ubertino was a leader among the Spirituals) remembered their protests as related to poverty. He claimed that Orsini had deliberately quashed poverty. See Arbor vitae cruxifixae Jesu Christi (Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1961), 5:6. 96 Field, Isabelle of France, p. 104. See pp. 95–120 for further discussion of her revised rule of 1263. 97 See BF II, pp. 563–564. This house had been founded around 1237 and it is unclear what rule they lived under up to 1264.

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General.98 The sisters’ protest demonstrates that they refused to rely on the friars’ good will and customary practice even if it was secured by the Cardinal Protector. The women were continuing to fight to tighten the bond between themselves and the brethren even after the 1263 resolution. Their protest further indicates that while the Friars Minor were trying to evade a bond with the cloistered women, the women desired a legal connection with the brothers that would secure their incorporation into the Franciscan Order. Finally, as Sean Field has pointed out, it also seems reasonable to suppose that the institutional identification Isabelle insisted upon for her foundation—Soeurs Mineurs, in Latin Sorores Minores (Pope Urban IV added Inclusae when he approved the revised rule)—appealed to them. This name made clearer that the women were a part of the Franciscan Order and that their communities were founded on Franciscan spiritual ideals.99 There is no information about what occurred immediately after the sisters’ protest at the papal palace in Viterbo. Most Italian houses in fact did not profess Isabelle’s rule. An exception was the community of San Silvestro in Capite in Rome, which was allowed to adopt the Isabelline Rule in October 1285 by Pope Honorius IV.100 There are no records of further organized dissent, however, suggesting that in practice uninterrupted pastoral care came to satisfy the sisters. Over the course of the late thirteenth and fourteenth century most Franciscan convents eventually adopted the Urbanist text. Nonetheless, some resistance persisted. At the General Chapter held in Lyons in 1274, the friars were warned against dissuading the women from professing the Urbanist Rule.101 In 1297 the Cardinal Protector, now Matteo Orsini, was still asking the friars to promote the papal rule to the sisters.102 Even her former community of San Damiano, now moved inside the townwalls of Assisi, continually had to seek reconfirmation of its right to live under Clare’s Form of Life and the privilege of poverty, suggest-

98 BF II, p. 485. Compare also p. 481 (confessors will be friars), p. 484 (visitator will be a friar). There are numerous other references to the women’s dependence on the Friars Minor (p. 478). 99 See Field, pp. 110 –114 for further comments on the desirability of this name. 100 See BF III, pp. 544–545 and pp. 549–550. 101 Opuscula Mystica, 467. 102 See his letter of 8 April 1297 printed in Benvenuto Bughetti, ed. “Acta Officialia de regimine Clarissarum durante saec. XIV,” AFH 13 (1920): 108–109.

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ing that the desire for a uniform constitution still existed.103 With the sisters unable or unwilling to band together, by the end of the thirteenth century, the papacy and the friars seemed able to dictate the women’s way of life in the absence of organized female opposition. Another way of understanding the aftermath of the decisive conflict between the sisters and the friars, however, is to see that the Clarisses had succeeded in securing the friars’ care and thus had tightened the relationship between the two groups. The bull Exiit qui seminat issued by Pope Nicholas III in 1279 became the authoritative declaration on the friars’ pastoral duties—and it guaranteed that the brothers would minister to them.104 Moreover, the lack of centralized governance from the Friars Minor promoted a model of localized resistance to papal codification. From within their enclosures, the sisters had the ability to determine their own formation and manner of life as Franciscan sisters. Conclusion Despite a crisis concerning pastoral care, the practical relationship between the Friars Minor and sisters changed little during Bonaventure’s tenure as Minister General.105 Customary practice had triumphed over legal wrangling to define the bond between male and female Franciscans. The friars continued to provide for those communities which were formally incorporated into the Order. We might conclude that Bonaventure’s fervent claims that the brothers had gained their freedom from the Clarisses were rather more an attempt to cover over a de facto defeat with a de jure victory. Indeed, the brothers’ pastoral responsibilities would shift from voluntary custom to legal requirement by the century’s end.106 In 1297, the friars’ insistence on their freedom would be dropped without protest from papal bulls compelling them to provide

103 For example, BF III, p. 107 from 31 December 1266. BF III, p. 308 from 21 May 1278 assures the Assisi Clarisses that they will be able to continue to live in their form of poverty despite of the ruling of the Council of Lyons (1274) disallowing Orders that wish to survive only on alms. Consult Norman Tanner, ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990) 1:326. 104 BF III, pp. 404–416. Exiit is better known of course for clarifying and elaborating the moderate standard of poverty. 105 Compare Grundmann, Religious Movements, p. 133. 106 See for example, John Caetano Orsini’s letter of 10 February 1268 in Bughetti, ed. “Acta Officialia,” pp. 100 –105.

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pastoral care to the sisters.107 Pope Benedict XII’s 1336 Constitution for the Franciscans confirmed that the brothers owed pastoral care to any Clarisse whether she had professed the Rule of Saint Clare, the rule approved by Pope Urban IV in 1263 (Poor Clares or Clarisses) or Isabelle of France’s rule (Minoresses).108 The functional redefinition of the Franciscan Order that occurred during Boanventure’s generalship resulted in friars and nuns leading different forms of life along traditional gender lines: the men preached and the women were enclosed contemplatives.109 Indeed, the translation of Clare’s body from San Damiano to the new basilica of Saint Clare inside Assisi’s walls in 1260 would mark physically the separation of what soon would be called the Order of Saint Clare from the ideals of the early foundation at San Damiano.110 For just as Bonaventure had confirmed that Francis’ legacy toward the brothers had changed from a literal model to a source of spiritual inspiration, his writings for the sisters indicate that Clare became more important as a devotional model than a guide to a way of life, as indeed her hagiographical legends had asserted. Whereas Clare had viewed religious perfection as living in complete evangelical poverty in literal imitation of Christ’s life in common with the Friars Minor, for Bonaventure, the Order of St. Clare attained religious perfection through a prayerful life lived in humility before God. His writings addressed to the Clarisses demonstrate that they might offer a model of devotion for men, but there no longer was any sense of criticism for the friars’ religious life as Clare had done throughout her life. The result was that by the time of 107 BF IV, p. 396 (4 June 1296). The previous reference was to Innocent IV’s bull of 12 July 1246 requiring the friars to provide pastoral care to the nuns. BF I, p. 420. 108 See Michael Bihl, ed. “Ordinationes a Benedicto XII pro Fratribus Minoribus Promulgate per Bullam 28 Novembris 1336,” AFH 30 (1937): 309–90. Chapter 31: De monialibus seu Minorissis. Five years earlier, the General Chapter had referred to “. . . monasteria sanctimonialium, quarum est nobis cura commissa . . .,” see Saturino Mencherini, ed. “Constitutiones Generales ordinis Fratrum Minorum a Capitulo Perpiniani anno 1331 Celebrato Editae,” AFH 2 (1909): 595. 109 A panel painted by Pacino da Bonaguida for the Clarisses at Monticelli in 1310 confirms these roles (now on display at the Accademia art gallery in Florence, Italy). A pictorial representation of Bonaventure’s Tree of Life, Pacino’s panel portrays Francis as a preacher and Clare as a contemplative. See the discussion of this panel in Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, p. 235, n. 61. 110 The sisters had traded San Damiano to the canons of the Church of San Giorgio in 1257. At this time they also accepted a hospital, a house, and some land to assure their material support, although Clare’s Form of Life continued to be their rule. See BF II, pp. 338–347 for the land trade and BF II, p. 407 for the translation of Clare’s body.

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Bonaventure’s death in 1274, the relationship between the friars and nuns had become fairly stable and settled into a traditional monastic pattern. Pope Nicholas III’s exposition on the Later Rule from 1279 made clear that the friars were always allowed to enter the female communities for whom they had pastoral responsibility.111 The friars’ constitution of the same year would remove the clause requiring explicit permission to enter the sisters’ cloister (absque licentia Generalis).112 There was still some grumbling but no overt challenges. When Bonaventure later addressed the question of the relationship between the friars and sisters in a quodlibetical question—Why should the brothers have pastoral responsibilities for the Order of Saint Clare? (Cur tamen Fratres curam habeant Ordinis sanctae Clarae)—he explained that the friars provide these services as a favor to the pope and their cardinal protector. Perhaps there is an echo of earlier frustrations when he added that it was not a task for which the brothers especially appreciated (non diligimus multum occupari cum ipsis)!113 Nonetheless, different representations of Clare of Assisi, both textual and oral, survived the mid-thirteenth century conflict over pastoral care to create potential sites of resistance to the way of life established by the friars and the curia for the nuns. Later medieval Clarisses might know their founder by three means. The predominant tradition was the consecrated virgin presented by the hagiographical tradition. This Clare failed to challenge the existing state of affairs and ironically contributed to later sisters’ relative lack of interest in their eponymous founder. Less well known were Clare’s own writings preserved by networks of sisters, of which the Messina codex, copied by Brother Leo seems to be an example. These texts, particularly her rule, would reemerge in the fifteenth century to provide a model of reform (as the last two chapters will discuss). Lastly and most destabilizing to the official hagiographical image, was the oral tradition.114 The Clare of this tradition, eventually

111 BF III, p. 414. Concerning Chapter 11 of Francis’ rule, he wrote that the friars should enter no convents “exceptis semper praedictarum Monasteriis [pauperum Monialium] inclusarum (emphasis mine).” 112 Bihl, ed. “Statuta generalia,” p. 75. 113 Determinationes Quaestionum circa Regulam Fratrum Minorum, 2, q. 17 in Opuscula Mystica, p. 369. 114 Giovanna Casagrande has argued that the increased number of references to Clare in later collections of stories of Francis (e.g. the Fioretti ) demonstrate the oral transmission of stories about her. See her “Presenza di Chiara in Umbria nei secoli XIII–XIV. Spunti e appunti,” CF 62 (1992): 485.

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recorded in texts, could challenge the way of life some sisters and friars viewed as imposed upon them by those who did not want to recall the ideals of the early Franciscan movement. This image of Clare became the heart of the Spiritualist tradition.115 Angelo Clareno, the fourteenthcentury Spiritual, thus claimed (incorrectly) in his Apologia pro vita sua, that Clare’s refusal to accept property had led to her excommunication by Pope Gregory IX.116 This Clare was a model of resistance and Franciscan idealism. These traditions would confront each other when later Clarisses sought to reform their way of life. The result was that both the “Rule of Saint Clare” (as Clare’s Form of Life would become known) and even the life she lived became controversial texts for the entire Franciscan Order. In spite of legislative unity, diversity continued to define the development of female Franciscanism.

Nimmo, Reform and Division, p. 79. Angelo Clareno, “Ad Alvarum Pelagium. Apologia pro vita sua,” ed. by Victorinus Doucet, AFH 39 (1946): 63–200: quotation from p. 143. 115 116

CHAPTER THREE

BEYOND CLARE: A FRANCISCAN CENTERED ORDER The idea that the Franciscan Second Order had formed around Clare of Assisi was well established by the middle of the fourteenth century. The great Franciscan chronicles of that period—the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals (dating from mid-century) and Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Confirmities (1385)—both incorporate entries on noted Clarisses who were presumably inspired by her example. The earlier chronicle included a vita for Agnes of Assisi, as well as briefer accounts of Clare and Sancia of Mallorca (who is discussed below).1 The Book of Conformities had a concise section, De Ordine S. Clarae, which began with Clare and her community of San Damiano, and included short notices on other holy sisters.2 There were many others about whom he could have written, Bartolomeo commented, but it would take too long to do so. It is enough to understand that these sisters added to the holiness of the Order.3 It should now be clear from the previous chapters that this popular idea of a female order founded by Francis and shaped around Clare reflected a later devotional understanding of the sisters’ institutional formation rather than a historical one. However, this conviction raises an important question. Who or what were the sisters’ models for their spiritual identity? If they did not look to Clare or San Damiano for inspiration, how did they respond to the efforts to promote her as a model for female Franciscan life? Did they understand themselves to be a part of a Franciscan tradition or something else? These are 1 For the Chronica XXIV Generalium see AF III. The entries on the sisters begin with Agnes of Assisi (pp. 173–181), Clare (182–184), and Sancia of Mallora (539–540). This is the earliest independent vita surviving for Agnes. 2 The Latin title of Bartolomeo of Pisa’s work is De Conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu. It is printed in AF IV–V; IV, pp. 351–360 (the entire treatise runs to over 1100 pages in this octavo edition). Obviously, the brevity of the entries in both chronicles indicates a perception that the women’s order was segregated from and subordinate to the main Order’s (i.e. the friars’) concerns. 3 AF IV, p. 359. For Bartolomeo’s approach to the sisters, see also Marina Innocenti Soriani, “L’immagine di santa Chiara d’Assisi nel ‘De Conformite’ di Bartolomeo Pisano,” Bullettino Storico Pisano 59 (1990): 91–108.

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questions that seek to return historical agency to the cloistered women and to understand how they understood their identity as Franciscans. In recognizing the importance of papal efforts to monasticize the women’s penitential movement, a sense perhaps has emerged that the sisters’ identity was imposed from outside by the Roman curia without much consideration for their devotional affinities. The Clarisses seem almost generically monastic with their enclosed communities and property.4 In contrast, lay penitents who drew inspiration from Francis and who received spiritual guidance from the Friars Minor seem more conspicuously “Franciscan.” Their numbers—both individuals and small communities, in both cases predominantly female—proliferated throughout Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.5 The best known examples are Umiliana Cerchi (d. 1246) and Margaret of Cortona (d. 1297), whose biographers sought to demonstrate how each woman’s penitential practices and charity to the poor while living in the world made them models of Franciscan life.6 The number of cloistered

A representative example of this view is C.H. Lawrence, The Friars, pp. 41–42. This idea has been expressed even by scholars who focus on the Clarisses, for example, Marie Richards, “Community and Poverty in the Reformed Order of St Clare in the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of Religious History 19 (1985): 10. Some scholars also have argued that since monastic women in the later Middle Ages had more in common with each other than with the male branches of their orders, the question of institutional identity mattered little for women. For a sense of this debate see Jo Ann McNamara’s review of Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England by Nancy Bradley Warren in American Historical Review 107 (2002): 269. 5 The literature on the penitential movement (which certainly included laymen as well as women) is vast. Mario Sensi recently surveyed the field and noted that we have only begun to understand its vastness, especially for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. See “La scelta topotetica delle penitenti fra due e trecento nell’Italia centrale,” CF 68 (1998): 245–275. See also the overview provided by Giovanna Casagrande, “Un Ordine per i laici. Penitenza e Penitenti nel Duecento,” in Francesco d’Assisi e il primo secolo di storia francescana (Turin: Einaudi, 1997). 6 See, for example, Bernard Schlager, “Foundresses of the Franciscan Life: Umiliana Cerchi and Margaret of Cortona,” Viator 29 (1998): 141–166. Other lay women associated with the Friars Minor (limiting examples to the Italian peninsula for the sake of brevity) included Rose of Viterbo (d. 1251), Giovanna of Signa (d. 1307), Angela of Foligno (d. 1309), Clare of Montefalco (d. 1318), Delphine of Sabran (d. 1360), and Micheline of Pesaro (d. 1356). The degree to which each woman was presented as a model of Franciscan life or even associated with the friars varied—e.g. both the Augustinians and Franciscans claimed Clare of Montefalco. Good orientations to these women may be found in Anna Benvenuti Papi, “Mendicant Friars and Female Pinzochere in Tuscany: For Social Marginality to Models of Sanctity,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, eds. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 84–103 and André Vauchez, “Female Sanc4

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holy women was much smaller and their hagiographic portraits (when they exist) lack distinction and instead emphasize general traits such as humility, obedience, and zeal for prayer.7 Yet in spite of these commonplace elements, this chapter argues that something can be learned both about the spiritual orientation of these enclosed women and the results of the campaign to promote the Saint Clare of the Latin Legend as a model of female Franciscan life. When we think about the spiritual development of the Order of Saint Clare during the thirteenth and into the fourteenth centuries, we should not imagine that it was a Clare-centered movement—ironically—but rather one focused on the Franciscan Order where the participation of the friars was critical for their identity as religious women. The legal dispute of 1261–1263 discussed in the previous chapter is an example of that orientation. However, this relationship was not a simple matter of the sisters’ dependency on pastoral care. A careful reading of the sources demonstrates how the women and their promoters were clarifying the sisters’ participation in the Franciscan movement. It is even possible to discern a strategy articulating the importance of the enclosed women to the Franciscan Order broadly speaking. This chapter examines their religious experiences in order to show how the idea of a network of Clarisses that stretched across communities and centuries started to take shape. A Franciscan Vision For Clare of Assisi, one of the most important elements of the sisters’ life at San Damiano was the presence of the friars who maintained a small community adjacent to their cloister. She fought as hard to preserve that tie as she did for evangelical poverty and their right to live without endowments. The religious experiences of another thirteenth-century

tity and the Franciscan Movement,” in The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel E. Bornstein (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 171–183. 7 Obviously these traits also occur in the hagiographical legends of lay women, see for example The Life of Saint Douceline, Beguine of Provence, ed. and trans. Kathleen Garay and Madeleine Jeay (Rochester: D.S. Brewer, 2001). Douceline’s brother was Friar Hugh of Digne, a noted Franciscan theologian and her legend makes clear that Francis of Assisi was her source of spiritual inspiration. Although she lived in a community with other lay women, they professed no formal monastic vows.

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woman suggest that this element of Franciscan life was not limited to Assisi or other Clarian houses, even in communities that appear more “Damianite” if we use that term to refer to houses organized by the local ecclesiastical figures. We know about Elena Enselmini primarily because she was a visionary. Before her death in 1241, the sisters at the convent of Arcella recorded her revelations and preserved them along with Elena’s incorrupt body, which soon became the focus of a local cult in late medieval Padua.8 Their record no longer survives, but later chroniclers—including the Franciscans Bartolomeo of Pisa and the late fifteenth-century chronicler Mariano of Florence—visited her tomb and copied parts of these writings into their treatises. If the sisters also had prepared a more traditional legend for Elena, it is no longer extent. It seems possible that one existed since another biography includes more personal details than those the Franciscan texts. Sico Polentone, a local humanist scholar, compiled a Vita b. Elena Enselmini in 1437 (the earliest surviving legend) as part of a trilogy of Paduan saints with Anthony of Padua and Antonio Peregrino.9 His works were primarily addressed to pilgrims who had been drawn to that city by new miracles associated with Anthony’s cult in 1433–1444. While the Santo, the great church dedicated to Anthony of Padua was their main destination, these religious tourists also visited Arcella to view Elena’s incorrupt body.10 Polentone sought to build their interest with a history of the Enselmini family and the long list of Paduan saints.11 Mariano’s chronicle skips both of those areas: it opens at Arcella and does not address her family or childhood. His main concern is her spiritual life and how she brings glory to the Order of Saint Clare.

She is referred to by the Legenda Pisana, one of the miracle collections associated with Anthony of Padua and other Paduan beati. See “Liber Miraculorum” et altri testi medievali, ed. Virgilio Gamboso (Padua: Edizioni Messagero, 1997), p. 524. 9 See AASS 2 November, 509–517. 10 Another contemporary treatise testifies to the continuing veneration of Elena, see the biography by another local writer, Michele Savonarola, De magnificis ornamentis regie civitatis Padue dating from 1445 (RIS 24, col. 1149–1150). 11 The Enselmini were a well off, but not necessarily noble family (one record refers to her father as a militis). Thirteenth-century notarial documents indicate that her family owned some lands jointly with Arcella, a possible indication that they were part of her dowry. See Paolo Maragon, “La Famiglia della Beata Elena Enselmini nel secolo XIII,” Il Santo 14 (1974): 233–238. 8

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Mariano presented Elena as a fervent imitator of Clare in patience, obedience, and love of poverty.12 He also praised Arcella as an exemplary community where the sisters had always followed the “the first rule,” by which he meant the Form of Life that Francis had given to Clare and the sisters at San Damiano and which she had preserved in her rule.13 However, Mariano is incorrect in these details: the thirteenthcentury community followed a different rule and it is highly unlikely for reasons discussed below that Elena viewed the still living Clare as her source of spiritual inspiration.14 Therefore, while these later vitae make some anachronistic assumptions, they nonetheless provide an opening into the more complicated connections that bound these women to the larger religious movement of which they were a part. The community of Arcella was located just outside Padua’s twelfthcentury wall.15 Both local and Franciscan chronicles claim that Francis established the convent around 1225 or 1226.16 For example, the Liber Regiminum Paduae, a compilation of earlier annals dating to the midfourteenth century, describes how Francis himself laid the first stone for its buildings. It also proclaims Arcella was the fourth house of the Order of Saint Clare, established after Assisi, Florence, and Faenza.17 A story circulating among Franciscan sisters amplified this tradition. It claimed that Agnes of Assisi—Clare’s own sister—helped establish the Paduan house along with ones in Milan and Mantua from her

Mariano, 51 and 307–343. Ibid., 51. 14 Modern scholarship has repeated this assumption; see, for example, Ada Gonzato Debiasi, “Elena Enselmini clarissa padovana. Le fonti agiografiche e il processo di canonizzazione,” Il Santo 34 (1994): 37–68. 15 See Sante Bortolami, “Minoritismo e sviluppo urbano fra due e trecento: il caso di Padova,” Le Venezie Francescane n.s. 2 (1987): 79–95. The derivation of Arcella’s name has attracted much attention (La Cella, A[ntiqua] Cella), for a review see Leopoldo Saracini, “La Cella del transito di Sant’Antonio nel Santuario Antoniano dell’Arcella,” Il Santo 40 (2000): 337–372. 16 Local chronicles include Annales Patavini (RIS VIII, col. 201) and Mantissa, adjecta vetustissimo ms. Chronico monachi Paduani hoc titulo (RIS VIII, col. 736). Bartolomeo of Pisa followed the lead of local tradition in his Book of Confirmities (AF IV, p. 358) and modern authors frequently repeat this information. However, since Wadding they have realized that it is “unlikely” that Francis would have established a convent during the year prior to his death (cf. AM II, 742). Wadding therefore judged 1220 a more likely date (when Francis traveled through the Veneto and Lombardy). Francesco Ferrari, a Franciscan friar working as a “modern Antiquarian,” moves the date up to 1215 following seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources. See his Il Francescanesimo nel Veneto (Bologna: Documentazione Scientifica Editrice, 1990). 17 Liber regiminum Padue (RIS VIII, col. 306). 12 13

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base at the Florentine convent of Monticelli.18 Arcella thus seems to be part of the early network of female Franciscan communities linked to the foundress of the female branch of the Franciscan Order. These traditions, however, owe more to later devotion and the desire to claim direct organization by Francis and Clare than to actual evidence. As the first chapter demonstrated, Clare did send sisters to help organize houses in Foligno, Spello, Florence and a few other places, but her direct influence was limited primarily to the Spoleto Valley. Unfortunately, the sources for Arcella are limited: no known extant document from the thirteenth century attests to the house’s foundation that could support or challenge this claim. The sisters’ own archive likely was lost in a 1443 fire that destroyed much of the convent.19 However, other texts situate Arcella within the Damianite confederation. Arcella’s religious orientation is a complicated proposition. Their identity seems imposed upon them from the outside by the papal curia—it is difficult to know whether the women sought this association or if they felt themselves to be connected to other Damianites. For, in spite of the ultimate success of Pope Gregory’s normalizing efforts, the communities he brought together began in diverse circumstances. For example, there is evidence that friars helped found the communities in Milan, Florence, and Faenza, but Verona seems to have formed sponta18 A seventeenth-century manuscript (a copy of earlier chronicles) preserved at Monticelli presents a tradition that Padua’s foundation can also be traced to Clare’s sister, Agnes of Assisi. Agnes was with Clare at San Damiano in 1212, but she later went to Florence to help establish the community at Monticelli (according to the fourteenthcentury Fioretti, Francis sent her). According to Agnes’ fourteenth-century vita, she spent the remainder of her life at Monticelli until she returned to San Damiano in 1253 to attend her dying sister. Agnes herself died a few months later. According to the alternate tradition, Agnes also traveled to Milan, Mantua, and Padua to establish communities there. Milan’s early records do seem to suggest a connection with San Damiano, but through friars, not sisters. See Maria Pia Alberzoni, Francescanesimo a Milano nel Duecento (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1991). The female connection is accepted by some modern Clarisses, for example, Chiara Lucia Garzonio, Senza voltarsi indietro. Vita di S. Agnese d’Assisi (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1991). 19 While the convent was rebuilt, it was again destroyed in the sixteenth century. During the siege of Padua (1509), the Emperor Maximilian I ordered the troops of the Republic of Venice to sack Arcella. The sisters were able to take Elena’s body with them into Padua, although they had to split up into different houses. In 1520 they finally managed to obtain a new house, from which they were expelled in 1806 by Eugenio Bonaparte. At this time they were united with the second community of Clarisses in Padua (Santa Chiara, founded 1325) but in 1810 under the Napoleonic suppressions, the convent was closed and the nuns dispersed. At that time Elena’s remains were translated to the Santo, where they remained until 1957, when they were returned to a chapel at Arcella. See Saracini, pp. 19–21 and also Debiasi, p. 41, n. 17.

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neously and independently. But even if we reject a direct organization by Francis on the model of Clare’s community as pious tradition has emphasized, we still must pay attention to the role of the friars. Indeed Arcella appears to have been one of the houses that were aligned early and quite likely deliberately with the Franciscan friars. The friars’ presence is attested to in 1216 in Treviso, Vicenza, and Lendinara. In 1220, Francis traveled in the Veneto and Lombardy, presumably visiting established groups. We do not need his direct involvement, however, for Arcella to be connected with the friars. Padua’s religious culture was particularly vibrant in the first three decades of the thirteenth century. Along with mendicant preachers, the commune had active groups of lay penitents as well as five double houses of reformed Benedictines (Benedictini Albi di Padova).20 This multiplicity of vocational choices suggests that Arcella was founded purposefully as a Franciscan community. Perhaps it was even established by the town itself. A statute dating to 1236 indicates that the communal government would contribute toward the community’s maintenance.21 The Vita Assidua, the earliest biography of Anthony of Padua composed in 1232, provides important information about the early foundation. According to the anonymous friar who composed the biography, the community already existed when Anthony first came to preach in Padua in 1228. The legend describes Arcella as a monastery of Poor Ladies with a small group of friars resident in order to provide spiritual care. The anonymous author says this was “according to the customs of the Order.”22 Other references in the biography to the friars’ house (called domus or locus fratrum) are matter of fact, suggesting that this was neither a new nor an extraordinary arrangement, either for the community or the Franciscan Order generally. Indeed, until the founding of the Santo in 1234, Arcella provided the friars’ with their primary residence in Padua. Anthony stayed there during his 1229–1230 preaching tour.

20 Antonio Rigon, “A Community of Female Penitents in Thirteenth-Century Padua,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Bornstein and Rusconi, eds., pp. 28–38. 21 See Antonio Sartori, “Il santuario dell’Arcella a Padova,” Miscellanea Franciscana 56 (1956), p. 553. Arcella would be the sole Franciscan convent in Padua until 1325 when a second house was established inside the town’s walls (Santa Chiara). 22 Vita Assidua, p. 363. See also the comments of Antonio Rigon, “Monasteri doppi e problemi di vita religiosa femminile a Padova nel Due e Trecento,” in Uomini e donne in comunità. Quaderni di Storia Religiosa (Verona: Cierre, 1994), p. 221.

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In his final illness he returned to Arcella where he died in 1231 in the friars’ quarters. In writing about the events surrounding his death, the Vita Assidua provides some information about the layout of the sisters’ convent, although regrettably it has little to say about interaction between the two groups. A Sister Olivia returned to the sisters’ convent after praying before Anthony’s body which was then lying in state. The next day she was unable to eat when the other sisters went to the refectory so the abbess sent her to the infirmary where Olivia was cured after she touched Anthony’s tunic.23 A Sister Bartolomea also was cured of epilepsy after praying by his body.24 The vita also reports that there was some tension between the friars and sisters at this time. The author tells us that the Poor Ladies wept inconsolably over Anthony’s body “in a womanly way (muliebris ut erant animi ),” which we might take as a bit disparaging since the two groups would later clash over the disposition of Anthony’s remains. The friars want to translate the body away from Arcella, which the sisters unsurprisingly and unsuccessfully protested. Even after they moved to the Santo (with Anthony’s remains), the house would continue as a community of both friars and sisters throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as indicated by testaments and other notarial documents in which bequests were made jointly to the brothers and sisters of Arcella.25 Therefore Elena’s community was clearly oriented toward the Franciscan Order, and specifically toward the friars from its early years, although not to the close network of Clarian communities as tradition has claimed. The former association does allow us to acknowledge the significance of the Damianite network organized by Pope Gregory that provided an institutional framework for what would become the female Franciscan Order. But, the double community at Arcella also suggests that we should qualify this potential external influence and consider the house’s devotional orientation. To do that, it is necessary to return to Elena’s visions and a consideration of the status of thirteenth-century Franciscan women. Elena Enselmini spent the last sixteen months of her life in bed at Arcella suffering from a series of debilitating fevers. Unable to sleep

23 24 25

Vita Assidua, p. 41. Ibid., p. 36. See examples in Sartori, pp. 538–582.

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due to her illness, Elena spent her time reading a Psalter. One day when she had fallen into a sort of a half-sleep with her head resting on the book, she had a vision of the Virgin. The Virgin told Elena that she would suffer greatly over the next year and must be patient, but at the end of this time she would find glory in heaven. This was the first of many visions: other ones ranged from a multi-headed monster, which the sisters interpreted as a sign of mortality, to a detailed view of a section of purgatory where religious men and women who had failed to obey their superiors toiled.26 Elena shared all of her visions with her community, although for much of this time she was no longer able to speak or easily move her body. Effectively paralyzed, she communicated instead through gestures, using a painstaking method of running through the alphabet to spell out syllables or entire words so that the sisters could record her visions. Bartolomeo of Pisa read them when he visited Arcella in the 1370s while he was a student in Padua. He was sufficiently impressed that he included a brief notice about Elena a decade later in his section on the Order of Saint Clare in the Book of Conformities—although seemingly he was more struck by their method of communication than in the actual content of the visions. He describes the former at length while ignoring her visions. Perhaps he was so impressed because he thought Elena was mute for 16 years, rather than 16 months (an error Mariano repeats).27 Mariano acknowledged Bartolomeo’s account of Elena, but unlike the earlier friar, he focused almost entirely on her visions, which he seems to have copied verbatim from the sisters’ book. A comparison with Sico Polentone’s 1437 vita shows similar language and ordering, suggesting a similar source was used by both men (presumably the sisters’ record). Polentone, however, omits or condenses some of the visions mentioned by Mariano. Each man was making editorial choices in their use of the sisters’ book, according to their own and their audience’s interests. Elena’s fourth and most elaborate vision was of God in Majesty and the heavenly court, a common theme in late medieval devotional literature. Mariano copied paragraph after paragraph of detailed descriptions of the physical layout of heaven and the symbolism of its decoration. Much of the description represents standard devotional themes; however, particular details reveal her understanding of spiritual

26 27

Mariano, 309, 314–317. AF IV, pp. 358–359.

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identity. Elena was precise in acknowledging the persons whom she saw there, ranging from Old Testament figures to contemporary saints.28 Among the latter is Francis: After the martyrs came the holy confessors among whom she saw that the first was the most blessed father, Saint Francis, with all of his holy brothers and sisters mixed together so that she did not see any difference between the orders of the friars and of the sisters. The most glorious father was at the front of one part of the two orders he established, and at the other part was the most reverend Pope Gregory IX.29

This vision reflects the idea that a common source of spiritual inspiration united the friars and sisters. Thomas of Celano, for example, wrote that Francis had promised perpetual care for Clare’s community because he recognized that “one and the same spirit had led the brothers and those little poor ladies out of the world,” a point that Clare similarly emphasized.30 But Elena’s vision goes beyond this basic trope of spiritual equality. She also sees Saints Benedict, Bernard, and Dominic in the heavenly court followed by their orders, although she does not identify if there were both men and women in these groups (much less if they were grouped so that the brothers and sisters were indistinguishable). There seems to be more in Elena’s description than the inclusive plural (monici ) because later Elena will describe the choir of Virgins, a distinctly female group. Among the saints there are both the expected early Christian martyrs such as Agnes and Catherine, but Elena also sees widows and those who have chosen to live in continence, a fair description of the female penitential movement as Elena knew it. Heaven therefore seems to separate the genders to some extent. The effect is to elevate the spiritual status of Elena’s order since only among Francis’ followers are men and women, and specifically the friars and enclosed sisters, participating together in the heavenly procession and sharing the same spiritual orientation. Another one of her visions adds to this picture. On the eve of the Feast of Saint Francis (i.e. 3 October) Elena was meditating on his virtues when she heard a powerful voice tell her that while Francis was

Mariano, 320 –334. Ibid., 323. “Dopo li martyri erano li sancti confessori, infra li quali el primo vedde el beatissimo padre sancto Francesco con tucti li sua sancti frati et sore insieme mescholati, et non vedde differentia alcuna infra li ordini de frati er delle sore.” 30 2 Cel 204. 28

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powerful on earth, he was now more powerful in heaven.31 She was then transported into an ecstatic trance and returned to the heavenly court. She watched Francis paying homage to different saints, and also to Pope Gregory, whom Francis particularly honored for supporting his Order. He was accompanied by the souls of his followers who had died. Again it is a mixed group of friars and sisters, whom Anthony of Padua led in singing a hymn of praise to Francis. Elena’s vision of the friars and sisters as a combined order in heaven is particularly striking given that the third and fourth decades of the thirteenth century were a time when the friars were increasingly complaining that their obligations toward female religious kept them from fulfilling their evangelical vocation. Certainly, the Paduan community, which consisted of the sisters’ cloister along with a small community of brothers, appears to be a part of the normalizing trend promoted by the papal curia in which the women’s religious movement was channeled into traditional monastic paradigms even as they secured a relationship with the Friars Minor. Arcella, however, seems to have been oriented toward the Franciscans both practically and devotionally from its early days. Elena’s visions suggest, moreover, that it was not inherently marginalizing for these women to be a part of this primarily male religious order but in fact a crucial part of their identity as religious women. Arcella’s religious experience confirms a Franciscan Order-centered movement, effected through the participation of the friars but without any direct connection to Clare’s model of religious life as practiced at San Damiano. Rather, it is the later sources such as Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Conformities and to a greater extent Mariano’s late medieval chronicle, that link her and Arcella to the female Franciscan movement which claimed Saint Clare as its figurehead. A Company of Virgins Clare of Assisi was not the first Franciscan woman whose holiness was recognized by the Roman Church. In 1247 Pope Innocent IV granted an indulgence to those who would visit the convent church of San Pietro de Molito in the Diocese of Rieti on several feast days, including

31

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that of its founder, Filippa Mareri (d. 1236).32 Portents at the time of her death clearly presaged her sanctity. According to her legend, a snow cloud which had hovered over the cloister in an otherwise cloudless sky dispersed as Filippa’s soul ascended into heaven. At that same moment, a visiting baron witnessed a ball of fire in the air over the convent. These visual signs combined with aural ones. A loud voice echoed through the neighboring towns and castles announcing that she had died. The following morning, a large crowd of both clerics and lay men and women came to the convent. With candles in their hands, they shouted “Saint Filippa, Saint Filippa” and sought her intervention with God.33 Her tomb soon became a pilgrimage site where many miracles occurred. Her supporters recorded these stories and had the collection duly notarized, although no formal inquest confirming her canonization seems to have been sought. Robert Brentano has noted the seeming carelessness with which this collection was prepared—the notary’s name is lost, witnesses are rarely recorded outside the account of the miracle itself, and the stories lack the historical detail of other contemporary collections. In comparison with the complex procedures beginning to be required for canonization during this period, Filippa’s dossier was notably amateur.34 Her cult remained primarily local and rooted in the local community. This obscurity is tempered, however, by her intriguing appearance in one friar’s vision nearly a half century after her death. On the vigil of the Feast of Saint Clare one year during the early 1280s, Fra Bartholomeo da Gallicano went to the convent of Santa Chiara in Assisi to preach to the sisters. On his return to San Francesco, he started to think about the verse from the Song of Songs—“As the lily among thorns (2:2)”—that provided the theme for the following day in case he again was called on to deliver a sermon to the enclosed women. He walked in reflection for a while around the brothers’ cloister and 32 Filippa’s legend and miracles were edited by Aniceto Chiappini, along with important documents from the convent’s archives as “Santa Filippa Mareri e il suo Monastero di Borgo S. Pietro de Molito nel Cicolano (Biografia-Liturgia-Documenti),” Miscellanea Francescana 22 (1921): 65–119 (see p. 96 for the specific indulgence). 33 Lectio IX, Chiappini, p. 89. The other two portents are told in the first of three parts of the miracle collection, see p. 92. 34 Robert Brentano, A New World in a Small Place: Church and Religion in the Diocese of Rieti, 1188–1378 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 265–274. It will be clear throughout this section that I have been inspired by his work on Filippa Mareri, as well as Margherita Colonna (he has briefly commented on how this vision directly connects the two).

