Clare of the Cross

ON BL. CLARE OF THE CROSS, VIRGIN,

NEAR MONTEFALCO IN UMBRIA,

In the year MCCCVIII.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Clare of the Cross, virgin, near Montefalco in Umbria (Bl.)

BY G. C.

§ I. The cult of this blessed Virgin, begun from time immemorial, and confirmed by the Roman Pontiffs.

Although Bl. Clare, commonly surnamed of Montefalco, passed to heaven on the preceding day, When this Blessed one had died in the year 1308 on the 17th day of August, and although Philip Ferrari in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, Ludovico Jacobilli in his Saints and Blessed of Umbria, volume 1, page 707, Arthur du Monstier in his Gynæceum and Franciscan Martyrology, and certain other hagiologists celebrate her yearly memory on the XVII day of August; yet we have deferred the feast of this blessed Virgin to the following day, following in that matter, after our custom, the Roman Martyrology, which on this day announces that Blessed one in these words: At Montefalco in Umbria, of blessed Clare the virgin, a nun of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, in whose inward parts the mysteries of the Lord's Passion, renewed, are venerated with the greatest devotion.

[2] Battista Piergili of Bevagna, of whom mention will often have to be made below, Pope John XXII in the Italian Life of Bl. Clare, part 3, chapter 16, attests that the public fame of this Virgin's sanctity was such that not long after her death Berengar of Saint-Affrique, who was then vicar of the bishop of Spoleto, began juridically to inquire into her deeds and miracles. This widespread reputation of sanctity is abundantly gathered from the letters of Pope John XXII, which run thus: John, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his venerable Brothers the bishops of Perugia and Orvieto, and to his beloved son Master Reginald of Sainte-Artémie, Canon of Périgueux, our Chaplain and auditor of causes of our palace, rector of the Duchy of Spoleto, greeting and Apostolic benediction.

[3] Great matter of exultation and of joy is afforded us, into the deeds and great thanksgivings and praises due from us are heaped up, when by new miracles the unshaken foundations of our faith shine forth, when the deep reality is fostered by things exhibited, and when quickening charity is kindled by acts of virtue. For the Father of mercies and the almighty God of all consolation knows how to give to the people of the Faithful things fitting to each season, to confer helping remedies, and to impart the solaces of the heavenly life; by which the faith of things past is built up, caution for things to come is bestowed, and the zeal of things present is kindled, melting souls, so that by the hope of reward we may conquer with fortitude in hardships and contend with humility in prosperity: to which the examples of those of our own age more urgently provoke us, and their merits more familiarly known support us, who are said to have lived so soberly, so justly, so piously upon earth that they are believed to be placed among the ranks of the Saints in heaven, since we, hoping, strive by grace toward those things which they are thought to have obtained by the showing forth of miracles.

[4] Now some time ago on the part of our venerable Brothers the bishops of Assisi, Spoleto, and Foligno, and of certain other beloved sons, Prelates of secular and Regular churches, and miracles of her he ordered inquiry to be made; and of all their Chapters, Colleges, and Convents, and also of the communities of Perugia, Spoleto, and Foligno, and of many Castles and villages of the Duchy of Spoleto, it was set forth before us and our Brothers that Clare of blessed memory, abbess of the monastery of the Holy Cross of Montefalco of the Order of St. Augustine, of the diocese of Spoleto, while she lived shone with the brightness of sanctity, was resplendent in her manner of life, and flashed forth with many and great miracles both before and after her death. Wherefore on their part humble supplication was made to us that, an inquiry being first made concerning the Life and miracles of the same Clare, if we should find the aforesaid to be supported by truth, we would inscribe her in the catalogue of the Saints, and cause her to be solemnly venerated with fitting honor throughout all the churches.

[5] but the business of Canonization then But although the aforesaid things set forth before us and those our Brothers, if they be true, have filled our heart and the hearts of those Brothers with manifold gladness, yet considering that the Roman Church, especially in so great a matter of faith, is wont to proceed with great maturity — namely where question is had of a matter so arduous, hidden indeed from the senses, unknown to the sciences, and to be proved by a certain new kind of proof, namely by life and by miracles: for if we judge those things difficult which are on earth, and find with labor those things which are in our sight, who shall search out the things which are in heaven? — we committed to our beloved son Napoleon, Cardinal deacon of St. Adrian, that at the Apostolic See he should receive information concerning this sanctity of life and these miracles of the aforesaid Clare by the testimonies of men worthy of credit, and should take care to report it to us, so that, a likelihood being thence taken, we might more safely proceed in the aforesaid business. And because through the said Cardinal's faithful report made before us and our Brothers we have received some information concerning the aforesaid sanctity and miracles, We, deeming it pious and fitting that the aforesaid should not be further passed over in dissimulation, by the counsel of those our Brothers have thought good to grant this supplication, as is set forth in the tenor of these presents.

[6] not being brought to the desired issue, Wherefore to your discretion, in which we have full confidence in the Lord, we give command by Apostolic writings that you, or two of you, in the place or places where you shall see fit, concerning the life,

conversation, and miracles of the aforesaid Clare, and the other circumstances touching this business, according to the form which we transmit to you enclosed under our Bull, you diligently inquire into the truth, and that what you shall find upon the aforesaid, faithfully drawn up in writing under the witness of your seals, you send by suitable men to the Apostolic See, so that, being sufficiently instructed by your inquiry, we may be able the more safely to proceed in that business, as the matter requires and as shall seem expedient. Given at Avignon on the eighth Kalends of November, in the second year of our Pontificate — which falls in the year of Christ 1317. This letter is related in Piergili after the Italian Life of Bl. Clare, pages 360 and 361, where there follows also another letter of the same Pontiff, which for brevity's sake I here pass over. Moreover I found the same among the authentic instruments which Mosconi, to be praised below, prefixed to his Latin compendium of the Acts, and of which I shall treat afterwards. Finally I compared both faulty editions of this letter with each other, and corrected the one from the other.

[7] Although at that time that inquiry (I know not for what cause) did not have the desired issue, Pope Nicholas V permitted her to be honored, yet it is certain that afterwards there was a great inclination of the Holy See toward promoting her cult; since Wadding in the Annals of the Minors at the year 1308, number 77, attests that Pope Nicholas V about the middle of the fifteenth century, venerating the excellent holiness of Bl. Clare, granted that a frequent commemoration of her should be made in this manner: Antiphon. The mountain of God, a fat mountain, a mountain in which it is well pleasing to God to dwell. ℣. Pray for us, Bl. Clare. ℞. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Prayer: O God, who didst glorify blessed Clare thy virgin, and didst renew in her body the mysteries of thy Passion and of the Trinity; grant, we beseech thee, that by her prayers and by imitation of her we may so remember the bitterness of thy Passion that we may deserve to enjoy the blessedness of the Trinity; who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen.

[8] Moreover the Supreme Pontiff Urban VIII, to increase the cult of this illustrious Virgin, published in the year 1624 a constitution and Pope Urban VIII which among us in volume 5 of the Roman Bullarium, page 62, runs thus: Pope Urban the eighth, for the future memory of the matter. Bearing on earth, though unworthy, the place of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gives to his servants and handmaids the reward of eternal glory in heaven, we are bound by the duty of the pastoral office laid upon us to take care that the due veneration of those same servants and handmaids of Christ may day by day be more promoted, and that the Lord may be praised in his Saints. Wherefore to the desires of any of the faithful, but especially of those who serve the Most High under the sweet yoke of Religion, which regard the special cult of such Saints, we gladly assent, in so far as we see it to be salutarily expedient in the Lord.

