CHAPTER IX
SANTA CLARA
Popular piety in Umbria never separates the memory of St. Francis from
that of Santa Clara. It is right.
Clara[1] was born at Assisi in 1194, and was consequently about twelve
years younger than Francis. She belonged to the noble family of the
Sciffi. At the age when a little girl's imagination awakes and stirs,
she heard the follies of the son of Bernardone recounted at length. She
was sixteen when the Saint preached for the first time in the cathedral,
suddenly appearing like an angel of peace in a city torn by intestine
dissensions. To her his appeals were like a revelation. It seemed as if
Francis was speaking for her, that he divined her secret sorrows, her
most personal anxieties, and all that was ardent and enthusiastic in the
heart of this young girl rushed like a torrent that suddenly finds an
outlet into the channel indicated by him. For saints as for heroes the
supreme stimulus is woman's admiration.
But here, more than ever, we must put away the vulgar judgment which can
understand no union between man and woman where the sexual instinct has
no part. That which makes the union of the sexes something almost divine
is that it is the prefiguration, the symbol, of the union of souls.
Physical love is an ephemeral spark, designed to kindle in human hearts
the flame of a more lasting love; it is the outer court of the temple,
but not the most holy place; its inestimable value is precisely that it
leaves us abruptly at the door of the holiest of all as if to invite us
to step over the threshold.
The mysterious sigh of nature goes out for the union of souls. This is
the unknown God to whom debauchees, those pagans of love, offer their
sacrifices, and this sacred imprint, even though effaced, though soiled
by all pollutions, often saves the man of the world from inspiring as
much disgust as the drunkard and the criminal.
But sometimes--more often than we think--there are souls so pure, so
little earthly, that on their first meeting they enter the most holy
place, and once there the thought of any other union would be not merely
a descent, but an impossibility. Such was the love of St. Francis and
St. Clara.
But these are exceptions. There is something mysterious in this supreme
purity; it is so high that in holding it up to men one risks speaking to
them in an unknown tongue, or even worse.
The biographers of St. Francis have clearly felt the danger of offering
to the multitude the sight of certain beauties which are far beyond
them, and this is for us the great fault of their works. They try to
give us not so much the true portrait of Francis as that of the perfect
minister-general of the Order such as they conceive it, such as it must
needs be to serve as a model for his disciples; thus they have made this
model somewhat according to the measure of those whom it is to serve, by
omitting here and there features which, stupidly interpreted, might have
furnished material for the malevolence of unscrupulous adversaries, or
from which disciples little versed in spiritual things could not have
failed to draw support for permitting themselves dangerous intimacies.
Thus the relations of St. Francis with women in general and St. Clara in
particular, have been completely travestied by Thomas of Celano. It
could not have been otherwise, and we must not bear him a grudge for it.
The life of the founder of an Order, when written by a monk, in the very
nature of things becomes always a sort of appendix to or illustration of
the Rule. And the Rule, especially if the Order has its thousands of
members, is necessarily made not for the elect, but for the average, for
the majority of the flock.[2]
Hence this portrait, in which St. Francis is represented as a stern
ascetic, to whom woman appears to be a sort of incarnate devil! The
biographers even go so far as to assure us that he knew only two women
by sight. These are manifest exaggerations, or rather the opposite of
the truth.[3]
We are not reduced to conjecture to discover the true attitude of the
Umbrian prophet in this matter. Without suspecting it, Celano himself
gives details enough for the correction of his own errors, and there are
besides a number of other documents whose scattered hints correspond and
agree with one another in a manner all the more marvellous that it is
entirely unintentional, giving, when they are brought together, almost
all one could desire to know of the intercourse of these two beautiful
souls.
After the sermons of Francis at St. Rufino, Clara's decision was
speedily taken; she would break away from the trivialities of an idle
and luxurious life and make herself the servant of the poor; all her
efforts should be bent to make each day a new advance in the royal way
of love and poverty; and for this she would have only to obey him who
had suddenly revealed it to her.
She sought him out and opened to him her heart. With that exaltation, a
union of candor and delicacy, which is woman's fine endowment, and to
which she would more readily give free course if she did not too often
divine the pitfalls of base passion and incredulity, Clara offered
herself to Francis.
It is one of the privileges of saints to suffer more than other men, for
they feel in their more loving hearts the echo of all the sorrows of the
world; but they also know joys and delights of which common men never
taste. What an inexpressible song of joy must have burst forth in
Francis's heart when he saw Clara on her knees before him, awaiting,
with his blessing, the word which would consecrate her life to the
gospel ideal.
Who knows if this interview did not inspire another saint, Fra Angelico,
to introduce into his masterpiece those two elect souls who, already
radiant with the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, stop to exchange a
kiss before crossing its threshold?
Souls, like flowers, have a perfume of their own which never deceives.
