Pope Alexander IV declares St. Clare a saint and fixes her feast

ANAGNI, September 26, 1255 AD — Pope Alexander IV has told the archbishops and bishops of France that Saint Clare of Assisi is enrolled among the saints, and has ordered them to keep her feast every year on August 12. His letter, dated today at Anagni, comes two years after her death at San Damiano, the convent below Assisi where she and her sisters lived without owning property. The Pope who issued it had sat at her sickbed as Cardinal Rainaldo and promised to protect that poverty.

St. Clare was the first of the Poor Ladies, the women who followed Saint Francis of Assisi, and she led them at San Damiano until she died there on August 11, 1253 AD. Canonizing her meant that, after an inquiry into her life and miracles, the Pope wrote her into the catalogue of the saints and ordered her feast kept throughout the Church.

Cardinal Rainaldo, Bishop of Ostia, was the cardinal responsible for the Poor Ladies. He held that charge for most of the reign of his uncle, Pope Gregory IX, and for all of the reign of Pope Innocent IV. In September 1252 AD he hurried from Perugia to St. Clare’s sickbed and gave her Communion. St. Clare begged the cardinal, in tears, to get the Pope and the cardinals to confirm her privilege of poverty, the papal permission for her sisters to live with no property of their own. Cardinal Rainaldo promised. A week later he drew up a Rule for her sisters that gave St. Clare the confirmation she wanted. On August 9, 1253 AD, two days before she died, Pope Innocent approved that Rule at Cardinal Rainaldo’s request.

When word of her death reached Assisi, men and women left the town in crowds and went down to San Damiano, all calling her a saint. At the funeral on August 12, Pope Innocent stopped the friars as they began the Office of the Dead and told them to sing the Office of Virgins instead. Thomas of Celano, who later wrote her life, said it looked as if the Pope wanted to canonize her before she was buried. Cardinal Rainaldo answered that they should do what was customary, and the Mass for the Dead was sung.

On October 18, 1253 AD, Pope Innocent ordered Bishop Bartholomew Accorombani of Spoleto to inquire into her life and miracles. At the end of November the sisters who had lived with her for years gave their evidence. Pope Innocent died on December 7, 1254 AD, before the bishop had finished, and five days later the cardinals elected Cardinal Rainaldo, who became Pope Alexander IV.

Pope Alexander took up her case with the cardinals, moved, Celano wrote, by the number of her miracles. The prelates he consulted answered, in Celano’s account, that St. Clare, “whom God had glorified on high, ought also to be glorified on earth”. With the second anniversary of her death at hand, Pope Alexander proclaimed her a saint in the cathedral at Anagni, the town where he was born.

The letter announcing the canonization went out to the churches of Western Christendom in copies that were not all dated the same day. Another copy to the bishops of France is dated October 19, and Celano puts the ceremony itself close to the anniversary of her death in August.

The letter opens on a play on her name: Clara claris praeclara (Clare, outstandingly clear with clear merits). Pope Alexander also wrote of her: “Clare lay hidden, but her life lay open; Clare was silent, but her fame shouted out”.

He called her the “primary and stable foundation” of the Order of San Damiano, which he said had spread “far throughout the whole globe”. He recorded that nothing could persuade her to let her monastery own property, even when Pope Gregory IX wanted to give it enough to support her sisters. Among the miracles of her lifetime he listed the day the convent had only half a loaf. St. Clare had it broken into pieces for the sisters, and as it was broken there came to be enough for fifty.

Her holiness and miracles, Pope Alexander wrote, had been tested by a careful inquiry, an examination and a solemn discussion. With the counsel and consent of the cardinals and the prelates then at the papal court, and by the authority of the Apostles Peter and Paul and his own, he ordered her “inscribed in the catalogue of holy Virgins”. Pope Alexander wrote: “let Mother Church rejoice, that She has born and educated such a daughter”.

The bishops were to keep her feast on August 12 and have their people keep it. August 11, the day she died, was already the feast of Saint Rufino, the patron saint of Assisi. Pope Alexander wanted more people to come to her tomb in the church of San Giorgio at Assisi. Anyone who had confessed and was sorry for their sins, and who came there with reverence on her feast or in the week after it, was let off a year and forty days of the penance they had been given.