A Pope offered her land. She said no.

PERUGIA, Umbria, September 17, 1228 AD — This spring Pope Gregory IX came to Assisi, and he walked down the hill to San Damiano to speak to Saint Clare of Assisi. He had property to hand over to her sisters, and it was his to give. She said no.

St. Clare and her sisters have lived at San Damiano since 1212 AD. It is a small church with buildings beside it, a quarter of a mile below the walls of Assisi. For sixteen years they have eaten what other people brought them. Lay brothers called questors are attached to the house. They go out and collect bread, oil and other gifts whenever the sisters need them.

Pope Gregory IX had been working to get convents land and a steady income. He did not want a house left with nothing at all. He had looked after St. Clare’s order since about 1219 AD, the year he wrote a rule for the sisters.

So he came to the door and asked St. Clare to let the monastery hold possessions, because the times were dangerous. She refused. The Pope thought she was afraid of breaking her vow of poverty. He offered to let her out of the vow: “If thou fearest thy vow, we release thee from the vow.” St. Clare answered him: “Holy Father, never do I wish to be released in anywise from following Christ forever.”

This week the answer came back in writing. Pope Gregory IX issued a letter at Perugia. Most of it does not order anything and does not grant anything. In it the Pope writes that the sisters want to belong to God alone. They have sold all their goods and given them to the poor, and they mean to own nothing at all, “in order to follow in all things the example of Him Who became poor”. St. Clare had done that in 1212 AD: she had her inheritance sold and gave all the money to the poor.

The Pope also writes about the things the sisters will have to do without. Then he tells them who will feed them instead: “He who feeds the birds of the air and who gives the lilies of the field their raiment and their nourishment, will not leave you in want of clothing or of food until He shall come Himself to minister to you in eternity.”

One sentence, near the end

The grant is a single sentence, near the end of the letter. Pope Gregory IX writes it as a direct answer to what the sisters had asked him for: Since, therefore, you have asked for it, we confirm by Apostolic favour your resolution of the loftiest poverty and by the authority of these present letters grant that you may not be constrained by anyone to receive possessions. It does not order the sisters to own nothing. It takes away everyone else’s power to make them own something. The Latin words a nullo (by no one) leave nobody out. So the Pope who stood at their door in the spring with property to give has signed away his own power to make them take it.