Clare of Assisi

Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), born Chiara Offreduccio into the nobility of Assisi, was a pioneer of women's religious life whose radical embrace of poverty and her founding of the Order of Poor Ladies (later the Poor Clares) made her one of the most significant women in medieval Church history. Inspired by the preaching of Francis of Assisi, the eighteen-year-old Clare fled her family home on Palm Sunday night in 1212, met Francis and his friars at the Portiuncula chapel, and there cut her hair and exchanged her fine clothes for a rough habit — an act of renunciation that mirrored Francis's own dramatic break with his family years earlier. Francis initially placed her with Benedictine nuns, but Clare soon established her own community at the church of San Damiano in Assisi. Clare's insistence on absolute poverty — that her community would own no property at all, either individually or communally — was revolutionary. Previous women's religious communities, including the wealthiest Benedictine abbeys, held extensive lands and received revenues. Clare fought for decades against ecclesiastical authorities who tried to impose a more moderate rule, and she became the first woman in Church history to write a religious rule — the 'Forma Vitae' (Form of Life), which received papal approval from Pope Innocent IV just two days before her death in 1253. During the forty-one years she led her community, Clare never left the enclosure of San Damiano, yet her influence extended far beyond its walls. Daughter houses spread across Italy and Europe. She also demonstrated remarkable courage: in 1240, when a troop of Muslim mercenaries in the service of Emperor Frederick II attacked Assisi, Clare is said to have appeared at the convent walls carrying the Blessed Sacrament, causing the attackers to flee. She was canonized by Pope Alexander IV in 1255, just two years after her death.