Clare was born into an aristocratic family. As a young woman she refused 2 offers of marriage. In 1212 she heard St Francis preaching and was so impressed that she determined to devote herself to the religious life. Like many others at that time, she was attracted to a life of poverty as a witness against the wealth, power and corruption that infected much of the church. At age 18, she ran away from home to join Francis and his poor brothers at Portiuncula outside Assisi. He received her vows as a nun and placed her in the temporary care of a convent of Benedictine nuns for her spiritual and religious formation. She resisted strong family pressure to return home, and was eventually joined by others, including her sister Agnes, who wished to follow with her the Franciscan ideal of absolute poverty. Later, her widowed mother joined her as well.

As a follower of Francis, she founded the Order of Poor Ladies, a monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition. In 1215, when the number of adherents had grown, Francis set up the small community in a house near San Damiano, the church just outside Assisi he had repaired a few years earlier. The order followed rules of rigid poverty and strict enclosure, even more so than other women’s religious houses of the day. Pope Innocent IV granted Clare “The Privilege of Poverty”, a papal grant which ensured that the 3 early houses of Assisi, Perugia and Florence should never be endowed but depend solely on alms. Before long there were religious houses belonging to “The Poor Clare’s” as they later became known, throughout Europe. Debate about poverty continued among the nuns, as it did in the Franciscan Order.

Clare’s relationship with Francis was always close, though they met rarely in his later years. He wrote for her the first rule of “The Poor Ladies”, as the order was originally called. Shortly before his death, he paid a brief farewell visit to San Damiano. Clare became an important figure in the contemplative tradition. Like Francis she was committed to serving the community joyfully and was imbued with a love of nature.

Clare directed and led the order with loving discretion and devotion for nearly 40 years. The rule of the order was austere, but Clare warned against going too far and being too extreme. To one superior she wrote, “Our bodies are not made of brass.” She wrote that her master Christ was “the splendour of eternal glory, the brightness of eternal light”. She was canonised two years after her death.

BORN: 16 July 1194, Assisi, Italy.

DIED: 11 August 1253, Assisi, Italy.