[9] Now in the name of our beloved sons the Procurator General and the Brothers of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine it was lately set forth to us to the Augustinian Order that they, out of the special affection which they bear toward blessed Clare of Montefalco, a nun of the same Order — in whose inward parts they assert that the mysteries of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are venerated with the greatest devotion by the neighboring inhabitants — and to increase the devotion of Christ's faithful toward her, greatly desire that an Office and Mass of the same blessed Clare might be recited and celebrated, and therefore caused humble supplication to be made to us that we would deign of our Apostolic kindness to provide suitably thereupon.

[10] We therefore, willing to assent to these pious desires of the same Procurator and Brothers, granted that a Mass and Office of her should be recited and to follow them with special favors, and absolving them by the tenor of these presents, and deeming them absolved, from any sentences of excommunication, suspension, and interdict, and from other ecclesiastical sentences, censures, and penalties inflicted by law or by man upon any occasion or cause, if they are in any way bound by any such, for the sole effect of obtaining these presents; inclining to these supplications, by the counsel of our venerable Brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church set over the sacred Rites, we grant and impart license by Apostolic authority in the tenor of these presents, that an Office and Mass of the said Bl. Clare from the Common of virgins with a proper prayer, inserted in the Missals of the same Order, may freely and lawfully be recited and celebrated by all the Regular persons of both sexes of the aforesaid Order only. Then, after the accustomed clauses, the date of this constitution is thus expressed: Given at Rome at St. Mary Major under the ring of the Fisherman on the XIV day of August MDCXXIV, in the second year of our Pontificate.

[11] with proper prayers: I think that at that time the following prayers were inserted into the Missal of the Augustinian Fathers, which Piergili thus appended to the Italian Acts of Bl. Clare. Prayer: O God, who, glorifying blessed Clare thy virgin, didst renew in her body the mysteries of thy Passion and of the Trinity; grant, we beseech thee, that by her prayers and by imitation of her we may so remember the bitterness of thy Passion that we may deserve to enjoy the blessedness of the Trinity. Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest in Trinity, God, for ever and ever. Amen. Secret: May the pious, humble, and devout supplication of blessed Clare, in whose heart by a wondrous prerogative thou didst renew the mysteries of thy Passion, be present to us, we beseech thee, Lord Jesus Christ; grant that by the virtue of this present oblation we may continually feel the benefits of thy Passion toward us. Who livest and reignest, God, etc. Postcommunion: Almighty and everlasting God, who, when the world grew cold, didst renew in the heart of blessed Clare the mysteries of thy Passion to inflame our hearts, mercifully grant that by her prayers and merits we may bring forth worthy fruits of penance. Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[12] which cult was thereafter extended to the whole diocese of Spoleto. About the same time the faculty of reciting the ecclesiastical Office of this blessed Virgin was extended to the whole diocese of Spoleto, as appears from the decree of the sacred Congregation of Rites, which Piergili after the Italian Life of Bl. Clare, page 364, thus exhibits: Whereas at another time, on the XXV day of May MDCXXIV, the sacred Congregation of Rites, our most holy Lord also assenting, granted to the Religion of the Hermits of St. Augustine that it might recite the Office of blessed Clare of Montefalco on the day of her death from the Common of virgins, yet with a proper prayer, it has judged that the same indult, the same Most Holy assenting, should be extended to the city and diocese of Spoleto. XXVIII September MDCXXIV. It was subscribed by Francesco Maria Cardinal del Monte; and below, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, secretary. Afterwards Pope Innocent XII in the year 1694 also granted to the Order of Minors the faculty of reciting an Office under a double rite of this Bl. Clare, as Huber at the XVIII day of August in his Franciscan Menology, and the Directories of the same Order commonly attest. From all these things it is clear that the immemorial cult of this blessed Virgin has been sufficiently approved and confirmed by the Church.

§ II. The authentic Acts of the Blessed one, and the various writers of them.

Among the various authors, Wadding in the Annals of the Minors at the year 1308, number 77, enumerates the various authors who committed to writing the deeds and miracles of Bl. Clare, in these words: Several have written her deeds; first of all the Vicar of Spoleto named above; then a certain anonymous writer, whose Latin narrative, composed by way of a dialogue, Brother Antonio of Montefalco rendered into Italian. Antonio Filoteo Omodei, a Sicilian, brought it into a better form in the year MDLVI. Presently Isidoro Mosconi wrote out in a more polished style the Life reduced to a compendium, and printed it at Bologna in the year MDCI. Among the Minorites, Mariano, Marco of Lisbon, Luis de Miranda, and Luis de Rebolledo. Among the Augustinians, Cardinal Seripando, Giuseppe Panfilo, Alonso de Orozco, a most learned man and of most holy repute, in the Augustinian Chronicles, Girolamo Romano, Angelo of Siena; but most exactly of all the most illustrious Don Agustín Antolínez, holder of the primary chair at Salamanca, presently archbishop of Compostela, a man of pious memory and of the highest erudition, very well known, whom I reverently looked up to. Of her John Marquez, a learned man, treats at greater length in his book On the Origin of the Hermits of St. Augustine, and Manuel de la Cerda in his Laurea Conimbricensis.

[14] To these I might add the Reverend Father Cornelius Curtius the Augustinian, who wrote the Acts of this blessed Virgin, and various other writers of the same Life, whose list Piergili prefixed to the Italian Acts of St. Clare. But to all of them I would prefer Piergili's own work, were it not written in the Italian tongue, and did I not shrink from a Latin version of so great a work: for this Italian biographer, of whom Jacobilli among the Writers of Umbria, page 67, makes mention, consulted authentic documents in the very monastery of St. Clare and elsewhere, as he warns the reader in his preface, and, having maturely weighed them, being furnished with a great knowledge of the matters, laboriously divided the Life and miracles of this blessed Virgin into four parts, and published his work at Foligno in the year 1640. I have no leisure to translate that diffuse Work into Latin, both because I am not sufficiently skilled in the Italian tongue, and because I have nowhere found this Life turned into Latin by the Augustinians. Nevertheless I shall from time to time excerpt some things from it for the illustration of the shorter Latin Life to be appended to this Preliminary Commentary, concerning which I shall now premise a few things.

[15] Indeed I could have wished that we had been able to obtain a faithful transcript taken from the old manuscript instruments, Isidoro Mosconi abridged her Life in Latin, which our Papebroch once sought in vain, as he himself noted in the margin at the said list of Piergili. But this defect will in some measure at least be supplied by the Compendium of the Life, miracles, and revelations of blessed Clare of the Cross, of the town of Montefalco in Umbria; extracted from the most ancient codices found in the monastery of the same blessed Clare, and published, by Isidoro Mosconi, a most renowned Jurisconsult of Trevi. Bologna, at the heirs of Giovanni Rossi, MDCI. This synopsis of the Acts and miracles it has pleased me to reprint, both because it is in Latin and because it was faithfully extracted by a learned author, the Vicar General of the archbishop of Bologna, from most ancient codices written not long after Bl. Clare's death by Apostolic authority through notaries lawfully employed in the cause of Canonization; which instruments he professes that he so used that he denies that anything more certain or more worthy of credit can be found.

