Virgin Saints and Martyrs

by S. Baring-Gould

At the end of that time her sister Agnes, two years younger than herself, came and entreated to be allowed to remain with her. The father was very angry, and called the members of the family together to consult on the matter. Nothing, however, could be done; the two girls were resolute.

In the meantime S. Francis was busy preparing a dwelling for them near a little church of S. Damian that he had restored. When this was complete he removed them to it. Many girls and even women now joined the sisters, and constituted a little community. Francis was appealed to for a rule by which they might form their lives, but this he was unwilling to give. Let them, said he, take Clara herself as their example.

Presently, little Beatrix arrived. She could not bear to be alone in the now desolate home, she yearned to be with her sisters. She also was accepted. After the death of her husband Hortulana also joined them, so that mother and daughters were united again.

As the fundamental rule of Francis was absolute poverty, his brothers were obliged to beg their bread. They went round the town and country with sacks, asking for scraps of food; and as it would not be seemly for the sisters of the house at S. Damian to do the same, the friars were constrained to divide their crusts with them.

Gregory IX. very sensibly objected to the friars going in and out of the convent, and he forbade it. “Very well,” said Clara; “if holy brothers may not minister to us the Bread of Life, they shall not provide us with the bread that perishes,” and she refused the crusts and broken meat they had collected on their rounds. What was to be done? The whole convent would starve. In a few days the Poor Clares would be dead. An express was sent to the Pope. Gregory could defy an emperor, and that such an one as Frederick Barbarossa; but he was no match for an obstinate woman. He gave way.

The rule imposed on the sisterhood by S. Clara was one of dreary penance. Their services in church were to be without music, even on the high festivals. She would not allow those who were ignorant to learn to read, so that to such these services were unintelligible.

In fact, extravagance marked all she did. She did not suffer the sisters ever to interchange a word with each other without permission, and they were all shut up in their convent, which they might not leave. It is true that S. Francis did slightly modify some of this severity. But his own rule of absolute poverty was a mistake. He intended it as a protest against the money and land grabbing which prevailed, not among laymen only, but among ecclesiastics, and also among the monks; but he went too far. He turned his friars into mere beggars. If he had insisted that they should be poor and work for their livelihood, that would have been well; but to employ them as tramps, begging from door to door, and sponging on the honest, hard-working people, was a fatal mistake, and led to very bad results.

So also Clara, in the hope of keeping her sisters devoted only to the service of God, dissuaded, nay, forbade, reading. In place of cultivating the intellect—a splendid gift of God—she made those under her direction bury their talents.

Insensibly, the Manichæan heresy had penetrated all minds, and made men and women think that the body was evil and must be tortured and bullied, and all that was human trampled underfoot, that the soul alone should be cared for. The result was the production of hysterical, ecstatic beings, who were helpless to do anything for themselves, and were, so far as their minds went, idiots.

S. Clara’s work would have been worse than useless, positively mischievous, had it not been for one thing. S. Francis, in order to extend religion among the people, had instituted a third branch of his institution, of which the second was that of the Poor Clares. This third order comprised men and women living in the world—in fact, a great guild of pious people, observing very simple rules, which bound all together in the service of God, His Church, and the poor and sick. This spread like wildfire: everywhere men and women, husbands and wives, young men and girls, rich and poor, nobles and merchants, day-labourers and needlewomen, joined this community, encouraged each other in good works, and learned, by knowing each other, to lose class exclusiveness.