One look had sufficed for Francis to go down into the depths of this
heart; he was too kind to submit Clara to useless tests, too much an
idealist to prudently confine himself to custom or arbitrary decorum; as
when he founded the Order of Friars, he took counsel only of himself and
God. In this was his strength; if he had hesitated, or even if he had
simply submitted himself to ecclesiastical rules, he would have been
stopped twenty times before he had done anything. Success is so powerful
an argument that the biographers appear not to have perceived how
determined Francis was to ignore the canonical laws. He, a simple
deacon, arrogated to himself the right to receive Clara's vows and admit
her to the Order without the briefest novitiate. Such an act ought to
have drawn down upon its author all the censures of the Church, but
Francis was already one of those powers to whom much is forgiven, even
by those who speak in the name of the holy Roman Church.
Francis had decided that on the night between Palm Sunday and Holy
Monday (March 18-19, 1212) Clara should secretly quit the paternal
castle and come with two companions to Portiuncula, where he would await
her, and would give her the veil. She arrived just as the friars were
singing matins. They went out, the story goes, carrying candles in their
hands, to meet the bride, while from the woods around Portiuncula
resounded songs of joy over this new bridal. Then Mass was begun at that
same altar where, three years before, Francis had heard the decisive
call of Jesus; he was kneeling in the same place, but surrounded now
with a whole spiritual family.
It is easy to imagine Clara's emotion. The step which she had just taken
was simply heroic, for she knew to what persecutions from her family she
was exposing herself, and what she had seen of the life of the Brothers
Minor was a sufficient warning of the distresses to which she was
exposing herself in espousing poverty. No doubt she interpreted the
words of the service in harmony with her own thoughts:
"Surely they are my people," said Jehovah.
"Children who will not be faithless!"
And he was for them a saviour.
In none of their afflictions were they without succor.
And the angel that is before his face saved them.[4]
Then Francis read again the words of Jesus to his disciples; she vowed
to conform her life to them; her hair was cut off; all was finished. A
few moments after, Francis conducted her to a house of Benedictine
nuns[5] at an hour's distance, where she was to remain provisionally
and await the progress of events.
The very next morning Favorino, her father, arrived with a few friends,
inveighing, supplicating, abusing everybody. She was unmovable, showing
so much courage that at last they gave up the thought of carrying her
off by main force.
She was not, however, at the end of her tribulations. Had this scene
frightened the Benedictines? We cannot tell, but less than a fortnight
after we find her in another convent, that of Sant-Angelo in Panso, at
Assisi.[6] A week after Easter, Agnes, her younger sister, joined her
there, decided in her turn to serve poverty. Francis received her into
the Order. This time the father's fury was horrible. With a band of
relatives he invaded the convent, but neither abuse nor blows could
subdue this child of fourteen. In spite of her cries they dragged her
away. She fainted, and the little inanimate body suddenly seemed to them
so heavy that they abandoned it in the midst of the fields, some
laborers looking with pity on the painful scene, until Clara, whose cry
God had heard, hastened to succor her sister.
Their sojourn in this convent was of very short duration. It appears
that they did not carry away a very pleasant impression of it.[7]
Francis knew that several others were burning to join his two women
friends; he therefore set himself to seek out a retreat where they
could live under his direction and in all liberty practise the gospel
rule.
He had not long to seek; the Benedictine monks of Mount Subasio always
seized every possible opportunity to make themselves popular. They
belonged to that congregation of Camaldoli, whom the common people
appear to have particularly detested, and several of whose convents had
lately been pillaged.[8] The abbey no longer counted more than eight
monks, who were trying to save the wreck of their riches and privileges
by partial sacrifices; on the 22d of April, 1212, they had given to the
commune of Assisi for a communal house a monument which is standing this
day, the temple of Minerva.[9]
Francis, who already was their debtor for Portiuncula, once more
addressed himself to them. Happy in this new opportunity to render
service to one who was the incarnation of popular claims, they gave him
the chapel of St. Damian; perhaps they were well pleased, by favoring
the new Order, to annoy Bishop Guido, of whom they had reason to
complain.[10] However this may be, in this hermitage, so well adapted
for prayer and meditation, Francis installed his spiritual
daughters.[11] In this sanctuary, repaired by his own hands, at the
feet of this crucifix which had spoken to him, Clara was henceforward to
pray. It was the house of God; it was also in good measure that of
Francis. Crossing its threshold, Clara doubtless experienced that
feeling, at once so sweet and so poignant, of the wife who for the first
time enters her husband's house, trembling with emotion at the radiant
and confused vision of the future.