[16] who states the cause of his work, It is well upon this matter to hear Mosconi himself, who before his synopsis thus prefaces: Among the many things which it has befallen me to see, by which I do not deny that God is wonderful in his Saints, the body of blessed Clare, called of the Cross, took hold of me in a wondrous manner; which after so many years still remains entire, and is seen by all who journey thither. Hence there is a great concourse of pilgrims, and innumerable votive offerings for benefits received are beheld. But if the body of the dead woman begets so great an admiration of itself among all, and stirs up religion and devotion, no less am I persuaded that this will come to pass if her Life, her manners, and her deeds be read through. And indeed the blessed God

has shown many and great signs of his benevolence to his Saints; but to blessed Clare, whose life I have proposed to write, he gave singular ones: for in the heart of what Saint were the mysteries of the Lord's Passion ever beheld? Certainly, since these things, when they were found in the heart of Bl. Clare, were seen by many, and by their testimony handed down to posterity, who will not confess that God followed her with a special love?

[17] his method, Since, then, the remembrance of this Virgin is most delightful to all, I am not unaware that it has been rightly desired by all that at some time something should be committed to writing concerning her life, manners, and the miracles wrought through her. Which brought it about that I sought as diligently as possible whether any records of these matters existed: and at length certain little books, written partly in Latin and partly in the vulgar tongue, under the names of different authors, came into my hands; which, since they did not show their authority or the origin of such great matters, a surer credit concerning these matters was desired by all. Wherefore, when I was in such uncertainty, since some of those books seemed to me foreign to the truth, I betook myself to this chief foundation of the whole work. And while I was turning this over in my mind and thinking day and night what ought to be done about it, at last, by the favor of God and the merits of the virgin Clare, the books of four principal codices, drawn up by order of the Apostolic See, were delivered to me; which were found by a certain divine benefit in the monastery of blessed Clare; in which is treated the Life, manners, conversation, miracles, and revelations of blessed Clare: and also another codex written upon the same matters by Berengar, who was then vicar of the most reverend Lord Peter, bishop of Spoleto. Moreover the privileges or graces of the supreme Pontiffs granted in the progress of the canonization. Besides this, compendia of the aforesaid, drawn up by the authority of the same Apostolic See on large pages, but arranged without order, were found by me.

[18] and indicates his fidelity, Relying upon these, I came to this judgment, that I might publish a compendium of the life of the blessed virgin Clare, made out of the said books and codices. But that the aforesaid may have a firmer credit, I shall begin from the first elements of those codices, and so proceed that nothing more certain or more worthy of credit may be found than this writing of mine. Then Mosconi enumerates the chief heads or certain fragments of the manuscript codices which he used for composing his compendium of the Acts, and thus concludes his preface: Out of which, most loving reader, we have reduced this compilation of mine into brief speech and into this form, and such was the order observed from its first framing. Let us now begin from the first form of writing her Life; then we shall come to those things which set forth the history. I beseech you, therefore, not to expect abundance of sentences or of elegancies; since I have ventured to commend this undertaking of mine rather by authority than by an ornate manner of speaking. I leave it to posterity to set forth such things with ornate sentences. Farewell. Therefore in this compendium of the Life and miracles the chief thing to be commended is its authority, which in the course of the little work shines forth again and again from the cited testimonies of ancient documents with which the author filled the margins. Yet in this our edition I shall omit those frequent citations of the processes, because they have long since been printed, and are sufficiently approved by long use and by the good faith of an honest man.

[19] Finally the praised biographer in the following pages of his prologue asserts that in the juridical Process for the beatification or canonization of Bl. Clare three hundred and seventy witnesses were examined, and assigns the authentic documents, and that upon this matter a report was made before the supreme Pontiff, which runs thus: Whereas it was some time ago set forth in consistory before your Holiness, most holy Father, on the part of the venerable fathers the bishops of Spoleto, Assisi, and Foligno, of the colleges and convents, and of the communities of Perugia, Spoleto, Foligno, and of many castles, villages, and places of the Duchy of Spoleto, that the aforesaid Clare of blessed memory, while she lived, shone with the brightness of sanctity, was resplendent with radiance, and flashed forth with many great miracles both before and after her death; and whereas at the report of the aforesaid supplication was made on their part that it might please your Holiness to cause inquiry to be made, and, the truth of the aforesaid being found, to inscribe that Clare in the catalogue of the Saints, and to cause her to be solemnly venerated with fitting honor throughout all the churches; your Holiness, information being received from me, Napoleon, Cardinal of St. Adrian, who by your mandate inquired at the Apostolic See concerning the aforesaid from persons worthy of credit and under oath, and made report, committed and commanded by Apostolic letters to the venerable fathers the bishops of Perugia and Orvieto, and to Master Reginald of Sainte-Artémie, Canon of Périgueux, our chaplain and auditor of causes of our palace, Rector of the Duchy of Spoleto, that they, or two of them, in the places where they should see fit, should inquire into the truth concerning the life, conversation, and miracles of the aforesaid Clare, and the other circumstances touching this business, according to the form which you transmitted to them enclosed under your bull, and should send what they found, drawn up in writing under the witness of their seals, by suitable men to the Apostolic See; and to the same Commissaries you appointed by other letters of yours a certain salary out of the goods of the said monastery.

[20] And the bishop of Perugia and Master Reginald, rector of the Duchy of Spoleto, the aforesaid commissaries, from which he excerpted his synopsis of the Acts. having received the aforesaid letters, in the place of the said monastery of the aforesaid Montefalco, in the year of the Lord MCCCXVIII, on the VI day of the month of September, through Master Berengar of Saint-Affrique, syndic and procurator, and in the procuratorial name of the said bishops, prelates, and Chapters and communities, their procuratorial and syndical papers being presented, and a solemn oath against calumny and to speak the truth being taken by that Berengar, and the articles and witnesses written below being produced, received, in the place and time above written and thereafter on several other days and places, witnesses, all told, three hundred and seventy and more, and with grave threatening of penalties made them swear that, upon the generality of the articles above, and upon the life, conversation, and miracles of the aforesaid Clare, and upon the whole business, they would speak the pure and unmixed truth of what they knew, without any admixture of falsehood, all hatred, fear, and love, and the rest being put away; and they examined them, causing their statements to be drawn up in writing by their public scribes; and at the command also of those commissaries Master Berengar, the aforesaid procurator, swore to speak the truth, and what he believed and what he knew concerning the life, conversation, and miracles of the said Clare. And the statements of all the aforesaid, drawn up in writing by notaries according to the mandate of your Holiness and enclosed under their seals, the aforesaid inquisitors caused to be presented to your Holiness by messengers, and by their letters they write back and report to your Holiness that they were never able to perceive anything on account of which any suspicion could be had against the aforesaid witnesses, and that in the aforesaid business the Process had been reached with all purity. After this Mosconi recites the order of the examination and of the manuscript Codices from which he took the compendium of the Life, which we shall reprint after this Preliminary Commentary.