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then sat down by the well. Fra Bartholomeo dozed off and, while asleep, had a vision. He saw a company of virgins, all dressed in white gowns decorated with golden stars and wearing crowns as a sign of their holiness. He recognized three of them: Clare of Assisi, Filippa Mareri, and the recently deceased Margherita Colonna. Clare, of course, was now an officially canonized saint whose feast was celebrated throughout the Franciscan Order. But the other two women would have been less well known even to Fra Bartholomeo’s fellow Franciscans. Like Filippa, Margherita’s saintly reputation was promoted by her noble family, especially her brother, the Roman senator, Giovanni Colonna. He wrote a vita and commissioned a Sister Stefania, a nun at the Colonna-supported community of San Silvestro in Rome, to prepare a miracle collection to help further his sister’s cult.35 Her text recorded Fra Bartholomeo’s vision in which Filippa explained to the friar that Margherita’s heavenly appearance in the company of virgins (caterva virginum) with Clare and herself was meant to demonstrate that the Roman woman now should be counted among the Order’s saints.36 This is a somewhat odd grouping. The vision of the heavenly company suggests a sort of institutional coherence forming around Clare, but this is the saint’s only direct appearance in the sources relating to Margherita Colonna, as well as her sole association with Filippa Mareri (who was Clare’s contemporary, of course). When we look at the religious communities established by each woman, neither appears especially interested in San Damiano’s model or Clare’s interpretation of Francis’ spiritual ideas. We therefore should be hesitant to make too much of a claim for her spiritual authority based on the grouping in Fra Bartholomeo’s vision. Indeed, the contemporary sources for Filippa and Margherita demonstrate greater affinities with both the eremitic and lay penitential traditions respectively, although Franciscan friars are present in both cases. Their religious experiences direct us to think more broadly about the spiritual networks that linked women within the Franciscan

35 Stefania (possibly a Colonna relation) was one of Margherita’s companions prior to entering San Silvestro. On the relationship between the two texts, see Giulia Barone, “Le due vite di Margherita Colonna,” in Esperienza religiosa e scritture femminili tra medioevo et età moderna, ed. Maria Modica Vasta (Acrireale: Bonnano Editore, 1992): 25–32. 36 B. Margherita Colonna. Le due vite scritte dal fratello Giovanni Colonna Senatore di Roma e da Stefania monaca di S. Silvestro in Capite, ed. Livario Oliger (Rome: Lateranum, 1935), pp. 206–208.

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ambit. Let us begin with Filippa Mareri, whose religious formation took place outside the realm of early female Franciscanism.37 Thomas of Celano included a story in his second biography about how Francis invited his doctor to lunch one day. He was then staying at a hermitage near Rieti and this doctor used to visit daily in order to treat the saint’s eyes.38 The friar in charge of the community was embarrassed by the invitation because they had so little food—only old bread, beans, and a little wine—but Francis insisted. The brothers had begun to lay the table when a knock was heard at the door. Answering it, they found a woman with a basket of finer foodstuffs: a fresh loaf of bread, fish, crabcakes, honey, and grapes. The friars eagerly put away their own meager offerings and joined their guest in the feast. The story ends with the doctor—who had earlier expressed his pleasure at sharing in the brothers’ poverty—telling the sated gathering that even if they had not eaten the food, they would have been sufficiently nourished by this demonstration of Francis’ holiness.39 Stories in which the friars receive food from generous strangers are common throughout Franciscan hagiography. They provide Biblical allusions, of course, but also reflect the reality of how Francis and the early brothers relied on the charity of others.40 As historical anecdotes, they testify as well to the growth of the Order and the spread of Franciscan spirituality throughout central Italy during the first half of the thirteenth century. Certainly there were many small Franciscan communities established throughout the Rieti Valley during the first two decades of the Order.41 Francis regularly visited the area. He often stayed at a friary near Greccio, which he favored because the brothers there lived a very simple life, or at the hermitage at Fontecolombo, where Cf. Luigi Pellegrini, “Female Religious Experience and Society,” pp. 114–116. This episode and Francis’ medical care from this doctor have received much attention. See, for example, Octavian Schmucki, “The Illnesses of Francis during the Last Years of His Life,” trans. Edward Hagman, Greyfriars Review 13 (1999): 21–59, pp. 37–40 esp. 39 2 Cel 44. Thomas adapted this story from the recollections of Francis’ companions (nos cui cum eo fuimus), compare The Assisi Compilation, 68 and The Legend of Perugia 26. 40 Compare 1 Cel 34. Food miracles also occur in Clare’s hagiography, see LCl 15. This theme is also common in early hagiography. 41 See Luigi Pellegrini, Insediamenti Francescani nell’Italia del Duecento (Rome: Laurentianum, 1984). The comments of Anna Benvenuti Papi are also helpful, see “Donne religiose e francescanesimo nella Valle Reatina,” in Il francescanesimo nella Valle Reatina, eds. Luigi Pellegrini and Stanislao da Campagnola (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editorale, 1994), p. 191 (obviously all of the studies in this volume are profitable for the Reatine context). 37

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he could devote himself to prayer. Moreover, he had a great affection for the local people. According to The Assisi Compilation: Many of these people, with the grace of God, entered religion because of [ Francis’] example and preaching and that of his brothers. Many women preserved their virginity and, remaining in their own homes, dressed in the clothing of religion. And although each remained in her own home, each of them lived the common life decently, afflicting her body with fasting and prayer. Thus it seemed to the people and to the brothers that their manner of living was not among the seculars and their relatives, but among holy and religious people who had served the Lord a long time, despite their youthful age and simplicity. That is why, with joy, blessed Francis often said to the brothers about the men and women of this town: “Even in a large city not as many people have been converted to penance as in Greccio, which is only a small town.”42

Filippa Mareri was one of these women from the Rieti Valley who took on a semi-religious life. Anna Benvenuti Papi has suggested that she may have been the woman who brought the basket of food to the friars.43 However, her interactions with the Franciscan friars are somewhat obscure. Most of our information about Filippa’s life comes from the legend referred to above (which does not recount the story of Francis’ lunch). Its form is liturgical: an office, nine biographical lectiones, and the miracle collection. It is impossible to know whether this text represents the original arrangement or even when it was first composed or by whom, as Robert Brentano has pointed out. It is possible that Fra Ruggiero of Todi, who appears in the text as Filippa’s spiritual advisor, prepared a vita or collected information for one, as occurred for many other thirteenth-century holy women, but there is no explicit reference to his efforts. This earliest surviving version of the legend dates only from 1545 when it was printed in Rome.44 This late date, combined with the The Assisi Compilation 74 (quotation from FAED II, p. 177). Anna Benvenuti Papi, “Donne religiose,” p. 202. The Assisi Compilation 68 offers a slightly different version of the story. In it, the woman at the door had been sent by a lady from a town about seven miles away from the hermitage. If this description is more accurate, it is equally possible that Filippa could have been the lady, if not the actual messenger. 44 See Brentano’s comments in A New World, p. 267 and p. 402, n. 62. Chiappini’s 1921 publication reproduced the sixteenth-century edition. Both he, and more recently Edith Pásztor, have read the legenda as an accurate representation of the thirteenthcentury community. See Pásztor, “Filippa Mareri e Chiara d’Assisi,” reprinted in Donne e sante. Studi sulla religiosità femminile nel Medio Evo (Rome: Studium, 2000), 173–196. Brentano’s own work on Filippa shows increasing doubt over how much the source 42 43

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rather conventional descriptions of her piety, raise obvious questions about its historical value. A careful reading, however, reveals important information about the historical woman, the origins of her community, and efforts to align her with the Franciscan Order. Filippa Mareri was born around 1200 into the local feudal nobility.45 While pregnant with Filippa, her mother was visited by an unnamed pilgrim carrying a flowering palm, an indication of her third child’s future holiness.46 As a young girl, she was encouraged by another anonymous figure, a man learned in Holy Scripture (aliquem virum in sacra pagina eruditum), to despise worldly things in order to know more about God. She distained marriage and instead sought to preserve her virginity. All this is hagiographical formula. Yet when the legend turns to more individual and important connections that could develop specific aspects of Filippa’s holiness, it surprisingly (and frustratingly) passes over them rather quickly. It states succinctly that Saint Francis and other contemplative men also influenced Filippa in her vocation, but offers no other details about how this occurred or who the other men were.47 This vagueness suggests that it was unlikely that Francis had much personal influence over the young woman. However, given the strong presence of Franciscans around Rieti, it certainly remains possible that she at least saw other friars preach—perhaps even Francis himself—although her legend provides no such details that would lay a foundation for her vocation as deriving from his inspiration.48 Filippa’s religious life began when she retreated to a room in her family’s castle, which she had set up like a monastic cell.49 As the pasrepresents the early community as he identified its similarities with the biographies of Margherita Colonna (see below). See also “Filippa Mareri, La Santa Baronessa, La Santa del Ciccolano,” in Saints Scholars and Heroes. Studies in Medieval Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones. Vol. I, eds. Margot H. King and Wesley M. Stevens (Collegeville, MN: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, 1979), pp. 287–297 and “Il movimento religioso femminile a Rieti nei secoli XIII–XIV,” in Il movimento religioso femminile in Umbria nei secoli XIII–XIV, ed. Roberto Rusconi, (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1991) pp. 69–83. 45 See Chiappini, pp. 65–69 on the immediate members of her family. Her father was baron of Cicolano. 46 Lectio I, Chiappini, p. 82. 47 Lectio II, Chiappini, p. 83. 48 On sources of Franciscan influence, see Henry Romanin, “La Scelta di Filippa Mareri,” in Roberto Marinelli, ed. Santa Filippa Mareri e il monastero di Borgo S. Pietro nella storia del Cicolano: atti del convegno di studi di Borgo S. Pietro del 24–26 ottobre 1986 (Borgo S. Pietro di Petrella Salto: Istituto Suore Clarisse di Santa Filippa Mareri, 1989), pp. 93 esp. 49 Lectio III, Chiappini, p. 93.

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sage from the Assisi Compilation quoted above demonstrates, this behavior had become a sort of spiritual trend in the towns of thirteenth-century Italy.50 However, the Mareri family castle was too loud for Filippa to manage the life of contemplation she wished to lead. In particular, her brother Tommaso regularly interrupted and harassed his sister.51 Thus, sometime in the early 1220s, Filippa left her family home and set up a small hermitage with several other like-minded women in a cave located up the mountain from the Mareri castle.52 She may have been inspired in part by stories about a local saint, Chelidonia of Subiaco, who lived as a recluse in a cave at Morraferogna until her death in 1152.53 This hermitage had a short history. The legend briefly describes Filippa as both a Mary and a Martha, who cleaned and fitted up the cave so that it was more fit for habitation.54 It is silent, however, about what her family or the local ecclesiastical authorities may have thought about this female hermitage. One easily imagines their discomfort.55 Not only was such a community an unorthodox and unusual choice for women, but the 1220s were the period when the papal curia was increasing its efforts to monasticize the women’s penitential movement. None of these concerns are stated directly, however. Rather the legend explains that Filippa’s brother Tommaso had a change of heart. Now described as a wise and discriminate man (vir utique sapiens et discretus), he begged his sister to return to Cicolano and establish a community for the women at the Church of San Pietro, whose interests he controlled. She accepted, perhaps because her brother agreed that the women would hold the property freely, which would give them some control over the shape of the community. The legend refers to

50 The Florentine Umiliana Cerchi is another contemporary example. See Anna Benvenuti Papi, “Umiliana dei Cerchi. Nascità di un culto nella Firenze del Dugento,” in In castro poenitentiae: santità et società femminile nell’Italia medievale (Rome: Herder, 1990), pp. 59–98 and Anne Schuchman, “The Lives of Umiliana de’ Cerchi: Representations of Female Sainthood in Thirteenth-Century Florence,” Essays in Medieval Studies 14, http://www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/vol14/schuchmn.html. 51 Lectio III, Chiappini, p. 83. 52 Chiappini estimates that the foundation of the hermitage occurred between 1221–1225 based on dates when Francis was in the area, and therefore could have inspired Filippa. See Chiappini, pp. 70 –71. 53 Brentano, “Filippa Mareri, La Santa Baronessa,” p. 294. 54 Lectio IV, Chiappini, p. 84. 55 Benvenuti Papi suggests that Filippa’s parents had died when she left for the hermitage since her brother Tommaso appears to be acting as head of family. His plans to depart on crusade in 1227/1228, also may have led to his efforts to bring his sister back from her hermitage. See her “Donne religiose,” p. 202.

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a notarized document in which Tommaso, along with Filippa’s other brother, Gentile, confirmed that the family renounced all rights over the church and its dependencies. A seventeenth-century copy of this foundation document is still kept in the convent archives, providing the date of 18 September 1228.56 We thus know approximately when Filippa Mareri and her companions, who included members of her own family as well as other women from the local nobility, first came to live at San Pietro de Molito.57 Up to this point, there is little evidence that Filippa and her community had much contact with the Franciscan friars. Her legend makes only the brief and non-specific reference to Francis’ encouragement for her vocation, but offers no suggestion that the women had a close relationship with the friars as was common both in the communities throughout the Spoleto Valley which were affiliated with Clare and San Damiano, as well as in other ones established by the friars such as Arcella in Padua. It describes the women as having chosen a poor life out of love for the Crucified Christ, but these sentiments have as much in common with contemporary penitential spirituality as anything explicitly Franciscan.58 If Anna Benvenuti is correct in identifying Filippa as the woman with the basket, it is interesting that her hagiographical legend makes no reference to this contact with Francis or to other friars who may have been connected to the women. An earlier version of her vita could have done so, but it seems even more likely that a later text would include such details as a way to build its subject’s saintly reputation or as a reflection of pious tradition. Moreover, the descriptions of the new community make clear that it was actually their move to San Pietro that brought the women more directly into a Franciscan ambit. Having moved rapidly through Filippa’s youth and eremitical experiment, the legend focuses more attention on the founding of the new community at San Pietro de Molito.

56 Pellegrini suggests that notarial errors in the document may be a later forgery to justify the sisters’ claim to the villa of Casardita, which it mentions, see Pellegrini, “Female Religious Experience and Society,” p. 115 and esp. n. 58. The post-medieval context of the convent (which moved to a new site in 1940) is also covered in the volume edited by Roberto Marinelli, Santa Filippa Mareri e il monastero di Borgo S. Pietro nella storia del Cicolano. 57 The family did retain the right to use a fortified tower, part of the dependent villa of Casardita, in case of a military attack. This document is printed in Chiappini, pp. 100 –101; Lectio V also refers to the instrument, Chiappini, p. 85. 58 Lectio IIII (sic), Chiappini, p. 84. Cf. also Lectio VII, Chiappini, p. 86.

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Acceding humbly to the prayers of her brother and strengthened by the Divine Spirit, [ Filippa], along with her companions, descended from the mountain and entered the aforementioned church with the joy and happiness of each person, for the purpose of doing perpetual penance according to the form and rule which she knew that the illustrious virgin Clare observed with her own sisters.59

The following lectio repeats twice more that her community followed the same rule as Clare’s did.60 The legend obviously wants to suggest Clare and San Damiano as a model for Filippa’s community. Chiappini even suggested that when Francis met Filippa he told her the story of Clare’s flight from her own family and establishment of the community at San Damiano with the intention of inspiring her to do the same. However, this claim is unsupported by any documentary evidence.61 There are no references in the medieval sources to San Pietro de Molito following the form of life which Francis had given to Clare and her sisters, although there are ones to the constitutions of the Order of San Damiano. San Pietro must have been incorporated into the order begun by Cardinal Hugolino/Gregory IX sometime after August of 1228, as the community does not appear in the list of recipients of Cardinal Rainaldus’s pastoral letter of that month. A letter from Pope Gregory to Filippa dated to 1231 confirmed that the convent was under the protection of the Holy See, not the local church, as part of the ordinis pauperum inclusarum. Another bull dating to 4 July 1235 confirmed similar privileges, although now the Order is referred to as the [Ordo] sancti Damiani.62 The emphasis on the sisters following the same rule as San Damiano reflects the intentions of the papal curia to monasticize female communities, and perhaps also a later pious emphasis to link the community to the first female Franciscan foundation.63 We cannot know how Filippa and the sisters responded to their incorporation into the Order of San Damiano (or indeed about leaving their hermitage). There is clear evidence that issues that motivated Lectio IIII, Chiappini, p. 84. Lectio V, Chiappini, p. 85. 61 See Chiappini, pp. 70 –71. 62 Printed in Chiappini, pp. 95–96. 63 Tradition claims that the community of Santa Lucia in Rieti was founded in 1253 when Clare sent her Sisters Beatrice and Pacifica (her natal sister and former duenna) from San Damiano. To the extent that this foundation story is accurate (which is unknown), it suggests Filippa’s house was not closely connected to Clare’s. Santa Lucia became the center of female Franciscan life in the Diocese of Rieti, see Brentano, “New World,” pp. 301–302. 59 60

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Clare to protest, such as radical poverty, did not seem to have interested the Rietan women. They used their funds to convert San Pietro from a parish church into a convent. They renovated their space and built a wall for their cloister. They also obtained books and liturgical furnishings. They obtained guarantees from Filippa’s brothers guaranteed that the Mareri family would not be able to seize income that was intended for their maintenance. Later notarized documents confirm that the sisters owned property and received donations of land, primarily from local donors. Their acceptance of endowments did not mean that the sisters were wealthy. Papal bulls confirm their exclusion from ecclesiastical tithes and also offered indulgences to bring extra funds to the sisters.64 Unlike the Clarian houses, the sisters of San Pietro de Molito appear concerned about their economic security. Their incorporation into the Order of San Damiano meant that the Franciscan friars would serve as pastoral ministers to San Pietro. The legend has little to say about their role, another point that seems to support the sisters’ early formation taking place outside Franciscan circles. The only brother who appears by name is Fra Ruggiero of Todi, who was mentioned above as Filippa’s spiritual director and perhaps the community’s confessor. The legend emphasizes that she was always humble and obedient toward him, as well as toward the Church generally.65 Fra Ruggerio attended her deathbed, along with several other brothers. Other friars appear in some of her miracles stories. Fra Tommaso da Civitella d’Abruzzo had a vision of Filippa’s soul being transported to heaven while he prayed in the Church of San Francesco in Assisi on the night she died.66 Other stories tell how she cured two local friars of abscesses. They were cured after they drank water from the cup which Filippa had always carried with her so that she would not dirty the church’s floor with either her tears or

64 See Chiappini, pp. 98–115 for a collection of the documents preserved in the sisters’ archive. The most recent documents edited are from 1500. 65 Lectio VI in Chiappini, p. 85. Ruggiero (Roger) of Todi was among the first friars to join the Early Brotherhood. He appears briefly in The Mirror of Perfection where Francis is describing the traits of the perfect friar including: “the charity of Brother Roger whose life and conduct were spent in ardent love.” Mirror of Perfection 85 in FAED III, p. 333. His entry in the Acta Sanctorum summarizes what is known about his life and saintly reputation, with references to other Franciscan sources. See AASS March 1, pp. 417–418. 66 Chiappini, pp. 91–92. This story is coupled with the other portents cited above in the introduction.

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her spit.67 Filippa’s legend thus reveals that the friars seem to have a regular presence at San Pietro de Molito as well as interaction with the sisters. Indeed, more than any particular example of her piety, they are what link her most directly to the Franciscan Order.68 Clearly, she was not basing her spiritual life directly on Clare’s example. There is a possible connection with Clare’s community, or rather with the spiritual aura associated with San Damiano and its residents. Filippa’s niece Imperatrice visited her aunt’s convent and expressed her desire to remain there with the sisters. Her family was unhappy, however, presumably because a marriage was planned for the young woman. The legend tells how Tommaso Mareri and his nephews entered the convent and forcibly tried to remove Imperatrice. Filippa threw herself on the floor in prayer. The Holy Spirit then intervened and rooted the younger woman to the floor so that she was unable to be led out of the convent.69 Familial opposition is common in female hagiography, of course, but this story has strong echoes with that of Agnes of Assisi, whose vocation was protected in a similar manner by her sister Clare as the first chapter related.70 Since these two women were still living at the time when Filippa’s intervention would have aided her niece, it allows for the possibility that the story of Clare and Agnes was circulating in central Italy, especially within Franciscan circles. Of course, it could be a later insertion given that we know so little about the transmission of Filippa Mareri’s vita. It is equally important that this story also points to the strong local and familial context to Filippa’s sanctity. She cured two female relatives: Illuminata, daughter of Francesco de’ Mareri, and Caterina, daughter of Giovanni de’ Mareri. Both women were later abbesses of San Pietro, showing how both convent and church were family projects.71 Although little is known about the Reatine people who testified to her

Ibid., p. 94. These brothers are identified as Palmerius de Maliano and Paulus de Rieti. Francis’ hagiographical legends also emphasize that he cared about keeping churches clean. If such an comparison was suggested, it is unstated. 68 Lectio VIII (De virtute orationis et spiritus prophetiae) is representative of her piety which reflect common thirteenth-century emphases, but is not linked directly to Franciscan themes. It discusses her love of prayer and devotions to the sacraments. It includes a vision of the Virgin, who appeared to her one day while she was praying (see Chiappini, pp. 86–87). 69 Lectio VIII, Chiappini, p. 87. 70 Cf. LCl 24–26. 71 Chiappini, p. 95. She also cured a Iacobus de’ Mareri cured of epilepsy. These three stories are included in the third part of the miracle collection which focuses on miraculous cures. 67

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postmortem miracles, they demonstrate her status as a community saint who could be appealed to when suffering from a fever or vexed by a demon.72 Indeed, more than the Franciscan Order, it is her family and the local community that have the most to gain in promoting Filippa’s sanctity. Their inexperience at doing so may have contributed to her lack of formal canonization and even the development of her cult among Franciscans.73 Nonetheless, her reputation may have had an effect on the other woman who appeared in Fra Bartholomeo’s vision: Margherita Colonna. By the late thirteenth-century, Colonna influence had expanded from their base in Rome into the Rieti Valley. Their religious patronage extended to the Cistercian canon, Bartolomeo da Rocca, as well as the Franciscan Spiritual, Angelo Clareno. This interest in the religious landscape of the area allows for a written or even oral version of Filippa’s legend becoming known to Margherita Colonna, who was linked with the older woman in Fra Bartholomeo’s vision. It also raises the possibility that the more polished texts produced to promote Margherita’s canonization could have influenced the existing textual form of Filippa’s legend.74 Both women were family saints whose spiritual advisors included Franciscan friars. They were humble, generally ascetic in their personal habits, and gave charity to the poor—a fairly typical litany for a thirteenth-century religious woman.75 The forms of religious life they adopted, while different in significant ways, similarly raise questions about the variety of experiences of early female Franciscans. Always modest and pious, Margherita Colonna’s main spiritual advisor was her brother Giacomo, a cleric and future cardinal.76 An 72 These stories make up the middle part of the miracle collection “De miraculis pubblica manu notatis et testibus idonei approbatis,” Chiappini, pp. 92–93. 73 Mariano of Florence did not include Filippa Mareri among the saints of the Order of Saint Clare in his chronicle. 74 Brentano discusses these possibilities in “A New World,” p. 268. See his discussion of the Colonna family and their interests in Rome before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 173–183. 75 Chiappini, Lectio VI, “De eius humilitate et carnis maceratione,” and Lectio VII “De Charitate ad proximum et pietate,” pp. 85–87. The legend links her ascetic practices to her humility—she did not wish to govern, but to be a servant to the sisters. 76 In addition to her two thirteenth-century legends, introductions to Margherita Colonna may be found in Giulia Barone, “Margherita Colonna e le Clarisse di S. Silvestro in Capite,” in Roma: Anno 1300. Atti della IV Settimana di Studi di storia dell’arte medievale dell’Università di Roma “La Sapienza” 19–24 maggio 1980, ed. Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider), pp. 799–805; “Margherita Colonna,” in

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episode early in Giovanni Colonna’s legend shows how Giacomo supported her religious vocation. While a student in Bologna, he dined at the Franciscan friary on the occasion of the feast of St. Margaret. After dinner, he went out to the garden and read from her legend. As happened with Fra Bartholomeo, Giacomo Colonna also experienced a vision involving his own sister. He saw her in heaven among a choir of angels. At first he feared that Margherita had died, but upon reflection realized this vision was meant to confirm her religious calling.77 Although Giovanni Colonna was considering arranging a marriage for her, Giacomo had encouraged her to remain a virgin. This apparently was also her desire. Margherita herself had a vision of the Virgin, the first of many recorded in both of her vitae. When it ended she went into the family’s chapel and read from the Hours of the Virgin. She spent the night there crying, praying aloud, and reading from the Hours, discovering that she no longer desired anything other than Christ. Giacomo discovered her there the next morning, and when she told him of her own experience, both siblings knew this confirmed her vocation.78 From that point, Margherita had regular visions of both the Virgin, who helped her repel the devil and comforted her spiritually,79 and also of Christ, from whom she received a ring whose marks could be seen on her flesh as a sign of their mystical marriage.80 A final vision of Christ heralded her own death about age 25 after a severe fever that lasted ten days.81 To a certain extent, Giovanni Colonna’s portrait of his sister demonstrates his own understanding of female holiness. This is not to say that Margherita did not favor these practices as well, but that the saintly image that emerges from the biography is primarily that of her secular brother. His tone tends to be more formal and conventional than Stefania’s, which is more personal and domestic, with its accounts

Mein Herz schmiltzt wie Eis am Feuer, ed. Johannes Thiele (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1988), pp. 136–145; and Robert Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, pp. 174–179. 77 Not surprisingly, Giovanni Colonna’s vita ( Vita I ) emphasizes the spiritual relationship between his two siblings. For Giacomo’s lengthy vision (it lasted over an hour), see Vita I, pp. 112–116. 78 Vita I, 117–123. 79 Ibid., pp. 128–129. Vita II (by Sister Stefania) does not focus as much on these visions in favor of representing Margherita’s character and her miracles. 80 Ibid., p. 134. 81 Compare Vita I, pp. 169–177 and the considerably briefer account in Vita II, pp. 210 –211.

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of the women’s conversations.82 The Cardinal’s descriptions of her devotion to the Virgin and to Christ, her virtues, and pious works are immediately recognizable as hagiographic commonplaces. His own vision of Margherita following her death at age 25 reveals his models. Giovanni witnessed his sister in heaven surrounded by five women: Agnes, Cecilia, Agatha, Lucia, and another whom the senator did not recognize but might have been Catherine of Alexandria or perhaps Margaret of Antioch. These early Christian martyrs are ubiquitous representations of female sanctity that Giovanni could use to promote his sister.83 (No reference to Clare of Assisi occurs.) Their presence suggested his understanding of Margherita’s holiness was formed through the larger picture of Christian history, perhaps fomented through their brother, Giacomo. For the senator’s legend pays considerable attention to his brother’s influence on Margherita, and indeed her own on the cleric. On his return from Bologna in 1273, Giacomo devoted himself to her spiritual direction, but the relationship was mutual, each exhorting the other in their devotion.84 They often discussed Scripture and saint’s lives together.85 He served as spiritual director to the small group of women Margherita gathered in a Colonna property at Praenestina.86 While she had always lived modestly in Giovanni’s home, she decided to leave in order to better devote herself to the austere life she desired.87 Margherita was only around 18 years old at this time; nonetheless, she was clearly seen as the leader of the community. She was the virgo materfamilias to the sorores,88 although not their leader/abbess, but rather their servant.89

82 Giulia Barone describes his life as more biographical than hagiographical in perspective whereas the second vita by Sister Stefania is more religious and specifically monastic in its perspective. See “Le due vite di Margherita Colonna,” in Esperienza religiosa e scritture femminili tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Marilena Modica (Acrireale: Bonnano, 1992), pp. 25–32. 83 Vita I, p. 182. Oliger noted that the Roman Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at that time had a mosaic of the Virgin accompanied by Cecilia, Agnes, Lucia, and Catherine—a possible source of inspiration for the Senator’s vision. 84 E.g. Vita I, p. 138. 85 Ibid., pp. 142–143. 86 Ibid., p. 126. 87 Like Filippa, Margherita originally lived as a recluse in brother’s home. Vita I, p. 125. In the later vita, Sister Stephania compared the community to an anchorage, see Vita II, p. 194. 88 Ibid., p. 160. These references seem to indicate that the number of women grew over time. 89 Ibid., p. 127.

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This was not only Giovanni Colonna’s personal opinion. Sister Stefania also referred to her maternal compassion in her collection.90 The community at Praenestina has obviously similarities to Filippa’s hermitage, although the Roman domestic setting is more similar to the better known examples of women who lived as penitents in their family homes from Tuscany and Umbria. Some of these women, for example Umiliana Cerchi and Rose of Viterbo, had wished to enter convents but were prevented by their lack of funds. This obviously was not the case for Margherita whose family was wealthy and powerful. The question thus should be asked whether Margherita had a more traditional, monastic vocation. Giacomo Colonna was a strong supporter of the Franciscans and it might be expected that he would encourage his sister toward the Clarisses, who by the 1270s were enclosed following the Rule of Pope Urban IV.91 The year after she moved to Praenestina, Margherita was given permission to dress in the habit of the Order of Saint Clare, as a vision of Francis had encouraged her to do.92 The Franciscan Minister General also authorized her to enter the convent of Santa Chiara in Assisi. According to Giovanni Colonna, poor health prevented her from doing so.93 Margherita briefly attempted to found a new community at Mentorella, but the effort failed and she soon returned to Praenestina with her companions where she lived for the rest of her short life.94 It remained an informal group: the women had no rule and were not cloistered. Occasionally, Margherita went into Rome where she visited different holy sites accompanied by a holy recluse and attended mass 90 This is one of the frequent sections in the second life where Sister Stefania represented conversations with Margherita. Cf. Vita II, p. 195. 91 Salimbene describes Giacomo as a totally devoted to the Franciscan Order in his chronicle. The future cardinal was friends with John of Parma and later assisted the Spirituals. See Salimbene, Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Scalia, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis Vol. 125 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), p. 258. 92 Vita I, p. 134. Cf. also Vita II, p. 201. 93 Vita I, pp. 144–145. Mariano claimed that she had wanted to found her own monastery, but her brothers delayed giving their support and this is why she turned to Santa Chiara in Assisi, Mariano, 401. 94 Ibid., 145–147. The vita does not explain why Mentorella was chosen. Lino Temperini suggested it appealed as the site of a hermitage visited by Francis. He also suggests that opposition from the local lord, Count di Poli, who was an enemy of the Colonna, led to its failure. See “Fenomeni di vita comunitaria tra i penitenti francescani in Roma e dintorni,” in Prime manifestazioni di vita comunitaria maschile e femminile nel movimento francescano della penitenza (1215–1447): atti del Convegno di studi francescani, Assisi, 30 giugno–2 luglio 1981, eds. Raffaele Pazzarelli and Lino Temperini (Roma: Commissione Storica Internazionale T.O.R., 1982), p. 609.

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at the friars’ church.95 Franciscan friars also visited the women at Praenestina. A Brother Egidio may have been her confessor at some point since she shared one of her visions with him.96 Thus, although she never made a formal profession, Margherita clearly felt an attraction to the Franciscan Order and cared deeply for its members. Giovanni recounts an amusing story of how she tended the friars at Zagarolo, a Colonna property in Rome, when they were all ill and stuck in their beds, even though he and Giacomo were similarly sick.97 He intended the story to illustrate Margherita’s humility. He also stressed her love of poverty and care of the poor following the example of Christ.98 Does this mean we should think of this noble laywoman and her community as a Franciscan institution? Neither of her two vitae makes this claim, and indeed this question is perhaps too precise for the fluidity of the medieval situation. It is Fra Bartholomeo’s vision of the caterva virginum—the band of holy virgins linking Filippa, Clare, and Margherita together—that most directly places her within the female Franciscan movement. Stefania explains that she and Margherita’s other companions, as well as some of her relatives, entered the convent of San Silvestro in Capite a few years after her death.99 It had been a Benedictine foundation, but under Colonna patronage became a Franciscan community.100 Mariano of Florence two centuries later would call her a “sora di sancta Chiara,” but that is a later understanding reflecting the development of a new community.101 Margherita’s body was translated to the Church and so she posthumously became a Franciscan sister and more accurately a

Vita I, pp. 151–154. Ibid., pp. 149–150. 97 Ibid., pp. 140 –141. 98 He described her as “hilaris in paupertatis aggressibus” and “hilaris ad Christi paupertatem evolavit (Vita I, pp. 130 –131).” Finally, on her deathbed he noted that as a “pauper Christi,” she refused to make a will ( Ibid., p. 174). 99 Vita II, p. 209. 100 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, p. 656 incorrectly refers to Margherita as founder of the community. Giacomo Colonna wrote a monastic constitution for the community; see Livarius Oliger, “Documenta Originis Clarissarum Civitatis Castelli, Eugubii (a. 1223–1263) necnon statuta monasterirum Perusiae Civitatisque castelli (saec. XV) et S. Silvestri Romae (saec. XIII),” AFH 15 (1922): 99–102. 101 Mariano, 380 –428. His biography is a hybrid of those by Giovanni Colonna and Sister Stefania. 95 96

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“Minoresse”—for San Silvestro did not profess Pope Urban’s rule for the Order of Saint Clare, but rather Isabelle of France’s rule.102 Both Margherita Colonna and Filippa Mareri remind us to pay attention to the larger contexts of these women’s lives, especially that of family and town, as well as to the limited influence of Clare of Assisi on the way their lives were remembered. Certainly the Franciscan context mattered. The Franciscan friars ministered to both communities but the women’s religious experiences demonstrated greater affinities with lay penitential traditions, than with an organized form of Franciscan life. Like other early female penitential communities, San Pietro de Molito was brought into the Franciscan ambit through the Order of San Damiano; Margherita’s family connections may have allowed her to remain independent and act more as a patron of the Franciscan friars. These same family connections brought greater success to her vita, which is perhaps why she is remembered incorrectly as a Clarisse while Filippa was mostly forgotten outside Cicolano. Nonetheless, these women from the Lazio also remind us of the diversity of the early female Order even as later chroniclers did not differentiate between the institutional types of female Franciscanism as modern scholars would. So why then did Fra Bartholomeo’s vision link Clare of Assisi, Filippa Mareri, and Margherita Colonna? Certainly, the answer lies partly in the fact that an average friar like Fra Bartholomeo probably did not draw distinctions between the institutional branches that had developed within the female Franciscan movement and that in practice these differences mattered less than they had even two decades previously when the fight over pastoral care was at its most intense. However, his linkage also demonstrates the effects of Clare’s normalization as a founder of the female Franciscan Order. Neither Filippa nor Margherita, or it would seem Elena Emselmini, constructed her religious life around the model provided by Clare, but after the creation of the eponymous order, a brother easily could them in his imagination. In sum, for many Franciscans, the neutralization of Clare was a success and her 102 Their profession occasioned one of the more awkward explanations in Mariano’s chronicle as he accounts for the relationship between the different Franciscan rules for women, 401. “Et havendo decto messere Jacopo manifestato a papa Honorio .4. el desiderio delle nove spose di Christo, per suo comandamento decte loro ad observare la regola di sancta Chiara, la quale papa Alexandro .4. addistantia de re di Francia modificò alle sore del monasterio di Sancta Maria della Humilità di Parigi. La quale regola poi da papa Urbano fu ricorretta et aprovata et per molte provincie in diversi monasterij divulgata.”

