Clare of Assisi
Saint Clare of Assisi was not a feminist in the modern sense, but then again no such ideas existed at all in the 13th Century. By all accounts, though, she was a formidable and powerful woman who was the first in history to found a religious order. In the society in which she was born, women were politically, socially and economically powerless, and quite literally the property of their fathers and husbands. This was a feudal, authoritarian and patriarchal society, and even aristocratic women like Clare and her friend St. Agnes of Prague were forced into arranged marriages by their fathers. Indeed, both Clare and Agnes defied their fathers when they insisted on entering religious life as followers of St. Francis of Assisi, and Clare's family disowned her. She was not a political rebel or revolutionary, but she did have a utopian vision of society that was radically at odds with the views of her powerful noble family, just as Francis's were diametrically opposed to those of his merchant-capitalist father. For Clare, the single most important idea was the Imitation of Christ (Imitatio Christi), especially in his poverty and humility. She took literally the Gospel injunction to give up all worldly possession and live a life of service and charity to the poor, and this is exactly what she did. Contrary to the male religious authorities of the time, she insisted that her sisters should work in the towns alongside the Franciscan friars rather than remaining cloistered, and that they would own no property. Not all of the women followers of Francis followed these ideals, and after Clare's death the church leaders attempted to alter Clare's rules, but she persisted in following the Franciscan vision for as long as she lived. For centuries, historians and religious scholars neglected her legacy, and many of her early writings were lost, but in the last thirty years there has been a major revival in Clarian studies which has restored her to her rightly place as a major Catholic religious reformer.
Clare was from the aristocracy of Assisi, and her father Favarone di Offreduccio di Bernardino was a knight from one of the twenty noble families who ruled the area. He had been driven from Assisi in 1198 by the merchant oligarchs, who burned down his house and confiscated his property. Yet he obtained his revenge three years later when the aristocratic armies or Perugia captured the city, and rewarded him with the return of his estate. Italy was not a united country in the 13th Century or indeed at any time before 1870, with the Normans (and later Spain) controlling Sicily and the South, while the Holy Roman Empire and France fought for control of the North. In central Italy, the popes were in control of Rome and a large area around it.
All sides desired to control Assisi for strategic reasons, although after the merchants and guilds burned down the fortress of the German governor Conrad von Urslingin, where some relatives of the emperor Frederic Barbarossa also resided, they declared it a Commune and free city. More importantly, the merchants built "new gates in the old city walls so that new trade routes might be encouraged." Clare and Francis of Assisi were both part of "the profound social, political, and economic changes that were already affecting daily life" (Armstrong 13). Many of the nobles were heavily in debt to these merchants, who controlled trade with the North and the Levant. This was an era in which "the chivalric traditions associated with the old ways were progressively undermined" by the new capitalist values of the money economy (Mueller 11). As a young man from a wealthy merchant family, Francis of Assisi participated in the uprising against the nobility, and in burning down their townhouses and country estates. He then fought in the war against Perugia and was held prisoner there for a year "before returning to Assisi physically and psychologically broken" (Mueller 13). Like Clare, he underwent a religious conversion and rejected both the nobility and the merchant oligarchs in favor of the higher calling of religious life.
In contrast to Favarone's materialism and worldly preoccupations, Clare's mother Ortulana was very religious, and had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land on her own. She was also a secret supporter of St. Francis, a man who Favarone loathed. Before Clare was born, her mother supposedly heard a voice that told her "do not be afraid, for you will joyfully...
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