§ III. The arguments by which the Franciscan Fathers ascribe this blessed Virgin to their third Order.

Wadding refutes those who assert Various Franciscan writers claim this blessed Virgin for their third Order, although they go by different ways to prove that opinion of theirs, as Wadding in the Annals of the Minors at the year of Christ 1308, number 67, attests in these words: Besides Scotus there died also in this year, on the XVI Kalends of September, the blessed and miraculous virgin Clare, a native of the town of Montefalco, situated on a high hill of the Vale of Spoleto, over against the city of Foligno. Many of ours, with great effort, ascribe her to the third institute of St. Francis, yet they do not agree among themselves. Some will have it that she always lived and died under this same rule; but that, the nuns being divided among themselves, after Clare's death the monastery, which before had been Franciscan, became Augustinian. Others admit that she served under the rule of St. Augustine, but that she went about in the habit of St. Francis and gave in her name to him: for although, they say, one may live under the rule of some saint, yet it does not follow that he is to be ascribed to his fellowship; just as neither are the Friars Preachers said to be of the Order of St. Augustine, nor several other Religious orders, because they serve under his rule; nor do those who keep the institutes of St. Benedict take their name from him. Others, finally, will have it that at the beginning of her life she lived in her first cell according to the institutes of the third Order; and then in the monastery of the Holy Cross, erected by her sister, together with her other companions received the rule and norm of life of St. Augustine from Gerard, bishop of Spoleto.

[22] that this Bl. Clare lived and died in the third Order of St. Francis, I confess that I have been able to find nothing certain or firm in this matter by which I might ascribe the most holy Virgin to ours; nay, it is expressly and clearly established, both from the Process of her life and from the compendium of the same, from the bulls of Pope John XXII given a few years after her death, and from the Life composed two years after her decease by Berengar of Saint-Affrique, Vicar of Spoleto, and from other records, that she observed the rule of St. Augustine, received from Gerard, likewise bishop of Spoleto, and served under it eighteen years, as I shall presently subjoin from the Acts and summary of the Process. Whence the first assertion of ours cannot stand, namely that she was a Franciscan, and that after her death the monastery became Augustinian.

[23] But as regards the second and third assertions, and yet contends with certain slight reasons, they seem to be rendered somewhat probable by the ancient images and paintings publicly displayed throughout the whole Vale of Spoleto and the province of Umbria, some of which I myself saw in the year one thousand six hundred and eighteen, when I was journeying to Perugia; and one very ancient one I received from a friend. Nay, even in her own church, in which the most holy body lies, I beheld her likeness upon the very wall in this Franciscan habit and scapular. Add that not without any foundation or without some reason of this kind was the most holy body of the blessed Virgin, laid among Augustinian nuns, in a monastery situated in the sight of the Augustinian Friars dwelling close by, kept for very many years covered and clothed in the Franciscan habit, until in the year MDLXXVII, under the Pontificate of Gregory XIII, it was decreed by the most illustrious lords Cardinals set over the interpretation of the decrees of the sacred Council of Trent, THAT THE HABIT OF THE ORDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE SHOULD BE RESTORED TO THAT BODY, AND THAT TO THE PAINTINGS AND IMAGES MADE OF HER THERE SHOULD BE FITTED THE HABIT AND COLOR WHICH BEFITS THAT ORDER. From which constitution it is plainly inferred that during that time the body had been covered with the Franciscan habit, and that the images had expressed the same.

[24] To these add that there is found in an old Legend written in Italian by an anonymous author, that she served under the third rule of St. Francis, and corrected by Antonio Filoteo Omodei, a Sicilian,

that the most holy little Virgin, while she was staying in her tender youth in the cell of St. Illuminata near the prisons of St. Leonard, led a penitent life, lived on alms, and wore a mean habit, a scapular, and a hood, which suit rather the Franciscan habit than the Augustinian. Nay rather I have shown above, when I treated in their places of St. Louis the king and of blessed Ivo, that hoods of this kind were familiar to the followers of the third institute of St. Francis. Nor indeed is it read that she changed this habit when she undertook the observance of the rule of St. Augustine; but that she retained it, as Brother Antonio of Montefalco, a fellow townsman of the blessed Virgin, expressly asserted in the Legend which he wrote of her in the year one thousand four hundred and seventy-five, whose autograph was sent to me from the monastery of Monteluce near Perugia; in which he also says that aged men told him that they had seen the companions of that same holy Virgin in the same gray habit and scapular.

[25] To someone, perhaps, this assertion will seem less true, before she embraced the rule of St. Augustine, both because the witnesses are of the household, namely Minorites, and because it will be reckoned singular that she should serve under the Franciscan habit but under the rule of Augustine. The author of the Legend was indeed of the household, yet a man beyond all exception, known to all throughout Umbria, the neighboring regions, and in the City itself for learning, for piety, for public offices, and for the office of vicar general, and dear to all, as we shall elsewhere say at greater length. Then it is not so singular or unusual that certain persons should go about under the habit of one Religion and the rule of another, that it is not done even today. To pass over almost all the earliest monasteries of the Poor Clares, which began under the Franciscan habit and the rule of St. Benedict, as may be seen in the first volume of our Annals and in its register — do not all the nuns of the Order of St. Dominic live under the Dominican habit and the Augustinian rule? And at Naples two royal monasteries of nuns are under the government of the Minors, namely St. Mary Magdalen and St. Mary of Egypt, which wear the cord or girdle of St. Francis, but profess the rule of St. Augustine. In the monastery of Vedano in the city of Milan, of the Order of St. Augustine, the greater part of the nuns went about in the habit of St. Clare under the rule of St. Augustine, until after some years they were separated from the lesser part, which preferred the Augustinian habit and institute, and they took up the rule of St. Clare by the prescription of Eugenius IV, half the monastery being granted them for their dwelling, as we shall elsewhere relate at greater length under the third year of Nicholas V.

[26] and timidly proves that opinion of his; The like happened in other monasteries, which we shall from time to time set before the reader in their own times. But that this very monastery of Montefalco also suffered its vicissitudes concerning the outward habit is established from the grave suit which arose under Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII between Constantine, bishop of Spoleto, and the General of the Order of St. Augustine, and certain women, Clare, Constance, and Bartholomea, who bore themselves as nuns of the said monastery of St. Clare of Montefalco, on the one part, and the abbess and the other nuns of the aforesaid monastery on the other, concerning certain letters granted by the aforesaid Innocent for changing the habit and wearing the Franciscan, which one party alleged had been obtained by surprise. The contention lasted a long time, and proceeded even to the gravest censures and even an interdict upon the town. At last, when further proceedings were being had before William de Perrenis, auditor of causes of the Apostolic palace, the cause was committed to Julian, bishop of Ostia, called of St. Peter ad Vincula, and to Raphael, Deacon of St. George in Velabro, Cardinals protectors of the Orders of St. Francis and St. Augustine; who, the matter being maturely discussed, at last reduced the harsh contention to a peaceable concord, a suspension of the censures until the feast of the Lord's Nativity having first been made by the Pontiff himself. These things were done in the year MCDXCI, as under that time we shall more suitably and more fully produce from the diploma itself and from the maidens' letters. Hence, then, I may suspect that Blessed Cherubino of Spoleto and Bernardino of Feltre, and also Michael of Milan, who flourished a hundred years and more ago — to say nothing of others more recent — took their foundation for ascribing this holy Woman to the Franciscans, not because she professed the rule of St. Francis, but because she perhaps at some time wore his garment, and because they saw the most holy corpse under it, until many years after, by the aforesaid decree of the Cardinals, the Augustinian habit was put upon it. Out of all these things Wadding in the same place thus timidly concludes: In uncertain matters I would dare to define nothing, save that she was Augustinian by profession; whether she was so likewise in the black garment, I find nothing firm or certain by which it may be openly proved, and the contrary conjectures refuted.