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sainthood served as the glue that connected a variety of female Franciscan experiences. Models of Female Franciscan Identity The Order of Saint Clare continued to grow throughout the late thirteenth and into the fourteenth century. When the General Chapter met in Naples in 1316, there were 372 Clarissan houses in Italy (locus sanctae Clarae).103 While Clare of Assisi was widely accepted as a source of spiritual inspiration for female Franciscans throughout the Italian peninsula, attention also was paid to promoting the holiness of several royal princesses connected with the female Order as a way of conferring status. These include not only Agnes of Prague and Isabelle of France, but also Salome of Krakow (d. 1268), Cunegunde (Kinga) of Poland (d. 1292), and Johanna of Navarre (d. 1342). A fourteenth-century manuscript once owned by the sisters at Monticelli includes a short vita of Salome as a part of a larger hagiographical collection.104 However, there is little evidence that the cults of these northern and central European women spread widely into the Italian peninsula outside references to them in Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Conformities.105 Individual abbesses were remembered in convent chronicles and oral tradition, but hagiographers do not seem to have been interested in spreading their example beyond individual houses.106 Floresenda da Palena, for example, was remembered as a beata primarily for using her dowry to establish the first Clarissan convent in Sulmona in 1268–1269. It clearly was a

103 Cited in Roberto Rusconi, “L’espansione del francescanesimo femminile nel secolo XIII,” in Movimento religioso femminile,” pp. 264–313. 104 ASF 699, ff. 76v–77v. For a description of this manuscript see Benvenutus Bughetti, “Codices Duo Florentini Archivi Nationalis Ordinem Clarissarum Spectantes,” AFH 5 (1912): 573–580. 105 AF IV, pp. 357–360. Mariano of Florence used this information (cf. 78–79 and 269–272) but also cited also cites a Zingua, daughter of the king of Hungary and sister of Elizabeth of Hungary. He is the sole Franciscan source to mention her. 106 Excerpts from Monticelli’s medieval chronicles were copied by later antiquarians and now are preserved in Florentine archives; see Archivio di Stato (ASF), Carte Strozziane, II serie, num. 58, pp. 363–390. See Bughetti, “Codices duo,” pp. 576–580. Another manuscript is an Antiquarian collection of the “Spoglia della cartapecore delle RR monache di S Maria di Monticelli” dating from 1174–1423. It was copied in 1740 by Giovanni Battista Dei, see ASF Fondo Manoscritti 172. Florence, BN II. IV. 380 (formerly Cod. Strozzi XXV 595) is a copy of several of the fourteenth-century registers.

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wealthy foundation—documents show the women managing extensive properties and obtaining papal bulls to protect their rights.107 However, the surviving evidence has little to say about her vocation or particular aspects of her piety that contributed to her saintly aura.108 As with the examples discussed above, there is little evidence for Clare of Assisi as a literal model. That changed, however, in early fourteenth-century Naples. While this is an exceptional example, it nonetheless provides evidence for the survival of Clare’s more radical reputation in contrast to the image provided by papal hagiography. Sancia of Mallorca (1286–1345), wife of Robert of Anjou, was an active and influential patron of the Franciscan Order. At the end of her life, she became a Clarisse in the convent of Santa Croce and took the name Sister Clare. Until recently, though, much of the credit for supporting Franciscans within the Kingdom of Naples was given to her husband. New research on the royal couple, however, has changed our understanding of the accomplishments and motivations of fascinating woman.109 She is perhaps best known for her support of the Franciscan Spirituals, those members of the Order who were deeply committed to apostolic poverty.110 But her enthusiasm for the Franciscan Order was not limited to the radical wing. Indeed, Sancia’s involvement as a patron of Clarissan churches and her interest in the Order’s history reveal her to be an advocate for defining the contribution of the enclosed women within the Franciscan Order based on Clare’s earlier model.

Aniceto Chiappini was also responsible for editing the documents associated with her community; his remains the only study of which I am aware concerning Floresenda. “La beata Floresenda da Palena e il suo monastero di S. Chiara in Sulmona,” Studi Francescani 8 (1922): 117–161, 325–346. 108 Local tradition claims that Francis escorted his own niece to Sulmona so that she might enter a convent there. This would be another example of a later interpolation; even Chiappini recognized its problems. See ibid., p. 120. 109 In addition to the other studies cited below, two recent monographs are especially important for recasting how we understand Robert and Sancia’s relations with the Franciscan Order. See Caroline Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266–1343 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) and Samantha Kelly, The New Solomon: Robert of Nales (1309–1343) and Fourteenth-Century Kingship (Leiden: Brill, 2003). 110 See Ronald G. Musto, “Queen Sancia of Naples (1286–1345) and the Spiritual Franciscans,” in Women of the Medieval World. Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, eds. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple (New York: Blackwell, 1985) pp. 179–214. David Burr’s recent book has provided an excellent reassessment concerning when it is appropriate to speak of a Spiritual movement. David, Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001). 107

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Soon after their arrival in Naples in 1310, Robert and Sancia began to build what would be the largest Clarissan church in all of Europe: Santa Chiara. To some extent, the new monarchs were continuing a program of church building begun by Robert’s parents, King Charles II and Queen Mary of Hungary.111 However, this particular project also grew out of Sancia’s strong devotional orientation toward the Franciscan Order. These sympathies derived in part from her family. Her mother, Sclaramonde of Foix, had supported Clarissan houses in Montpellier, Perpignan, and Palma.112 Sclaramonde should be considered a “true daughter of blessed Francis,” according to a letter Sancia sent to the General Chapter meeting in Assisi in 1334. She similarly claimed to draw inspiration from her great aunt, Elizabeth of Hungary.113 Her marriage to Robert of Anjou further increased her ties to the Franciscan Order. He was related to Elizabeth of Hungary through his mother, and his brother was Louis of Toulouse, who would be canonized in 1317. These spiritual connections, however, did not initially unite the couple, whose marriage had served a political alliance. Robert had several extramarital affairs that produced children, while Sancia herself seems to have been infertile, an awkward position for a medieval queen. This situation may have strengthened her already existing desire to enter religious life. In 1312, Pope Clement V, noting her particular devotion to the Order, agreed that she might have two Clarisses with her at all times.114 Sancia established a sort of micro-convent at court, but it went no further at this time. The following year Robert wrote to his wife and acknowledged her desire to enter Santa Chiara as a professed sister once the building was completed. Nonetheless, he advised his wife that she would have to

111 See Bruzelius, Stones of Naples, pp. 75–131. One of these churches was another Clarissan foundation, Santa Maria Donna Regina. See the recent studies of this church collected by Janis Elliott and Cordelia Warr, eds. The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 112 Bruzelius, Stones of Naples, p. 146. Sclaramonde’s patronage also was referred to in a papal letter, see BF V, pp. 50 –51. 113 Sancia’s letter lays out her Franciscan lineage including the Angevin family, although at the time of her arrival in Naples, her own family connections were probably most influential. Her letter (which includes the text of three earlier letters also sent to the Franciscans) was printed in the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, see AF 3, pp. 508–514. 114 AM, VI, p. 531 (incorrectly dating the bull to 1311). Clement granted this concession to Sancia at the same time as he approved the foundation of Santa Chiara, see below (n. 117).

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wait until widowhood to achieve her goal.115 His warning did not seem to have impressed Sancia. In 1316 she wrote to Pope John XXII asking for a divorce so that she might enter a cloister. He refused—twice—for she wrote again for permission the next year. The queen was limited to her small court of Clarisses and her role as church patron. But around this time the relationship between the royal couple also began to change. They worked together to promote the cult of Saint Louis. Robert’s increasing interest in religion following the death of his son and heir, meant that Sancia was increasingly involved with the royal government.116 She also devoted considerable time to her patronage of the Order of Saint Clare. Sancia actively supported the building of Santa Chiara. While Robert also contributed funds toward its construction, the papal bulls concerning the church all refer to her as its founder. Certainly, she was the main financial backer. She donated her entire dowry to the project and later guaranteed an annuity for the church.117 She also secured indulgences for the church that provided an additional source of funds. Indeed, it is clear from the unusually large number of papal bulls responding to the queen’s requests for Santa Chiara that her involvement in the project was sustained and helped achieve its rapid construction. Building began perhaps as early as 1313 and the main church was consecrated already in 1340. By 1317 the first women already were able to move into the cloister, some friars having already settled in their space during the previous year. Given her support of the Spiritual Franciscans who privileged the ideal of apostolic poverty, it may appear ironic that Santa Chiara was such a large complex and that its decoration was so elaborate.118 The latter resulted in part from 115

n. 23.

Robert’s now lost letter of 6 June 1313 is cited in Bruzelius, p. 138 and p. 237

116 For the divorce request and the later change in their relationship, see Adrian S. Hoch, “Sovereignty and Closure in Trecento Naples: Images of Queen Sancia, Alias ‘Sister Clare,’ ” Arte Medievale 10 (1996): 122–124 and Musto, pp. 186–188. The pope—and some modern scholars—have identified Sancia’s religiosity as a cause of marital trouble between her and Robert. 117 I have followed Bruzelius’ account of the construction of Santa Chiara in The Stones of Naples; for Sancia’s role as patron, pp. 138–139. The initial bull for Santa Chiara refers to her financial commitment. AM VI, pp. 531–532. 118 Samantha Kelly has argued that Sancia’s commitment to the Spirituals was deeper than Robert’s. For example, she wrote more directly in defense of poverty, see Kelly, pp. 83–87 esp. Robert surrounded himself with friars beginning in the 1320s and was buried in the habit of the Franciscan Third Order. On Sancia’s involvement, see also Musto, pp. 193–202. Bruzelius suggests that Sancia’s involvement deepened

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its status as a royal church: the Angevin family tombs were located in the main church and they regularly used it for royal ceremonies. However, Sancia’s own ideas about religious life appear most directly in the cloistered areas of the church. Santa Chiara was a large double monastery with separate cloisters for the Friars Minor and Clarisses.119 The foundation bull allowed for a community of 100 Clarisses and later that number was increased to 120 and then 150 sisters. The friars’ population was originally set at 20, but it too was increased to 50 over time.120 As was the case at San Damiano and other early foundations, Santa Chiara had a smaller house of friars attached to the women’s convent to provide pastoral care. Thus, the monastic complex looked back to the Order’s earliest foundations as a model. San Damiano obviously testified to the frequency of this situation, but so also did Arcella. That Sancia was thinking about San Damiano was indicated in her legislative organization. She determined that the women would profess the Rule of Saint Clare, rather than the prevailing Urbanist Rule.121 It is not clear how she obtained a copy of the earlier rule, but it is likely that her agent (perhaps a friar sent for that purpose) went to Assisi obtained one from the sisters at Santa Chiara who had preserved copies of Clare’s Form of Life. Given that she had provided substantial funding for the community, Sancia’s attraction to the Clare’s rule does not seem to be based in apostolic poverty, in spite of her support for the Spiritual Franciscans. Instead she seems to have been attracted to the close relationship to the friars which it demanded, that is, to the ideal of spiritual mutuality that looked back toward the example of Francis and Clare.122 Several scholars have identified Sancia’s interest in, as well as knowledge of, early Franciscan history. In their artistic patronage, she and Robert often chose to represent themselves with Francis and Clare,

in after the arrival of her brother, Philip of Mallorca, in Naples in 1324 as Philip was connected to the group (The Stones of Naples, p. 142). 119 A document from 1321 refers to its status as a double community (the church is referred to as Corpus Christi, an earlier name for the church), see AM VI, p. 562. 120 The 1311 bull had set the number at 100 (AM VI, pp. 531–532). The number of 120 was set in 1317 (AM VI, pp. 546–547) and then 150 the following year (AM VI, p. 568). The original number of friars was set at 20 (AM VI, 344); in 1317 that number was set at 50. 121 See AM VI, pp. 631–646. This lengthy bull confirms that the will live “secundum regulam datam Sororibus Ordinis sancti Damiani a Domino Innocentio Papa IV.” 122 Bruzelius, Stones of Naples, pp. 141–142.

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invoking that earlier spiritual partnership.123 Her letters demonstrate her knowledge of Franciscan sources ranging from Francis’ rules, Thomas of Celano’s and Bonaventure’s biographies, and perhaps also later sources like the Mirror of Perfection and even the writings of Spiritual Franciscans like Angelo of Clareno.124 Taken together, these elements indicate that Sancia was not merely respectful of the Order’s early history, but that she wanted to recreate it. Santa Chiara in Naples thus reflects the early structure of shared male and female communities like at San Damiano. Symbolically, Bruzelius also argues the double house reflects the two aspects of Francis’ own vocation—the active and the contemplative.125 In other parts of the church, Sancia made changes to traditional female monastic architecture that further supported the contemplative orientation of the sisters’ community. For example, the nuns were able to see the altar during the Mass from their choir.126 In the late 1330s Sancia became involved in other Franciscan projects. Of these, the most important was the Clarissan convent of Santa Croce, which Pope Benedict XII gave her permission to establish on 19 March 1338.127 Like the larger Santa Chiara, this community also was a double convent. Located in a secluded area, an orchard separated the friars at Santa Trinità from the sisters’ cloister. Even more than Santa Chiara, this foundation looked toward Clare and San Damiano as a model. In 1338 she was granted permission to invite relatives of Clare’s from Assisi to enter the house.128 Unlike Santa Chiara, the decoration of this new church reflected a more austere understanding

123 Darleen Pryds, “Clarisses, Franciscans, and the House of Anjou: Temporal and Spiritual Partnership in Early Fourteenth-Century Naples,” in Clare of Assisi: A Medieval and Modern Woman, ed. Ingrid Peterson (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute, 1996) pp. 99–114. See also Adrian S. Hoch, “Sovereignty and Closure,” and “Pictures of Penitence from a Trecento Neapolitan Nunnery,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 61 (1998): 206–226. 124 Musto, pp. 194–195. 125 Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples, p. 142. She also develops an intriguing, albeit speculative, argument about how the structure of the public church may be tied to Joachite and Spiritual ideas, pp. 146–149. 126 Sancia’s sensitivity to this issue came from her own intense Eucharistic devotion. Bruzelius, Stones of Naples, pp. 144–146. She discusses Clarissan architecture at greater length in “Hearing is Believing: Clarissan Architecture c. 1213–1340,” Gesta 31 (1992): 83–91. 127 AM VII, pp. 260 –261. 128 Sancia was also given permission to enter the convent temporarily to recover from an illness on 31 October 1339, see AM VI, p. 73.

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of Franciscan poverty.129 Not surprisingly, the convent also adopted the Rule of Saint Clare.130 When Robert of Anjou died at the beginning of 1343, Sancia seems to have begun making her plans to retire to Santa Croce. She had been named regent for Robert’s heir, his granddaughter Giovanna (who was daughter of his son by Robert’s first wife) but by that fall she was preparing to enter religious life. In October 1343 Sancia, now Sister Clare of the Cross, finally became a professed Clarisse.131 She retired from her secular life, but a papal bull gave her permission to visit the different communities she had founded in the company of two Clarisses.132 Sancia lived there for another year, dying on 28 July 1345. Mariano of Florence included Sancia among the Order’s beatae. No formal papal process to canonize her began, however, although Giovanna of Naples did write a letter advocating for her canonization. The strongest piece of evidence seems to have been that her body was discovered to be incorruptible when it was translated from Santa Croce to Santa Chiara in 1352.133 Certainly the Angevin family was interested—this would be another saint in the family and further evidence of their dynasty’s saintly authority.134 Sancia perhaps would have appreciated their support, but it is uncertain whether a dynastic model of sanctity would have appealed to her. For Sancia of Mallora looked directly to the history of the Franciscan Order, piously but also critically, as a way to define her religious experience. Conclusion Except for Filippa Mareri and Floresenda Palena, all of the women whose religious experiences this chapter has examined, were memorialized in Mariano of Florence’s chronicle. He claimed that they fol129 Sancia may have been influenced by Delphine de Sabran, one of her ladies in waiting. Along with her husband Eleazer, Delphine was an advocate of marital celibacy and strict poverty. For an introduction to this couple, see Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 130 AM VI, p. 343. “Sanctae Clarae subiit Institutum, juxta rigorem primae regulae, quem ipsam diximus, in Monasterium sanctae Crucis introduxisse.” 131 See AM VI pp. 62–629 for Pope Clement VI’s permission. The Chronicle of the XXIV Generals cited the Minister General’s praise of her, see AF III, pp. 539–540. 132 AM VII, pp. 632–633. 133 Musto, p. 189. 134 Cf. Hoch, p. 135.

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lowed the model of Francis and Clare, but this was a later invention, of course, which has led to confusion about how the order of enclosed Franciscan nuns actually developed. Filippa and Margherita’s religious experiences should not be subsumed solely under Franciscan inspiration; Elena and Floresenda remind us that there were plenty of women for whom Clare’s model of Franciscan life was negligible, even if Francis and the friars were a source of inspiration. But what is most interesting in these lives is the way we start to see a sense of institutional history developing. This is reflected in the sisters’ own efforts to keep records of their communities and notable members, as much as in Sancia’s more direct connections with the early female movement. She is a harbinger of changes that will occur over the course of the fifteenth century. She represents how Clare’s way of life—the commitment to the friars and the Franciscan movement broadly, combined with the profession of Clare’s Form of Life—would come to define a branch of female Franciscan life.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CLARISSES AND OBSERVANT REFORM It has become a commonplace that Clare of Assisi was “rediscovered” in the fifteenth century by the reformers who sought to return the Franciscan Order to its spiritual origins through devotion to its earlier ideals. As these last two chapters will show, Clare’s rediscovery through this process was more complex than usually has been recognized. Specifically, friction resulted from the different images of her and the different uses made of her by the friars and sisters respectively. Yet, these differences were not simply a result of gendered dichotomies, but varied with fraternal and sororal groups depending on the extent to which Clare’s image derived from the inspirational figure of the hagiographical legends or from the Clare of her own writings, particularly her Form of Life. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the complex legacy of the sisters’ legislation had persisted for over a century and a half. While most convents in Italy were governed by the rule promulgated by Pope Urban IV in 1263, local variations and compromises prevented the Order from maintaining a standard observance. (The Neapolitan communities sponsored by Sancia of Mallorca do not seem to have influenced other houses.) In the first decades of the fifteenth century, however, the Franciscan Order again confronted the collective problem of legislative unity for the sisters. Some Clarisses were seeking to profess Clare’s Form of Life, which was starting to become known as the Rule of Saint Clare. Their rediscovery of what was referred to as the ‘first rule’ was directly associated with the Franciscan Regular Observance, a reform movement that promoted rigorous adherence to the Later Rule, even as they accepted papal modifications (particularly concerning poverty).1 Observant friars pursued an active vocation: they were 1 The bibliography on the Regular Observance is extensive as is fitting for its significant impact on the Franciscan Order. Since the focus of this book is the relationship between the Friars and Clarisses, discussion of the background to the reforms will occur more often in the notes than in the text. A starting point is Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division as well as Mario Sensi’s important study of the relationship between the fifteenth-century Regular Observance and the fourteenth-century reforms, see Le

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apostolic preachers, papal legates, prosecutors of heresy, and in many other ways served the ecclesiastical hierarchy in its efforts to reform the Universal Church. The question of who the Clarisses de Observantia were and what defined their standard of observance was more problematic.2 Two texts, written nearly a century apart, illustrate the dialectical tension between the principles of Observant Reform and its practice within the Order of Saint Clare. On 12 May 1431 the newly elected Pope Eugenius IV issued the first call for the universal reform of the Order of Saint Clare. His bull, Ad statum singulorum, complained that a state of dissolution existed in many Clarissan houses. Some sisters had relaxed their discipline so greatly, it claimed, that they had come to live indulgently. It also lamented that dissension and scandals arose daily in many communities. The bull accordingly commissioned the Franciscan Minister General, William of Casale, to reform the Clarisses by invigorating fraternal visitations, enforcing enclosure, and renewing monastic discipline. He was called upon to depose and replace unfit abbesses. The bull also empowered him to transfer sisters and property to other houses, or even to reassign income from one community to another, in order to help achieve and stabilize reform.3 While acknowledging that these duties were a burden on the friars—now surely a rhetorical gesture—Ad statum singulorum contains no indication that this was an extraordinary assignment.4 Yet in spite of these prescriptions and the evident concern for the state of life in Clarissan houses, the overall tone of the papal bull is generic. There is no mention of the sisters’ rule or a standard with which they should comply, nor does it call on the Minister General to appoint friars from the reform party to address the situation in the convents. Instead

Osservanze Francescane nell’Italia Centrale (Secoli XIV–XV), Biblioteca Seraphico-Cappucina 30 (Rome: Collegio San Lorenzo da Brindisi, 1985). 2 Anne Winston-Allen surveys the origins of the Observant movement and its impact on the women in Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004), pp. 65–96 esp. While her focus is the German lands and Low Countries, she provides not only a good introduction to the broader process, but also useful comparisons with the Italian context. 3 BF I ns, p. 16. 4 Contemporary legislation continued to require the Friars Minor to provide pastoral care to the women. Exiit qui seminat (BF III, pp. 404–416) issued by Pope Nicholas III in 1279 had become the authoritative statement on the friars’ pastoral duties. The 1430 Martinian Constitution cited it in the description of the pastoral duties toward the sisters. AM X, p. 185.

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it echoes earlier papal demands for female monastic enclosure.5 Indeed, the use of monastic formulae concerning the decline of conventual life throughout the bull implies that to some extent the pope did not distinguish the Clarisses from other female religious orders. Its outward indifference is even more striking when Ad statum singulorum is compared to a bull addressing the friars’ renewal issued just two months earlier and within days of Eugenius’s election to the papal throne. The bull Vinea Domini had reinstated the reform program drafted by John of Capistrano in 1430.6 Along with Bernardino of Siena, Albert of Sarteano, and James of the Marches, John is remembered as one of the “Four Pillars of the Observance.” After joining the Order in 1415, he quickly rose to become a leader among the Observant Franciscans. His program, known as the Martinian Constitution, effectively was a chapter by chapter commentary on the Later Rule that insisted, among other provisions, that those friars who wanted to live according to a stricter interpretation of the rule should be respected.7 The new pope soon became a strong advocate for the Observant friars, offering his support to John of Capistrano who visited him soon after his election.8

5 The obvious comparison is Boniface VIII’s 1298 decree Periculoso, edited by Elizabeth Makowski in her Canon Law and Cloistered Women, pp. 133–135 (see also pp. 89–100 for a discussion of its fifteenth-century commentators). 6 John of Capistrano also played an important role for the ecclesiastical hierarchy serving as papal legate and inquisitor toward the heretical Fraticelli. See briefly Ottokar Bonmann, “Giovanni da Capestrano,” DIP 4:1212–1223; also Mario Sensi, “Giovanni da Capestrano francescano,” in S. Giovanni da Capestrano nella chiesa e nella società del suo tempo. Atti del Convegno storico internazionale. Capestrano-L’Aquila 8–12 ottobre 1986, eds. Edith and Lajos Pasztor (L’Aquila: Comitato per il VI Centenario della nascita di San Giovanni da Capestrano, 1989), pp. 21–54. 7 BF I ns, 1–12. The Martinian Constitution (AM X, pp. 176–189) was presented at a special chapter held in 1430 under Pope Martin V’s patronage. In his commentary, John of Capistrano insisted that the friars emancipate themselves from properties that guaranteed a secure income and place their financial affairs in the hands of a procurator. In other words, John was demanding that the Conventuals conform to the Observant’s standards. Therefore, it is perhaps surprising that the Chapter enthusiastically adopted the Martinian Constitutions. But not unexpectedly, soon after that meeting, some friars reversed their support. Pope Martin allowed William of Casale to relax his vow to follow the new Constitution and reconfirmed that the friars might use property as long as it was legally owned by the Papal See (BF VII, pp. 737–739). Vinea Domini reinstated the constitution and required William to honor his vow to uphold the constitution. Pressure from the conventual brethren would force him to again relax these requirements the following year (BF I ns, p. 19 and pp. 34–35). These relaxations are discussed in Nimmo, Reform and Division, pp. 607–613. 8 See AM X [1431], p. 207. This support grew out of his own religious background. Eugenius had been an Augustinian canon and member of a reformed monastery in Venice before moving into the papal curia (as Bishop of Siena and later governor of

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The generic nature of the sisters’ bull, Ad statum singulorum, thus contrasts sharply with the pope’s approval of the organized program of standards set out for the Friars Minor. It implies that Eugenius IV did not see the Clarisses as part of the Observants’ plan for the Franciscan Order’s renewal. The pope’s silence also raises questions as to whether he thought that the same religious ideals still motivated the two groups, or if he judged that their connection had become a legal formality. Not quite a century later and from the perspective of looking back on the Observants’ triumphs, Fra Mariano of Florence offered a more specific and even more loquacious description of the Clarisses’ renewal.9 His chronicle praised the renewed discipline and fervor that the Observant reformers had brought to the Franciscan Order in the middle of the fifteenth century. For in this ruinous time the seraphic saints Francis and Clare intervened. Omnipotent God with his usual clemency, just as He had begun wondrously with simple men and an order of poor laity, now started to revitalize and reform the order once ruined by the Friars Minor, so much that it was exalted marvelously for its holiness and doctrine and its numbers were increased through all the lands of the faithful. Thus, the aforementioned Order drew notice in all the new foundations of Saint Clare and returned to great perfection and sanctity. The most high God incited great fervor and promoted ardor in the hearts of these beloved and most noble virgins so that they were not content to live under the observance of the rule of Pope Urban, but wanted to follow Christ the immaculate bridegroom and the glorious saints Father Francis and Mother Clare. They desired and chose to adopt the observance of the austere rule composed and given to saints Francis and Clare, through which observance, they would sustain persecutions, anxiety, and misery as I have shown [ in my chronicle].10

the Marches) through the influence of his uncle, Pope Gregory XII. For Eugenius’ papal career, see Joachim W. Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church (Leiden: Brill, 1978). 9 The Regular Observance gained increasingly greater autonomy over the course of the fifteenth century. In 1446 Ut Sacra (AM XI, pp. 250 –253) gave permanent authority to the office of the Vicar Generals (assuring that the reformers had independence from the Conventuals, even though both groups continued to be governed by the Minister General). In 1517 Pope Leo X promulgated Ite et vos (AM XVI, pp. 42–48) which recognized that the divisions between the two groups could not be healed and so divided the Franciscan Order into two separate branches. 10 Mariano 89.

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Unlike Pope Eugenius IV, Mariano saw the sisters’ renewal as part of the friars’ program. It is striking, moreover, that his description celebrates precisely the two areas that created tension between the brothers and sisters in the thirteenth century: pastoral guidance from the Friars Minor and allegiance to Clare’s Form of Life from 1253. The Observant sisters’ reform—as characterized by Fra Mariano as well as by the papal bulls—thus raises questions about what renewed interest in the ideals of the thirteenth-century Order as represented by Clare and her writings really meant for fifteenth-century sisters and their pastoral ministers, the Franciscan Friars. This chapter pursues only one part of this question. In fact, it addresses only circumstantially the mechanics of reform (the who, when, where, and how).11 It focuses rather on the practical and spiritual complications that resulted from the Clarisses’ return to their primary legislation.12 The wealth of materials on the late medieval Franciscan Order requires a selective approach to this problem. This chapter therefore concentrates on two sources that offer privileged access to understanding how Observant Franciscans interpreted the sisters’ rule in the fifteenth century. (The following chapter will turn to the sisters’ writings specifically.) John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare allows an exploration into why the friars were promoting a return to the suppressed legislation and what they thought it represented for the sisters to do so.13 Mariano’s devotional history of the Order of Saint Clare similarly opens questions about the implications of the sisters’ return to the Rule of Saint Clare and how they understood Clare’s status as founder of the female movement. His treatise in comparison with John of Capistrano’s text most interestingly reveals differences in how the friars viewed the sisters’ identity within the Order. Since these issues arise within a particular context of ecclesiastical and Franciscan

For the general characteristics and trends of Clarissan reform, see Mario Sensi, “L’Osservanza francescana al femminile,” Bailammé: Rivista di Spiritualità 6 (1992): 139–161. Now see also Alfonso Marini, “Il recupero della memoria di Chiara nell’Osservanza,” in Clara Claris Praeclara, pp. 525–544. 12 This chapter primarily focuses on the communities involved with the Observant reform movement rather than the “Conventual” sisters since the former group was more interested in the formative years of the Franciscan Order and using its history to define their current identity. 13 “Explicatio Primae Regulae S. Clarae auctore S. Ioanne Capistratensis (1445),” ed. by Donatus van Andrichem, AFH 22 (1929) 337–357 and 512–529 (I will cite “Van Andrichem” to refer to the introduction and EJC, with page number and reference to chapter and precept in parentheses—to refer to the commentary itself ). 11

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politics, which in turn is circumscribed by the varied and unsystematic nature of the sisters’ renewal, a brief consideration of the stakes in Clarissan reform opens this chapter. The Origins of Clarissan Reform The nature of female Franciscan reform in Italy was geographically diffuse radiating from different centers, as well as temporally protracted. Moreover, and contrary to common assumptions about female religious life, there is no reason to think Clarissan reform originated in a systematic plan on the part of the Regular Observance. Beginning in the 1420s, a fourteenth-century spiritual movement that had begun among Franciscan tertiaries (usually called bizzoche or pinzochere in the sources) gradually transformed into a program of reform among the enclosed sisters.14 This transformation often was guided by Observants friars, above all by Bernardino of Siena and John of Capistrano. The former was particularly influential—the famous Sienese preacher would claim to have reformed 200 convents by the end of his life.15 For example, in 1418 after hearing Bernardino preach, the sisters at Santa Ursula in Milan asked to be placed under the care of the Observant friars.16 Two years later one of these sisters, Francesca di Giussano, left Milan to become abbess at Corpus Christi, a newly founded community in Mantua. Its patron was Paola Malatesta who, along with her husband, the Marchese Gian Francesco Gonzaga, also had been deeply influenced 14 For the connection between the fourteenth-century reform movement and the Regular Observance, see Mario Sensi “Clarisses entre Spirituels et Observants,” in Sainte Claire d’Assise et sa posterité, pp. 101–118; this theme also underscores his Le Osservanze Francescane. He argues in the monograph that the bizzoche were too passive and too docile to effect their own reform, which led them to fall under the influence of the Regular Observance (p. 262). This pattern may have been true for some houses, but it overlooks the cases where the sisters sincerely wanted and promoted reform. 15 Alberto Ghinato, “L’Ideale di Santa Chiara attraverso i secoli,” in S. Chiara d’Assisi. Studi e Cronaca, p. 338. See also Fausta Casolini, “San Bernardino e la riforma dei monasteri di Clarisse,” in Francesco d’Episcopo, ed. San Bernardino da Siena predicatore e pellegrino. Atti del Convegno Nazionale di Studi Bernardiani. Maiori 20 –22 June 1980 (Galatina: Congedo, 1985), pp. 53–60. A recent evaluation of Bernardino’s ideas, which provides a useful context for his reform efforts, is Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 16 The house had been founded in the fourteenth century as a community of Augustinian tertiaries. See Paolo Sevesi, Le Clarisse in Milano ed il Monastero di S. Chiara (Milan: Romolo Ghirlanda, 1930), pp. 20 –23.

