A Pope offered St. Clare property. She said no.

SAN DAMIANO, near Assisi, September 8, 1252 AD — A cardinal rode down from Perugia today because St. Clare of Assisi had got worse. Cardinal Rainaldo dei Conti di Segni gave her Communion at her bed. Then he preached to the sisters standing round it. St. Clare cried, and asked the cardinal to keep her soul and the souls of the other sisters in mind. Then she asked him for one thing, most of all. The thing was a piece of paper.

St. Clare is fifty-eight. She has led this house of sisters outside Assisi since 1215 AD. In 1228 AD Pope Gregory IX made Cardinal Rainaldo the Cardinal Protector of the Franciscans and of houses like hers. That was a few months after he became Pope.

A paper that lets a house own nothing

A papal privilege is a grant written in the Pope’s own name. It lifts the person who holds it out of a rule everyone else has to follow. A house of nuns was expected to live on property given to it. In 1228 AD Pope Gregory IX granted that nobody could force property on St. Clare or her sisters. With other houses that same Pope worked hard to get them property. And he made some of them take gifts they wanted to refuse.

A Pope pressed her to take property

In May or June of 1228 AD Pope Gregory IX came to Assisi and visited San Damiano. He offered to give the house property himself. He pressed St. Clare to take it, and told her the times were dangerous. She said no. Then he offered to let her out of her vow of poverty. “Holy Father, never do I wish to be released in anywise from following Christ forever,” she answered him.

That September, at Perugia, he issued the paper. It is called Sicut manifestum est (As it is manifest). Nobody had ever asked for a paper like that before, and no Pope had ever issued one.

Pope Gregory IX gave the same exemption to only a few other houses. One of them belonged to St. Clare’s friend Saint Agnes of Prague, in 1238 AD. At the start the sisters at San Damiano lived on the work of their own hands. They would take no alms.

Then the law went the other way

Five years ago the law of the order changed. In August 1247 AD Pope Innocent IV gave the Poor Ladies a new rule. It cancelled every rule they had followed before. The new rule let every convent own property, and told each house to find someone to look after it. It put the order in the hands of the Franciscan leaders. In June 1250 AD Pope Innocent IV wrote to Cardinal Rainaldo. Any house that preferred the older rule could keep it.

Pope Innocent IV had been at Lyons since December 1244 AD. He came back to Italy last year. He settled his household at Perugia on November 5, 1251 AD. St. Clare had begun to fail while he was still in France. That is why Cardinal Rainaldo was at Perugia with the court when today’s word came that she was worse.

So this is what St. Clare asked for at her bed. She wanted the Pope and the cardinals to confirm the paper that lets her house own nothing. Cardinal Rainaldo promised her he would.