[27] but afterwards, furnished with new arguments Yet afterwards that author, taking courage again and furnished, as he says, with new documents, in the Annals of the Minors at the year of Christ 1491, number 65, after relating the various vicissitudes of the monastery of the Holy Cross, writes thus: At this time, and for many years following, the body of blessed Clare of Montefalco was seen in that monastery clothed in the Franciscan habit; and that the Virgin appeared to her in that garment, and wonderfully delivered her from a disease with which she was grievously afflicted, was attested by the noble lady Maria Emanuel, daughter of the Count of San Esteban, the most chosen wife of Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz. Wherefore, to make some return for the benefit, having journeyed to Montefalco, she gave on the X day of April in the year MDLXXVII a precious crystal shrine, framed with silver bars and bolts, for laying up the body, and a silken habit of ash color to cover it. But when this habit was attempted to be removed by order of Fulvio Orsini, bishop of Spoleto, great contentions arose between the Franciscans and the Augustinian Hermits, both contending that it ought to be covered with no other garment than their own; and in the same year, on the XVII day of October, there came forth the decree of the sacred Congregation of the interpreters of the Council of Trent, establishing, as I have elsewhere said, that the Augustinian habit ought to be restored to the holy body. From what time it had been veiled in the Franciscan habit, there is none who relates. It is certain that it could not have been removed save by the authority of such great princes. What the Franciscans then produced in defense of their cause, I do not know. I know most certainly that, although by profession of rule the Virgin was Augustinian, she was bound to the Franciscans by many bonds.

[28] In her first cell of St. Illuminata she always lived under the habit and manner of life of the third Order of St. Francis, he renews the same suit, until in the monastery of the Holy Cross she received from the bishop of Spoleto the rule of St. Augustine; which Battista Piergili himself, formerly confessor of that monastery and rural Vicar of the town of Montefalco, who lately wrote at length the Life of the most holy Virgin and with the greatest zeal described her as Augustinian, most freely concedes from the process and Acts of the Virgin which he had read. The same man gladly confesses that in the monastery of the Holy Cross under the rule of St. Augustine she had Franciscan confessors, most of whom he enumerates; and relates that at her death none stood by save two Franciscans, Thomas her confessor — whom our friend Thomas de Herrera in his Alphabetum Augustinianum wrongly conjectures to be of his own institute — and Francis her own brother. His praises at her funeral were celebrated in a sermon by James Gontius, a Franciscan lector: for examining the mysteries and instruments of the Lord's Passion found in her heart, Brother Massæus, Guardian of Foligno, is called in. To the Process to be drawn up by Apostolic authority concerning the holiness of her life and her miracles a beginning is given in the year MCCCXVIII in the church of the Minors, the assessors being Francis Damiani, custos of Todi, the Virgin's brother, and Francis Mevantulus of Bevagna, Guardian of Montefalco. When the Process had been brought to Avignon, three Franciscan Cardinals were successively appointed to open and examine it: Vitalis de Furno, of the title of St. Martin in the Mountains; Reginald, bishop of Ostia; and another, Bertrand, bishop of Tusculum. The chief persons in the codices of the Acts, or Processes, which testify to her virtues and miracles are addressed as Franciscans; no Augustinian is named through all the books or Processes.

[29] That at her death St. Francis appeared to her, with whose love she always burned, and the opinion of the Franciscans and that she said, "Behold the holy Father Francis," is contained in the Process preserved among the nuns of her monastery, although it is seen in a recent hand, and by a too manifest alteration the name of St. Francis is changed into that of Augustine. Whence Piergili, that he might fit his pen to the old writing and the recent correction — or corruption — relates that she said: "Behold Father St. Augustine; behold St. Francis." And this differs greatly from what is contained in the Process. More sincerely and faithfully did Achille Egidio, a noble of Montefalco, sing, who, having seen the processes, composed the whole Life of the Virgin in heroic verse, with the title of the Clareis. He thus expressed the vision:

And the choir of the Saints of God, shining with heavenly light, Was seen to be present, among whom that standard-bearer, Bearing the sacred stigmata, was there; to whom the Virgin thus: "My Father Francis, come down from lofty heaven, How fair art thou come to me! Forsake not thy lowly handmaid; Look upon me, thy handmaid, floundering in the last agony, And guard me under thy protection and patronage."

No wonder, then, if throughout the Vale of Spoleto her images are commonly seen in the Franciscan habit; nay, even in the very church in which she lies, as I have elsewhere noted, her image has since the year MCCCXXXIII stood so before all. In that habit the noble man John of Amelia, Rector of the Duchy of Spoleto, then caused her to be painted there near the pulpit; but some mischief-maker attempted with a knife or iron to scrape away the cord or knotted rope, which nevertheless he did not so accomplish but that to this day both the girding cord and the attempted fraud are plainly discerned. In the church of the Conventual Franciscans of that town, about the year MCDL, the famous painter Benozzo of Florence portrayed her with his brush in this garment, and many others elsewhere have likewise represented her.

[30] Wadding in the same place, number 68, takes another argument from the great codex of the Process, he strives to persuade the reader more confidently. in which he asserts that this is found concerning the garments of that holy Virgin: When she was well she wore one tunic only, and that a coarse one of gattinello. Then from that kind of cloth he infers that St. Clare was clothed in a garment such as the Minorites wear, for whom a tunic of gattinello is prescribed. Finally from all these reasonings of his he deduces the following conclusion: Not, therefore, altogether without any foundation have the Franciscans claimed some part for themselves in that most illustrious Virgin, since from her childhood and in the very beginning of her virtue she was instructed under their garment and teaching; since also under the institute of St. Augustine she had Franciscans as counselors and confessors; since likewise she found the same men the chief promoters of her fame and glory. Let the Augustinian Fathers hold this precious treasure in peace; let them deservedly exult in so great an ornament of their institute; but let it be permitted others also to be partakers in the exultation, who were partakers in her instruction; let it be permitted the Franciscans also sometimes to call her their own, to whom so many titles are at hand for claiming her in some manner for themselves. Those who have written of her more exactly concede that at least until in the monastery of the Holy Cross she took up the Augustinian rule, she was Franciscan in habit

and in manner of life; nor after taking up that rule did she lay aside her affection toward the Franciscans, or shrink from their instruction. Why then may they not in some manner call her their own, or depict her under their habit, since she wore it — even as the Canons Regular of St. Augustine depict St. Anthony of Lisbon as an Augustinian, although he afterwards became a Franciscan? These things you have, which out of trustworthy records and sure documents supplied to me after the publication of the third volume, where I opened discourse concerning this most holy Virgin, I would set before the reader's judgment; and I suspect that he will thereafter say that the efforts of the Minors hitherto in claiming some right for themselves in so great a Virgin's glory have not been so idle. These things being related for the one side, let us now hear the arguments of the other side.