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by the Observant Franciscans. Perhaps Paola met with Bernardino during the 1419 General Chapter held in Mantua and there received his support for a plan to found three convents and four friaries de Observantia in that city.17 Corpus Christi became the center of a network through which Observant principles spread to other convents throughout Northern Italy as represented in Map 2.18 Invited to preach in Assisi in 1425 on the Feast of Saint Clare, Bernardino urged his listeners to return to the principles of Francis and Clare “just as is revealed in convents already reformed by [Corpus Christi] of Mantua.”19 These women had responded to the friars’ call to return to their spiritual origins by restoring their observance of their primary legislation,20 which they understood to be the Form of Life given by Francis to San Damiano and preserved as the 1253 Rule of Saint Clare. (Pope Gregory IX was often credited as co-author of this text, although Clare was not.)21 In 1425 Santa Chiara in Verona was granted “each and every privilege allowed to Corpus Christi in Mantua.”22 San Bernardino in Padua was founded in 1439 “under the rule and according to the constitution of the convent of Corpus Christi.”23 Observant reformers encouraged other houses to reform to this same standard.24

17 Their meeting is suggested by Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality, p. 89. The bulls granting permission for these foundations are printed in AM X, pp. 383–388 (see specifically pp. 383–384). For these foundations see Cesare Cenci, “Le Clarisse a Mantova (saec. XIII–XV) e il primo secolo del Fratri Minori,” in Le Venezie Francescane 31 (1964): 3–92 and also his “I Gonzaga e i Fratri Minori dal 1365 al 1430,” AFH 58 (1965): 3–47 and 201–79. 18 For the importance of female networks (incorporating both cloistered women and secular patrons) for spreading Observant spirituality, see Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality, pp. 86–120. The foundational study is Antonio Fantozzi, ed. “La riforma osservante dei monasteri delle clarisse nell’Italia centrale. Documenti sec. XV–XVI,” AFH 23 (1930): 361–382; 488–550. 19 Quoted in Dionisio Pacetti, “La predicazione di S. Bernardino da Siena a Perugia e ad Assisi nel 1425,” CF 20 (1940): 13–14. 20 AM X, p. 387. 21 For example Mariano, 96. 22 Inspiration for this house’s reform is also attributed to Bernardino of Siena. See the bull dating from 1425 establishing its privileges in AM X, pp. 457–458. Other houses they reformed were granted similar rights, see the examples for Corpus Christi in Ferrara from 1431 (AM XI, p. 215). 23 AM XI, p. 438. See also the description of Santa Chiara de Muriano’s foundation in Venice in 1439, in AM XI, pp. 102–103. 24 Corpus Christi in Pesaro was founded in 1439 by Battista da Montefeltro, wife of Galeazzo Malatesta. Sister Felice Meda came from Santa Ursula in Milan to become

Milan

Volterra

Florence

Parma

Mantua

Arezzo

Rome

ASSISI Foligno

Camerino

Pesaro S. Sepulcro

Urbino

Perugia

Forlì

Bologna

Ferrara

Padua

Venice

L'Aquila

Map 2: Networks of Reformed Clarisses, c. 1420–1500

Cremona

Verona

Cities in italic type visited by Mariano

other cities

“Mantua” and “Ferrara” networks

“Foligno/Perugia” and “Mantua” networks

“Foligno/Perugia” network

“Ferrara” network

“Mantua” network

Networks of Reformed Clarisses c. 1420-1500

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Their reasons for promoting the Rule of Saint Clare, however, were not explicit. Some Observants probably associated the prevailing Urbanist Rule with the relaxation of standards in the convents.25 They would have seen the Rule of Saint Clare as a closer representation of the Order’s earlier ideals and admired its conformity with the friars’ Later Rule. But given the relative scarcity of that text as late as the 1440s, it is likely that few friars had actually read Clare’s Form of Life, administered with it, or even were prepared to contend with its demands for communal austerity.26 However, even as these women were becoming part of the Observant movement through their association with reformed brothers, profession of the primary rule was not yet an articulated standard or a viable campaign for the Clarisses’ renewal. Even the network of reformed convents associated with the Corpus Christi community in Northern Italy did not represent a coordinated plan among the friars for the reform of the Order of Saint Clare. Through the late 1430s, Observant reformers generally encouraged the enclosed women to follow a stricter observance of whichever rule they already had professed. Thus in Central Italy, reformed houses continued to profess the Urbanist rule even if they received pastoral care from Observant brothers. For example, in 1424 the Augustinian tertiaries of Santa Lucia in Foligno entered the Order of Saint Clare and professed the Urbanist Rule. Three years later they sought permission to receive pastoral care from the Observant friars, but they did not change their rule.27 Along with Monteluce (whom Santa Lucia reformed in 1448), these sisters would reform many convents forming a central Italian network of communities.28 Of course, not all Clarisses were interested in reforming their way of life. Their opposition led Eugenius IV to reissue Ad statum singulorum in 1437. Simultaneously, he promulgated Ad ea quae felicem which berated the lack of enclosure in their communities and threatened their abbess along with six other sisters. See Filippo Meda, “Una insigne clarissa milanese: La B. Felice Meda (1378–1444),” AFH 20 (1927): 241–259. 25 Mario Sensi, “Chiara d’Assisi nell’Umbria del Quattrocentro,” CF 62 (1992): 173. 26 Diego Ciccarelli, “Contributi alla recensione degli scritti di S. Chiara,” Miscellanea Franciscana 79 (1979): 358. For other difficulties obtaining this rule, see below. 27 BF VII, pp. 682–684. See Ricordanze del Monastero di S. Lucia OSC in Foligno (Cronache 1424–1786), ed. by Angela Emmanuela Scandella (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1987). 28 As Map 2 indicates, there was considerable interaction between the communities in both the central and northern networks of Clarisses.

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excommunication if the women did not accept the friars’ reforms. Although the pope was clearly angry at what he identified as the sisters’ “frivolous and repellent” excuses, the only standard he presented for their reform was still a generic regularis observantia.29 Some of the pope’s continuing reluctance to call upon the Observants might be read as a unwillingness to put the women into a situation where they would be without pastoral care if they came between the disputing Observants and Conventuals. (This was a real threat—Mariano of Florence’s chronicle identified five houses where the sisters were abandoned during a dispute.)30 Nonetheless Eugenius’ support for the Regular Observance and especially for John of Capistrano, who was becoming one of the most prominent reformers helped authorize the Franciscan Observants to articulate and execute a plan for the sisters’ reform. John of Capistrano and Clarissan Reform More than any other individual friar, John of Capistrano was responsible for institutionalizing Observant Reform among the Clarisses. He achieved this through a combination of spiritual exhortation, personal influence, and ultimately, administrative policy. In 1437, the same year the pope again called for the Clarisses’ universal reform, Eugenius already had appointed John to see personally to the reform of San Guglielmo in Ferrara.31 By singling out the prominent Observant, the pope was sanctioning the reformers’ efforts to renew the Franciscan Order as well as indicating his respect for convents already associated with the Regular Observance. John transferred San Guglielmo from the care of the Conventuals to the Observants. He also arranged for sisters to come from Corpus Christi in Mantua to reform the house. With their arrival, the Ferrarese community abandoned the Urbanist Rule and instead professed the Rule of Saint Clare.32 John’s actions as a reformer of the Clarisses and his growing prominence among the 29 BF I, ns, pp. 157–158. The bull addresses standards of enclosure that should not be violated sub poena excommunicatione. 30 Mariano compared the 1261–1263 “strike” with contemporary cases where friars refused to provide pastoral care to the sisters (cf. Mariano, 42). 31 See BF ns I, p. 133 and pp. 137–138. See also Teodosio Lombardi, I Monasteri delle Clarisse: S. Guglielmo, Corpus Domini, S. Bernardino, S. Chiara, in I Francescani a Ferrara, Vol. 4 (Bologna: Provincia di Bologna dei Frati Minori Osservanti, 1975), pp. 27–34. 32 BF ns I, p. 196.

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Observants were drawing attention. The bishop of Ferrara, Giovanni Tavelli da Tossignani, wrote that there were two houses in his district in need of reform and that he would be glad if the pope appointed John as their visitator.33 The bishop was particularly interested in ecclesiastical reform as he prepared for the transfer of the Council of Basel to his see the following year. By the 1440s, John of Capistrano seems to have begun thinking more programmatically about Clarissan reform. 1442 brought him to France serving a double role as papal legate and envoy for Albert of Sarteano, the Observants’ Vicar General. Commissioned to pursue a union between the French and Italian reform movements, John met with Colette of Corbie, the spiritual leader of the French reformers. This alliance never came to fruition, but their meeting seems to have forced him to confront the question of the reformed sisters’ obligations to the Rule of Saint Clare.34 This text was not well known in France due in part to the success of Isabelle of France’s rule. In 1434, Colette had sent a friar to Assisi to locate a copy of Clare’s Form of Life for their consultation. Perhaps she discussed its contents with John of Capistrano and advocated its merits. Colettine communities were governed by the primary rule and a constitution she had composed for them.35 She did not insist on a literal observance, dropping passages she judged no longer relevant or appropriate for the sisters. For example, she declared that while in Clare’s day it had been appropriate and even fitting for the sisters to go outside the cloister, it now would be very dangerous and even detrimental for the nuns to do so.36 She did require that they adopt corporate poverty and strict asceticism. A story circulated that John

33 This unpublished letter is cited in Johannes Hofer, Giovanni da Capestrano; una vita spesa nella lotta per la riforma della chiesa, trans. Giacomo di Fabio (L’Aquila: Provincia dei Frati Minori d’Abruzzo, 1955), pp. 205–206, n. 33. 34 The Colettines rejected the authority of the Vicars. See Hugolino Lippens, “Saint Jean de Capistran en mission aux États Bourguignons (1442–1443)” AFH 35 (1942): 113–132 and 254–295. For Colette and the female branch of her reform movement, see Élisabeth Lopez, Culture et Sainteté: Colette de Corbie (1381–1447) (St. Étienne: CERCOR, 1994). 35 Her constitution was approved by William of Casale in 1434 (AM X, pp. 281–306). For Colette’s reforms, see also Michael Bihl, ed. “De tribus epistolis fr. Guillelmi Casalensis, Ministris Glis Ord. Min. ad S. Coletam datis,” AFH 5 (1912): 385–387 and Ubald d’Alençon, ed. “Documents sur la réforme de Ste. Colette en France,” AFH 2 (1909): 447–456 and 3 (1910): 260 –276. 36 AM X, p. 306.

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asked Colette to modify the sisters’ austerities; she refused and prayed successfully that he would yield. This anecdote is probably a fabrication—it became a staple of Colette’s hagiographical literature37—and does not report accurately any conversations the two might have had about the Rule of Saint Clare as a standard for female communities. But John does seem to have left France confirmed in the opinion that that Clare’s Form of Life could become the standard for Clarissan reform, although its literal observance was not necessary. John returned to Italy in 1443 for the General Chapter meeting at Padua. A violent confrontation between the Observants and Conventuals (which prevented the election of Observant Albert of Sarteano as Minister General) convinced the pope that the reformers needed greater autonomy. He gave permanent status to the office of the Vicar General and enjoined the Order to appoint John of Capistrano to that office for the Cismontane brothers.38 At the same time, Eugenius also extended the vicar’s authority to include the Clarisses de Observantia, thus incorporating the reformed houses into the Observant branch of the Franciscan Order.39 John now wrote the Provincial Vicars to direct the Observant friars to refuse pastoral care to houses that had not professed the Rule of Saint Clare. In other words, John of Capistrano’s directive meant that adopting Clare’s Form of Life would become a marker of the sisters’ Observant status. Without a copy of this letter, his reasons for this new approach must remain speculative. The immediate cause was most likely increasing friction between the Observants and the unreformed Conventuals, which in turn promoted a desire to segregate the Clarisses in similar branches.40 Not unsurprisingly, the friars’ threatened repudiation of unreformed convents created problems. Some women feared the austere requirements if they were forced to profess that rule—Mariano of Florence’s aunt, a sister in Arezzo, told him that she had hesitated to become a

See Hofer, p. 253. BF ns I, pp. 332–334. Although there were three main strands of Observant reform, the Italian Regular Observance, the French Collettines, and the Spanish Villacrecians (the most literal of the three branches), there were just two Vicar Generals, the Cismontane and the Ultramontane—whose commission was obviously geographical. 39 AM XI, p. 204. 40 On the growing tension between the two groups in the 1430s, see Celestino Piana, “Scritti polemici fra conventuali ed osservanti a metà del ’400 con la partecipazione dei giuristi secolari,” AFH 71 (1978): 339–405 and 72 (1979): 37–105. 37

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Clarisse for that very reason.41 Moreover, communities that had long been accustomed to receive spiritual ministry from the friars suddenly found themselves on the verge of being deprived of pastoral care. In 1443 Prioress Paola de Premenugo wrote a plaintive letter to Pope Eugenius IV concerning the relationship between her community of Santa Maria di Vedano in Milan and the Franciscan Order. Although the sisters always had professed the Augustinian rule, she wrote that the Franciscan friars were accustomed to provide their pastoral care. Their relationship was harmonious and the women were pleased with the goodwill that they had received from the Friars Minor.42 But alas, holiest Father, something has now happened [which we learned ] through a letter that Fra John Capistano, Vicar of the Friars Minor of the Observance, wrote and was shown to us. It was written to the vicar of the province of Milan, namely to Fra Nicholas of Bressa, who at present is vicar of the Observant friars. [ The letter] came to us and spoke of your part, that it is your will that we should chose one of two things. Either we should adopt the observance of the Rule of Saint Clare as it is, or if we do not want to accept that rule, we should know that we will be deprived of the care of the Friars Minor—those who as I have written above have always governed us, caring nothing about our rule which, as you know, is that of Saint Augustine. And now it seems that if we wish to follow our Augustinian Rule, we must be under the care of the archbishop [because] those friars no longer wish to govern us.43

Paola explained that she already had informed their confessor that she would not accept the Franciscan rule. She complained that she was unwell and her infirmity would prevent her from tolerating the demands of the Rule of Saint Clare. She further rejoined that she intended to honor her profession to the Augustinian Rule. Some of the younger sisters were willing to profess the Franciscan rule, but the prioress warned the pontiff that many of these women would be unable to withstand the austerities of Clare’s rule such as daily fasts and going without shoes. Paola also insisted that many were agreeing to change their profession only because they feared abandonment by the Friars Minor. After raising other problems, she concluded by begging the pope to confirm their profession of the Augustinian Rule and to compel the Observant friars

41 She told him that when she was searching for a religious community to enter, but “in quelli di sancta Chiara non voleva udire di entrare, per respecto della molta fragile et debile sua natura et mala dispositione corporale . . .” (Mariano, 451). 42 The letter is printed by Sevesi, pp. 223–226. 43 Sevesi, p. 225.

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to minister to them.44 While the abbess’ language appears dramatic, this situation was in no way unusual. Such conflicts often resulted in awkward compromises if not outright hostility within the community. At Santa Maria de Vedano, a provisional compromise was reached in 1445 in which those sisters who desired the proposed reform were given a chapel, and those wanting to remain Augustinians kept the main church. This unsatisfactory arrangement lasted until 1454 when they eventually split into two communities.45 It is notable that Paola and the other sisters assumed that profession of the Franciscan rule would require a literal observance of the Rule of Saint Clare. The prioress’ anguish essentially appears caused by fears of the harsh and ascetic life the women believed the Franciscan rule would demand of them. That the Observant friars themselves had adopted a moderate observance of the Later Rule could have assured the Milanese women and contradicted the fears about the austerity of female Franciscan life expressed by both Paola and Mariano’s aunt. Nonetheless, their apprehension makes clear that the Friars Minor had not articulated the standard of observance they wished the sisters to adopt or confronted what they considered to be the austere dictates of Clare’s Form of Life. John of Capistrano and the Moderate Observance On 27 January 1445 nearing the end of what would be his first term as Vicar General of the Cismontane Observants, John of Capistrano prepared a commentary of sorts on the Rule of Saint Clare. A certain Elizabeth, who was then abbess of Corpus Christi in Mantua, had requested that he write an explanation of the sisters’ legislation.46 Although at first he appeared reluctant to respond, entreaties from Corpus Christi’s confessor and encouragement from Pope Eugenius IV ultimately persuaded him to write a commentary on the Rule of Saint Clare.47 John seems to have recognized that this text could serve both political and Ibid., pp. 225–226. The subsequent documents are published in Sevesi, pp. 226–240. 46 Very little is known about this Elizabeth. Fausta Casolini wondered if she might be identified as an Elisabetta Libonati, abbess at the Clarissan convent in Migliarino, but originally from S. Ursula in Milan. See Casolini, “San Bernardino,” p. 58 n. 22 referring to Candido Romeri, “Le Clarisse nel territorio della minoritica Provincia Veneta,” Le Venezie Francescane (1953): p. 36 n. 99. 47 EJC, p. 342. 44 45

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didactic aims. It would enable him to define the sisters’ obligations to their rule, a task he had already undertaken for the Observant friars in a 1443 encyclical on the Later Rule.48 John perhaps consulted with other leading friars, including Bernardino of Siena and Nicholas of Osimo before his commentary was published.49 He also made clear that his work came with the sanction of Pope Eugenius IV.50 Finally, although the text was addressed to the Clarisses at Corpus Christi, he realized that his commentary would circulate to other convents reformed by sisters from the Mantuan house.51 In sum, John of Capistrano seems to have seen his commentary as a means to resolve a practical problem: how could the sisters practice a moderate observance of Clare’s Form of Life? Nonetheless, his commentary and its reception reveal the disjuncture between the Observants’ idealization of their spiritual origins and their articulation of what that meant in practice. The Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare is a complex document that moves back and forth between moral and judicial registers. It consists of three parts: a letter of greeting, the exposition of the rule itself, and a closing letter that reflects upon the desired temperament of the abbess and the sisters. While the introductory and concluding texts serve as spiritual exhortations, John’s approach to the legislation itself was both systematic and pragmatic. The commentary proceeds sequentially through Clare’s Form of Life, dividing each chapter into precepta. There are 118 of these over the twelve chapters. This was surely a logical way for the trained canon lawyer and theologian to proceed, but the number of decrees identified in each chapter also is

See AM XI, p. 212. In 1440 Bernardino of Siena, who was then Vicar General, issued an encyclical on the friars’ obligations to the Later Rule. Its origin may provide some evidence for how the declaration on the sisters’ rule developed. Nicholas of Osimo, the actual author of the text, drafted it at the command of Pope Eugenius IV. Before it was published, however, these two friars along with others including John of Capistrano and William of Casale debated its precepts. The result was a text that Duncan Nimmo judged “peculiarly authoritative.” It seems likely that a similar discussion would have occurred before John of Capistrano published his commentary on the sisters’ first rule. See the document in AM XI, pp. 117–118 and Nimmo’s comments in Reform and Division, p. 588. 50 EJC, p. 343. 51 A new convent (Santa Eucaristia) would be founded in Aquila in 1449 “. . . iuxta ritus, mores et instituta monasterii Corporis Christi Mantuani” (AM XI, p. 104; this house is discussed below). The sisters at another house in that city, Santa Chiara, were probable owners of the manuscripts on which the edition is based, see Van Andrichem, p. 340. 48 49

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significant.52 At the high end, the chapter on “Profession” has eighteen precepts and there were twenty on the “Election of the Abbess.” This particular attention to legal obligations certainly reflects a canonist’s form of thought, but it is noteworthy that there are sixteen decrees on “Silence” and ten in the chapter on “Enclosure.” Meanwhile “Labor” has only five and “Divine Office” six.53 If these divisions are not merely a convenient separation, they also must reflect John’s view of their relative importance to the sisters’ communal and spiritual lives. Given past conflicts over Clare’s ideals for female Franciscan life, it is striking that the sixth chapter on poverty, which both explained how women could live out Francis’ ideals and contained her most autobiographical passages, contains only two precepts. Unlike other chapters, neither precept offers any additional commentary. They simply restate the end of that chapter where Clare decreed that the sisters should own no land except what they needed for a garden.54 This chapter’s relative silence thus seems to suggest that the Observant friars had little concern for her intentions or understanding of how woman could live out Francis’ spiritual ideals. Besides the first chapter’s reference to Francis’ promise of pastoral care in the commentary, Clare appears only in the sisters’ vow of profession, a passage borrowed from the Urbanist Rule.55 John of Capistrano seemed uninterested in Clare as a person or her legislation as a historical document. Most of the decrees are literal explanations of the text. For example, the commentary first identifies the three principal precepts of the sisters’ form of life as obedience, poverty, and chastity.56 Generally, the commentary is straightforward and based on current practices in the Order; for example, John explained that blindness or illness were conditions that reasonably might prevent a sister from reading her breviary.57 His authorities for longer explanations usually were drawn from canon law

John had studied law in Perugia between 1406–1411. He served as a judge in that city until a spiritual crisis brought him to the Franciscan Order in 1415. See Ugolino Nicolini, “S. Giovanni da Capestrano studente e giudice a Perugia (1411–1414),” AFH 53 (1960): 39–77. 53 The complete accounting is: chapter 1: form of life (3 precepts), 2: reception and profession (18), 3: office (6), 4: abbess and chapter (20), 5: silence (16), 6: poverty (2), 7: labor (5), 8: alms and illness (12), 9: penance and serving sisters (13), 10: penance and correction (7), 11: enclosure (10), and 12: visitator, chaplain, and confessor (6). 54 EJC, p. 357 referring to FLCl 6:12–15. 55 EJC, p. 347 (2:12). This passage also was in Colette’s Constitutions. 56 EJC, p. 344 (1). 57 EJC, p. 349 (3:1). 52

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and papal rulings. John argued that the latter applied to the sisters’ legislation just as they did to the friars’ Later Rule because of the conformity of the two rules.58 While this idea may have reflected an earlier commonplace, fourteenth-century documents concerning pastoral care for the sisters generally do not incorporate such argument. Observant reformers like John of Capistano seem to have been the first ones to articulate it as an argument to justify the sisters’ obligations.59 Longer decrees indicate issues that especially concerned him or that he considered particularly important for shaping the sisters’ lives. Not unsurprisingly enclosure—the standard medieval vision of religious life for women—received prominent attention. A lengthy passage reviewed papal bulls from Gregory IX through Eugenius IV on the Clarisses’ enclosure.60 In other decrees, John advised the sisters that their visits to the grate should be rare and that they should never go alone but must take two companions. The women also should be sure that no one could see into the cloister, and that no one could enter or exit.61 One precept even warned that some sisters might try to fake sickness since that was an occasion when secular visitors might enter the cloister. John strongly advised the abbess to limit these exchanges.62 He also followed the papal bulls in giving prominent consideration to pastoral ministry. The commentary on the first chapter confirmed that the Friars Minor would provide pastoral care for the Clarisses just as Francis had promised to the first sisters.63 Whereas for Clare this passage had been a crucial move to bind the friars to her Order, for John it spotlighted the important role the friars played in shaping the sisters’ lives.64 More than a guarantee of spiritual care, he urged the sisters to give their ultimate obedience to the visitator rather than their abbess, because the cleric was responsible for their reform. Perhaps because female

58 EJC, p. 344 (1). Cf. also EJC, p. 346 (2:6) where John explained that the bull Exivi also applies to the sisters. 59 Compare the earlier texts printed by Benvenutus Bughetti, ed. “Acta Officialia de regimine Clarissarum durante saec. XIV,” AFH 13 (1920): 89–135.” Mariano of Florence also recognized this argument, see Mariano, 55. 60 EJC, p. 519 (11:7). 61 Ibid., p. 355 (5:8). 62 Ibid., p. 514 (8:10). See also 11:10 for a similar passage. 63 Ibid., p. 344 (1). 64 Mariano of Florence claimed that good reform could be attributed to the presence of a good confessor (cf. Mariano, 87, 591, 609, 656, 696, and 699). The reverse was also true: the decline of a community could be blamed on an unfit confessor (Mariano, 86).

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Observant renewal was more diverse than the friars’, John thought that these ministers would be a means of assuring a standard discipline throughout the reformed Order of Saint Clare.65 The Vicar General also was aware that the Rule of Saint Clare must not appear unduly harsh. He assured the sisters about the areas that most concerned them: poverty, fasting, and silence. His commentary thus expresses the Observants’ acceptance of material support over complete evangelical poverty. For example, Clare’s Form of Life had stated the sisters could not advise a postulant on the dispersal of her worldly goods; however, the commentary suggests that the woman could freely choose to donate her inheritance for the support of the community.66 Their love of poverty was expressed in other ways, for example, in simple clothing.67 John also explained that the first rule did not actually require them to fast perpetually. The abbess always had discretionary power to moderate fasting as needed for younger sisters or ones who were ill. The precept continues that special provisions are made for adolescents and those who are ill. Fasting is always at the discretion of the abbess. This passage is one of the longest in his text indicating the degree to which fasting was a concern for the women and their pastoral ministers.68 Finally, he advised that silence was not a penance, but rather a gift the women had received to fight against temptations and to bring them to spiritual perfection.69 The effect of considering these decrees together—that is, John’s explanations of the standards for enclosure, pastoral care, poverty, fasting and silence—suggests how Clare’s Form of Life had been neutralized for the friars by the period of the Observant reform efforts. His comments on the sisters’ obligations rehearse a standard ecclesiastical view of enclosed female life and seems not to explain what it meant for the sisters to return to their spiritual origins. There is little in fact in these requirements that appears different from the Urbanist Rule. For John of Capistrano, however, a return to the Rule of Saint Clare meant rediscovering the important role of the abbess that Clare had been so concerned to define. In Pope Urban’s rule and even Colette’s

John’s description of the visitator in chapter twelve is taken directly from his 1443 encyclical to the brothers (EJC, pp. 521–522 (12:3–4)). 66 EJC, p. 345 (2:5). Compare FLCl 2:7–10. 67 Ibid., p. 348 (2:14). This description is drawn from Colette’s constitution, see Van Andrichem, p. 349, n. 1. 68 Ibid., p. 350 (3:3). 69 Ibid., p. 356 (5:16). 65

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constitution, the focus had been on the governing authority of that office and the sisters’ obedience to its holder.70 John restored Clare’s characterization of the abbess as a woman who loved the sisters like a mother and cared for them like a servant.71 He expanded this idea in the concluding letter that addressed the desired qualities of the abbess. John urged her to be an example to all. She should be grave, discrete, kind, just, fair, patient and lacking in any private affections that might lead her to favor one sister more than another. Furthermore, . . . . in food and drink she should be sober, [she should be] frugal in laughter, modest in words, temperate in corrections, beggarly in necessary garments, temperate in vigils, industrious in prayer, and indefatigable in all good works.72

The office should be a burden to her and not an honor. Because she possessed these qualities, the sisters should venerate the abbess and follow her example.73 Taken together, these qualities constitute a rather formulaic list and at first reading appear to represent a conventional ending to the John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare. His Franciscan audience, however, would have recognized the source of his description. This characterization of a Clarissan abbess was based on Francis’ description of the duties of the Minister General.74 John appropriated Francis’ portrait for his own description of the ideal abbess, leaving out only the qualities he did not consider necessary for women. The omitted traits include those that called on the minister general to be abstemious toward money (the sisters would have a procurator) and cautious toward learning (since they were not preachers, they would not engage in formal study).75 This shadowing of Francis’ description implies that for John, and presumably his fellow brothers, in the Regular Observance, the abbess played a role in her individual community that was parallel to the function of the Minister General as governor and spiritual leader for the entire Franciscan Order. This image is Compare Lopez, Culture et sainteté, pp. 288–289. Compare TestCl 61–66. For example, EJC, p. 516 (7:1). 72 EJC, 523–524. 73 Ibid., 524–525. 74 Van Andrichem, p. 524. This passage can be found in Celano’s second biography (2 C 184–187), Mirror of Perfection 80, as well as Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Conformities (AF IV, p. 624). 75 John turned the passage in Clare’s Form of Life that declared “et nescientes litteras non curent litteras discere” (FLCl 10:8) into a metaphorical warning against unnatural curiosity, see EJC, p. 517 (10:7). 70 71

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simultaneously both empowering for the Clarisses and isolating. It reveals the lack of centralized reform and perhaps a realization that the female branch of the Order functioned more like a confederation than a hierarchal system. This closing letter to the attached to his commentary thus reflects the reality that for female reform to be successful, it would require a strong abbess as well as a dedicated confessor. This allows for the spiritual shaping of the women’s community to come from inside its walls. Therefore, at the end of this text it is possible to see the problems embedded in John’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare and in female Observant reform generally. The basic principle behind his commentary began with shared spiritual origins: the Rule of Saint Clare is the foundation of Clarissan reform just as the Later Rule is for the Friars Minor. The result is spiritual equality: papal declarations on the friars’ legislation also apply to the Rule of Saint Clare; the abbess plays a role similar to the minister general’s. Of course, the analogy does not extend to the way of life lived by each group. The Clarisses were not preachers, rather they were enclosed contemplatives. The friars believed the radical form of life Clare installed in her rule—to live out Francis’s evangelical vocation of complete poverty—was no longer possible as they had expected. Indeed, the model of enclosed life presented by John of Capistrano appears fundamentally indistinguishable from that of other orders of enclosed women, except that they receive spiritual care from the Friars Minor. This is to say that John’s commentary does not, perhaps could not, ultimately account for the Observant Clarisses’ reception of their primary rule as other than a decree of legal obligation. Hence it is not surprising that rumors about the authority of the John of Capistrano’s commentary seem to have spread more rapidly than the text itself. Friars with pastoral responsibilities seem to have treated it as a practical document. Two of its manuscripts contain an appended list of questions for clarification posed by a Fra Gratian. The answers are brief. For example, Gratian wished to know if the ban on the sisters talking about worldly goods prevented them from advising the postulant that she could keep her breviary ( John allowed that they could).76 Yet his deceptively straightforward and literal commentary actually created further anxiety. Preceptum, his term for indicating the

76

See Van Andrichem, pp. 525–527.

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different distinctions was a problematic usage, conveying legal, moral, and pedagogical consequences to medieval readers. It led many to believe that John had intended his treatise to be considered a new constitution for the Order of Saint Clare: this was a rumor heard by Colette of Corbie in France.77 Some sisters were under the impression that the decrees were binding sub gravi. In 1446 Fra Nicholas of Osimo in his own commentary on the Rule of Saint Clare (a supplement of sorts to John of Capistrano’s text) assured the sisters that the precepts should be considered as advice or admonitions, and that the only binding decrees were the gospel precepts (their vow of obedience, poverty, and chastity).78 In his 1447 bull Ordinis tui, Pope Eugenius IV also decreed that the sisters were only bound to this three-fold vow, along with prescriptions on enclosure and the election of the abbess.79 Ordinis tui also reconfirmed that the Observant Clarisses were the responsibility of the Vicar General (now James of Primadizzi, to whom the bull was addressed). That friar was particularly enjoined to ascertain that the standards for the sisters’ reform were not too strict for the pope believed that Clare’s Form of Life was excessively harsh (nimis rigorosum). The friars should assure that the Clarisses were not going about unshod or keeping perpetual silence. Fasting also should be moderated, for example, they could have meat in their broth. These particular clerical texts thus represent the sisters’ return to their primary legislation as a matter of legal prescription. By their nature, however, this genre left open the question of the sisters’ interest in their spiritual origins. The dialectical tension between the friars’ presentation of the principles of female Observant reform and the actual impact of their legislative renewal is revealed in Mariano of Florence’s devotional history of the Order of Saint Clare.

See Perrin, p. 253. “Explicatio Regulae S. Clarae auctore Fr. Nicolao de Auximo O.F.M. (1446) deque alia auctore S. Ioanne de Capistrano (1445),” ed. Lucio M. Nuñez, AFH 5 (1912): 299–314. On Nicholas’ career and writings, see Umberto Picciafuoco, Fr. Nicolò da Osimo (1370?–1453): Vita, Opere, Spiritualità (Monteprandone: Officine Grafiche Anxanum, 1980). 79 BF ns I, pp. 524–526. 77

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chapter four Mariano of Florence and the Clarisses

Mariano of Florence already was well-known to the Clarisses of Volterra as a chronicler of the Franciscan Order when they asked him to write an account of their history in 1516.80 In many ways he was probably a typical friar. He had entered the Observant branch of the Franciscan Order by 1493 and probably received a basic theological training in one of the Order’s studia (perhaps in his native Florence). He seems to have spent most of his career as a parish priest. But despite these responsibilities, Mariano also was an ardent chronicler of the Order, composing histories of the Friars Minor and tertiaries, along with other Franciscan apologetics and devotional works. Yet in spite his contemporary reputation, after his death in 1523 he soon became a relatively obscure figure and has received relatively little attention compared to other Franciscan authors.81 This is unfortunate, since he offers important insights into the contemporary relations between the friars and sisters, as well as to how each group understood the history of the Franciscan Order. Mariano eagerly took up the sisters’ commission and spent the next three years researching the treatise. Earlier chapters have referred to his sources, but it is important to look more closely at how he obtained information for his chronicle. Mariano made use of existing Franciscan chronicles including Bonaventure’s Major Legend, the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, and Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Conformities, but quickly discovered that their references to the female movement were usually brief

80 Mariano has receive comparatively little attention in comparison to other Franciscan chroniclers. For details of his life see Boccali, Libro, pp. 3–7. See also Cino Cannarozzi, “Ricerche sulla vita di Fra Mariano da Firenze,” in Studi Francescani 27 (1930): 31–71. More recently, M. Bertagna, “Per un nuovo incontro con Fra Mariano da Firenze,” Studi Francescani 79 (1982): 473–479, offers bibliography. For an overview of his literary production, see Roberto Razzoli, “Fra Mariano da Firenze e le sue opere. Cenni storico-critici,” Luce e Amore 1 (1904): 26–34, 72–78, 123–126, 268–274, and 313–317. Individual works are beginning to receive attention, see for example Chiara Mercuri, Santità e propaganda. Il terz’ordine francescano nell’agiografia osservante (Rome: Bibliotheca Seraphico-Capuccina, 1999). 81 Most scholars know Mariano as author of a lengthy, but now lost, chronicle of the Friars Minor known as the Fasiculus Chronicarum Ordinis Minorum Divisus in 5 Libros, which was completed around the time he began work on the sisters’ history. Wadding used an autograph copy for the Annales Minorum, but all we have today is a summary of it known as the Compendium Chronicarum Ordinis FF. Minorum. This work was edited by Teofilo Domenichelli in AFH 1 (1908): 98–107; 2 (1909): 92–107, 305–318, 457–472, 626–641; 3 (1910): 294–309, 700 –715; 4 (1911): 122–137, 318–339, 559–587.

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and limited to the biographies of a few noted women.82 Consequently, he took advantage of the complex institutional and spiritual network that linked Franciscan convents throughout northern and central Italy. He visited different convents associated with the Observants in order to read the bulls and other documents in their archives, to copy their chronicles for his own stories, and even to interview sisters about the history of their houses. A sense of his itinerary appears early in the chronicle where he acknowledges the sisters’ enthusiasm for his project. For this work, I was begged by those holy virgins and venerable brides of Christ from the convent[s] of San Cosmas and San Silvestro in Rome, of Santa Lucia in Foligno, of Monte[ luce] in Perugia, of Santa Eucaristia in Aquila, of Santa Chiara in Urbino, Pesaro, and Florence, and finally of Santa Elisabetta of Volterra (which is now known as San Lino)83 to write something for their edification, profit, and consolation about the origin and growth of the order of our seraphic mother, Saint Clare. Many times I promised to do this, and so wishing faithfully to fulfill [my vow], I have undertaken this task of writing about the aforementioned order in the present treatise.84

Reading his account, one recognizes familiar Franciscan apologetics and has the sense that Mariano was following an established narrative of Observant triumph. However, because he was taking on a new subject—he was the first chronicler of the Order of Saint Clare—historical and present conflicts emerge for which he does not necessarily have models. Moreover, because of the sisters’ contributions, the resulting treatise properly should be understood as a collaboration between

82 See Mariano, 16, 18, 54, and 62 for references to these works. Other citations were not explicitly mentioned but are clear from reading the text. 83 Mariano finished the treatise while serving as the confessor to this community in Volterra. The house was originally a small community of tertiaries who do not seem to have been associated with a particular religious order until 1496 when they formally affiliated with friars from the Observant Reform branch of the Franciscan Order and four other women—two sisters each from Franciscan communities in Siena and Prato—joined them. The community was known then as Santa Elisabetta, in honor of the famous Franciscan tertiary. However, in 1519 they changed their name to San Lino when the sisters gained permission to enter the Order of Saint Clare. At the same time, they moved into a new cloister and dormitory. The monastic complex also included an adjacent church and oratory, all built for them by their patron, the humanist scholar and local landowner Raffaello Maffei, on the site identified as the home of San Lino, the first Latin pope and Peter’s immediate successor. A history of the convent was provided in 1580 by the convent’s confessor, Stefano Contronio, and recorded by Fra Dionisio Pulinari in his Cronache dei Frati Minor della provincia di Toscana, ed. Saturino Mencherini (Arezzo: Cooperative Tipografia, 1913), pp. 332–339. 84 Mariano, 6.

