St. Clare's rule says own nothing, and the cardinal agreed

PERUGIA, September 16, 1252 AD — At Perugia today Cardinal Rainaldo, the cardinal who protects the order, approved the rule Saint Clare of Assisi wrote for the sisters at San Damiano. It is the first rule in the history of the Church that a woman wrote and sent to a pope for approval. St. Clare was not there. She is fifty-eight, and she has been ill for more than twenty-five years. She has lived at San Damiano, the small church below the walls of Assisi, since she was a girl.

The whole argument is about property. Rome wanted convents of women to be given land to live on, with a man of business to run it. St. Clare wanted her sisters to own nothing and to beg. The rule the cardinal approved today is the one she wrote herself.

When St. Clare and her first companions came to San Damiano, St. Francis wrote them a few lines to live by. About 1219 AD a cardinal who was looking after the order wrote another rule for the sisters. The sisters at San Damiano never took it up, and kept to what St. Francis had given them.

The Pope who offered to let her off

Nine years later that cardinal had become Pope Gregory IX. He came to San Damiano and offered to release St. Clare from her vow of poverty. “If thou fearest thy vow, we release thee from the vow,” Pope Gregory IX told her. She answered: “Holy Father, never do I wish to be released in anywise from following Christ forever.”

He gave in. At Perugia on September 17, 1228 AD he wrote out a letter for her. It said that nobody was allowed to make her sisters accept property. No one had ever asked a pope for a letter like that before. It protected San Damiano and almost nowhere else. Then, five years ago, Pope Innocent IV decided the other way for the whole order. He gave the sisters a new rule that let every convent own property. It hurt her that he had allowed it.

What a cardinal promised at her bedside

Eight days ago Cardinal Rainaldo heard that she was worse and hurried down from Perugia to her sickbed. He gave her Communion and spoke to the sisters. St. Clare asked him to remember her soul and the souls of her sisters. Most of all, she begged him to get the Pope and the cardinals to confirm the letter Pope Gregory IX had written out for her. He promised her he would.

Eight days later he has done what a protector can do. He approved the whole rule she had written, and it puts the same poverty into the law her sisters live by. The Pope whose word she wants is in that same city, holding his court there. She is still pressing him for it.

Her rule lets the sisters own nothing, in their own name or through anyone else. They may keep only as much ground as the convent itself needs, and they may not farm it except as a kitchen garden. St. Clare tells them to ask for alms and not to be ashamed: “Nor should they be ashamed, since the Lord made Himself poor in this world for us.”

The rule says who runs the house, too. The sisters elect the abbess, and if they all judge she cannot do the work they must choose another. She must call them together at least once a week and ask every one of them what she thinks, “for the Lord frequently reveals what is better to the youngest”.

One part of the rule was written years before, and not by her. St. Francis dictated it for her sisters shortly before he died, and she has kept the words safe ever since. They are part of the law her sisters live under now. St. Francis had written: “I, little Brother Francis, wish to follow the life and poverty of our Most High Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother and to persevere in this until the end; and I ask you my ladies, and I give you my advice that you live always in this most holy life and poverty.”