§ IV. The answers by which the Augustinian Fathers refute the arguments of the Franciscan Fathers.

The Augustinian writers refute Wadding Juan Márquez the Spaniard, in his Origin of the Hermits of the Order of St. Augustine, chapter 25, and Simplicien de Saint-Martin the Frenchman in the History of the Saints of the same Order, page 553 and following, and other Augustinian writers commonly deny roundly that in the monasteries or cells in which this Bl. Clare lived the rule of the third Franciscan Order was then in use. Hence the Reverend Father Cornelius Curtius in the Life of that Blessed one, which was reprinted at Cologne in the year 1636, at number 13 writes thus: When therefore the virgins' dwellings had been duly ordered and adorned, deliberation was begun also concerning a certain method of living which they should assume and hold perpetually. For hitherto the judgment and command of the superioress had been their rule of life. At length there pleased them the famous rule of the great Father Augustine, received in very many monasteries, which Gerard, bishop of Spoleto, by his authority willed to be kept whole and entire by all thereafter. The diploma of that bishop, which was given in the year of Christ 1290, will be related below in the Acts of the blessed Virgin, numbers 14 and 15. Since, therefore, the Augustinians by this denial undermine the chief foundation of the contrary opinion, it lies upon the Franciscans to prove that before the year of Christ 1290, in which the rule of St. Augustine was received by those virgins, the third rule of their Order was observed in the monastery of the Holy Cross or in the other neighboring convents.

[32] Nor is that foundation sufficiently established from this, in various ways, that St. Clare and her companions committed their consciences to Franciscans to be directed: for those virgins could easily, before they had assumed the rule of St. Augustine, have lived according to certain pious customs and have had Franciscan directors. This no one will deny, as I think, since Wadding above at number 25 asserts that at Naples two monasteries of nuns are governed by Minorites, which nevertheless profess the rule of St. Augustine. Nay, he further adds at number 28 that in the very monastery of the Holy Cross that direction by Franciscans continued even after the rule of St. Augustine was taken up. I do not think that those Neapolitan nuns, or others like them who are under the government of the Minorites, are on that account to be ascribed to the Franciscan Order. Certainly St. Teresa can be reckoned in no Order but the Carmelite, even though she chose for herself various confessors or directors from other Religious families. And so it remains for the Franciscans to prove that those virgins at Montefalco or in the neighborhood kept the third rule of St. Francis by the prescription of superiors or by common consent, which the Augustinians deny.

[33] Here Dom Battista Piergili was somewhat more liberal, and with Piergili, and perhaps granted the Franciscans more than the Augustinians would wish: for in the Italian Life of St. Clare, part 1, chapter 15, he freely admits that Joanna the directress perhaps conformed the customs or domestic laws to the third rule of St. Francis, so that in her congregation a certain ordered manner of living might be observed. But he at once adds that those virgins adopted this norm of living without any obligation, and obeyed their directress humbly without a vow of obedience, as he affirms is gathered from the authentic testimonies and Acts. Although in this place Piergili seems to concede too much to the Franciscans, yet let us also grant gratuitously that that congregation of virgins before the year 1290 had very many customs conformable to the third rule of St. Francis. Does it follow thence that St. Clare and her companions are to be reckoned to the Franciscan Order? If the Franciscans would have it so, then not undeservedly did Antonio de Heredia the Benedictine at the XII day of August reckon among the Saints of his Order St. Clare of Assisi, because that virgin at the beginning of her conversion lived in a Benedictine monastery and for the most part observed the rule of St. Benedict, as we showed in volume 2 of August in our Work, pages 742 and 743, where nevertheless we rejected this pretension of certain Benedictines. Finally, the Benedictines will rightly claim for their Order almost all the earliest monasteries of the Poor Clares, which began under the Franciscan habit and the rule of St. Benedict, as Wadding above at number 25 expressly confesses.

[34] who seems further removed from all party zeal, I could gather in this place many arguments which Augustinian writers have set against the Minorites, and easily borrow them from the General History of the Order of St. Augustine, which the Reverend Father Luigi Torelli wrote in Italian, and in which at the year of Christ 1290 from number 70, or in volume 5 of that Work, page 106 and following, he solidly refuted all the arguments of the Reverend Father Wadding. But I shall rather select a few from the praised Piergili, who ought to be reckoned further removed from all party zeal, since he never gave in his name to the Augustinian Order. This Italian author, then, in the Life of St. Clare, part 1, chapter 14, relates from Berengar, who two years after the blessed Virgin's happy death wrote her Acts, these Latin words: But in course of time, when the aforesaid place which had been built for a monastery was in some measure set in order, Joanna the aforesaid directress, and the other ladies of that place, sought from the diocesan one of the approved rules. The diocesan or bishop who is here recorded was Gerard, prelate of Spoleto, from whom Joanna the directress, and her sister Clare, and the other companions, in the year of Christ 1290 received the rule of St. Augustine to be observed, as we have already said once and again above.

[35] they argue ad hominem, But already in the preceding year Pope Nicholas IV had approved the third rule of St. Francis, as Wadding in the Annals of the Minors at the year 1289, number 48, sets forth in these words: At this time the third Order of penitents, instituted by St. Francis, was flourishing in a wonderful manner, and very many patrician men and princes put on that habit, and, embracing the holy laws, submitted to them with great pleasure and devotion; and the institute had already borne rich fruits in so many most holy persons of both sexes, whose Lives we have described in both volumes. Accordingly the Pontiff in this year (namely of Christ 1289, of which he there speaks) confirmed by Apostolic diploma the rule delivered to them by St. Francis, with certain things added according to the condition of the time and of the persons, which is commonly circulated, and is contained in the Vatican Register under this superscription: To our beloved sons the Brothers, and to our beloved daughters in Christ, the Sisters of the Order of Brothers of Penance, both present and to come. This rule we have given among the other little works of the holy Patriarch, and have illustrated it with ascetical commentaries.

[36] From these things I frame the following reasoning, which I desire to be maturely weighed by the learned. and both from the diploma of the bishop of Spoleto, If those pious virgins lived until the year 1290 under the third rule of St. Francis, as Wadding contends, why at that time did they seek one of the approved rules, and why did the bishop of Spoleto in the year 1290 prescribe to them the rule of St. Augustine, since the supreme Pontiff in the preceding year had already approved the third rule of St. Francis by a published diploma? Would not the prelate of Spoleto have answered more briefly and more easily that the rule of St. Francis, which they had hitherto observed, had already been approved by the Roman Pontiff himself, and assigned it to be retained? Add that the bishop of Spoleto sufficiently hints that those virgins had not yet lived under a certain and approved rule, when in the month of June of the year 1290 he writes to them among other things thus: Now on your part humble supplication has been made to us that, whereas the houses of the Holy Cross and of St. Catherine of Bottaccio near the stronghold of Montefalco of the diocese of Spoleto, in which under regular observance you purpose to render a peaceful service to God, seem sufficiently fitted for a place of Religion, we would deign of special grace to grant you a CERTAIN rule, and other things which befit a regulated place. We therefore, commending your laudable purpose in the Lord, having invoked the name of Christ, have thought good to grant you by the authority of these presents the rule of blessed Augustine, which we will and command to be perpetually and inviolably observed by you and by the other Sisters who shall be in the same place for the time being. Do you hear that those virgins only purposed or desired under regular observance to render a peaceful [] service to God*? Hence it seems to follow that before that they had not lived under regular observance, but according to certain domestic laws or customs. Finally, why should Joanna the directress and her companions have sought a certain and approved rule, if from the year 1289 they had already had such a one?