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Mariano and the sisters. It is certainly appropriate that we know this first history of the female Franciscan movement by the breathless title assigned by Mariano’s amanuensis, Suor Dorothea Broccardi: The Book of the Worthiness and the Excellence of the Order of the Seraphic Mother of the Poor Ladies Saint Clare of Assisi.85 The first book of Mariano’s treatise follows the model of the fourteenth-century Book of Conformities to explain how the Order of Saint Clare was prefigured in the Bible and how the Clarisses shared affinities with Christ and the Virgin.86 It also provides a historical account of the foundation of San Damiano and growth of other communities emphasizing the papal role in establishing the female Order. Mariano had relatively little to say about the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in his chronicle, admitting that it was both a matter of lack of sources, as well as his own distaste for the spiritual laxity in the Order at that time.87 He explained that the Clarisses had followed the Friars Minor into a period of decline when they had moved away from the early ideals of the Franciscan Order. Without the guidance of good spiritual advisors, the sisters had “thrown their previous zeal over their shoulders” and “crushed poverty under their feet” by holding property and granting annuities. Rather than devoting themselves to prayer and maintaining strict enclosure, these sisters rather would go often to the grate to chat about secular gossip with visitors.88 Mariano was particularly sad that the convent of Monticelli in his native city of Florence was an example of this deterioration. He seems to have read a chronicle of the house’s foundation and other documents in the sisters’ archive, which allowed him to show how the Order’s general decline had an effect on Clarissan convents.89 85 This title appears in Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi ms. 6146, f. 4r. Dorothea also transcribed his Vita di San Francesco (Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi ms. 5966, see her colophone on f. 262f ) and Via Spirituale (Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi ms. 6359). Her hand also appears in a Vita del beato Giovanni di Capestrano ( Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi ms. 6147, with her colophon at f. 92v). 86 Cf. Mariano, 135–188. 87 Mariano, 76 and 88. 88 Ibid., 371. 89 Mariano explained “si legge che erano molte sore di virtù et sanctità ornate (74)” at Monticelli. He named a few other sisters in passing, but he offers few specifics about their lives. For example, in a brief chapter on Chiara degli Ubaldini, abbess at Monticelli until 1264, he names several other noble Florentine women who were sisters there but offers few details about them (cf. Mariano, 345–346). For discussion and identification of these women, see Zeffirino Lazzeri, “Il Monastero di Piccarda,” La Verna 10 (1912): 169–181, 266–279, 361–367 and 440 –458. BNCF, Fondo Mano-

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The second half of Mariano’s treatise is devoted to biographies of noted Clarisses. Some of these women are important thirteenth-century figures intended to inspire his readers’ devotion: Clare, of course, her companions at San Damiano and Agnes of Prague are all included. He used the later thirteenth and fourteenth century women to comment on how the Order had moved into a state of laxity, notably drawing two of his examples from the sisters at Monticelli. One of these women was the famous Piccarda Donati (d. 1320), best known from her portrayal in Dante’s Divine Comedy.90 Dante and Beatrice encountered her in the third canto of Paradiso among the souls who had broken their vows. Piccarda was there because her family abducted her from the convent and forced her to marry a political ally. Dante asked Piccarda whether she and the other souls in this lowest sphere of Paradise did not wish that they were closer to God, but she answered that they were happy to yield to Divine Will. Thus Dante’s Piccarda is a passive figure unable to control her own fate and subject to outside forces—both secular and divine. This portrayal is obviously related to a common medieval presentation of women as the weaker sex.91 Mariano referred to Dante in his chronicle, but his strikingly different representation seems to represent how the Clarisses preferred to remember her.92 He identified her as Suor Costanza, her religious name, and emphasized how she made a deliberate choice to seek a religious vocation. He expanded Dante’s brief account of how she ran away from home to Monticelli in order to avoid marriage. When her father and brother tried to persuade her to return home, first with honeyed words and later with threats of physical violence, she remained firm in her religious vocation. Indeed, her family hired twelve brutes to steal her away from the convent (echoes again of Agnes of Assisi and Filippa Mareri), but it still took them two tries to find her and return Piccarda/Suor Costanza to her family home. Dante’s account referred to a marriage of an

scritto 172 is an eighteenth-century Antiquarian record of excerpts from the sisters’ chronicles and other writings (“Spoglia della cartapecore delle RR monache di S Maria di Monticelli”). Other manuscripts with Antiquarian accounts of Monticelli include BNCF, Magliabecchiano II.IV 379 and Magliabecchiano XXV 595, which both date from the seventeenth century. 90 Paradiso 3:34–123. 91 Jeryldene Wood also has commented on this representation; see her Women, Art, and Society, p. 2. 92 Mariano, 357–368.

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indeterminable length, but in Mariano’s version Suor Constanza’s prayers caused her body to break out with a rash that is fatal soon after the nuptials. The Piccarda who appears in Mariano’s chronicle is thus a heroic woman whose example should inspire contemporary Clarisses. In contrast, we know very little about the life of her contemporary Elia dei Pulci (d. 1320) outside of Mariano’s account. She is introduced as a devoted example of the ideals of Francis and Clare and as a woman committed to prayer and contemplation. It would be nice to know more, not the least because Mariano also praised her for her learning—perhaps she was one of the sisters responsible for the convent archives.93 Most of her biography is devoted to a prophecy of how the Order of Saint Clare would fall into dissolution. She had fallen severely ill and was drifting in and out of consciousness. One day when the convent’s youngest member was attending her, Elia suddenly opened her eyes and said that she wanted to speak with her since the young woman would be living in the community the longest. She cautioned the younger sister that Monticelli soon would abandon its good customs and fall into ruin. Her warning is somewhat Sibylline in its lack of concrete information. As reported by Mariano there are few details, although it asserts sweeping contrasts between their original high reputation and the ignominious depths to which the community would fall, before returning to these heights through reform.94 Mariano concluded that it happened as Elia de’ Pulci predicted: by the start of the fifteenth century, only one sister remained at Monticelli and others had to come from outside (San Ludovico in Bologna) to reform the community.95 The convent’s records acknowledge this decrease. In 1348 at the height of the Black Death in Florence, there were only 18 sisters in the convent. By 1380, their numbers had only grown to 19.96 Mariano would mention no other sisters from Monticelli until Filippa de’ Medici, who died in 1488. The majority of his subjects, however, are fifteenth-century (that is, contemporary) Clarisses who participated in the Franciscan Order’s Ibid., 369–373. Mariano, 370 (her prophecy precedes the general description of the Order’s relaxations cited above). 95 Ibid., 372. He also refers to Monticelli’s need for reform in the first book of his chronicle (Mariano, 87). 96 Cited in BNCF, Magliabecchiano XXV 595, p. 283. During the second half of the thirteenth century, the community usually included around 50 women. See also Zeffirino Lazzeri, “Il Monastero di Piccarda,” pp. 266–270. 93

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Observant revival. The complex question of the sisters’ legislation plays an important role in many of their stories. In the first book, Mariano had written that their legislation was a sign of the Order’s evangelical perfection and a confirmation of the sisters’ spiritual equality with the Friars Minor.97 He proclaimed (without any intended irony for the accepted modifications) that the sisters’ return to their primary legislation defined good reform: “all . . . lived under the rule which Saint Clare received from Saint Francis, in the highest poverty like the Friars Minor, and with the aforementioned modifications of Pope Eugenius.”98 Nonetheless, his history reflects the tension between the friars’ and nuns’ perspectives on reform. While Mariano emphasized that the Order of Saint Clare had been formed by the Friars Minor and the papacy, his sources resist this telling. Indeed, the sisters’ voices dominate his history. Three representative examples—Antonia of Florence and the convent of Santa Eucaristia in Aquila, Cecilia Coppoli and the sisters of Santa Lucia in Foligno, and Eustochia of Messina who founded Montevergine in Messina—reveal how the women’s interest in their first rule was more closely related to a desire to return to their spiritual origins represented in the historical figure of Clare and her Form of Life than the friars had intended. After the death of her husband in 1430, Antonia of Florence refused a second marriage and instead entered a community of Franciscan tertiaries in her native city. 99 She soon moved to another house in Foligno and three years later went to Aquila to establish a new community of tertiaries. Antonia spent fourteen years with the tertiaries at Santa Elisabetta but her dissatisfaction with the sisters’ way of life there gradually grew. Since the women were not cloistered, the sisters lived much as it would if they had remained in the secular world. To Antonia, this house did not reflect Francis’ intentions for religious

97 Mariano analyzed the conformity of the two rules (Mariano, 52–57). Mariano’s account is based on Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Conformities, see AF IV:360. He also recounts this story among anecdotes that tell how the Order of Saint Clare was preordained in Scripture (Mariano, 16). 98 Following a list of reformed houses, Mariano commented “tucti questi vivono sotto la prefacta regola di sancta Chiara havuta da sancto Francesco, in somma povertà come li frati minori, et con la decta modificatione di papa Eugenio (Mariano, 91).” 99 Mariano, 575–607. His narrative is based on interviews with some of the sisters with whom she entered. Mariano’s version can be compared to a vita composed by one of Antonia’s companions, see Cino Cannarozzi, ed. “Due vite della B. Antonia da Firenze,” Studi Francescani 57 (1960): 319–342.

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women.100 Her discontentment with the tertiaries’ legislation led to interest in founding a new community that would profess the Rule of Saint Clare.101 John of Capistrano, who came to Aquila to preach in 1447, enthusiastically endorsed Antonia’s goal. He helped her and other willing sisters take over an abandoned community which they renamed Santa Eucaristia.102 They received a copy of Clare’s rule from Corpus Christi in Mantua.103 But although they had John’s support, Antonia’s convent faced opposition from the local community of friars. These brothers were unreformed Conventuals and they refused to hear the sisters’ confessions or say mass because the sisters had not professed the Urbanist Rule.104 John of Capistrano, who was now in his second term as Vicar General of the Cismontane Observance, had to send Observant friars from Rome to minister to Santa Eucaristia.105 Mariano’s biography of Antonia of Florence, recorded viva voce from her companions, emphasizes the sisters’ desire to return to their spiritual origins and the persecutions they suffered for it. Although he identified lack of enclosure as the reason for Antonia’s interest in the primary rule, this was not the only reason for her dissatisfaction with the sisters’ way of life in her former community as the description of her virtues that follows the account of Santa Eucaristia’s foundation makes clear. Antonia’s religious devotion demanded a literal interpretation of Clare’s rule. Mariano recorded that she was praised for her love of poverty and her penance—which included fasting, dressing in vile clothing and maintaining long periods of silence.106 Above all, she was lauded for her patient endurance of their adversities: the Conventuals’ refusal to provide pastoral care and the suffering it engendered are compared to the cancerous tumor that afflicted Antonia for sixteen years.107 To some extent, these descriptions can be identified as hagiographical tropes.

Over the course of the fifteenth century the papacy particularly sought to enclose the female tertiaries. See Benvenutus Bughetti, ed. “Prima Regula Tertii Ordinis iuxta Novum Codicem,” AFH 14 (1921): 109–121. 101 Mariano, 579. 102 Ibid., 579–581. 103 BF ns I, pp. 536–537. 104 Mariano, 590. 105 Ibid., 590 –593. These two brothers were foreigners (Hungarian and Romanian), an indication of the continuing tension between Conventuals and Observants on the Italian peninsula. 106 Ibid., 593. 107 Ibid., 592. 100

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Another story, though, also addresses the Observant sisters’ desire for a literal observance of Clare’s Form of Life. The sisters at Santa Lucia in Foligno also faced opposition to their desire to profess the Rule of Saint Clare.108 As referred to above, this house was at the center of the Central Italian network of convents which spread reform under the Urbanist Rule. In the late 1440s, however, the sisters were becoming dissatisfied with the requirement that they possess communal property. The community, led by their prioress Cecilia Coppoli, began to talk about adopting a stricter form of evangelical poverty. They asked the friars (that is, the brothers assigned to provide pastoral care to Santa Lucia) to obtain a copy of the Rule of Saint Clare for them, but the men claimed they were unable to locate one. The unspoken assumption is that they also were unwilling. With great difficulty, the sisters managed to obtain a copy of the first rule from the abbess at Santa Chiara in Assisi.109 They read it and decided they wanted to profess their first rule instead of Pope Urban’s, but the friars refused to allow them to change. The Clarisses prayed to God, and to Saints Francis and Clare, for support and as a result their desire to profess the primary legislation grew. They even secretly began to sell off their possessions.110 Finally in 1469—twenty years after the sisters had first expressed their desire to profess the Rule of Saint Clare —their confessor allowed them to do so. When the Provincial Vicar learned about this, however, he was furious. Cecilia and several of the other sisters had to leave the community and settle instead at the Observant convent of Santa Chiara in Urbino on account of his wrath. The sisters in Foligno again protested through the use of prayers and fasting. It was not until 1476 when Pope Sixtus IV visited the convent and listened to the women request to profess the Rule of Saint Clare that matters finally began to change. The friars tried to prevent any shift, but the pope

108 Ibid., 686–708. His account was based on Santa Lucia’s chronicle (compare pp. 1–38) which he had read while researching his treatise. Jacques Dalarun has begun to study Santa Lucia and the sisters’ literary production. See his “Le monastère de Santa Lucia de Foligno, foyer intellectuel,” Frate Francesco 73 (2007): 419–448 and “Santa Lucia de Foligno. Histoire, littérature et théologie dans un monastère de Clarisses observantes,” in Frédéric Meyer et Ludovic Viallet, ed. Identités franciscaines à l’âge des réformes (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005), pp. 363–384. 109 Mariano, 694–695. 110 Ibid., 695.

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approved the Clarisses’ appeal in 1477. Cecilia Coppoli returned from Urbino to become Santa Lucia’s abbess.111 Obviously and to a greater extent than in Antonia of Florence’s story, Santa Lucia’s narrative testifies to the great and sustained desire some Clarisses had for the Rule of Saint Clare. While Cecilia Coppoli is praised for her learning as well as her virtues, the struggle for the rule is the center of Mariano’s narrative.112 It also confirms that the women’s interest in the primary legislation included a more literal interpretation of its intentions. The religious ideology of the sisters at Santa Lucia directed them towards complete poverty which they could only fulfill through profession of Clare’s Form of Life. In their perseverance against the resistant friars, the sisters also were like Clare who fought for the friars’ recognition and the right to live without material support. A final example from Mariano’s biographies demonstrates the implications and the depth of the women’s interest in their spiritual origins. This example has an intriguing connection to Santa Lucia in Foligno, confirming the spiritual and personal networks that developed among the contemporary sisters. Mariano’s account of the life of the Sicilian Clarisse Eustochia Calafato was based on a vita composed by her fellow nun, Jacopa of Pollicino. This text was sent to Santa Lucia in Foligno because Eustochia and Cecilia Coppoli had regularly corresponded and exchanged devotional writings.113 Mariano found this source in the sisters’ archives and used it in his chronicle. He recounted how Eustochia of Messina entered the Clarissan convent of Santa Maria di Basicò in 1449 after the death of her father. 111 Ibid., 696–704. Pope Sixtus, “cognoscendo infra li frati et le sore essese differentia (702),” arranged a compromise. The Vicar General was ordered to transfer the women to the Observance, but to assure that they would not be left without material support, he arranged for them to receive grain, wine, and other necessary things in years of need. 112 Cecilia received a Humanist education and wrote poetry in her family home in Perugia. When her family tried to arrange a marriage for her, she left home to enter Santa Lucia. For her achievements, see Cesare Cenci, “Il testamento della b. Cecilia Coppoli da Perugia e di Battista (Girolama) di Montefeltro,” AFH 69 (1976): 219–231 and Antonio Fantozzi, ed. “Documenti intorno alla B. Cecilia Coppoli clarissa,” AFH 19 (1926): 194–225, 334–384. 113 Mariano, 631–677. The original is lost but there are two manuscript copies now preserved in Perugia (Biblioteca Comunale Augusta ms. 1180) and Ferrara (Biblioteca Civile Ariostea ms II 1999). The Perugia manuscript, which Sister Felicita da Perugia copied in 1510, is edited as La Leggenda della Beata Eustochia da Messina, ed. by Michele Calafato (Messina-Florence: Casa Editrice G. d’Anna, 1950). Monteluce’s convent chronicle referred to this legend, see Memoriale di Monteluce. Cronaca del monastero delle Clarisse di Perugia dal 1448 al 1838 (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1983), p. 100.

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Although she had battled her male relatives to gain permission to enter a convent, and specifically to enter Basicò, she was not particularly happy there. The sisters had professed the Urbanist Rule and relied on Conventual friars for their pastoral care. Eustochia herself always lived according to the observance of Clare’s rule, but she began to plan to leave Basicò and found a new house where she and other women could profess the Clarisses’ primary legislation. When her dissatisfaction with the community and desire to leave became known, Eustochia was ill-treated by the abbess and other sisters, as well as by the Conventual Friars who ministered to the community. She had once been very close to the abbess, Flos Milloso, who appears to have felt betrayed by Eustochia’s dissatisfaction with the convent’s way of life.114 Her mother petitioned the pope on her daughter’s behalf for permission to found a new house that would live under the Rule of Saint Clare and be governed by Observant friars.115 When this permission was granted, however, Eustochia faced another problem because no copy of this rule could be found in all of Sicily. Sympathetic friars were deputized to go the General Chapter and obtain the text, but they returned empty handed. Eustochia was anxious and uncertain how to proceed. Knowing that the Rule of Saint Clare conformed to the friars’ legislation, she next determined to modify their rule for female use. Much as Clare herself had done over two centuries before, Eustochia took chapters from the Later Rule and adapted them for a community of women.116 This modified text, however, still did not satisfy her. Mariano, copying the legend composed by Eustochia’s companions, wrote that divine intervention created a solution. One day in springtime when it had rained all day and all night, a certain gentleman and his sons were walking along a river within the city. One son, Francis by name, was walking along and found a very small and very ancient book on the river bank. The father took it and saw that it was dry. It seemed to him a miraculous thing, especially because the cover

114 Mariano, 631–637. Mariano discusses these persecutions at some length, 640 –645. 115 Ibid., 643. For documents relating to Eustochia’s new foundation, see Franco Terrizi, ed. “Documenti relativi alla “vita” della beata Eustochia Calafato,” AFH 58 (1965): 280 –329. 116 Mariano, 645. Jacopa’s legend expands on the story of the friar sent to the Chapter meeting, telling how he was deliberately attacked on the way there and prevented from completing his mission.

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Eustochia discovered that not only did it contain the rule they wanted, but it also included Clare’s Testament, her Blessing, and the 1216 Privilege of Poverty issued by Pope Innocent III. (This is the famous Messina codex discussed above in the introduction.) She now had the desired rule but additional trials—both physical confrontations with the Urbanist sisters at Basicò and the initial refusal of the Observant friars in Messina to provide pastoral care to the women—prevented her from settling into her community until 1464.118 Therefore, the overwhelming theme of Eustochia’s biography is triumph in the face of persecution and the desire for a literal observance of Clare’s Form of Life. The story of the acquisition of the Rule of Saint Clare occupies a central role in Eustochia of Messina’s story as recounted by Mariano.119 Fairly typical hagiographical narratives direct these three stories about the sisters’ perseverance and determination to profess Clare’s rule. Their function is to create a direct connection between their present community and woman now seen as the Order’s founder, Clare of Assisi. This is most obvious in the case of Eustochia’s miracle. She considered mediated access to their spiritual origins unsatisfactory. There is no mention of John of Capistrano’s fairly literal commentary on the Rule of Saint Clare and even her attempt to modify the Later Rule was insufficient. Eustochia’s story thus presents a clever way to authorize the literal observance of the earlier rule. These three stories recounted by Mariano show that the literal observance of Clare’s text was important to the Observant Clarisses and also suggests that admiration for her audacious behavior inspired the later sisters. In fact, he appears caught in the middle between wanting to modify its austerities and admiring these women who insisted on a precise observance of its dictates. Although he had emphasized in the first half of his history that the rule had to be modified, the second book praises women who strictly followed its demands. For example, Felice

Ibid., 646. Mariano, 647–658. The pope had to threaten excommunication to the friars to assure pastoral care for Eustochia’s community. 119 Jacopa’s story provides more details about the community and Eustochia’s devotional life. 117 118

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Meda, a Clarisse in Milan, is lauded for her commitment to prayer, ascetic habits, and strict fasting according to the demands of Clare’s rule.120 Even women whose houses were still governed by the Urbanist rule, for example Monticelli and Monteluce, were praised for living as if they had professed the Rule of Saint Clare.121 Obviously, to some extent Mariano’s history must be read as hagiography, that is, an account of saintly exemplars that are to be admired but not literally emulated. However, since it is contemporary women who Mariano lionizes, it can be imagined that his female readers would see authorization for their desire to follow the strict dictates of the Rule of Saint Clare. He concluded his treatise by telling the sisters to take up these examples for devotion, for by following them “you might be counted among and named as the true daughters of Saint Francis and Saint Clare.”122 Conclusion Certainly, there is some irony in the fact that the Rule of Saint Clare was of more interest to the Clarisses and circulated more widely during the Quattrocento than ever before. Along with the Messina codex associated with Eustochia Calafato, other fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts testify to the Clarisses’ strong desire to return to their spiritual origins by professing the first rule. The Volterra manuscript of Mariano’s treatise concludes with the text of Clare’s Form of Life.123 The rule circulated in its original Latin form, as well as in vernacular translations that made it accessible to the greatest number of sisters. Two fifteenth-century manuscripts still held by the Clarisses at Santa Chiara in Urbino contain vernacular translations of the rule; the reformed Clarisses at Santa Chiara Novella in Florence had another copy.124 These manuscripts often included her other writings, particularly her Testament and Benediction, further emphasizing the sisters’ interest in Clare. The presence of Ordinis tui and John of Capistrano’s

Mariano, 456. Mariano, 375. Filippa de Medici (d. 1488) was a nun at Monticelli. 122 Mariano, 728. 123 Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi, ms. 6146, ff. 206v–209r. The rule is not complete as the treatise ends abruptly with the chapter on silence. 124 See Ciccarelli, “Contributi,” pp. 351–355. Santa Chiara Novella’s manuscript is now BNCF Landau-Finaly 40, ff. 1–24v. 120 121

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rule commentary in some of these manuscripts connects them to the Regular Observance.125 There was an obvious conflict between the Observants’ principle goal of returning to the Order’s spiritual origins and the way Franciscans actually lived by the middle of the fifteenth century. The implications of this tension worked out in different ways for the sisters than it had for the brothers. For Observant friars, much as had been the case with Bonaventure two centuries prior, Francis was presented as a source of spiritual inspiration rather than a literal model. The resulting implication was that the friars could accept modifications to his legislation for their Order.126 The friars sought to channel the sisters’ response to Clare in a similar manner. John of Capistrano presented reform as a matter of legal obligations. Although his experiences with the Observant Clarisses gave him a clear affection for the female order, he still conceived of them in the traditional clerical terms of enclosed contemplatives. Mariano’s chronicle demonstrates how differently Clare could function as an inspiration. He constructed his chapters on the life of Clare as an explanation of her conformities with Christ and with the Virgin, this non-chronological narrative further divorcing the saint from the historical person in common with the rule commentaries.127 But while John of Capistrano’s commentary could not define what it meant spiritually for the women to live out Clare’s rule, his chronicle showed how some sisters struggled to do so. His devotional history demonstrates that the sisters often resisted moderations to the Rule of Saint Clare because they had responded to its original intentions. As the next chapter shows, the women were also using the historical Clare and her legacy to authorize their identities as Franciscans.

125 All texts are included in BNCF Landau-Finaly 251, a fifteenth-century manuscript which includes the Nicholas of Osimo’s commentary as well as the Rule of Saint Clare presented as an anonymous series of declarations on the legislation. A vernacular life of Clare by Ugolino Verino further connects the women with the rule (ff. 81v–121v). 126 See Nimmo, “St. Francis within the Observance,” in Francesco d’Assisi nella storia. Secoli XIII–XV, Atti del primo convegno di studi per il VIII centenario della nascita di S. Francesco (1182–1982). Roma (29 settembre –2 ottobre 1981), ed. Servus Gieben. (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini 1983), pp. 161–172. 127 Mariano, 138–188.

CHAPTER FIVE

WRITING FEMALE FRANCISCAN IDENTITY Literary production flourished within late medieval Franciscan convents. Observant Clarisses authored chronicles about their communities, vitae of pious sisters, and a wide variety of devotional works ranging from shorter prayers and spiritual exercises to longer treatises on developing the interior life. They also translated texts and prepared manuscripts.1 These works provide copious evidence about the sisters’ spiritual life within convent walls. They also testify to influences on the Clarisses’ religious formation ranging from earlier Franciscan literature, such as Bonaventure’s devotional treatises and Jacopo da Todi’s laudi, to patristic and monastic tradition, with citations from authors such as Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux. Yet what is arguably most interesting about these texts is their demonstration of how the sisters understood their own identity as enclosed contemplatives within the Franciscan Order. For what the sisters’ writings (and indeed readings) reveal is that they were appropriating different models of Clare of Assisi—sometimes the enclosed contemplative of the hagiographic tradition and sometimes the activist leader of the female Franciscan movement whose reputation had been preserved in oral tradition—for their own spiritual formation. Although prescriptive texts—rule commentaries, monastic constitutions, confessors’ manuals, etc.—regularly reflect a strong desire among clerics to keep strict control over the spiritual formation of the women in their charge, the sisters also were actively engaged in shaping their own religious experiences through their writings.2 Many of these works 1 Until recently, female Franciscan authors usually have been left out of general studies of Franciscan literature. Bert Roest’s recent survey is a welcome change in that it considers works by female authors as part of the tradition. See his Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Observant Clarisses are featured in two recent studies which examine nuns and historical writing in Italy and Germany respectively, see K.J.P. Lowe, Nuns Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter Reformation Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. As noted in the previous chapter, the latter book focuses on houses in the German-speaking lands and the Low Countries, where the situation had much in common with the Italian peninsula. 2 See the comments of Roest, Franciscan Literature, pp. 411–415.

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engage with themes that similarly concerned male Franciscan authors (indeed, religious authors generally). For example, several Clarisses wrote short works on the Passion, a topic of much interest to Observant reformers. The sisters in Messina kept a copy of Eustochia Calafato’s Book of the Passion, perhaps her autobiographical reflections on a vision of the Passion.3 The prolific Battista da Varano (d. 1524) also wrote a treatise on this theme, The Mental Sorrows of Christ in His Passion, at the request of one of her fellow nuns, Sister Pacifica d’Urbino.4 While the theological ideas in each work are typical of other contemporary treatises, they were written from the women’s perspective. Eustochia’s work recounts how a sister is transformed by her vision, and Battista produces a dialogue between Christ and a nun. The preservation and dissemination of these and other works by means of the spiritual and institutional networks established by the female reformers testify to the Clarisses’ interests in commemorating their Order. Obviously this chapter cannot survey the entire body of literature produced by and for enclosed women connected with the Franciscan Order in the later Middle Ages.5 It therefore examines selected examples that specifically reflect the strong culture of devotion in these convents that relate to the sisters’ use of their own spiritual traditions. The last chapter used John of Capistrano’s and Mariano of Florence’s writings to explore how the friars and sisters may have understood the women’s religious experience in different ways. This chapter builds upon that examination in order to explore how reformed Clarisses also used competing images of Clare of Assisi to define their identity within the Franciscan tradition.

3 Il libro della Passione scritto dalla beata Eustochia Calafato Clarissa messine (1434–1485), ed. F. Terrizzi (Messina: Instituto Ignatianum,1979). Eustochia seems to have written other treatises; however, these were not printed (unlike the works of some other Observant Clarisses) and may yet be rediscovered in the Sicilian archives. 4 I dolori mentali di nostro signore Gesù nella sua Passione has been edited in [Camilla] Battista da Varano, Le Opere Spirituali, ed. Giacomo Boccanera (Iesi: Scuola Tipografica Francescana, 1958), pp. 60 –109. There is an English translation, The Mental Sorrows of Christ in his Passion, trans. Joseph L. Berrigan (Saskatoon: Peregrina, 1986). Jeryldene Wood discusses Battista da Varano and her writings briefly in Women, Art and Spirituality, pp. 112–120. 5 An introduction to these texts can be found in Katherine Gill, “Women and the Production of Religious Literature in the Vernacular, 1300 –1500,” in E. Ann Matter and John Coakley, eds. Creative Women and the Arts in the Middle Ages: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 64–104.

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The Clarisses as Enclosed Contemplatives One of the best known works produced by a late medieval Clarisse, Caterina Vigri’s autobiographical treatise, The Seven Spiritual Weapons, stressed the rewards of dedication to a life of prayer. Beloved sisters, be prudent and know how to bear patiently the absence of divine love, and in such times, exert yourselves to remain strong in the usual mental and vocal prayer and the other holy virtues and good works until it pleases the divine clemency to rekindle the flame of his virginal and chaste love in your hearts, so that, when God has tested the soul that remains empty of him for some time and has seen that it remains constant and faithful in such poverty, he cannot withhold his consolation and returns to it inseparably with greater abundance.6

These sentiments, while obviously sincere, also may appear conventional. After all, it was a theological principle that the focus of women’s religious life was contemplation and devout prayer, fostered by strict enclosure and separation from the world. Over two centuries earlier, Bonaventure likewise had counseled the Franciscan sisters of Longchamp to pray almost unceasingly since it would lead them toward spiritual perfection in his treatise On the Perfection of Life. Caterina and her sisters likely knew this text. The convent of Corpus Domini in Bologna, founded in 1456 with Caterina Vigri as its first abbess, owned a vernacular translation of his treatise that was part of a devotional miscellany designed to guide the women in their efforts toward spiritual perfection ( per farsi perfetta religiosa).7 Spiritual treatises like Bonaventure’s were only one of the ways in which the women were encouraged to dedicate themselves

6 I have used the translation in Catherine of Bologna, The Seven Spiritual Weapons, trans. Hugh Feiss and Daniela Re (Toronto: Peregrina, 1998), p. 74. This translation was based on the earlier critical edition produced by Cecilia Foletti (1985), which has now been superseded by Caterina Vigri, Le Sette Armi Spirituali, ed. Antonella Degl’Innocenti (Caterina Vigri: La Santa e La Città) 1 (Florence: SISMEL/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1999). This work will be cited throughout this chapter as Vigri, LSAS. 7 An inventory of the convent’s library dated 1602 seems to identify this work with the description “una istruttione della santa vita di S. Bonaventure.” He is the only named author in this collection of lauds, prayers, short treatises, a verse life of Christ, and other texts (“item seguono molte oltre belle cose et volgare et latine per farsi perfetta religiosa”). See Serena Spanò, “La biblioteca del ‘Corpus Domini’ Bolognese: l’inconsueto spaccato di una cultura monastica femminile,” La Bibliofilia 88 (1986): 1–23 (description on p. 20). The convent library was later lost in a fire that destroyed most of the complex. For the sisters’ knowledge of Bonaventure’s works, see the comments of Silvia Mostaccio in her introduction to Illuminata Bembo, Specchio di illuminazione (Florence: SISMEL/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001), p. xliii.

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to prayer. From the perspective of these texts, it emerges that these women were encouraging the role of prayer, ritual and liturgy in their lives—an emphasis that implicitly and sometimes directly invokes the model of Clare in the Latin Legend. The Clarisses’ monastic constitutions stressed their liturgical responsibilities. For example, the constitution prepared for Monteluce after their 1448 reform and the statutes for San Guglielmo in Ferrara from the end of the fifteenth century both begin with requirements for the Divine Office.8 These documents list penances for failure to perform part of the Office, ranging from reciting a certain number of Pater Nosters, to eating on the ground, or laundering all of the sisters’ habits. John of Capistrano typically offered a fairly literal reading of Clare’s Form of Life on the Divine Office in his rule commentary, describing how the sisters should follow the customs of the Friars Minor, for example by not singing the liturgy. He glossed occasio rationabili to allow that a sister might not participate in the Office if she were ill or blind.9 Perhaps the Clarisses would not have considered that a sufficient reason. The nuns in Pesaro recalled a story about a pious sister who lay ill in their infirmary. There, this Sister Maddalena had a vision of the Virgin, who granted her a miracle. “She could recite from memory all of the Divine Office, both daily and feast days and—this is truly amazing—with all of the rubrics, so that she no longer had need of a breviary.”10 This story underscores that while liturgical celebrations were perhaps an ecclesiastical requirement, they were no less important to the sisters themselves. Statutes and convent inventories make clear that praying the breviary and other religious books were a regular part of the nuns’ devotional exercises.11 Monteluce’s constitution required the convent to be

8 Benvenuto Bughetti, “Statuta pro Clarissis a B. Angelo de Clavasio O.F.M. ordinate,” AFH 6 (1913): 101–110; Livarius Oliger, “Documenta Originis Clarissarum Civitatis Castelli, Eugebii (a. 1223–1263) necnon Statuta Monasteriorum Perusiae Civitatisque Castelli (saec. XV) et S Silvestri Romae (saec. XIII),” AFH 15 (1922): 71–102 (Monteluce’s statutes are pp. 93–98). 9 EJC 3:1–2, pp. 349–350. 10 Mariano, 512. Mariano seems to have learned about Maddalena and other holy sisters in Pesaro from interviews with its current residents. In the chapter devoted to Felice Meda (the former abbess and most noted among the women—her incorruptible body was a local site of devotion), he refers to testimony received from sisters (Mariano, 478). 11 EJC 3:1–2, pp. 349–350; cf. Serafino Gaddoni, ed. “Inventaria Clarissarum.” AFH 9 (1916): 294–346.