If we are not entirely to misapprehend these beginnings, we must
remember with what rapidity external influences transformed the first
conception of St. Francis. At this moment he no more expected to found a
second order than he had desired to found the first one. In snatching
Clara from her family he had simply acted like a true knight who rescues
an oppressed woman, and takes her under his protection. In installing
her at St. Damian he was preparing a refuge for those who desired to
imitate her and apart from the world practise the gospel Rule. But he
never thought that the perfection of which he and his disciples were the
apostles and missionaries, and which Clara and her companions were to
realize in celibacy, was not practicable in social positions also;
thence comes what is wrongly called the _Tertiari_, or Third Order, and
which in its primitive thought was not separated from the first. This
Third Order had no need to be instituted in 1221, for it existed from
the moment when a single conscience resolved to practise his teachings,
without being able to follow him to Portiuncula.[12] The enemy of the
soul for him as for Jesus was avarice, understood in its largest
sense--that is to say, that blindness which constrains men to consecrate
their hearts to material preoccupations, makes them the slave of a few
pieces of gold or a few acres of land, renders them insensible to the
beauties of nature, and deprives them of infinite joys which they alone
can know who are the disciples of poverty and love.
Whoever was free at heart from all material servitude, whoever was
decided to live without hoarding, every rich man who was willing to
labor with his hands and loyally distribute all that he did not consume
in order to constitute the common fund which St. Francis called _the
Lord's table_, every poor man who was willing to work, free to resort,
in the strict measure of his wants, to this table of the Lord, these
were at that time true Franciscans.
It was a social revolution.
There was then at that time neither one Order nor several.[13] The
gospel of the Beatitudes had been found again, and, as twelve centuries
before, it could accommodate itself to all situations.
Alas! the Church, personified by Cardinal Ugolini, was about, if not to
cause the Franciscan movement to miscarry, at least so well to hedge
about it that a few years later it would have lost nearly its whole
original character.
As has been seen, the word poverty expresses only very imperfectly St.
Francis's point of view, since it contains an idea of renunciation, of
_abstinence_, while in thought the vow of poverty is a vow of liberty.
Property is the cage with gilded wires, to which the poor larks are
sometimes so thoroughly accustomed that they no longer even think of
getting away in order to soar up into the blue.[14]
From the beginning St. Damian was the extreme opposite to what a convent
of Clarisses of the strict observance is now; it is still to-day very
much as Francis saw it. We owe thanks to the Brothers Minor for having
preserved intact this venerable and charming hermitage, and not spoiling
it with stupid embellishments. This little corner of Umbrian earth will
be for our descendants like Jacob's well whereon Christ sat himself down
for an instant, one of the favorite courts of the worship in spirit and
in truth.
In installing Clara there Francis put into her hands the Rule which he
had prepared for her,[15] which no doubt resembled that of the Brothers
save for the precepts with regard to the missionary life. He accompanied
it with the engagement[16] taken by himself and his brothers to supply
by labor or alms all the needs of Clara and her future companions. In
return they also were to work and render to the Brothers all the
services of which they might be capable. We have seen the zeal which
Francis had brought to the task of making the churches worthy of the
worship celebrated in them; he could not endure that the linen put to
sacred uses should be less than clean. Clara set herself to spinning
thread for the altar-cloths and corporals which the Brothers undertook
to distribute among the poor churches of the district.[17] In addition,
during the earlier years, she also nursed the sick whom Francis sent to
her, and St. Damian was for some time a sort of hospital.[18]
One or two friars, who were called _Zealots of the Poor Ladies_, were
especially charged with the care of the Sisters, making themselves huts
beside the chapel, after the model of those of Portiuncula. Francis was
also near at hand; a sort of terrace four paces long overlooks the
hermitage; Clara made there a tiny garden, and when, at twilight, she
went thither to water her flowers, she could see, hardly half a league
distant, Portiuncula standing out against the aureola of the western
sky.
For several years the relations between the two houses were continual,
full of charm and freedom. The companions of Francis who received
Brothers received Sisters also, at times returning from their preaching
tours with a neophyte for St. Damian.[19]
But such a situation could not last long. The intimacy of Francis and
Clara, the familiarity of the earlier friars and Sisters would not do as
a model for the relations of the two Orders when each had some hundreds
of members. Francis himself very soon perceived this, though not so
clearly as his sister-friend. Clara survived him nearly twenty-seven
years, and thus had time to see the shipwreck of the Franciscan ideal
among the Brothers, as well as in almost every one of the houses which
had at first followed the Rule of St. Damian. She herself was led by the
pressure of events to lay down rules for her own convent, but to her
very death-bed she contended for the defence of the true Franciscan
ideas, with a heroism, a boldness, at once intense and holy, by which
she took a place in the first rank of witnesses for conscience.
Is it not one of the loveliest pictures in religious history, that of
this woman who for more than half a century sustains moment by moment a
struggle with all the popes who succeed one another in the pontifical
throne, remaining always equally respectful and immovable, not
consenting to die until she has gained her victory?[20]
To relate her life is to relate this struggle; the greater number of its
vicissitudes may be found in the documents of the Roman _curia_.
Francis had warded off many a danger from his institution, but he had
given himself guardians who were little disposed to yield any of their
rights; Cardinal Ugolini in particular, the future Gregory IX., took a