[37] Wadding above at number 22 confesses that from the ancient instruments and the Process of canonization it is established and from Wadding's own reasons that Bl. Clare observed the rule of St. Augustine for eighteen years. Moreover at number 28 he asserts that that Process was promoted and examined by Franciscans. Nevertheless he always maintains tooth and nail that this blessed Virgin was clothed in the Franciscan habit and until the year 1290 served under the third rule of St. Francis. But thence Piergili attacks Wadding, and argues against him in Italian in about this manner: If Bl. Clare of Montefalco had ever been ascribed to the third Order of St. Francis, without doubt the Franciscans who took part in the Process of canonization and in the examination of the witnesses would not have permitted her to be simply named an alumna of the Order of St. Augustine; but would have ordered it to be expressed in those authentic instruments that she had passed from the third rule of St. Francis to the Augustinian profession, so that some part of the true splendor which arose from the first training of this tender little Virgin might redound to their own Order. But in the Pontifical letters and other old documents this Bl. Clare is called only an alumna of the Order of St. Augustine. And so those contemporary Franciscans, he says, who were the chief actors in the life and after the death of Bl. Clare, seem to have been ignorant of this observance of the third Franciscan rule: for they would not have dissembled in the Process of canonization a matter so glorious to their Order, if they had known it.

[38] they claim this blessed Virgin for their own Order. But when Wadding affirms that Bl. Clare is represented clothed in the Franciscan habit in ancient paintings, Piergili answers him that he has seen very ancient panels in which this blessed Virgin is depicted clothed in the Augustinian habit. And then he is of opinion that this discrepancy of the paintings arose from the dissension of the nuns of the Holy Cross, of whom several in the fifteenth century were attempting to seize the institute and habit of St. Clare of Assisi, while a few others

wished to retain the Augustinian profession, as we related above at number 26 from Wadding. Certainly at that time it could easily have come to pass that the nuns of the Holy Cross, according to their affection, clothed the incorrupt body of Bl. Clare now in the Franciscan and now again in the Augustinian habit, and so ordered her to be painted. Whatever be the case in this matter, since the Augustinians have the principal thing, which is the profession, Piergili concludes from the common axiom that the accessory, that is the habit, must be added to its principal. But I do not see that anything is proved from the habit against St. Clare's Augustinian profession: for, on Wadding's testimony, the Neapolitan nuns wear the cord or girdle of St. Francis, although they profess the rule of St. Augustine. I do not think that the Franciscans on that account reckon these and like monasteries to their Order.

[39] Finally they infer from the declaration of Pope Gregory XIII, Perhaps someone will object with Wadding that St. Clare appeared in the Franciscan habit to a noble lady, who, being freed of a disease by her intercession, went to Montefalco and, besides other gifts, out of a grateful mind offered a silken garment of ash color with which the body of this blessed Virgin might be covered. But I answer that historical disputes are not to be decided even from the revelations of holy women, as Papebroch long since demonstrated by various examples in volume VI of May from page 246. Moreover Pope Gregory XIII and the most eminent Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church do not seem to have made much of this apparition, since afterwards in the year 1577 they published an instrument to which is prefixed this title: A declaration of our most holy lord Gregory by divine providence Pope XIII, and of the most illustrious and most reverend lords Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, interpreters of the decrees of the sacred Council of Trent, upon the controversy between the Reverend Fathers Augustinian and Franciscan concerning blessed Clare of Montefalco, to be executed by the most reverend lord bishop of Spoleto.

[40] [who ordered that the body of Bl. Clare should be clothed in the Augustinian habit,] Then that declaration, to be committed to execution by the prelate of Spoleto, runs thus: Most reverend lord. The controversy which is contained in this little book our most holy Lord committed to be examined by the most illustrious Cardinals set over the interpretation of the decrees of the sacred Council of Trent; who, having often heard the procurators of both Orders, and having maturely and fittingly considered what was adduced by either party, afterwards referred the whole matter to his Holiness, who also, according to the judgment of those Cardinals, declared that blessed Clare of Montefalco is of the Order of St. Augustine, and that therefore the habit of the said Order must be restored to her body, and that to the paintings and images made of her must be fitted the habit and color which befits the same Order of St. Augustine. Your Excellency, therefore, both in the city of Spoleto and in the other places of your diocese will diligently take care that these things be thus executed, and will fare well in the Lord. Rome, the XVII day of October MDLXXVII. Your Excellency's, as a brother, Filippo Boncompagni, Cardinal of St. Sixtus.

[41] From this public testimony of a most eminent man it appears and ordered that she be so represented in images, that that controversy was maturely examined, the procurators of both Orders being often heard, and that without doubt the Franciscans then brought forward for their opinion all the weight of reason and authority which they could gather in their own favor. That suit was afterwards renewed, and in the ecclesiastical tribunals of Spain and Portugal was again decided according to the said declaration of the Roman curia, as the most illustrious Antonio de Gouvea, bishop of Cyrene, proves from authentic documents after the Spanish Life of St. Clare of Montefalco, which he caused to be printed at Madrid in the year 1625. Since, therefore, the Franciscan Fathers, after a diligent examination of both litigating parties, lost their case, we adhere to these most weighty judgments of illustrious men, and think the opinion of the Augustinian Fathers far more probable.

[42] Wherefore we conclude this paragraph with the words of the Reverend Father Thomas de Herrera, that this blessed Virgin cannot be ascribed to the Franciscan Order. who in the Alphabetum Augustinianum, after the eulogy of Bl. Clare, writes thus: There was once litigation for Clare between the Seraphic and the Eremitic Order. A Virgin indeed worthy that most illustrious Orders should contend for her. Yet the victory fell to the Augustinians in the year MDLXXVII, and thereafter everywhere, the public decrees of ecclesiastical princes forbidding Clare to be depicted under any other than the Augustinian habit, or to be affirmed to have been of another Order. And indeed our men contended with a manifest right: for the monastery of the Holy Cross from its first foundation and endowment was Augustinian: and the nuns who in the time of Innocent VIII attempted to have it transferred to the Order of the Poor Clares never in their repeated petitions, all of which I have seen, set forth to the Pontiff that Clare or her monastery had at any time served under the rule of the divine Francis. On the contrary, Constantine, bishop of Spoleto, and the Eremite Brothers cried out that it was unjust that the monastery and the virgin Clare, over whom Augustine had always presided, should without cause be taken from them. There were indeed two Clares, and both most illustrious, near in time and neighbors in country. The one born at Assisi in Umbria, the other at Montefalco in the Duchy of Spoleto; and he who divides all things as he wills gave to each of these sacred Religions one Clare, by whom he might render the whole Order illustrious and enlighten it with the rays of sanctity. Now let us proceed to another discussion.