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well stocked with prayer books for common use. Franciscan humility appeared with the warning that there should be no breviarii curiosi or books that were too richly decorated.12 The Clarisses probably often prepared their own devotional manuscripts within the convent scriptorium, an activity that itself could be a form of devotional activity. Thus even as Caterina Vigri filled her days with manual tasks such as sewing, writing, or reading, she always kept her mind busy with prayer or other spiritual exercises. Her biographer and fellow sister, Illuminata Bembo, told how when Caterina copied her own breviary, her eyes would sometimes fill with tears while she worked on it.13 Illuminata once came up behind her in the scriptorium and took away her pen and paper without Caterina’s knowledge. . . . it was as if she were standing outside of herself with her tears flowing abundantly. Then, after a little time, she would stand and open her arms like a cross. She would say the Pater Noster, repeating it many times and saying it sweetly all the while standing in that pose . . . and then she returned to copying that breviary or composing one of her lauds or sonnets for her love of Christ.14

Other devout sisters received similar commendations for focusing on devotional exercises even when they were engaged in menial tasks—or the reverse! The chronicle of San Cosimato in Rome praised Sister Teodora for continuing to sew the convent’s linens even while she prayed in their oratory.15 Most references to prayer books in the sisters’ writings focus on their devotional role, but these books could serve a dual purpose. The sisters at Monteluce copied and decorated prayer books, which they sold in turn to secular patrons (often family members) to help support the convent.16 Caterina Vigri, however, urged the sisters to have reverence always for these texts. Illuminata Bembo recalled:

Oliger, ed. “Documenta Originis Clarissarum,” pp. 93–98. For reproductions of this breviary and discussion, see Vera Fortunati and Claudio Leonardi, eds. Pregare con le immagini: il breviario di Caterina Vigri (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004); see also Kathleen G. Arthur, “Images of Clare and Francis in Caterina Vigri’s Personal Breviary,” Franciscan Studies 62 (2004): 179–192. This breviary is preserved as a relic in the chapel dedicated to Caterina (where her incorrupt body is the most significant object of devotion) at the convent of Corpus Domini in Bologna. 14 Illuminata Bembo, Specchio di Illuminazione, 6:27–28, p. 37. 15 Cited in Lowe, p. 325. 16 See Ugolino Nicolini, “I Minori osservanti di Monteripido e lo ‘scriptorium’ delle Clarisse di Monteluce in Perugia nei secoli XV e XVI,” Picenum Seraphicum 8 (1971): see pp. 108–110 for a list of sales from the convents’ records. 12 13

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chapter five Caterina did not want breviaries to be made shoddily, but rather to be fashioned and handled with great solemnity and reverence almost like a chalice, out of respect for the holy words which they offered in praise of God. She asked us: “Why do you use this ornament and foliation? Is it not better to have Jesus Christ in the initial capitals as in prayers or lessons? What feeling can be brought out from these ornaments but a diversion of the mind? But [an image of ] Christ Jesus is a sweet and gentle reminder.”17

The convent church, the nuns’ choir, and small oratories served as the primary places where the Clarisses prayed collectively.18 The importance of these spaces and indeed of prayer to the sisters is confirmed in an intriguing story told by Sister Battista Alfani in a chronicle begun as a record of Monteluce’s reform (liber reformationis vel memorialis).19 She recorded effusive praise for Fra Antonio d’Assisi, who was reconfirmed as Monteluce’s confessor at the 1505 Provincial Chapter. Fra Antonio earned the sisters’ gratitude because he persuaded his brother friars to agree to refurbish both the external choir, where the brothers came to sing the office, and the nuns’ sacristy. He also restored parts of the refectory and made repairs throughout the nuns’ choir.20 The sequence of events in Monteluce’s chronicle suggests that the refurbished church inspired a new ritual for the convent. Battista recorded how the nuns had not been accustomed to pray together (other references throughout the chronicle make clear that she meant outside of the liturgical hours). The Clarisses prayed, of course, but according to individual inspiration and opportunity. Fra Antonio suggested that the sisters’ adopt the friars’ custom of coming together daily in the church for prayer. The Clarisses enthusiastically agreed. During the winter months, the sacristan would ring the bell after matins calling the sisters to the church to spend an hour in common prayer. In the summer, the time was more flexible—perhaps after matins,

Bembo, Specchio di Illuminazione, 6.25, p. 36. For the architecture of Clarissan houses as related especially to devotional practices, see Bruzelius, “Hearing is Believing,’ 83–91 and Lowe, pp. 123–141. Lowe notes that the Clarisses at San Cosimato in Rome had oratories that allowed some private devotion, see p. 140. 19 Ugolini Nicolini, ed. Memoriale di Monteluce. Cronaca del monastero delle Clarisse di Perugia dal 1448 al 1838 (Santa Maria degli Angeli, 1983). For Monteluce’s culture, see Stefano Felicetti, “Aspetti e risvolti di vita quotidiana in un monastero perugino riformato: Monteluce, Secolo XV,” CF 65 (1995): 553–642. See also Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, pp. 99–112. 20 Memoriale di Monteluce, 78–79. 17 18

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vespers, or even nones, according to the daily tasks of the sisters. While the elderly and infirm were excused, the rest of the community would come together for an hour of silent prayer.21 Battista loved this new ritual. She urged her fellow sisters to maintain it and hoped that future abbesses also would nourish the practice. She certainly acknowledged that prayer at any time was pleasing to God, but she felt communal prayer had particular benefits. The perfect and the imperfect would pray at the same time, so their petitions were be more likely to be heard regardless of individual merit. In coming together for prayer, the sisters were not only following the custom of the friars, but also the authority of Scripture and recommendations drawn from the writings of the Church Fathers and legends of the saints.22 These authorities led Battista to consider whether prayer, while always beneficial, was particularly effective at certain times of the day. She argued that the liturgical hour of nones had a special significance, citing examples from the life of Christ and the practices of the Apostles. But Battista also noted that this hour had special resonance for Clare of Assisi, who always said a prayer at that time. The sisters could do no worse than to follow her example. If we would be called the daughters of such a great mother then let us strive to follow in even a little bit of her holy footsteps and, if we are not able to follow her in the perfection of evangelical poverty and avoidance of material things, which is our great desire, let us try at the least to follow her in having no inclination for earthly things. For humility, charity, and the other virtues were all perfectly represented in her, especially in her zeal for holy prayer, in which [activity] that holiest of mothers was always most passionate.23

Battista told her sisters to go read Clare’s legend to learn more about the importance of prayer to the woman they viewed as their Order’s founder.24 The flow of information in Monteluce’s chronicle thus moved from their church to a new prayer ritual to the importance of exemplary models for shaping their spiritual life. By the fifteenth century, the sisters were not only telling stories from their Order’s history, but 21 Memoriale di Monteluce, p. 79. Her description of the practices makes clear how large Monteluce was since all of the sisters could not be accommodated in the church. 22 For example, Battista cited Jerome and the legend of Saint Nicholas, Memoriale di Monteluce, pp. 80 –81. 23 Memoriale di Monteluce, p. 83. 24 See below for Battista’s own translation of the thirteenth-century Latin Legend commissioned by Pope Alexander IV.

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also about their contemporaries. Mariano’s chronicle served as a means for carrying these stories between cloisters. For Sister Francesca d’Assisi (d. 1440), the church was her “cell” and her “bed” was the predella beneath the crucifix over the high altar. She regularly would spend the night praying there until she heard the sister who served as sacristan awaken to sound the bell calling the sister to matins. Then she would sneak back to her pallet in the dormitory as if she had been there all night.25 Sister Filippa de Medici (d. 1488), a Clarisse at Monticelli outside Florence, also regularly spent the night praying or reciting the Office in the convent’s church. Her sisters praised her zeal, noting that the only time she had missed morning mass or indeed prayer the previous night was on the day she died.26 When Sister Paula of Foligno (d. 1470) was troubled by diabolic visions and other temptations, her confessor at Santa Eucaristia in Aquila counseled her not to go to bed that night, but instead to pray in the church. Paula went there and prostrated herself on the floor before the host, with her arms stretched out so that her body formed a cross. After five hours in this position, Christ appeared to her in a vision that freed her from the diabolic tribulations and left her consoled.27 Antonia of Florence, who had received John of Capistrano’s assistance in founding Santa Eucaristia in Aquila, also experienced a vision one night while she prayed in their church. Sister Angela of Aquila entered the choir and easily saw Antonia in her usual spot praying because the entire church was lit up by flames over her head. Antonia, however, would not share the contents of her vision to the other woman’s evident frustration.28 In each of these last examples, Mariano learned about these women from talking with their sisters. These examples of devout nuns easily could be multiplied. Their frequency reflects a shared understanding among the friars and nuns that commitment to prayer was a sign of holiness and worthy of emulation. That conclusion is rather obvious, but these examples also suggest some common understandings of prayer among the Clarisses. First, these examples point to the importance of the sisters’ church and its

25 Mariano, 250. Mariano seems to have learned about Francesca through research in Santa Chiara in Assisi’s archives, although he noted that he had found little—“non ho trovato notitia alcuna excepto ella infra scripta [i.e. about Francesca] (Mariano, 249).” 26 Ibid., 374–375. 27 Ibid., 615–623. 28 Ibid., 595.

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devotional objects as site for prayer. Certainly this point could be made for other religious women, but the use of dormitories as opposed to individual cells may have focused the Clarisses more on their churches, even for private devotion.29 Second, the connection between devout prayer and penance that was common to medieval constructions of enclosed female sanctity is present here as well. However, it may be significant that the Clarisses’ understanding of penitential activities relate more to restricting sleep or adopting uncomfortable position for prayer, rather than more physical penances such as bodily discipline.30 Finally, these examples point to a relationship between prayer, obedience, and humility for the Clarisses, an indication of the acceptance of the image of Clare promoted by the papacy in the thirteenth-century Latin Legend. All Franciscans were taught to meditate on Christ’s life, especially His Passion, to engage in self-reflection, particularly concerning their sins, and to engage in mental prayer. The Clarisses, perhaps, were more easily able to devote themselves to such spiritual tasks, in comparison to the brothers who pursued a more active vocation of apostolic service. For example, Bernardino of Siena wrote to Suor Nicolina, the abbess of Santa Marta in Siena, that he wanted to attend to their spiritual needs but “that which you have sought from me, I have more need of from you, for in my conscience I would be ashamed to teach you what I do not sense in myself.”31 This apology might be dismissed as trope—Bonaventure had written much the same to the sisters at Longchamp. However, Bernardino and his contemporaries were increasingly aware that the Clarisses hardly had to rely on the friars as devotional guides. This is not to dismiss the significance of pastoral care. The late 29 Lowe, pp. 132–133. Obviously the sisters would not go there if the space was being used for parish services given the importance of enclosure to their communities. Larger churches might have a nuns’ choir as at Santa Chiara in Naples. Convent architecture has begun to emerge as a field of study, although the focus tends to be on Renaissance foundations. In addition to the already cited studies by Bruzelius, Lowe, and Wood, see Anabel Thomas, Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities of Renaissance Italy: Iconography, Space and the Religious Woman’s Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Still useful for its reproduction of architectural plans in A.M. Filipiak, “The Plans of the Poor Clares’ Convents in Central Italy: From the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1957. 30 Compare Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner’s comments about the practices of Dominican penitents in her introduction to Dominican Penitent Women (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), p. 14. 31 His letter is dated 10 November 1440, see Bernardino of Siena, Opera Omnia, Vol. 8 (Quarcchi: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1965), pp. 321–322.

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medieval Clarisses valued their pastoral ministers, as the example of Monteluce’s confessor cited above demonstrates. But Observant sisters were developing their own traditions of religious instruction, including writing treatises that instructed in devotional activities that circulated within and between their communities. Caterina Vigri provides an excellent example of the range of such teaching. The Clarisses at Corpus Domini in Bologna preserved a rich body of spiritual writings by their first abbess, Caterina Vigri, and her companions.32 In addition to The Seven Spiritual Weapons, the sisters recorded her sermons, devotional prayers, and a series of short teachings, which they called her dottrina.33 Illuminata Bembo’s biography of Caterina notes that she regularly instructed the sisters, and especially the novices. At Corpus Christi in Ferrara, where Caterina was a nun before moving to Bologna, she served as Mistress of Novices. In some cases, Caterina herself recorded her teachings, but more often these texts seem to be short oral instructions that were easily memorized and later recorded by her companions. For example, she offered five recommendations for saying the Divine Office well: to approach it with reverence, to say the entire office without any interruptions, to adopt a proper tone and volume, to speak clearly, and to approach the task with appropriate fervor.34 She offered seven steps to prepare for prayer, beginning with adopting a pure mind and body to adopting a state of humility and

32 For an overview of Caterina’s literary production, see Gabriella Zarri, “Écrits spirituals inédits de Catherine de Bologne (1413–1463) et de ses soeurs,” in Geneviève Brunel-Lobichon et al. eds. Sainte Claire d’Assise et sa posterité: VIIIè centenaire de Sainte Claire. Actes du Colloque de l’UNESCO ( 29 septembre–1èr octobre 1994) (Paris, 1994), pp. 219–230. See also the papers in Claudio Leonardi, ed. Caterina Vigri, la Santa e la Città: Atti del Convegno, Bologna, 13–15 novembre 2002 (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004). 33 See Caterina Vigri, Laudi, Trattati e Lettere, ed. Silvia Serventi (Caterina Vigri: La Santa e La Città) 2 (Florence, 2000). In addition to Le Sette Armi Spirituali, critical editions are now available for I dodici giardini: l’esodo femminile, ed. Gilberto Aquini and Mariafiamma Maddalena Faberi (Bologna: Gli Inchiostri Associati, 1999), Rosarium metricum de mysteriis Passionis Christi Domini et de Vita BVM ed. Gilberto Sgarbi (Bologna: Giorgio Barghigiani, 1997) and I Sermoni, ed. Gilberto Sgarbi (Bologna: Giorgio Barghigiani, 1999). 34 Laudi, Trattati e Lettere, p. 79: “Queste sono V cose neccessarie a chiunque vol dire bene lo divino officio.” Such lists were common in late medieval spiritual treatises. For example, the manuscript containing Mariano of Florence’s Vita di San Francesco (copied by Dorothea Broccardi) concluded with a anonymous list of twelve devotional rules (“La prima regula sit aguardarsi dal peccato et considerare el peccato in se chi e male . . .”). See Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi ms. 5966, f. 267v.

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confidence in God.35 Another lesson offered six succinct conditions necessary for a successful prayer. Following these standards would result in merit to the postulant, nourishment to her soul, and ultimately, grace.36 Her Fifteen Steps toward Perfection (Quindici gradi della perfezione), a treatise addressed to the novice sisters who were just beginning their lives in religion, was modeled after Bonaventure’s Tree of Life and Triple Way.37 Caterina divided it into three parts representing the different stages of religious life: incipientes, proficientes, and perfecti. This division emphasizes the overall didactic function of her spiritual writings. Illuminata’s Mirror of Illumination records how after lunch she would quiz the novices about the lesson they had just heard read at the table. Caterina also would assign those sisters who were best at reading to recite the Short Office of the Cross and then instruct her charges on its teachings on prayer and humility.38 These works represent the voice of the mature woman, experienced in religious life. However, her best known treatise—not only to modern scholars, but presumably medieval Franciscans as well since Mariano incorporated sections into his chronicle—was her spiritual autobiography.39 While serving as Mistress of Novices in Ferrara, Caterina had begun to compose the work that became known as The Seven Spiritual Weapons. Written in secret, she had completed a draft by 1438, although it was revised until 1463. On her death bed, Caterina presented her treatise to the community’s confessor. She charged him to correct any errors and directed him to have a copy made for Corpus Christi in Ferrara.40 Caterina also recommended that copies be distributed throughout the Order so that others might benefit from her direction.41

35 Ibid., pp. 85–86: “Seguta altre sete conditione che se rechiede a degnamente prepararse alla oratione.” 36 Ibid., p. 153. 37 Caterina Vigri, Laudi, Trattati e Lettere, pp. 81–83. 38 Specchio, p. 11. 39 Mariano, 513–574. He also seems to have read Illuminata Bembo’s Specchio and have seen Caterina’s breviary. 40 In addition to the autograph manuscript of the treatise preserved at Corpus Domini in Bologna, there are eighteen known manuscripts surviving from the fifteen century. Some of the texts described by L.M. Nuñez, “Gli scritti di santa Caterina da Bologna” can no longer be identified (e.g. one of the Bologna manuscripts was destroyed during Word War II). See La Santa nella storia, nelle lettere, e nell’arte (Bologna, 1912), pp. 41–70. 41 Caterina also gave her confessor a letter, which was transcribed in an earlier edition of the treatise. See Caterina Vegri (sic), Le Sette Armi Spirituali, ed. Cecilia Foletti (Padua, 1985), p. 162.

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chapter five I have written here below at some length some counsels to comfort those persons who have entered the noble battle of this obedience and, being strongly attacked and assaulted by their own will and by how they see things or how things appear to them, are very sad, thinking that, by this, they will lose all the merit of obedience. That is not true, because each virtue perfected by its contrary. That this is true, I will show later when I will speak of this excellent and beautiful virtue of obedience which is worthily called the queen or noble empress.42

The Seven Spiritual Weapons therefore explicitly sets out to guide the sisters in developing their religious lives. Caterina had been compelled instead to write because of her own emotional and religious crises. As a young nun, she had suffered from an excessive piety which received little sympathy from her abbess. She also experienced long periods when she felt completely abandoned by the God.43 These experiences and her conviction to maintain faith and hope in God directed her to write for the dilectissime sorele (sic) and carissime novice to whom she refers throughout the treatise.44 The Seven Spiritual Weapons reflected the Regular Observance’s emphasis on interior piety. For example, Caterina stressed that the mind would be the locus of their religious life. Throughout the treatise, she makes frequent references to the mental nature of their spirituality and explains how the mind should be central to their devotion. The fourth [weapon] is the memory of the most glorious pilgrimage of that immaculate angel Christ Jesus and most especially his most holy death and passion. [ You should ] always be carrying the presence of his most chaste and virginal humanity before the eyes of your mind.45

As in this passage, she often invoked the metaphor of the mind’s eye—occhio del’intellecto—a popular theme in the Quattrocento employed to analogize vision in moral and spiritual terms.46 But Caterina also marked the mind as the site where diabolical battles were fought and spiritual understanding gained. She warned her readers that the devil

Vigri, LSAS, Preface 7–8 (quotation from Feiss and Re, p. 32). Ibid., 7: 114–118. 44 Ibid., 3; 7:15, 119; 9:5–8; and 10:10 –12. 45 Ibid., 4:7 (quotation from Feiss and Re, p. 37). 46 For example, Peter of Limoges, Libro de locchio morale et spirituale vulgare, which was translated into Italian by Teofilo da Roma, an Augustinian canon, and printed in Venice by Giovanni Rossi, 21 May 1496. Cited in Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 103. 42 43

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would try to place temptations and doubts in their minds. Sometimes he might first give her virtuous thoughts, but then quickly shift to its opposite so that the sister was tricked into a vice. She warned that this strategy could make the sufferer feel desperate.47 In her discussion of the seventh weapon, “the Authority of Scripture,” Caterina demonstrated furtherhow these mental temptations might occur. She revealed three diabolical visions she had experienced while having doubts about her vocation and felt abandoned by God. In order to teach her humility and demonstrate that evil was more astute than she, God had allowed the devil to trick her. Three times the devil appeared to her: first in the guise of the Virgin, then as Christ on the Crucifix, and finally as the Virgin holding the Christ Child. In each apparition, the devil offered Caterina sound advice, but its effect was to inspire in her the opposite virtue, just as she instructed in the prologue as cited before. Thus, although her visions told her to obey her superiors and particularly her abbess, Caterina reacted by remaining in prayer when she had been ordered to another task, second-guessing her superiors, and she even contemplated leaving the convent.48 She found resolution, however, in turning to prayer and crying out to Heaven for help with what she identifies as her mental voice. Caterina indeed did place strong emphasis on the role of prayer in their lives: Pray then, dearest sisters, stand strong and constant in the time of battle, and should it happen that the body is rendered completely weak, keep the desire of the will to do good things and suffer evil ones, so that what you are not able to complete in act, you can complete in loving desire.49

Through these visions Caterina taught obedience and perseverance in faith and devotion. She clearly demonstrates how their devotional life is rooted in mental experiences. Having depicted the diabolic visions she had suffered when she first had entered the convent and over which she had triumphed with divine aid, in the last section of the treatise Caterina declared that she would reveal another grace conceded to her by God when her faith

Vigri, LSAS, 7:7 (quotation from Feiss and Re, p. 43). While the treatise casts this conflict as spiritual, there also were contemporary fights within the community over the institutional affiliation of the house and its leadership. Mary Martin McLaughlin unpacked its complicated history in “Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case of Corpus Domini, Ferrara, 1406–1452,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (1989): 293–320. 49 Ibid., 7:127 (quotation from Feiss and Re, p. 76). 47 48

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was challenged. She did not understand how the host could actually be the body of Christ and the sacramental wine His blood. She was very worried and unable to find solace either in confession or prayer. Communion also was unsatisfactory.50 Then one day while Caterina was praying in the Church, God came to her mind and explained to her the doctrine of Transubstantiation through a process that Caterina described as parlando intellectualmente. . . . God visited her mind and spoke to her intellectually. He gave her clear knowledge that the entire divinity and humanity of him who is our God is truly the host which the priest consecrates. He went on to show how and in what manner it was possible that under these small appearances of bread were present God and man in their entirety. And in brief he gave her knowledge of everything that bothered her regarding faith in this sacrament and put an end to struggles and doubt that she had undergone and could have undergone in the future, convincing her with beautiful and natural examples.51

She then wrote that her soul was much consoled by this explanation and her mind confirmed in her faut, so that the next time she went to communion, she tasted a great sweetness and from then on desired frequent communion. Before ending their sacra conversazione, moreover, God also explained how only the worthy actually benefit from the Sacraments and clarified the Virgin Birth.52 It seems significant that Caterina required God’s explanation before she could experience material confirmation. This vision contrasts most obviously with the episodes in many mystical texts where the host’s sweet taste alone is enough to convince the man or woman struck by doubts. It is possible to read this episode in part as “faith seeking reason.” Indeed, through The Seven Spiritual Weapons the narrative reflected the intellectual qualities of the Clarisses internal spirituality—remember: this treatise was intended for Caterina’s fellow nuns. There are several passages that show parallels between these cloistered women’s search for religious knowledge and the questions motivating academic theology. Caterina’s concerns with the benefits of Eucharistic reception had been addressed by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica and contemporary theologians engaged

50 51 52

Ibid., 8:2. Ibid., 8:3–4 (quotation from Feiss and Re, pp. 77–78). Ibid., 8:5–9.

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in many debates on the nature of Mary’s conception and virginity.53 At other points in The Seven Spiritual Weapons, Caterina had demonstrated her familiarity with the Augustinian hierarchy of visions, discussions of the virtues and vices in moral theology, and other contemporary theological debates. Caterina’s description of cloistered life, to be sure, appears dominated by humility and obedience, the tradition model for enclosed female religious life as promoted in Clare’s Latin Legend. Her prologue praises novices for fleeing the dangerous secular world for the cloister where they can seek union with Christ their bridegroom. They are advised to fight the vices with which they were tempted with their opposite virtues—the seven weapons of her title. Throughout the treatise, Caterina advised abbesses to watch carefully over these novices because the devil would test them.54 They therefore should guide the younger women with kindness, compassion, and even maternal love, for as Caterina warned her readers, the abbess is responsible for all the souls in her care.55 This understanding of communal life proclaims that the shaping of spiritual life was directed from within the cloister walls. It is striking that when you read The Seven Spiritual Weapons, confessors and other male clerics are mostly absent even though the men insisted that male religious were necessary to direct the women’s communities. This does not mean, however, that Clare’s idea of mutuality or indeed a more outspoken and activist Clare had disappeared, as an example from a work by Battista Alfani, the initiator of Monteluce’s reform chronicle demonstrates. Clarisses Writing Clare Reform also inspired renewed interest in the life of Clare of Assisi.56 By the later Middle Ages her hagiographical legend circulated widely both in its official form—the Latin vita commissioned by Pope Alexander IV 53 For example, the Council of Basel-Ferrara ruled on the conception of the Virgin Mary, see AM X, 80. 54 Vigri, LSAS, 7:5–53. 55 Ibid., 7:120 and 9:17. 56 A version of this section appeared as Lezlie Knox, “What Francis intended: Gender and the Transmission of Knowledge in the Franciscan Order,” In Anneke Mulder-Bakker, ed. Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, 1200 –1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 143–161.

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in 1255—as well as in diverse vernacular translations.57 Italian versions of her legend range from near literal translations of the thirteenth-century Latin Legend commissioned by Pope Alexander IV to looser renditions in which the author might add to, subtract from, or even rearrange incidents in the traditional narrative according to the interests of the expected audience.58 These texts sometimes came to challenge earlier representations of Clare. An analysis of one of these freer translations, a late fifteenth-century Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare composed by a Clarisse, Sister Battista Alfani, is the focus of this section.59 Written specifically for other Clarisses, this vita offers important testimony concerning the reception of images of Clare by her own Order after Observant Reform. A close reading of Battista’s text in comparison with the thirteenth-century Latin Legend reveals how these sisters might have been empowered by the reworked vita and its presentation of the Order’s founder.60 In particular, attention to one story within its narrative shows how it constructs a didactic model for the relationship between the sisters and friars in the fifteenth century. Ultimately, Battista’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare demonstrates how images of their Order’s namesake could work to both inspire and shape their spiritual identity for the later medieval sisters. Battista Alfani professed her vow as an Observant Clarisse at the convent of Monteluce outside Perugia in 1452.61 She was an extraor57 For a catalogue of Latin and vernacular manuscripts, see Giovanni Boccali, “Tradizione manoscritta delle legende di Santa Chiara di Assisi,” in Clara Claris Praeclara, pp. 419–500. 58 See Felice Accrocca, “I Codici romani della ‘Legenda di Santa Chiara in Volgare,’ ” in CF 63 (1993): 55–70. 59 Battista Alfani, Vita et Leggenda della Seraphica Vergine Sancta Chiara, ed. Giovanni Boccali (Santa Maria degli Angeli-Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 2004). Battista’s legend was first rediscovered and described by Benvenutus Bughetti, “Codices Duo Florentini Archivi Nationalis Ordinem Clarissarum Spectantes,” AFH 5 (1912): 573. Zeffirino Lazzeri edited the Florentine manuscripts as La vita di S. Chiara. Raccolta e tradotta da tutte le fonti conosciute e completata col testo inedito del Processo di canonizzazione per un francescano toscano del Cinquecento (Quaracchi, 1920) but this has now been superseded by Boccali’s critical edition. 60 It may be useful to clarify here that this chapter will distinguish between the thirteenth-century text commissioned by Pope Alexander IV as the Latin Legend and Battista’s vita as the Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare. 61 The Alfanis were a wealthy and pious Perugian family. Alfano Alfani’s catasto (tax) record showed that his three eldest daughters were nuns at S. Giuliana (little is known about this house, including whether it was affiliated with a particular religious order). A middle son became an Observant Friar and Alfano’s three younger children, all girls, entered Monteluce between 1449 and 1452 (the convent had been reformed in 1448). After her husband’s death, Battista’s mother also entered that convent. Battista entered

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dinary figure even within this remarkable community that had become well known in the fifteenth century for its active scriptorium and its role in spreading Observant Reform throughout Central Italy. During her 72 years as a professed nun, Battista served as abbess three separate times, briefly left the community in 1492 to reform the convent of Santa Chiara in Arezzo, and still became one of the house’s more prolific scribes. Her hand has become well known to modern scholars from Monteluce’s Liber Memorialis, a chronicle of the convent’s history and reform.62 References throughout this book further document her activities as a scribe. An entry in the convent’s Entrate e uscite records the sale of a breviary copied by Battista to her brother.63 Battista also copied (scripsse) treatises on Christ’s Passion and on the Virgin’s sorrows (composed by Fra Gabriele of Perugia), as well as a vitae of Christ and of the Virgin and a verse Passion according to her ‘obituary’ in the convent’s chronicle.64 She completed a vernacular translation of Domenico Cavalca’s popular “Lives of the Fathers (Vitae Patrum)” scripse . . . tucto de sua mano.65 Working in the scriptorium also gave Battista time to compose her own works. Recording her death in 1523, the Memorial praised Battista’s learning, represented particularly by the legend of Saint Clare which she had composed for her sisters.66 The combined factors of Monteluce’s scriptorium and the sisters sent from within its walls to reform other communities probably helped this legend to circulate to other Clarissan houses. Five late fifteenth-century manuscripts of Battista’s legend survive. Each was owned originally by a Franciscan convent with connections to Monteluce and Observant reform.67 in 1452 although previously she had lived since she was very young with a community of tertiaries (nel quale ve intrò molto mammola). See Memoriale di Monteluce, p. 125. For the catasto reference, see Alberto Grohmann, Citta e territorio tra medioevo ed età moderna (Perugia, sec. XIII–XVI), Vol. I. La Città (Perugia: Volummia, 1981), pp. 381–408. 62 Memoriale di Monteluce, 2. 63 Cited in Ugolino Nicolini, “I Minori osservanti di Monteripido e lo ‘scriptorium’ delle Clarisse di Monteluce,” p. 109. Also see Ignazio Baldelli, “Codice e carte di Monteluce,” Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 1 (1951): 387–93. Battista’s hand also can be identified in one of the many prayer books produced in this convent’s scriptorium including Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale Augusta 1299, see Giuseppe Mazzatinti, Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1895), 5:269. 64 See Memoriale di Monteluce, 107–108. 65 Ibid., 25. 66 Ibid., 124–125. 67 For a description of the manuscripts, see Accrocca, “I Codici Romani,” p. 58 (which discusses four of the manuscripts) and Alfani, Vita et Leggenda, pp. 30 –35. Several of these manuscripts can be connected to Santa Chiara Novella in Florence (BNCF Magliabechiano XXXVIII, 135; Florence, Archivio di Stato Cod. 699; Genoa,

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Both the thirteenth-century Latin Legend and Clare’s canonization process served as sources for Battista’s legend.68 She followed the structure of the official legend, but her translation was not slavishly literal.69 She often made additions to the standard narrative which reflect renewed interest among the Clarisses in their Order’s history and their founder’s legacy. It is important that these stories frequently accent Clare’s role in shaping the female movement and her role in the early Order generally. Indeed, their inclusion emphasizes that the namesake of the Order of Saint Clare was more than just Francis’ follower.70 Battista incorporated a translation of Clare’s Blessing and referred to her Testament.71 She also cites her role in gaining confirmation of the sisters’ Form of Life, although this text is presented as the rule given to Clare by Francis.72 The Latin Legend had cited none of Clare’s writings in its attempts to reduce her influence in the Order’s formation. Battista also returned Francis to the narrative of Clare’s life, for example by recording his frequent contact with San Damiano and his exhortation composed for the Poor

Biblioteca dell’Università Cod. F.I. 16 (55); and a fourth which was originally owned by the Clarisses in Coverciano, which closed in 1970, and now is held by the sisters of the Monastero delle Clarisse S. Agnese d’Assisi in Florence). Santa Chiara Novella was founded in 1452 when three sisters came from Monteluce to help establish the Florentine community (Memoriale di Monteluce, 15). Boccali also has identified another manuscript in Genoa, see Boccali, “Tradizione manoscritta,” pp. 482–484, as well as a later sixteenth-century one in Venice with similarities to Battista’s text (although with some differences in content). 68 Alfani, Vita et Leggenda, pp. 73–75. She briefly discussed the texts and was concerned to establish their authority. The sisters probably had other versions of Clare’s life in their collection. BNCF Magliabecchiano XXXVII, 215 is a fairly liberal translation of the Latin legend by an anonymous author. Boccali argues that it once belonged to Monteluce, see “Tradizione manoscritta,” p. 476. 69 I compared her text to the thirteenth-century Latin text, as well as a fairly literal fifteenth-century Italian translation of the Latin Legend preserved in BNCF Magliagbecchiano XXXVIII, 55, ed. by Guido Battelli, as Tomaso da Celano, La Leggenda di Santa Chiara d’Assisi. (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1952). 70 Mariano D’Alatri has made a similar point for the sixteenth-century Portugese chronicler, Marco of Lisbon, see “L’Immagine di Chiara d’Assisi nelle Croniche di Marco di Lisbona,” CF 62 (1992): 543. 71 Alfani, Vita et Leggenda, 36: 1–14 pp. 241–252. Chapter 36 included translations of both texts as well as a description of their composition (Come sancta Chiara innançi che morissi fece devotamente testamento, immitando el suo padre santo Francesco.) 72 Ibid., 39:1–2, pp. 258–259. Battista’s description of the origins of the sisters’ rules is very interesting because it seems to confuse Pope Innocent IV’s rule and that of Isabelle of France. She explains that the pope moderated the sisters’ observance out of concern for their fragile nature (the text he modified is identified as “la quale sancto Francesco haveva data ad santa Chiara e alle sua sorelle”) and that this papal rule was adopted by most convents throughout Aquitaine and Provence (39:1).

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Ladies.73 In one story, Clare shows more discernment than Francis. As an example of Clare’s prophetic abilities, Battista incorporated a story telling how Francis once sent five women to join the community at San Damiano, but Clare knew that one of them lacked a true vocation. Out of respect for Francis, the community accepted the woman, but she stayed for only half a year before leaving.74 These references illustrate how the thirteenth-century Clarisses had insisted on a connection with the Poverello even as the Friars Minor tried to obscure those bonds. They thus present a positive model for the relationship between the friars and sisters in the fifteenth century. Battista drew these stories from a rich tradition of textual and oral evidence. Although not officially sanctioned, accounts of Francis’ life such as the Mirror of Perfection and the Legend of Perugia recorded his exhortation for the sisters.75 Surely, the Clarisses’ collective memory of their founder was equally important for Battista. Information about Clare, and in particular about her writings, had been preserved in written form among the women since the thirteenth century. Monteluce, one of the earliest Damianite foundations, may even have functioned as a repository. The record of Clare’s canonization process survives only in a fifteenth-century vernacular manuscript copied at Monteluce. The same manuscript also included copies of Clare’s Form of Life and Testament, as well as Nicholas of Osimo’s commentary on the Rule of Saint Clare.76 Attention to Battista’s sources is not just idle speculation but a challenge to understand the historical and memorial record of Clare of Assisi. More than just an academic or pious debate about what source most accurately portrays the first Franciscan woman, these investigations allow the historian to track shifting interpretations of Clare’s significance to her Order. One such marker of the changing meaning of certain stories occurs in an intriguing episode recorded by Battista:

Ibid., 32:1, pp. 220 –221. Ibid., 20:1, p. 170; her source was Sister Cecilia of Spello’s testimony at the canonization process, see PC 6:44–50. 75 Mirror of Perfection 90 and Legend of Perugia 45. 2C 204 also refers to this story. 76 BNCF Landau Finaly 251 is a devotional miscellany containing liturgical texts, sermons, and other spiritual readings. It was owned by Santa Chiara Novella in Florence. See 1r–33v (canonization process), 256v–261r (Clare’s Testament), 316v–325r (Rule of Saint Clare, although it is divided in precepts like John of Capistrano’s text), and 357v–363r (Explicatio Regulae S. Clarae). 73

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an account of a sermon preached by the famous English Franciscan, Alexander of Hales, at San Damiano. This story is part of the chapter entitled “On the zeal and care which Saint Clare had for procuring holy preachers. And how willingly and with great attention she listened to holy sermons.”77 Most of this chapter follows the structure established by the thirteenth-century Latin Legend but at its end, Battista recounted a story not found in the official legend or, indeed, in most collections of stories about Clare and her followers, including Mariano’s history.78 It is worth quoting in full. One day the most devoted mother Saint Clare asked the Guardian at Santa Maria degli Angeli to send a brother to preach to them. It so happened that just then in the friary there was a master in Sacred Theology whom many have identified as the Irrefutable Doctor, Master Alexander of Hales, who was most famous for his learning and for his holy way of life. He had entered the Order of Saint Francis as a respected doctor and master of great excellence. Because of his devotion to Francis, [Alexander] had come to Assisi and stayed for a long time at Santa Maria degli Angeli. In fact, he had been there long enough that he was able to speak and preach in Italian. Thus, when Clare asked for a preacher, the Guardian was able to send that master to the convent of San Damiano to preach the word of God to those holy sisters. [Alexander of Hales] went there and began to preach and speak magnificently about God. But when he was in the middle of the sermon, Brother Giles—who was also there to hear the sermon—suddenly stood up animated by the Holy Spirit and inflamed with divine love. [ Brother Giles] said; “Be quiet, Master, for I wish to speak.” [ Master Alexander], filled with true humility, at once uttered no more words and humbly sat down. Brother Giles, completely inflamed [with the Holy Spirit] spoke some words about God of such sweetness and consolation that all of the minds of the listeners were wonderfully consoled and brought to wonder. When Giles had finished speaking, he said to the Master, “Stand up and finish the sermon which

77 Alfani, Vita et Leggenda, 29, p. 205. “Dello studio et sollecitudine che Santa Chiara aveva di procurare gli santi predicatori. Et come volentieri et con grande attentione udiva le sancte predicatione.” 78 Cf. LCl 37. Ugolino Verino, who wrote a vernacular life of Clare for the sisters at Santa Chiara Novella also does not include it. His legend dates to 1494 and exists in two manuscripts, the aforementioned BNCF Landau Finaly 251, 81v–121v and Dallas, Southern Methodist University Bridewell 10290 (entire manuscript). See their respective descriptions in Giovanna Lazzi and Maura Rolih Scarlino, I Manoscritti Landau Finaly della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (Florence, Giunta Regionale Toscana Editrice Bibliografica, 1994), 2:428–435 and Donald Weinstein, Girolano Savonarola: Piety, Prophecy, and Politics in Renaissance Florence (Dallas: Bridwell Library, 1994), pp. 37–40. Also see Walter W. Seton, “The Italian version of the Legend of Saint Clare by the Florentine Ugolino Verini,” AFH 12 (1919): 595–99.

