WE HAVE become accustomed to hearing the name of St Clare of Assisi alongside that of St Francis. Indeed, she referred to herself as his “little plant”. While she certainly flourished from the spiritual seeds sown by Francis, this plays down her originality as a mystic and theologian in her own right, as well as the complexity of the creation of the order known by her own name, the Poor Clares.
Although Clare had what Margaret Carney has called a “shared vocation” with Francis, Clare has a distinctive place in the rich tapestry of Franciscan spirituality. To understand it, we need to take her experience of life as a medieval woman seriously.
Probably born in 1193 to the noble Offreduccio family, Clare was attracted to the new way of life, based on the Gospels, with which Francis had invigorated Christian spirituality. Her family’s home was in the San Rufino piazza at the heart of church and civic life in Assisi and probably where Francis preached; so this influence is perhaps unsurprising.
Although it is unclear who first approached whom, the two met regularly. On the night of Palm Sunday 1211, with Francis’s encouragement, Clare fled her family home. Having been taken, briefly, to three churches and monasteries, Clare then moved to the small Church of San Damiano, which Francis and his brothers had repaired, just outside the city walls of Assisi. It was there that Clare attracted a community of Sisters and remained for the next four decades until her death in 1253.
Although she wanted to live a life dedicated to poverty, simplicity, and humility, just as Francis and his non-enclosed brothers had, her community was confined to a traditional monastic lifestyle and given the rule of St Benedict to live by. This rule did not contain the strictness of poverty which Clare wanted, and she strove to attain a clear focus on poverty for her community.
Although Francis had provided two short statements for Clare’s Sisters attesting to the poverty that they should follow, these statements were described by Pope Gregory IX as like “a milk drink” suited to children rather than a guide for life for those with spiritual maturity.
Building on her connections to the royal family of Bohemia and to Francis himself, Clare had the clout to construct her own rule, which was approved in the final days of her life. Although it contained contributions from several men, including Francis, this achievement made hers the first approved rule to be composed by a woman.
This achievement reminds us that medieval female mystics needed supporters, and were forced to collaborate with the available authorities. While female mystics are rightly held up as challenging the patriarchal authority of their day, none of them was entirely free of it.
What becomes clear from Clare’s rule, the two Lives written shortly after her death, and interviews with her Sisters in the process of her canonisation is that the Sisters were to treat one another as equals rather than hierarchically. Clare did not like using the title “abbess”, and involved all Sisters in decision-making where possible. She herself washed the feet of ill Sisters.
Clare’s focus on poverty was also key to her theological writings. These include her four letters to Agnes of Prague, a Bohemian princess who had received betrothal requests from royal and imperial men, but, instead, built a hospice and a convent, which she joined in 1234.
Two central linguistic strategies demonstrate much of Clare’s theology. First, following a long line of theologians, she took up the erotic and spousal language of the Song of Songs to encapsulate the relationship that the human soul should aim to enter into with Christ. Playing on the fact that, rather than take up betrothal offers, Agnes had entered the convent, becoming Christ’s bride, Clare praised Agnes for taking “a spouse of more noble stock” who would place “precious stones” on her breast, “priceless pearls” on her ears, and “a golden crown” on her head.
As a princess, Agnes had enormous wealth and would have gained even more through her betrothals. Clare praises Agnes for her choice, because “more than others you could have enjoyed the magnificence, honour and dignity of the world,” but, instead, chose “a life of holy poverty and bodily want”.
Crucial to understanding the theological significance of this is Clare’s conception of Christ as having become completely poor, not just materially on earth, but because the incarnation was a process of self-emptying, an infinite impoverishment. As Clare wrote in her second letter, “as a poor virgin, embrace the poor Christ.” She asked Agnes to look, consider, contemplate, and ultimately imitate “him who became contemptible for you”, in turn “making yourself contemptible for him”.
It is not just that Agnes was to make herself physically poor, but she was also to conform herself (as much as possible in this life) to Christ, in what we might call a spiritual impoverishment.
Clare’s second linguistic strategy is her use of the metaphor of the mirror in the third and fourth letters. We are used to shiny mirrors, but medieval mirrors were not commonplace. They were made of tarnished metals that would take considerable work to polish and give someone a glimpse of their reflection. This image was often used in medieval literature to show someone both what they were and what they should be. In this instance, the use of the hypothetical mirror allowed Agnes to compare herself with Christ and, Clare writes, to “transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead itself”. This signifies spiritual development, as the soul becomes increasingly conformed to Christ.
When using the metaphor of the mirror, Clare and her contemporaries would have had in mind 1 Corinthians 13.12: “For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face.” Following this eschatological imagery, Clare tells Agnes in the final letter that she now looks into the mirror “without blemish”, and suggests that Agnes had reached a spiritual maturity, having worked hard to polish the “mirror” of her perception, and so could see Christ in herself, just as Christians in heaven would see God.
The beautiful use of the mirror metaphor is woven together with the language of marriage to create a theology of significant depth, which (although not saying this directly) points towards the deification of the soul, in which it becomes God-like. For Clare, this is particularly signified by the infinite impoverishment of God in the person of Christ hanging on the cross.
For Christians today, this reflective contemplation emphasises that we are transformed into God specifically through a contemplation of human suffering. Clare (like Francis) rejected materiality, but not the material. Creation was seen to be imprinted with the Trinity and providing our way to return to union with God. It is in this material that we can contemplate Christ hanging on the cross, from which we find God, not through glancing, but through a purposeful gazing.
As Ilia Delio comments, this is particularly challenging and demanding. “The truth of God hidden in the fragile things of creation” forces us to recognise the paradox of richness and poverty in Christ and to “see the depths of God revealed in persons or creatures who otherwise might be discarded”. This contemplation sets us out on a journey that is not just transformative, but all-consuming. As Delio writes, it “places a demand on our private, comfortable lives”. Ultimately, it is about the realisation that our needs, interests, and desires are no more important than other people’s. This contemplation allows us to arrive at the realisation that our lives are interdependent with those of the suffering in society.
Moreover, Clare’s life and practice teach us something of the importance of perseverance to make a reality what, we know in our hearts, will honour God. While Clare herself had power and authority, she used this to foster a community of equals, seeing the value in each of her Sisters rather than asserting her dominance.
Taken together, Clare’s life and mystical theology coalesce to encourage us to see that our transformation into God and our salvation can happen only through a recognition of the suffering — both those suffering around us today and the suffering flesh of God on the cross. In the face of a variety of crises today, we must realise that we cannot do this alone, but must appeal to others to help those around us to flourish.
Dr Michael Hahn is the Dom Gregory Dix Lecturer in Christian Spirituality at Sarum College and Senior Editor of the journal Franciscan Studies. His lecture on Clare of Assisi was the second in a series on women mystics, hosted jointly by Sarum College and the Church Times. www.sarum.ac.uk