Clare

Founder of the Order of Poor Ladies (Poor Clares) and author of the Rule of Saint Clare, the first monastic rule composed by a woman to receive papal approval. Her four letters to Agnes of Prague and her Testament provide direct witness to a contemplative spirituality of radical poverty and Christocentric devotion.

Traditionally, Clare defended Assisi from Saracen attack in 1240 by processing to the walls carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance, at which the attackers fled. This episode is recorded in the canonization proceedings and by Thomas of Celano. Additional miracles are attested in the canonization process, including healings and her vision of attending Christmas Mass at the basilica of San Francesco while confined to her sickbed — this last tradition led to her designation as patron saint of television in 1958.

Born Chiara di Favarone in 1194 to a noble Assisi family, Clare heard Francis of Assisi preach and was drawn to his vision of apostolic poverty. In 1212, at about eighteen, she left her family secretly on Palm Sunday night and joined Francis at the Portiuncula, where he received her into religious life.

Clare was established at San Damiano, where she lived for forty-one years, becoming abbess of a growing community of women — the Order of Poor Ladies, later called the Poor Clares. The defining struggle of her religious life was securing the Privilege of Poverty: the right for her community to own no property, not even collectively. This was unprecedented, as the papacy normally required religious houses to hold endowments for stability. Clare appealed to successive popes over decades, resisting attempts to impose property ownership on her community.

Two days before her death, Pope Innocent IV finally approved her Rule — the first monastic rule written by a woman to receive papal sanction. Clare's four surviving letters to Agnes of Prague, a Bohemian princess who had adopted the Clarian form of life, reveal a sophisticated contemplative theology centered on the image of Christ as mirror.

Clare endured chronic illness for nearly three decades of her abbacy but remained actively engaged in governance and spiritual direction. She died on August 11, 1253, and was canonized by Alexander IV in 1255.

• Monastic
• Founder