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you began an hour ago.” What a mirror of humility! That the master in Holy Theology at once raised himself and finished the sermon to the great consolation and good example of all those who were present. Once he had finished the sermon, the preacher departed. Then the holy mother Saint Clare, with joy exulting in her spirit, turned to the friars who were still present and said, “O Brothers, I tell you that I have seen here today many marvelous things. Today the desire of my father, Saint Francis, was achieved. I remember that many times he said these words: ‘I want to see such great humility in my Order that when a brother who is a master in Holy Theology is preaching and a lay brother interrupts wishing to speak, that [master] should humbly yield to the simple lay brother.’ Today I saw that happen before my eyes, and I say to you truthfully, I was more edified by the humility of that brother, the master preacher, than if I had seen a dead man resurrected.”79

The story recounted by Battista Alfani evokes with rare detail the circumstances of a sermon preached to the nuns at San Damiano. It attracts curiosity in particular because although it is well known that Franciscan friars often preached to enclosed women, actual accounts of their visits are uncommon. The story also intrigues because it presents a confrontation between two friars who represented opposite poles in the Franciscan Order. The simple and unlearned Giles of Assisi, one of the first men to join Francis’ fledgling Order, is juxtaposed with Alexander of Hales, the Order’s most famous academic recruit. As regent master at the University of Paris, Alexander became known as the Irrefutable Doctor and as a representative of the changing Franciscan Order in which study would be understood as supporting a preaching vocation.80 These friars and their defense of academic learning were opposed by unlearned friars like Giles (one of Francis’ first followers) who lauded the reclusive contemplative life. Such a confrontation is exciting to image—but did this striking event actually occur? Historians who have studied Alexander of Hales and Giles of Assisi have accepted its veracity, while most scholars interested in Clare and her Order appear unaware of the story. The context and historicity of this event matter and deserve to be explored. If it recounts an actual event, it offers testimony not only to the rather extraordinary circumstances of a sermon preached to the Clarisses but also to the practical relationship between the nuns and the friars in the 1240s, a tense period

Alfani, Vita et Leggenda, 29.4, pp. 209–211. Bartolomeo of Pisa lauded Alexander’s learning in the Book of Conformities, AF IV, p. 336. 79 80

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when the brethren were reluctant to fulfill their pastoral responsibilities to the enclosed nuns. If the story is fictive, however, it offers important information about the transmission of legends and their re-appropriation in later contexts to reveal changed perceptions of Clare. The search for this story’s genealogy begins in the fourteenth century. The biography of Giles of Assisi recounted within the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals provides the earliest reference (c. 1369) to the sermon preached at San Damiano. Its source is obscure. Certainly, that is true for much of this text’s information, but in this specific case it may indicate the appropriation of a story circulating within oral tradition since earlier biographies of Giles do not report it.81 The Chronicle relates the story of the aborted sermon as an example of Giles’ humility.82 This account obviously is much shorter than the one in Battista’s vita and lacks the details that enrich her narrative, such as the fact that the learned preacher had been in Italy long enough to be able to preach in the vernacular. Crucially, in the that chronicle the educated friar is not identified as Alexander of Hales, but only as an English brother who was a master in theology. That description certainly could refer to Alexander, but equally to other brothers such as Haymo of Faversham, a master at Oxford before going to Paris who was elected Minister General in 1240.83 Since direct references to Alexander of Hales in the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals do not even allude to the incident, it is seems unlikely that the author intended to portray the Irrefragable Doctor as the protagonist. Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Conformities, composed in 1385, also tells the story of the sermon preached before Clare and her sisters. In fact, he recounted it twice.84 Bartolomeo first presented the confrontation at San Damiano in the biography of Giles of Assisi as an example of obedience, specifically that Giles wished a learned master to demon-

The shorter life of Giles (attributed to Brother Leo) predates the longer life which exists only in the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals. It has been edited most recently by Rosalind B. Brooke, Scripta Leonis, Rufini et Angeli Sociorum S. Francisci. Corrected edition (Oxford: Clazrendon Press, 1990 (1971), pp. 316–349. See also Walter W. Seton, The Life of Blessed Giles of Assisi (Manchester: The University Press, 1917). 82 AF III, p. 81. 83 AF III, pp. 218–220. 84 There is a fair amount of repetition throughout this lengthy treatise in which Bartolomeo offers a biographical account of all the Friars Minor known to him, within the structure of a defense of Francis’ conformity to Christ (within the Conventualist tradition). See Carolly Erickson, “Bartholomew of Pisa, Francis Exalted: De Conformitate,” Mediaeval Studies 34 (1972): 259–261 esp. 81

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strate the virtue of obedience.85 In a later book, he retold the story in his discussion of how an anonymous master demonstrated the virtue of humility.86 Although Bartolomeo failed to name the master in either version, and did not even identify him as English, the second example suggests circumstantially that Alexander of Hales might be identified as the anonymous master of theology. The episode immediately before it is recognizably an account of Alexander’s entry into the Franciscan Order and his debate over which order to join.87 Bartolomeo’s second narration of the incident may be Battista’s immediate source since it closely resembles her own.88 Her legend concludes with two miracles drawn from Bartolomeo of Pisa’s text further suggesting that she and the Monteluce sisters knew his text.89 Thus, a comparison of these sources provides conjectural evidence of the event’s authenticity. When we attempt to assign a date to this incident, however, the historicity of the sermon preached before Clare becomes more questionable.90 Alexander entered the Order in 1236 or 1237 and died in 1245 so the time frame for the alleged encounter between him and Giles at San Damiano is limited. The Franciscan annalist Niccolò Papini claimed that the incident must have occurred in 1242. In that year Alexander presented the so-called Exposition on the Franciscan Rule to the General Chapter meeting in Bologna. Papini proposed that the English friar could have traveled to Assisi during this visit. The Quaracchi editors of Alexander’s commentary on the

AF IV, p. 408. AF V, p. 144. 87 Ibid., p. 309 should be compared to AF IV, p. 429 and the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals in AF III, p. 281 where Alexander of Hales struggles to decide between the Dominicans and the Franciscans seeks advice from a woman as to which mendicant order he should enter. 88 The general outlines of their stories are the same. A learned master of theology had come to Assisi because of his devotion to Saint Francis and remained there long enough to be able to preach in Italian. He and Brother Giles traveled to San Damiano so that the master could give a sermon to the nuns. When Giles interrupted and demanded to speak, the Master humbly seated himself and let his unlearned companion preach. Clare’s account of Francis’ intentions and her claim to be more impressed by the Master’s humility than if she had seen a dead man resurrected concluded each passage. 89 Compare Bughetti, “Codices Duo,” p. 574. 90 It is unlikely that if he had preached to the nuns that a record would survive of the actual sermon.The record of Alexander’s sermons in Johannes Baptist Schneyer, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters: für die Zeit von 1150 –1350 is uninformative (compare 1:269–270). It lists 20 sermons de tempore and de sanctis (none on Clare). 85 86

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Sentences reject this suggestion.91 They instead propose 1239 as a more satisfactory date when he might have attended that year’s chapter meeting in Rome. They must acknowledge, however, the story’s probable fictiveness since there is no independent evidence for Alexander of Hales’ presence in central Italy in that year or any other outside the story which Battista Alfani incorporated into her vita of Clare.92 The evidence for Alexander’s sermon to the Clarisses is ultimately both circular and circumstantial. Moreover, the silence of the thirteenth-century sources, including the early lives of Giles of Assisi, renders it unlikely that this incident actually occurred as recounted in Battista’s vita. Not only did Clare’s Latin Legend fail to mention the incident, but there is no record of it in her canonization process. Her community exerted a special effort to remember their abbess’ teaching and actions, so it seems likely that one sister would have mentioned Alexander’s visit and Giles’ interruption if it had happened.93 To claim that Alexander’s visit to San Damiano never occurred should not suggest that Battista Alfani, Bartolomeo of Pisa, or the anonymous compiler of the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals invented the episode or presented a story they considered false. It is most likely that oral and written traditions conflated the story. It is fairly easy to imagine how a reference to an unnamed English theologian came to be associated with Alexander of Hales, the Order’s most famous English master. A possible genealogy might look something like this. The thirteenth-century sources for Clare’s life refer to her appreciation of learned preaching. Reports of these educated friars and their sermons preached at San Damiano survived in oral tradition among the sisters. One of these stories became attached to the life of Giles of Assisi by the middle of the fourteenth century, although the lack of references to the episode in his earliest biographies makes his actual

91 Papini was a Conventual Franciscan and successor to Giovanni Sbaraglia in the Order’s historical projects (Sbaraglia prepared the Supplementum to Wadding’s Annales Minorum). Nicolò Papini. Index onomasticus Scriptorum universae Franciscanae familiae (1828) quoted in Magister Alexander de Hales, Glossa in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, I (Quarachi: Collegio S. Bonaventurae, 1951), p. 55*. 92 Alexander had visited Rome and the papal court in 1230 before his profession as a friar. Glossa, 74*. Their interpretation reveals, however, that the fourteenth-century readers may have recognized Alexander as the protagonist. 93 One of Clare’s companions, Sister Filippa advised another nun: “Tu che hai bona memoria, tiene bene a mente quello che la madonna [Chiara] dice.” See PC 3:21.

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participation uncertain. A brief version of the story focusing on Giles’ involvement was recorded in the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals. At least by the last quarter of the fourteenth century, some versions of this story were assigning Alexander of Hales’ name to the anonymous master in theology. Nonetheless, Bartolomeo of Pisa seems to have been reluctant to trust his sources since he fails to confirm the Irrefragable Doctor’s participation by naming him directly as the Master of Theology. Battista may have known the story from Bartolomeo’s text, an unknown chronicle, from surviving oral traditions about Clare, or even a combination of these possibilities. She could have included it in her vita because it was now a standard story (although then we would expect to find it in other translations or adaptations of the legend), but it also seems possible that Battista was interested in presenting a certain image of Clare. The historicity of this story matters for understanding how some late medieval Clarisses viewed their eponymous founder as a role model. It is certainly true that medieval authors and their readers were more concerned with the meaning of the hagiographical story than its grounding in historical facts. The fourteenth-century histories used the story of Alexander and Brother Giles to illustrate the virtues of humility and obedience. They focused on the interchange between the two friars with the result that the story may have functioned as a commentary on what should be the proper role of learning in the Order. The convenient juxtaposition of unlearned Brother Giles and Master Alexander of Hales is so exemplary that it must have been used as an exempla. While Battista may have relied on earlier written accounts of the story for a general outline, her Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare gave a changed meaning to the event’s significance. In the fourteenth-century chronicles, Clare’s participation in the sermon was an afterthought. She came to the center, however, when the story was part of the narrative of her life. In Battista’s legend the presence of the famous Alexander of Hales and the saintly Brother Giles serve to draw attention to a story in which Clare played an important role. Yet Battista’s text not only changed the impact of the story in comparison with these accounts, it also altered earlier readings of Clare’s life. Whereas the thirteenth-century Latin Legend had emphasized her silence and enclosure, Battista challenged this image by presenting Clare as a vocal reformer who participated in the friars’ debates concerning their institutional self-formation and identity as Franciscan Friars Minor.

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The Clarisses read the account of Alexander of Hales’ sermon at San Damiano after Battista’s paraphrased translation of the chapter on Clare’s love for preaching in the Latin Legend. The theme was her eagerness to listen to sermons. Battista translated: Through the most fervent zeal which Saint Clare had for constant prayer and meditation, she reached the highest level of contemplation in a short time. Because contemplation nourished her and fed her with divine words, that blessed mother was greatly desirous to hear the words of God through holy preachers.94

Following the Latin Legend’s narrative, she first told how Clare provided preachers for the sisters’ spiritual edification. Next Battista recorded how her delight in sermons was so great that one time the Christ Child appeared standing next to her while Brother Philip of Atri preached to the nuns. Last, she described how Clare famously achieved the friars’ return when they withdrew from the women’s communities and refused to provide spiritual care. San Damiano’s abbess threatened a hunger strike unless the Pope ordered the Friars Minor to resume pastoral visits. This last example shows Clare as a leader who acted to protect her followers’ rights; however, in the Latin Legend this fairly short chapter more readily invokes the nuns’ role as passive listeners to clerical authority. In its description of a sermon preached at San Damiano, the nuns attended silently to their preachers. Benefits accrued from listening to sermons were personal and internal. Thus, the thirteenth-century legend described Clare’s reaction to preaching in individual terms. Although she was not educated in the liberal arts, [Clare] nevertheless enjoyed listening to the sermons of those who were, because she believed that a nucleus lay hidden in the text that she could subtly perceive and enjoy with relish. She knew what to take out of the sermon of any preacher that might be profitable to the soul.95

It presents Clare as receptor, not actor. Although medieval religious women often explicated texts to each other and engaged in other shared intellectual activities, this dimension of community life is missing.96 94 Alfani, Vita et Leggenda, 29.2, pp. 206–207. Compare LCl 37 and VLCl 1115– 1144. 95 LCl 37 (quotation from CAED, p. 311). 96 Scholastic disputations on the ability of women to teach (for example, by Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent) although basically refuting the possibility, did allow women to teach other women or children within cloister walls. For a discussion of these

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The Latin text’s depiction of preaching within the convent walls stressed the differences between the preachers and the sisters in other ways as well. Most notably, it focused on the women’s enclosure. Although the rule of the Friars Minor required that visitors to the nuns’ convents must remain at all times in the sight of their companion, the Latin Legend did not refer to the presence of Philip’s companion or other friars who might live near to San Damiano to provide spiritual care to the sisters. Their absence from the text underscores the sisters’ enclosure and separation from the world and also from the Friars Minor’s concerns. In the vernacular life, Battista’s addition of the story about Alexander of Hales and Brother Giles refocused this message. The story represents the more frequent contact between the friars and sisters that the prescriptive sources readily admit. It is striking that this confrontation is staged before the women and that it is Clare who instructs the brothers about Francis’ attitude toward learning. Her explanation of Francis’ hopes that academic learning would yield to divine inspiration and devotion proclaims her authority to speak about the Franciscans’ apostolic vocation.97 Her commentary is noteworthy given the friars’ long-standing opposition to pastoral responsibilities and the difficulty the thirteenth-century Franciscan Order had faced over determining what it meant for women to live out a vocation inspired by the ideals of Francis and Clare. Perhaps the Clarisses who read Battista’s legend might have paused over the closing sentences where Clare offered a critique of Alexander’s and Giles’ encounter. She was not silent but spoke directly to the friars who were assigned to San Damiano to provide spiritual care to the women. Enclosure did not isolate her or her sisters from the Friars Minor. Battista’s vernacular legend thus reflects the historical Clare who regularly commented on how both the friars and sisters could achieve Francis’ ideals in the communal lives. This story’s presence in Battista’s text thus does two things. It empowered its female readers by inserting Clare into the center of debates about the nature of Franciscan life in contrast to her official hagiographical disputations, see Alcuin Blamires, “Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints’ Lives,” Viator 26 (1995): 135–152. 97 The story of Francis granting permission to Anthony of Padua to begin a school of theology as long as it did not go against the spirit of the rule reflects an idea similar to Clare’s commentary, see Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, AF III, p. 132. The authenticity of this letter had been challenged (see Felice Accrocca, “Nodi problematici,” pp. 593–597), but at the least, this characterization of Francis’ views was accepted in some circles at least by the fourteenth century.

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image. It also established a positive model of interaction between the friars and sisters which was lacking throughout the Latin Legend. Moreover, Clare’s proclamation that Francis had wanted academic learning to yield to humility reminds the brethren that contemplation, the defining characteristic of the sisters’ life, was an important part of the Franciscan charism. Franciscan men and women might live out their vocations in different ways, but ultimately they were inspired by and responsible to the same ideal. This image of Clare would have had particular resonance for the nuns at Monteluce who were Battista’s primary audience. The assertion of a mutual commitment to living out the Poverello’s ideals was the lived experience of their community at the heart of the Observant Reform movement in central Italy. Monteluce helped spread the spiritual and intellectual ideas of the Observant movement through their scriptorium and in partnership with the friars at nearby Monteripido.98 While the friars preached, the enclosed nuns copied the texts—including many manuscripts of the Rule of Saint Clare—that promoted reform and guided spiritual life within both male and female communities in the Franciscan Order.99 Thus, when Clare told the friars that Alexander’s humility in yielding to Giles fulfilled Francis’ intention that academic learning would always yield to divine grace, this also alluded to the goal of the fifteenth-century Observant Clarisses whose enclosed life combined contemplation and intellectual endeavor, and above all, was rooted in Franciscan humilitas. Battista Alfani’s representation of Clare empowered women to speak out about the nature of their vocation. Her Clare was not merely “the teacher of the unlearned” as the thirteenth-century Versified Legend had claimed, but an important model for the sisters of how they should live out the vocation and spiritual ideal which they shared with the friars.

98 Nicolini, p. 103. See the same article pp. 113–115 for a list of surviving manuscripts from Monteluce’s scriptorium. 99 Monteluce was certainly one of the communities Gabriella Zarri had in mind when she write “A chi esamini la vita religiosa femminile tra Quattro e Cinquecento non può sfuggire il fatto che le monache francescane si impongono per devozione e cultura. Significativamente è il ramo femminile che fornisce all’ordine quella letteratura devota in volgare che il ramo maschile produce in quantità e qualità irrilevante.” In Le Sante Vive: Cultura e religiosità femminile prima età moderna (Turin: Rosenberg e Sellier, 1990), p. 40.

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Conclusion To a great extent, the writings of Caterina Vigri and Battista Alfani offer traditional ideas about the Clarisses as religious woman. Prayer and contemplation were meant to be the main focus of their lives. Moreover, the virtue of humility was praised above others, an idea going back to Thomas of Celano’s description of the Order of San Damino in his earlier biography. However, these texts show that the Observant Clarisses were not passive recipients of the friars’ spiritual direction. They also did not simply repeat standard theological themes, but reworked them in ways that gave meaning to their lives as enclosed sisters. Indeed, their status as enclosed contemplatives was precious to them as well as critical to their understanding of their status within the Franciscan Order. These writing circulated among the Clarisses, in conjunction with works that memorialized both contemporary sisters and the history of their Order stretching back to Clare and San Damiano. An illustration by Sister Dorotea Broccardi, Fra Mariano’s copyist in Volterra illustrates this idea.100 In brilliant watercolor—reds, blues and browns—Dorotea created a sort of Franciscan family tree. It represents the spiritually powerful idea of Francis as founder of the female order with the assistance of popes Innocent IV and Urban IV, the authors of two of the Franciscan rules for women.101 Mariano’s narrative certainly credited Gregory IX for helping Francis write San Damiano’s Form of Life, so it is somewhat surprising that Dorotea did not represent them. Nearly three-quarters of the image, however, is devoted to the women. Clare, of course, is at the center, holding a staff representing her leadership of the Order. This is a change from her usual iconographic representation with a monstrance or a lily.102 Around her are representations of the women in the chronicle with scrolls identifying each figure. The noble women wear crowns. Her detail is fantastic—their

Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacci, Ms. 6146, f. 1v. A scroll under them represents the papal declaration approving the female order: “Innocentius .4. aprobamus ordinem pauperum dominarum sic confirmamus Urbanus .4.” 102 The monstrance referred to the story that Clare had raised a monstrance with a consecrated host, thus driving the Saracens from Assisi (see LCl 14 and PC 9:4), while a lily is the tradition symbol of a female virgin saint. For the development of Clare’s iconography, see William Cook, “The Early Images of St Clare of Assisi,” in Clare of Assisi: A Medieval and Modern Woman, pp. 15–29 and Servus Gieben, “L’iconografia di Chiara d’Assisi,” in Chiara d’Assisi: Atti del XX Convegno, pp. 187–236. 100

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cheeks are blushed and Dorotea drew the bare toes of Clare, Ortulana and Felice of Milan. Remember here the papal protests concerning the Sorores Minores who did not wear shoes! The women who do not have individual scrolls are the sisters who were martyred in Acre in 1291.103 Dorotea has indicated their status with terrible looking knives over their head and blood dripping onto their faces. Her image obviously was designed to inspire the sisters’ devotion, but it also recalls that earlier vision of Elena Enselmini in which the friars and sisters were mixed together in heaven. Dorotea’s image is not chronologically precise—it is more of a vision really than a family tree. It mixes together Franciscan woman from the earliest days of the Order with more recent women. Her drawing thus helps to explain why the fifteenth-century Franciscan Clarisses understand their history as shaped by an institutional and spiritual network. In part it is obvious: they used their own experience as a template for constructing the past. Another is more complex. Just as the friars privileged Francis, so now too were the sisters privileging Clare as a spiritual authority. They were seeking a connection to their origins in good reform tradition. They created a female-centered model that promoted women’s spiritual equality with the friars. Certainly, the stories in Mariano’s treatise combined with the sisters’ writings show how the enclosed women all along were preserving their history and using it to shape their identity as Franciscans. Although the thirteenth-century institutional network shaped by Francis and Clare was an imagined one, a real spiritual network grew from that point onward.

103

Mariano, 252–259.

CONCLUSION

THE TRUE DAUGHTERS OF FRANCIS AND CLARE In his history of the Order of Saint Clare, Mariano of Florence wrote that Francis was reluctant to govern the growing Damianite movement because he worried that scandal would result if the friars appeared overly familiar with women.1 This was why Francis had cursed Philip Longo and called him an affliction when that friar had accepted the office of visitator to the Poor Ladies. In Mariano’s judgment, however, Francis had been incorrect. Certainly [ Francis] was a most holy man and one who was chosen by God. Often he was inspired by a prophetic spirit, but not always. [. . .] It seems that on this occasion God did not reveal to Saint Francis the great fruits that the Order [of Friars Minor] would raise and produce in God’s Church. For this reason, he was greatly concerned from the beginning, on account of their very great zeal, that his friars should not give even the smallest scandal to the world because of their way of life.2

But then Mariano reconsidered Francis’ failure to recognize the future glory of the Order of Saint Clare. Perhaps he was prophetic and had foreseen the tumult that would come to the Order during Bonaventure’s generalship when the sisters had tried to require the friars to provide pastoral care to their communities.3 These reflections on Francis’ prophetic gifts now appear unintentionally amusing. One can picture Mariano struggling with how to reconcile Francis’ pastoral resistance and the sisters’ audacity with the Order he said benefited from the friars’ guidance. Tension between the Friars Minor and Clarisses confronts anyone studying female Franciscanism in the later Middle Ages. Rather than repeating the common narrative of Clare’s apparent triumph in the final days of her life, which was then disappointingly quashed through the efforts of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the leadership of the Franciscan Mariano, 39. Ibid., 41. 3 Ibid., 42–43 which begins: “El secondo respecto forse fu che illustrato di spirito prophetico previdde lo scandolo che doveva venire nel ordine.” 1 2

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Order, this book has sought to demonstrate how relentlessly the image of Clare of Assisi—as historical woman, as author, and as saint—was contested by the different groups who had a stake in the sisters’ identity as Franciscans. I have attempted to show how the women combined a strategy of boldness on the one hand, and deliberate accommodation on the other to shape the debates over what it meant for enclosed women to live out a Franciscan vocation. The sisters’ varied approach began with Clare herself and other sisters during the thirteenth century and continued through to the fifteenth-century Observant reforms. The historical importance of Clare of Assisi resides in her efforts to translate Francis’ ideals into a form of life for enclosed women. She argued with successive popes to gain the right for her community to live in complete evangelical poverty. She encouraged other communities to do the same and even sent sisters from San Damiano to help them do so. Her most daring act was to adapt the Form of Life given to the sisters by Francis into a religious constitution that demonstrated how they could live out his spiritual ideals. Certainly his affection for her was important for Clare’s determination, but it is striking that she tried to extend San Damiano’s example in spite of opposition. (It also is both bold and remarkable that Clare did these things even when the Friars Minor were accepting modifications to their way of life.) Both by her personal example and through the guidance of her rule, Clare gave her followers a strong model for shaping their lives as Franciscans. However, this was a model of spiritual authority, not institutional formation in a proper sense. It is a clear overstatement of the evidence to suggest that Clare was the founder of a religious order during the first half of the thirteenth century. Credit for the institutionalization of the female Franciscan Order belongs to Pope Gregory IX, as his medieval biography claimed.4 He united Clarian houses, with those influenced primarily by the friars. Indeed for the majority of the women affiliated with the early Franciscan Order, a tie to Clare was less important than one to Francis and the brothers. This interest in Clare begins to change widely only in the fourteenth century; however, this does not mean that the earlier sisters were not also concerned with their identity as closed women attached to the Franciscan Order. In the 1260s the sisters boldly tried to bind the Friars Minor to them. When this strategy failed, the women organized a protest before the

4 “Vita Gregorii papae IX,” cited in Alberzoni, “Sorores Minores e autorità ecclesiastica,” n. 90.

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papal curia after a new rule had been proposed for them which did not guarantee pastoral care from the friars. Likewise, during the Observant reform movement, the Clarisses continued to seek control over their own formation. They responded to the friars’ call to return to their spiritual origins, but when some sisters were not satisfied with the way the Rule of Saint Clare was presented to them, they expropriated Clare’s intentions on their own and insisted on a more literal observance of their first rule. Other Observant Clarisses also set about reclaiming Clare as a role model for the way they were currently living out their vocation. In all of these cases, the authority for the sisters’ assertiveness came from understanding themselves a part of authentic ideals of the Franciscan movement. Yet even as the Clarisses were trying to control their institutional identity, they also claimed, even proclaimed, their dependence on the Order of Friars Minor. Clare always insisted on a connection with the friars because she understood that evangelical poverty was the core of their shared vocation and the ideals of the Franciscan movement. However, for most sisters, poverty was not a motivating force as much as a secure relationship with the brothers was. Her followers were willing to accept papal determinations of their legislation, for example the Urbanist Rule of 1263, when they were assured that they would receive in turn pastoral care from the Friars Minor. To some extent their dependence resulted from the fact that an order of religious women could not be autonomous. But the Clarisses’ acceptance, even desire for, pastoral aid and oversight also resulted from their sense of identity within the Franciscan movement. Mariano’s description of the Clarisses as “true daughters of Saint Francis and Saint Clare” is ultimately more subtle than he would have realized. It signals the sisters’ loyalties both to the Order of Friars Minor and the Franciscan movement generally (represented by Saint Francis), as well as to Clare, the radical religious visionary who had shaped their Order. This book has sought to make two general contributions not only to our knowledge about the Order of Saint Clare, but also to our understanding of the Franciscan movement in the Middle Ages. First, by concentrating on the complicated history of the sisters’ reception of Clare and her Form of Life, this project evaluates how the sisters invoked the authority of the early movement to influence their institutional formation and relationship with the Friars Minor. It shows that many Clarisses were interested in a more literal reading of their spiritual origins than the friars were, an indication of their self-interest in determining meant for women to live out a Franciscan vocation.

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Second, by considering periods of conflict between the friars and nuns, it demonstrates that the women were continually implicated in the friars’ on-going processes of institutional self-definition. Since the friars’ understanding of their vocation—particularly their responsibility to Francis and his Rule—was not static but rather always under dispute, their conception of the women’s place in the Franciscan Order also was changeable. Tension between the two groups often resulted from specific conflicts about pastoral ministry or the sisters’ obligations to their rule. This book demonstrates, however, that the conceptual issue of what it meant for women to be members of an order inspired by Francis of Assisi and dedicated to apostolic poverty and mendicant preaching was always larger than those practical concerns. Of course, we should ask to what extent did their identity as Franciscans matter to these women? Is this question about spiritual identity too modern? Scholars who have worked on female religious life during the early and high Middle Ages (prior to the rise of the mendicant orders) have suggested that it mattered little. Enclosed women had more in common with each other than with the male members of their Orders. This argument makes good sense and certainly a comparison of Clarissan houses with Dominican or Vallombrosian ones, among others, would find many points of similarity.5 However, as scholars have rewritten the history of medieval religious movements to include women, it is clear that this idea is untenable when it comes to issues of spiritual identity.6 By this phrase, I do not mean identity as constructed by what the women pray or read for their devotions. Rather, it is in their own writings, as well as their institutional struggles to affiliate with the Friars Minor, that it becomes clear that membership mattered greatly. Dorotea Broccardi and the other women who contributed to Mariano’s chronicle knew this well. It is this sense of Franciscan identity rooted in historical tradition that contributed to the late medieval rediscovery of the historical Clare of Assisi, foundress at last of the eponymous monastic Order.

5 The studies by Lowe, Thomas and Winston-Allen cited in the previous chapter are notable for their comparative focus that demonstrate similarities across religious orders. 6 Constance Berman has noted that there often seems to be a higher standard of proof for identifying women as part of a movement or religious order, see her “Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?” Church History 68 (1999): 824–864.

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INDEX

abbess: John of Capistrano on role of, 140–42; Caterina Vigri on religious guidance from, 171 Abelard, Peter, 31 Acre martyrs, 186 Ad ea quae felicem (Eugenius IV), 131–32 Ad statum singulorum (Eugenius IV), 124–27, 131 Agnes of Assisi: correspondence with Clare of Assisi, 9; enters religious life, 22–23; and establishment of Arcella, 91, 92n.18; familial opposition in hagiography of, 22–23, 107; at Monticelli convent, 27; on Privilege of Poverty for Monticelli, 34–35; refuses to join Hugolino’s confederation, 29; visits from Brother Elias requested by, 37; vita in Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, 87 Agnes of Prague: canonization of, 10n.29; Clare of Assisi’s letters to, 9, 10; Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life adopted by community of, 44n.102; Clare of Assisi urges her to emulate Rachel, 39; exemption to practice evangelical poverty granted, 39; Gregory IX rejects request to follow Francis’s Form of Life, 19, 38; Mariano of Florence’s biography of, 147; seeks guidance from Clare of Assisi, 19–20, 24, 33, 38–39; status conferred by, 114 Albert of Sarteano, 125, 133, 134 Alberzoni, Maria Pia, 8, 28, 29, 37, 38 Alexander IV, Pope (Rainaldo dei Conti di Segni): and approval of Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life, 41; bulls against women falsely claiming to be Sorores Minores, 57; and canonization of Clare of Assisi, 47–48, 49, 50; as Cardinal Protector, 32; at Clare of Assisi’s deathbed, 51; continues to act as protector of both friars and sisters after election, 70; and Gregory IX’s strategy for San Damiano, 32; and Innocent IV’s rule of 1247, 40; Latin Legend commissioned by, 49n.126, 171; letter to sisters of San Damiano, 67; on poverty, 51

Alexander of Hales, 176–84 Alfani, Battista, 172–73; Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare, 172–84; on prayer at Monteluce, 162–63; as scribe and writer, 173; Caterina Vigri’s The Seven Spiritual Weapons and, 171 Angela of Aquila, Sister (Clarisse at Santa Eucaristia in Aquila), 164 Angelis gaudium (Gregory IX), 19 Angelo, Brother, 23, 35 Angelo Clareno, 86, 108, 119 Anthony of Padua, 90, 93–94, 97 Antonia of Florence, 149–50, 164 Antonio d’Assisi, Fra, 162 Aquinas, Thomas, 170 Arcella, convent of: Anthony of Padua dies at, 94; destruction and rebuilding of, 92, 92n.19; Elena Enselmini’s incorruptible body at, 90; establishment of, 91–92; friars at, 93–97; Mariano of Florence on, 91; religious orientation of, 92–93 Armstrong, Regis, 65, 66n.32 Assisi Compilation, The, 101 Augustine, Saint, 171 Balvina, Sister (sister at San Damiano), 28 Bartholomeo da Gallicano, 98–99, 113 Bartoli Langeli, Attilio, 10, 13–14 Bartolomea, Sister (sister at Arcella in Padua), 94 Bartolomeo of Pisa: and Elena Enselmini, 90, 95. See also Book of Conformities Battista da Varano, 158 Beatrice (sister of Clare of Assisi), 53–54, 105n.63 Bembo, Illuminata, 161–62, 166, 167 Benedetta, Abbess (at San Damiano), 14 Benedictine Rule, 40, 41 Benedict XII, Pope, 84, 119 Benvenuta, Sister (sister at San Damiano), 53 Benvenuti Papi, Anna, 101, 104 Bernardino of Siena, 125, 128–29, 137, 137n.49, 165

216

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Bernard of Quintavalle, 22 Blessing (Clare of Assisi), 9, 10, 174 Bonaventure of Bagnorea: attitude toward enclosed women, 63–70; on hostilities between friars and sisters, 58, 75–77; influence on Clarisses’ religious formation, 157; and Isabelle of France, 63–64; letter to sisters of San Damiano from, 64–65, 67; Major Legend, 62, 62n.16, 73–74, 144; Observant Clarisses’ knowledge of, 157, 159; On the Perfection of Life Addressed to the Sisters, 64, 64n.24, 65–67, 159; on prayer, 159; reform of Franciscan Order of, 59–63, 84; relationship of friars and sisters stabilizes during tenure of, 83–85; on request for spiritual guidance from Longchamp, 165; Sancia of Mallorca’s knowledge of, 119; Soliloquy, 68; The Soul’s Journey to God, 65; Tree of Life, 167; The Triple Way, 65, 68, 167; and understanding of Clare of Assisi, 65, 84–85; visit to Italy of 1259, 64 Book of Conformities (Bartolomeo of Pisa): Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare draws on, 179; on Clare of Assisi in founding of Franciscan Second Order, 87; on cults of royal women, 114; on Elena Enselmini’s visions, 95, 97; on establishment of Arcella, 91n.16; on Giles of Assisi and sermon preached at San Damiano, 178–79, 181; Mariano of Florence draws on, 144, 146 Book of the Passion (Eustochia of Messina), 158 Borri, Gianmario, 26–27 Brentano, Robert, 98, 101 breviaries, 160–62 Broccardi, Dorothea (Clarisse at San Lino in Volterra), 146, 185–86, 190 Brooke, Rosalind and Christopher, 4–5 Brufani, Stefano, 10 Bruzelius, Caroline, 119 Calafato, Eustochia, of Messina, 149, 152–54, 158 Cavalca, Domenico, 173 Canonization Process of Clare of Assisi: as source for Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare, 174;

manuscript evidence for, 175, 175n.76; occurs in Assisi, 48; sisters’ testimony at, 14, 27, 42, 43, 49–50, 52–54, 180 Carpino, 27 Cerchi, Umiliana, 88, 111 chaplains, 76 Chiappini, Aniceto, 105, 115n.107 Chiara degli Ubaldini (abbess at Monticelli in Florence), 146n.89 Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, 10, 87, 144, 178, 180, 181 Clare of Assisi biographical facts: arrives at San Damiano, 23; becomes follower of Francis of Assisi, 21–22; deathbed visions of, 46–47; family attempts to retrieve, 22–23; family background of, 21; funeral of, 45; leaves home to join Francis, 21–22; Brother Leo’s relationship with, 13; letter from San Damiano announcing death of, 45–46; said to be exception to Francis of Assisi’s misogyny, 2–3; translation of body of, 84 as founder of religious order: as antagonist of Gregory IX (Hugolino), 29, 33; attempts to extend manner of life of San Damiano, 19–20, 188; attempts to found other houses on model of San Damiano, 27–28; claim as overstating the evidence, 188; Clare’s writings and view of, 14, 15; Damianite sisters move away from ideals of, 59; direct influence as limited, 15; effects of normalization as, 113–14; idea as established by middle of fourteenth century, 87; as inspiration not literal model for Order of Saint Clare, 79; Mariano of Florence on, 6–7; motivation of claims of direct foundation, 26; narratives of status as, 2–4; network of Clarian houses, 28; newer historiography on marginalization of, 3–4, 7; and Order of San Damiano, 29, 31–44; in organization of other houses, 92; as partner in foundation of Franciscan “Second” Order, 3; as role model, 114, 181; Sancia of Mallorca takes as model, 115,

index 118–19; two views of foundational role of, 4, 20–21; Urban IV’s foundation of Order of Saint Clare reduces to figurehead, 4, 15–16 image of and traditions about: in Bartholomeo da Gallicano’s vision of company of virgins, 99, 113; in Dorothea Broccardi’s Franciscan family tree, 185–86; circulation of story of, 107; image as contested, 4, 188; legends refashion narrative of, 48–54; in oral tradition, 85–86; rediscovery in later Middle Ages, 16, 123, 190; shifting interpretations of, 175–84; in Spiritualist tradition, 86; three traditions about, 85–86 legacy of: assessing, 4–8; historical importance of, 188 practices attributed to: asceticism, 52–54, 150; prays at nones, 163 on relationship of friars and sisters: on close connection of, 16, 33, 42–44, 54, 57, 89, 175, 189; on common spiritual origins of, 73, 96; hunger strike threatened to preserve pastoral care, 36, 51, 182; tension between Franciscan Order and, 45, 55 religious ideals of: on Agnes of Prague and evangelical poverty, 19–20, 38–39; on evangelical poverty as essential to Franciscan vocation, 3, 5, 9, 38–39, 42–44, 54, 63, 188, 189; on Francis of Assisi’s ideals as her own, 25; on iter perfectionis, 38–39 as saint, 44–54; canonization of, 15, 48, 49; feast of, 48 writings about: Bonaventure on, 65, 67, 84–85; by Clarisses, 171–84; John of Capistrano on, 156; Mariano of Florence’s biography of, 147; Thomas of Celano on, 34, 48–49, 67, 74 writings of, 9 (See also Form of Life (Rule of Saint Clare); Testament of Saint Clare; Blessing), 9, 10, 174; critical edition of, 5; preservation of, 85 “Clarian Question,” 8 Clarisses. See Order of Saint Clare Clement IV, Pope, 10, 80, 81 Clement V, Pope, 116 Colette of Corbie, 133–34, 140–41, 143

217

Colonna, Giacomo, 108–9, 110, 111, 112 Colonna, Giovanni, 99, 109–10, 111, 112 Colonna, Margherita, 108–13; in Bartholomeo da Gallicano’s vision of company of virgins, 99, 112, 113; brother Giacomo as spiritual advisor of, 108–9, 110; death of, 109; as family saint, 108, 113; love of poverty of, 112; and Filippa Mareri, 108; Clarissan habit worn by, 111; as posthumous Franciscan sister, 112–13; Praenestina community of, 110–11; Rome visited by, 111–12; at San Silvestro in Capite, 112–13; visions of, 109 Constitution of Narbonne, 60–62, 64, 69 Coppoli, Cecilia (Clarisse at Santa Lucia in Foligno), 149, 151, 152 Corpus Christi, convent of (Ferrara), 166, 167 Corpus Christi, convent of (Mantua), 128–29, 131, 132, 136, 137, 150 Corpus Domini, convent of (Bologna), 159, 166 Costanza, Suor (Piccarda Donati), 147–48 Cunegunde (Kinga) of Poland, 114 Dante, 147–48 De Conditoris omnium (Gregory IX), 19 Divine Office, 160, 166 Dominican Order, 68, 74n.67 Donati, Piccarda (Suor Costanza), 147–48 Elia dei Pulci (sister at Monticelli in Florence), 148 Elias, Brother, 13, 20, 36–37, 37n.65, 38, 46 Elizabeth of Hungary, 116 enclosure: Antonia of Florence on lack of, 150; Bonaventure’s attitude toward enclosed women, 63–70; Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life on, 52; Clarisses as enclosed contemplatives, 142, 158–71, 185; as female virtue, 67; John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare on, 139, 142, 156; Latin Legend emphasizes, 183; in Mariano of Florence’s history of Clarisses, 146; of Order of Saint Clare, 111; in papal program for Damianite confederation, 32; in Urbanist Rule, 58, 79

218

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Enselmini, Elena, 90–97; and Dorothea Broccardi’s Franciscan family tree, 186; incorruptible body of, 90; visions of, 94–97 Ermentrude of Bruges, 9 Eugenius IV, Pope: Ad ea quae felicem, 131–32; Ad statum singulorum, 124–27, 131; calls for reform of Order of Saint Clare, 124–27; on harshness of Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life, 143; and John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare, 136, 137; John of Capistrano’s reforms supported by, 125, 132, 134; Ordinis tui, 143, 155; resistance to reform among Clarisses, 131–32; Vinea Domini, 125 Eustochia Calafato of Messina, 149, 152–54, 158 evangelical poverty: Agnes of Prague granted exemption to practice, 39; Alexander IV on, 51; in Bonaventure’s letter to sisters of San Damiano, 67; Bonaventure’s reforms and, 61, 62, 63; Clare of Assisi on central importance of, 3, 5, 9, 38–39, 42–44, 54, 63, 188, 189; and Clare of Assisi’s canonization, 47; Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life on, 41–44; Clare urges on Agnes of Prague, 20, 38–39; in Colette of Corbie’s rule, 133; Margherita Colonna’s love of, 112; diversity of observance of, 78, 79; doubt that women could live without means, 42; Franciscan Order and women’s penitential movement share commitment to, 30; Franciscan Order’s shift toward moderation, 36, 41–42, 43, 44, 49, 55, 188; Francis of Assisi on women religious and, 24, 31; Francis of Assisi preaches, 1, 21; John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare on, 138, 140; in legends of St. Clare, 50, 51–52; papacy opposes expansion of, 78; at San Damiano, 12, 25, 78; San Damiano community continually seeks reconfirmation of privilege of, 82–83; and Santa Chiara in Naples, 118; Santa Lucia convent desires to practice, 151, 152; sisters of San Damiano find it difficult to live according to, 23–24; Spiritual Franciscans on, 115 Exiit qui seminat (Nicholas III), 83

Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare ( John of Capistrano), 127, 136–43, 154, 155–56, 160 Exposition on the Franciscan Rule (Alexander of Hales), 179 fasting, 53, 135, 140, 143, 150, 155 female Franciscan movement: Bonaventure’s attitude toward enclosed women, 63–70; Bonaventure’s reforms and, 63, 84; Clare of Assisi in shaping of, 20–21; competing forms from late 1230s, 19; Damianite network as institutional framework for female Franciscan Order, 94; diversity in early, 113; Francis of Assisi has little to do with organizing, 31; Francis of Assisi’s opposition to a female order, 25; Jacques de Vitry on, 1–2, 26; John of Perugia on, 1–2; Mariano of Florence’s history of, 144–55; material support required by Urbanist rule, 78; models of female Franciscan identity, 114–20; as more confederation than hierarchical system, 142; papal efforts in institutionalization of, 7, 15–16, 21, 54–55, 83, 88; princesses in, 73, 73n.60, 114; rejection of Urbanist rule in, 79–81; strategies for shaping their Franciscan vocation, 188; and Urbanist rule, 77–83; variety of rules for, 78. See also Order of Saint Clare; Order of San Damiano; relationship of friars and sisters Field, Sean, 64, 82 Fifteen Steps toward Perfection (Vigri), 167 Filippa, Sister (sister at San Damiano), 43, 51, 53 Filippa de’ Medici (Clarisse at Monticelli), 148, 164 Floresenda da Palena, 114–15, 120 Fontecolombo, hermitage at, 100–101 Form of Life (Rule of Saint Clare) (Clare of Assisi): Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare on, 174; Antonia of Florence founds community that professes, 150; Assisi parchment of, 41n.89; becomes known as Rule of Saint Clare, 123; Bonaventure’s reforms and suppression of, 63; bull approving, 9–10; in Clare of Assisi’s writings, 9; Clare’s image based on, 123; Clare’s

index struggle to gain approval for, 6, 40; Clarisses desire literal reading of, 136, 150, 151, 152, 154, 189; on connection between Friars Minor and women’s community, 42–44, 54; as controversial text for Franciscan Order, 86; on enclosure and silence, 52; Eugenius IV on harshness of, 143; Eustochia of Messina founds community professing, 153–54; on evangelical poverty, 41–44; fifteenthcentury manuscripts of, 155, 175, 184; as foundation for Clare’s later spiritual authority, 15; Franciscan Order’s opposition to, 44; Francis of Assisi’s Form of Life referred to in, 24; Francis of Assisi’s Testament incorporated in, 25; as hybrid text, 41; Innocent IV approves, 3, 41, 43, 51, 81; John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare on, 136–43; John of Capistrano supports adoption of, 133–34; legends of St. Clare ignore, 51; Mariano of Florence on, 91, 126, 127, 154–55; Monteluce manuscript of, 175, 184; motivation of sisters’ desire to return to, 149; Nicholas of Osimo’s commentary on, 143, 175; and Observant Reform, 123, 129, 131, 133–36, 188; and protest against Urbanist rule, 80; as radical formula for female monastic community, 43; rediscovery of, 123; San Damiano community continually seeks reconfirmation of, 82–83; San Guglielmo, Ferrara, professes, 132; at Santa Chiara in Naples, 118; at Santa Croce convent, 120; Santa Lucia in Foligno fights for right to profess, 151–52; scarcity of the text, 131, 151, 153–54; some convents continue to profess, 78; Testament of Saint Clare’s conformity with, 12; in Volterra manuscript, 155; women’s concern over harshness of, 135–36, 140 Form of Life (Francis of Assisi): Agnes of Prague seeks permission to adopt, 19, 24; Clare of Assisi adapts for women, 188; Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life incorporates account of, 24, 41, 81; Innocent IV on, 40; legends of Saint Clare fail to cite, 50; San Pietro de Molito and, 105; sisters of Corpus

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Christi, Mantua, seek to profess, 129 Francesca d’Assisi (Clarisse at Santa Chiara in Assisi), 164 Francesca di Giussano (abbess at Corpus Christi in Mantua), 128 Franciscan Order: in Dorothea Broccardi’s Franciscan family tree, 185–86; Francis of Assisi as founder of three orders, 19, 73. See also female Franciscan movement; Observant reform; Order of Friars Minor “Franciscan Question,” 8 Francis of Assisi: Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare on, 174–75; in Bonaventure’s Major Legend, 62, 74; Bonaventure’s reforms and, 60, 61; Clare of Assisi becomes follower of, 21–22; contact between brothers and religious women opposed by, 30–31, 187; Brother Elias’s letter announcing death of, 46; in Elena Enselmini’s visions, 96, 97; and establishment of Arcella, 91, 91n.16; evangelical poverty preached by, 1, 21; female order opposed by, 25; fledgling religious movement associated with, 1; as founder of three orders, 19, 73; as inspiration rather than model, 62, 156; in legends of Saint Clare, 50–51, 50n.132; and Filippa Mareri, 100–101, 102, 105; on Minister General’s duties, 141; misogyny attributed to, 2–3, 74; and San Colpersito convent, 26, 27, 31; takes Clare to San Damiano, 23; Testament, 12, 25, 41, 175; vision of primitive brotherhood of, 1, 36; withdraws from contact with San Damiano, 30–31, 49. See also Form of Life (Francis of Assisi); Later Rule (Francis of Assisi) Friars Minor. See Order of Friars Minor Giles of Assisi, 176–84 Gloriosus Deus (Innocent IV), 51 Gonzaga, Gian Francesco, 128 Gratian, Fra, 142 Gregory IX, Pope (Hugolino dei Segni): Agnes of Prague’s request to follow Francis’s Form of Life rejected by, 19, 38; Angelis gaudium, 19; becomes pope, 31; Clare of Assisi becomes antagonist of, 33; in creation of

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Order of San Damiano, 3–4, 19, 54, 188; De Conditoris omnium, 19; in Elena Enselmini’s visions, 97; incorporates female religious into Franciscan Order, 31–32; on iter perfectionis, 38; on living sine proprio, 35–36; and Filippa Mareri, 105; Privilege of Poverty of 1228, 12, 34; Quo elongati, 35–36, 61; Quoties Cordis, 31–32; regularizes women’s penitential movement, 28–29, 78; and Rule of Saint Clare, 129, 185; visits San Damiano, 34; wants Friars Minor to minister to women’s houses, 29–30; on women falsely claiming to belong to Order of San Damiano, 37–38 Grundmann, Herbert, 25 Haymo of Faversham, 61, 178 Honorius III, Pope, 28 Honorius IV, Pope, 82 Hugolino, Cardinal. See Gregory IX, Pope Humbert of Romans, 74n.67 humility, 23, 67, 89, 166, 181, 184, 185 Innocent III, Pope: oral approval for brothers to live at San Damiano, 23; Privilege of Poverty attributed to, 10–12, 13; rights of asylum granted San Paolo delle Abbadesse by, 22 Innocent IV, Pope: in Dorothea Broccardi’s Franciscan family tree, 185; bulls against women falsely claiming to be Sorores Minores, 37, 57; and canonization of Clare of Assisi, 44, 47–48, 51; Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life approved by, 3, 41, 43, 51, 81; at Clare of Assisi’s funeral, 45; and Franciscan resistance to ministering to women, 39–40; Gloriosus Deus, 51; incorporates new convents in 1246, 39; incorporates no new women’s houses between 1228 and 1245, 36; indulgence granted for visiting San Pietro de Molito, 97–98; opposes female Franciscans living without support, 13; revised constitution for Order of San Damiano, 39, 40, 78 Inter personas (Urban IV), 72 Isabelle of France: Benedict XII’s 1336 Constitution and Rule of, 84; and Bonaventure, 63–64; and Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life in France, 133;

Clarisses prefer her Rule to Urbanist Rule, 80, 81–82; Margherita Colonna’s community professes Rule of (claim by Mariano of Florence), 113; pope approves Rule of, 78; status conferred by, 114 iter perfectionis, 38 Jacopa of Pollicino, 152 Jacopo da Todi, 157 Jacques de Vitry, 1–2, 26 James of Primadizzi, 143 James of the Marches, 125 Johanna of Navarre, 114 John XXII, Pope, 117 John of Capistrano: Antonia of Florence supported by, 150; as canon lawyer, 137, 137n.52; and Clarissan reform, 132–36; Eugenius IV supports reform program of, 125, 132, 134; Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare, 127, 136–43, 154, 155–56, 160; and moderate Observance, 136–43; in origins of Clarissan reform, 128; on reform as matter of legal obligation, 138, 142, 156 John of Parma, 58, 59 John of Perugia, 1–2 John the Spaniard, 26 Jordan of Saxony, 68, 68n.39 Later Rule (Francis of Assisi): Bonaventure’s reforms and, 60, 61; Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life modeled on, 41, 131; Eustochia of Messina adapts for women, 153, 154; and Innocent IV’s rule for Order of San Damiano, 40; John of Capistrano compares Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life with, 139, 142; John of Capistrano’s encyclical on, 137; Martinian Constitution as commentary on, 125; Observant reform promotes, 123, 139; on relationship between friars and women, 30, 36, 69, 75, 85 Latin Legend of Saint Clare: referring to the Privilege of Poverty, 11; Alexander IV commissions, 49n.126, 171; and Alexander of Hales’s sermon at San Damiano, 176, 180; Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare and, 172, 174, 176, 181, 182–83; campaign to promote, 89; on Clare

index of Assisi’s asceticism, 53; as official hagiography, 171–72; prayer, obedience, and humility in model of Clare of, 165; prayer, ritual, and liturgy in model of Clare of, 160; Caterina Vigri’s The Seven Spiritual Weapons and, 171 lay penitents: Clarisses contrasted with, 88–89; literature on, 88n.5; Margherita Colonna’s affinity with, 99, 113; in Padua, 93; San Damiano community and, 23 learning (study), 61, 61n.14, 63, 181, 183 Legend of Perugia, 175 Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare (Alfani), 172–84 Leo, Brother, 13–14, 23, 65, 85 Liber Memorialis (convent of Monteluce), 173 Liber Regiminum Paduae, 91 Longchamp, convent of, 63–64, 78, 80, 81–82, 84, 165 Longo, Philip, 22, 29, 187 Lothario, Brother, 75 Louis of Toulouse, 116, 117 Maddalena, Sister (Clarisse at Corpus Domini in Pesaro), 160 Major Legend of Saint Francis (Bonaventure), 62, 62n.16, 73–74, 144 Malatesta, Paola, 128–29 Maleczek, Werner, 10–13 Mareri, Filippa, 100–108; in Bartholomeo da Gallicano’s vision of company of virgins, 99, 113; Margherita Colonna and, 108; community at San Pietro de Molito, 102–5; community incorporated into Order of San Damiano, 105–6; early life of, 102; enters religious life, 102–3; familial context of sanctity of, 107–8; hagiographical legend of, 101–2; hermitage set up by, 103, 111; lack of formal canonization of, 108; miracles stories of, 106–8; portents of sanctity of, 98; tomb as pilgrimage site, 98 Mareri, Tommaso, 103–4, 107 Margaret of Cortona, 88 Mariano of Florence: aunt fears Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life, 134, 136; biographies of Clarisses of, 147–55; chronicle as means of carrying stories between cloisters, 164; as chronicler,

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144; on Clarisses as “true daughters of Saint Francis and Saint Clare,” 155, 189; on Margherita Colonna, 112; on different rules for women, 113n; on Elena Enselmini, 90–91, 95, 97; on female Franciscan Order forming around Clare of Assisi, 6–7, 120–21; history of the Clarisses of, 144–55; on houses of sisters abandoned during reform disputes, 132; on Observant reform, 126–27; on Sancia of Mallorca, 120; at San Lino convent, Volterra, 145n.83; sources of chronicle of, 144–45; as typical friar, 144 Martinian Constitution, 125 Meda, Felice, 154–55, 186 Medici, Filippa de’, 148, 164 mendicancy: women and, 2. See also evangelical poverty Mental Sorrow of Christ in His Passion, The (Battista da Varano), 158 Messina codex, 13–14, 85, 154, 155 Milloso, Flos (abbess at Santa Maria di Basicò), 153 Mirror of Illumination (Bembo), 167 Mirror of Perfection, 119, 175 monasticism: Order of Saint Clare as almost generically monastic, 88; traditional paradigm of female, 66; women’s in first half of thirteenth century, 25–27. See also enclosure Monteluce, convent of (Perugia): Battista Alfani at, 172–73; Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare and, 184; communal prayer at, 162–63; Gregory IX insists on material support for, 35; Liber Memorialis, 173; liturgical requirements at, 160; living as if they professed Rule of Saint Clare, 155; Mariano of Florence visits, 145; Observant reform at, 131; permission granted to observe Rule of Saint Clare at, 44n.102; prayer books at, 161; refurbishment of church of, 162; scriptorium of, 173, 175, 184; Urban IV’s sister a nun at, 71 Monticelli, convent of (Florence): Agnes of Assisi associated with, 27; Suor Constanza at, 147; Elia dei Pulci’s visions of, 148; exemption from endowment granted to, 35, 44n.102; Filippa de’ Medici at, 148, 164;

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living as if they professed Rule of Saint Clare, 155; Mariano of Florence on, 146, 146n.89; San Damiano’s practice adopted by, 27 Mooney, Catherine, 6 Mueller, Joan, 20 Nicholas III, Pope, 83, 85 Nicholas of Osimo, 137, 137n.49, 143, 175 Nicolina, Suor (abbess at Santa Marta in Siena), 165 Observant reform, 123–56; active vocation in, 123–24; Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare and, 172; conflict between Conventuals and Observants, 134; “Four Pillars of the Observance,” 125; John of Capistrano and Clarissan reform, 132–36; John of Capistrano and moderate Observance, 136–43; and Mariano of Florence’s history of Clarisses, 144–55; Monteluce convent in spread of, 173, 184; networks of reformed Clarisses, 130; origins of Clarissan reform, 128–32; Rule of Saint Clare and, 123, 129, 131, 133–36, 188; Caterina Vigri’s The Seven Spiritual Weapons and, 168 Ognissanti, Convent of, 77 Olivia, Sister (sister at Arcella in Padua), 94 On the Perfection of Life Addressed to the Sisters (Bonaventure), 64, 64n.24, 65–67, 159 Order of Friars Minor: Benedict XII’s constitution for, 84; Bonaventure’s reform of, 59–63, 84; Constitution of Narbonne, 60–62, 64, 69; expansion of Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life opposed by, 44; and Francis’s vision of primitive brotherhood, 36; Gregory IX incorporates female religious order into, 31–32; Gregory IX on living sine proprio, 35–36; legends of St. Clare de-emphasize connection to, 50; moderation in observance of poverty of, 36, 41–42, 43, 44, 49, 55, 188; as preachers, 61, 62, 63, 84; Spiritual Franciscans, 86, 115, 117, 118; Urban IV appoints separate protector for, 70–71; and women’s religious movement, 25–27. See also relationship of friars and sisters

Order of Saint Clare: as almost generically monastic, 88; Margherita Colonna dresses in habit of, 111; dormitories rather than cells in, 165; as enclosed contemplatives, 142, 158–71, 185; enclosure of, 111; Eugenius IV calls for reform of, 124–27; growth of, 114; John of Capistrano and Clarissan reform, 132–36; John of Capistrano and moderate Observance, 136–43; literal reading of their spiritual origins desired by, 136, 150, 151, 152, 154, 189; liturgical requirements in, 160; Mariano of Florence on Elena Enselmini and, 90; Mariano of Florence’s history of, 144–55; networks of reformed Clarisses, 130; and Observant reform, 123–56; origins of reform of, 128–32; religious instruction in, 166–71; resistance to reform among, 131–32; royal princesses associated with, 114; Sancia of Mallorca as patron of, 117; Sancia of Mallorca becomes Clarisse, 115, 120; Urban IV and foundation of, 4, 15–16, 58, 79; variations within, 123; writing about Clare among, 171–84; writings of, 157–86 Order of San Damiano: Arcella and, 92; Clare of Assisi and, 31–44; Clare of Assisi’s canonization and, 48; Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life incorporates passages from papal legislation for, 41; communities in 1228, 33; deliberate confusion with Clare’s house, 3–4, 32; as Franciscan-centered order, 87–121; friars in founding of Damianite communities, 92–93; Gregory IX and foundation of, 3–4, 19, 54, 188; Gregory IX wants San Damiano to serve as model for, 29, 32; Innocent IV’s revised constitution for, 39, 40; as institutional framework for female Franciscan Order, 94; Filippa Mareri’s community incorporated into, 105–6; papal curia intends St. Clare as figurehead for, 57; papal program for, 32–33; pastoral care and crisis of 1261–1263, 70–77; some communities as like double monasteries, 70; Urban IV appoints separate protector for, 70–71; women falsely claim to belong to, 37–38, 57–58

index Ordinis tui (Eugenius IV), 143, 155 Orsini, Cardinal John Caetano, 70–71, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80 Orsini, Cardinal Matteo, 82 Ortulana, mother of Clare of Assisi, 186 Pacifica de Guelfuccio (sister at San Damiano), 21, 27–28 Pacifico, Brother, 26 Padua: cult of Elena Enselmini’s incorruptible body at, 90; religious culture of, 93; San Bernardino convent, 129. See also Arcella, convent of Paola de Premenugo (prioress at Santa Maria di Vedano in Milan), 135–36 Paoli, Emore, 12–13 Papini, Niccolò, 179 Paradiso (Dante), 147–48 Parenti, John, 32 Passion, the, 158, 165 Paula of Foligno (Clarisse at Santa Eucaristia in Aquila), 164 Pellegrini, Luigi, 25 penance: in Francis of Assisi’s vision of religious life, 1; prayer and, 165 penitential movements. See lay penitents; women’s penitential movement Philip of Atri, Brother, 182, 183 Philip of Perugia, 71 piety, interior, 168, 170 Pisa Chapter of 1263, 73–74 Polentone, Sico, 90, 95 poverty, evangelical. See evangelical poverty prayer: Clarisses’ understanding of, 164–65; communal, 162–63; as focus of Clarisses’ lives, 185; in Clare of Assisi’s spirituality, 21, 36; spiritual treatises encourage, 159–60; Caterina Vigri on conditions of successful, 167; Caterina Vigri on rewards of life of, 159, 169 prayer books, 160–62 preaching, 61, 62, 63, 84 Privilege of Poverty (1216), 10–12, 13 Privilege of Poverty (1228), 12, 34 property: Church as reluctant to have order of women without material support, 44; Constitution of Narbonne on, 61; Gregory IX insists that women’s order hold, 34–35; Gregory IX on living sine proprio, 35–36; in Innocent

223 IV’s constitution, 40; John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare on, 138, 140; Filippa Mareri’s community owns, 106; in papal program for Damianite confederation, 33–36; Santa Lucia convent opposes communal, 151. See also evangelical poverty

Quo elongati (Gregory IX), 35–36, 61 Quoties Cordis (Gregory IX), 31–32 Rainaldo dei Conti di Segni. See Alexander IV, Pope Ranieri di Bernardo of Assisi, 21 relationship of friars and sisters: Alexander IV ignores question of, 67; in Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare, 177–78, 183, 184; at Arcella, 93–97; Bonaventure on, 68–70; Clare of Assisi on close connection between, 16, 33, 42–44, 54, 57, 89, 175, 189; Clarisses rely on friars for spiritual guidance, 165–66; at Margherita Colonna’s Praenestina community, 112, 113; common spiritual origins of sisters and friars, 23, 30, 73, 75, 76, 96; conflict between, 2, 17, 187, 190; crisis of 1261–1263, 59, 70–77, 187, 188–89; in Elena Enselmini’s visions, 96–97; and Eugenius IV’s call for reform, 126; Francis opposes contact between brothers and religious women, 30–31, 187; friars in founding of Damianite communities, 92–93; friars’ resistance to providing pastoral care to women, 36, 39–40, 51, 55, 57–58, 63, 69, 70–77, 78, 83–84, 178, 182, 183; Gregory IX incorporates Order of San Damiano into Franciscan Order, 32; Hugolino wants Friars Minor to minister to women’s houses, 29–30; informal associations between friars and female penitents, 2; John of Capistrano’s Explanation of the First Rule of Saint Clare on, 139–40; John of Perugia on, 1; Later Rule on, 30, 36, 69, 75, 85; in Filippa Mareri’s community, 104, 105–7, 113; and Observant reform of Clarisses, 131, 132, 134–35, 149; San Damiano as mixed community, 23; San Damiano’s privileged tie to the brothers, 31, 32,

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36, 67; at Santa Chiara in Naples, 118; stabilizes under Bonaventure’s tenure, 83–85; tension between Clare of Assisi and Friars Minor, 45, 55; women continue to fight to strengthen bond even after 1263, 82; women seek close relationship, 16–17 Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul (Thomas of Celano), 48–49 Robert d’Arbissel, 31 Robert of Anjou, 115, 116–17, 120 Rose of Viterbo, 111 royal princesses, 73, 73n.60, 114 Rufino, Brother, 13, 23 Ruggiero of Todi, Fra, 101, 106–7 Rule of Saint Clare. See Form of Life (Rule of Saint Clare) (Clare of Assisi) Rusconi, Roberto, 7 Saint Clare, basilica of, 84 Salome of Krakow, 114 San Bernardino, convent of (Padua), 129 Sancia of Mallorca, 115–20; becomes Clarisse, 115, 120; in Chronicle of the XXIV Generals, 87; death of, 120; desires to enter convent, 116–17; incorruptible body of, 120; as infertile, 116; micro-convent at court of, 116; represents herself with Francis and Clare, 118–19; Santa Chiara built by, 116, 117–18; Santa Croce convent established by, 119–20 San Colpersito, convent of (San Severino), 26–27, 31 San Cosimato, convent of (Rome), 161 San Damiano: Alexander IV’s letter to sisters of, 67; Alexander of Hales’ sermon at, 176–84; Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Book of Conformities on, 87; Bonaventure’s letter to sisters of, 64–65, 67; and Brother Leo, 13; Clare attempts to extend manner of life of, 19–20, 188; Clare of Assisi arrives at, 23; Clare of Assisi attempts to found other houses on model of, 27–28; Clare of Assisi’s body moved from, 84; Clare of Assisi’s funeral at, 45; as continually seeking reconfirmation of Clare’s Form of Life and privilege of poverty, 82–83; evangelical poverty and mutual support as ideals of, 12, 25, 78; evangelical poverty makes life difficult

for, 23–24; as exception to women’s religious establishments, 25; Francis of Assisi provides Form of Life for, 24; Francis of Assisi said to support only, 2–3; Francis of Assisi’s last communication with, 24–25; Francis of Assisi withdraws from contact with, 30–31, 49; Gregory IX visits, 34; Hugolino (Gregory IX) opposes expansion of model of, 29; letter announcing Clare’s death, 45–46; Filippa Mareri’s community modeled on, 105; Mariano of Florence on foundation of, 146; as mixed community, 23; as never institutional model, 16; and Order of San Damiano, 29, 31–44; papal approval of Clare of Assisi’s Form of Life recognizes unique status of, 43; and Privilege of Poverty of 1216, 11–12; Privilege of Poverty of 1228 for, 12, 34; San Colpersito convent and model of, 27; Santa Chiara in Naples compared with, 118, 119; Santa Croce convent modeled on, 119; unique tie with Friars Minor, 31, 32, 36, 67. See also Order of San Damiano San Guglielmo, convent of (Ferrara), 132, 160 San Lino (Santa Elisabetta), convent of (Volterra), 145, 145n.83 San Paolo delle Abbadesse, convent of (Assisi), 22 San Pietro de Molito, convent of (Rieti), 97–98, 102–5, 113 San Silvestro in Capite, convent of (Rome), 82, 112–13, 145 Santa Chiara, convent of (Arezzo), 173 Santa Chiara, convent of (Assisi), 13, 111, 151 Santa Chiara, convent of (Naples), 116, 117–18, 119 Santa Chiara, convent of (Sulmona), 114–15 Santa Chiara, convent of (Urbino), 145, 151, 155 Santa Chiara, convent of (Verona), 129 Santa Chiara Novella, convent of (Florence), 155 Santa Croce, convent of (Naples), 119–20 Santa Elisabetta (San Lino), convent of (Volterra), 145, 145n.85

index Santa Eucaristia, convent of (Aquila), 145, 150, 164 Santa Lucia, convent of (Foligno), 131, 145, 149, 151–52 Santa Lucia, convent of (Rieti), 105n.63 Santa Maria di Basicò, convent of (Messina), 152–53 Santa Maria di Vedano, convent of (Milan), 135–36 Santa Marta, convent of (Siena), 165 Sant’Angelo di Panzo, community of (Assisi), 22 Sant’Apollinare, convent of (Milan), 28 Santa Ursula, convent of (Milan), 128 Santo, friars’ community (Padua), 93, 94 Sclaramonde of Foix, 116 Seven Spiritual Weapons, The (Vigri), 159, 166, 167–71 silence, 33, 52, 140, 143 Sixtus IV, Pope, 151 Solet annuere, 9–10 Soliloquy (Bonaventure), 68 Soul’s Journey to God, The (Bonaventure), 65 Spiritual Franciscans, 86, 115, 117, 118 Spiritus Domini (Urban IV), 72–73, 75, 76 Stefania, Sister (companion of Margherita Colonna), 99, 109, 111, 112 Stephen, Brother, 2–3, 29, 30 Stephen of Hungary, Cardinal, 70–71, 74 study (learning), 61, 61n.14, 63, 181, 183 Summa Theologica (Aquinas), 170 Tavelli da Tossignani, Giovanni, 133 Teodora, Sister (Clarisse at San Cosimato in Rome), 161 Testament (Francis of Assisi), 12, 25, 41, 175 Testament of Saint Clare (Clare of Assisi): Battista Alfani’s Legend of the Holy Virgin Saint Clare refers to, 174; as autobiographical testimony of origins of female Franciscanism, 12, 14; challenged as forgery, 10–13; in Clare of Assisi’s writings, 9; conformity with Form of Life, 12; and dating of Messina codex, 13–14; on evangelical poverty, 42 Thomas of Celano: on common spiritual origins of sisters and friars, 96; on Elias, 37, 37n.37; on

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evangelical poverty, 51–52; on Francis of Assisi and the sisters of San Colpersito, 26; on humility, 185; on Filippa Mareri, 100; Sancia of Mallorca’s knowledge of, 119; second biography of St. Francis on Clare of Assisi, 34, 34n.53, 48–49, 67, 74 Thomas of Eccleston, 38 Tommaso da Civitella d’Abruzzo, Fra, 106–7 Transubstantiation, 170 Tree of Life (Bonaventure), 167 Triple Way, The (Bonaventure), 65, 68, 167 University of Paris, 59, 61n.14, 177 Urban IV, Pope: in Dorothea Broccardi’s Franciscan family tree, 185; Inter personas, 72; Observant reform and rule of, 131; open hostilities between friars and sisters under, 58, 72–75; Order of Saint Clare established by, 4, 15–16, 58, 79; as outsider to Franciscan Order politics, 71; separate protectors appointed by, 70–71; sisters and rule of, 77–83; Spiritus Domini, 72–73, 75, 76; women’s rejection of rule of, 79–81 Versified Legend of the Virgin Clare, 50, 52–53, 184 Vigri, Caterina, 159, 161–62, 166–71, 185 Vinea Domini (Eugenius IV), 125 Virgin Birth, 170–71 virginity, 52, 67 Vita Assidua, 93, 94 Vita b. Elena Enselmini (Polentone), 90, 95 Wadding, Luke, 9, 91n.16 William of Casale, 124, 137n.49 women: canonization in thirteenth century, 47; Church’s model of female sanctity, 52; doubt that they could live without means, 42; familial opposition in female hagiography, 107; Hugolino creates first religious order to consist solely of, 28–29; misogyny attributed to Francis of Assisi, 2–3, 74; monasticism in first half of thirteenth century, 25–27; traditional female virtues, 67; traditional paradigm of female

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index

monasticism, 66. See also female Franciscan movement; women’s penitential movement women’s penitential movement: in Elena Enselmini’s visions, 96; informal associations with friars, 2; Isabelle of France, 64; living in family homes,

111; Filippa Mareri’s hermitage and, 103; regularization of, 28, 31, 88, 103; San Damiano as one of many communities, 11; Sant’Angelo di Panzo community, 22; in women’s religious movement of thirteenth century, 25

THE MEDIEVAL FRANCISCANS General Editor STEVEN J. MCMICHAEL ISSN: 1572-6991

1. COOK, W.R. (ed.). Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy. 2005. ISBN 90 04 13167 1 2. McMICHAEL, S.J. and MYERS, S.E. (eds.). Friars and Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. 2004. ISBN 90 04 11398 3 3. CASCIANI, S. (ed.). Dante and the Franciscans. 2006. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15495 7, ISBN-10: 90 04 15495 7 4. JOHNSON, T.J. (ed.). Franciscans at Prayer. 2007. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15699 9, ISBN-10: 90 04 15699 2 5. KNOX, L.S. Creating Clare of Assisi. Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy. 2008. ISBN 978 90 04 16651 6