. Otherwise placitum*.

§ V. The time at which the Blessed one died, and the sacred mysteries of the Lord's Passion which the nuns found imprinted upon her heart after death.

The Blessed one died in the year 1308, forty years old, When this blessed Virgin was reaching the fortieth year of her age, in the year of Christ 1308 she passed to the Lord, in whose love and service she had from almost her very infancy constantly persevered, as will appear from the compendium of the Acts to be published below. In assigning this age of St. Clare and in reckoning the same year of her death the more exact writers of the Acts agree. Whence Philip Ferrari in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy at the XVII day of August, and Marco of Lisbon in the Portuguese Chronicle of the Minors, part 2, book 5, chapter 43, are to be corrected, who ascribe to this blessed Virgin only thirty-three years of life. They erred also in assigning the year of her death — Cherubino Ghirardacci the Augustinian, and the praised Marco the Minorite; of whom the former in his History of Bologna, book XI, page 364, wrongly assigns the death of St. Clare to the month of December of the year 1298, and the latter, in the place just cited, to the year of Christ 1299. Jacopo Filippo of Bergamo of the Order of St. Augustine, in his Supplement to the Chronicles at the year of Christ 1299, also fell into this last anachronism.

[44] and straightway grew famous for miracles, Let us now pass to the posthumous glory of the same blessed Virgin, concerning which Wadding in the Annals of the Minors at the year of Christ 1308, number 77, has this: After her death, famous for miracles, she stirred up all to venerate her. A certain Minorite, being ordered to preach at her obsequies, forgetting the theme which he had devised for the funeral, put forward this one divinely suggested: According to thy name, so also is thy praise; and in his whole sermon honored her not as one dead but as a holy virgin, to the great wonder of himself and of his hearers. And she among other prodigies recalled to life a boy crushed by a heap of straw, and two women and one man who had been drowned in the waters. The blood which flowed from her heart, kept in a phial, boils up when some grave misfortune threatens the town. Her feast day is honored with the highest solemnity among the people of Montefalco, and also the day of the Finding of the Holy Cross, which she used to observe with especial solemnity.

[45] and in her heart were found the sacred instruments of the Lord's Passion, But most of all this Bl. Clare was rendered famous by the mysteries of the Lord's Passion which the nuns found expressed in her heart after her death, and concerning which Cornelius Curtius the Augustinian in the Life of this blessed Virgin writes the following: When the funeral rites had been performed after the Catholic rite, the nuns, admonished from heaven, come to the hope that some hidden mystery lay concealed in the inward parts of her who had so often suffered a swooning of the senses at the sacred memory of the Lord's Passion. All therefore come together and deliberate with mature counsel what ought to be done. At last it pleased them to open the body and to search out whether anything beyond nature could perchance be found there. Francesca, who had more courage and faith, undertakes the task of the dissection. She cuts the body in the middle, and finds the heart larger than the head of an infant; and besides that, the seat of the gall harder than the order of nature bears. Here again all hesitate, entreat God with prayers, and ask whether it be lawful to search the heart itself with the knife.

[46] whose position is here described and represented. The same Francesca seemed to receive as it were from heaven the omen of daring, and, pious tears being first shed, divides it into equal parts. And behold — O unheard-of thing! — all the sacred instruments of the Passion appear in it (which also is wonderful to tell) unharmed and wholly untouched by that cutting. In the right part of the heart there was seen the figure of Jesus Christ fastened to the cross and marked with livid wounds. There hung in the same place from three little sinews, as from threads, three nails, hard, sharp, and black, of which the two shorter hung from a shorter thread, and the third and longer from a longer thread. Close by was another little sinew, to which was a rusty point, hard and sharpened, which represented the lance; and a twisted, rough, prickly circle, which represented the crown of thorns. Finally there was a shapeless mass of many red little sinews, which they interpreted as the sponge. Here I note in passing that the crown of thorns, which Mosconi and Curtius place in the right part of the heart, is placed by Piergili in the other. This difference also appears from the picture engraved in copper which Piergili prefixed to the Italian Acts of St. Clare, and which we have faithfully reduced to a smaller form, as you see here.

When Clare unfolds her breast, The mystery of the Cross shines forth.

Whatever be the case concerning the true position of this crown of thorns, the praised Curtius pursues his narrative in these words: In the left part lay a linen cloth stained with a good many little drops of blood; and a scourge of five knotted little sinews; and a fleshy sleeve not unlike wood; likewise little cords black with gore: and beside these another little sinew, straight, as if hedged about with little cords, which signified the column. Moreover all these likenesses, although they were of flesh, yet had the color and the hardness of the things which they represented.

[47] Although these sacred mysteries of the Lord's Passion had been found in the heart of Bl. Clare in the presence of various witnesses, When the demon strove to hide this posthumous glory of Bl. Clare yet the envious demon incited a certain Peter de Salomone, a heretic of the sect of the Fraticelli, who strove to obscure this manifest miracle, as Piergili in the third part of the Italian Life, chapter 8, relates in about this manner. That hypocrite, then, and secret heretic, on Piergili's testimony, under the false title of religion and zeal came to Spoleto, went to Berengar of Saint-Affrique, vicar-general of the prelate of Spoleto, and told him that the Catholic faith and the reputation of his bishop were injured, since credit was so easily given to the little tales and fictions of nuns. He added that those instruments of the Lord's Passion which were said to be imprinted upon Clare's heart could have been formed by a skillful hand. Finally that dissembler

so persuaded the Vicar General that he straightway went in indignation to the monastery of the Holy Cross to rebuke the nuns sharply, as though they had feigned that miracle. But out of this very calumny, by which the devil attempted to wrap the posthumous glory of Bl. Clare in darkness, a greater honor of that same Virgin shone forth, as we shall now relate.

[48] Mosconi in the prolegomena which he prefixed to the often-mentioned compendium of the Life, or to call it in doubt, adduces the following from an old instrument: The Vicar of the bishop of Spoleto who then was, hearing that the mysteries of Christ's Passion had been found in the heart of the aforesaid Clare, and suspecting that something concerning them had been maliciously contrived, came in indignation to the monastery for the sake of inquiring into these matters; and there, a multitude of persons of dignity being gathered, he caused all the tokens of the aforesaid Clare, still fresh in it, to be exhibited in his presence; which, inspecting them diligently and seriously, handling them with his hands and pressing them with his fingers, he recognized by careful investigation to have been made not by human fiction but miraculously by divine operation: on account of which, laying aside his indignation and returning to the city of Spoleto, having upon these matters the common deliberation, counsel, and assent of the cathedral Chapter and of the Prelates and Rectors of the Collegiate and other churches of the aforesaid city, and of many men skilled in both laws and Lecturers in theology, he began to receive witnesses upon the aforesaid, lest the memory of them should perish in time to come.

[49] a severe examination of that prodigy being instituted, And behold, to that Vicar, standing on a certain evening in the middle of the choir of the episcopal chapel of St. John and thinking upon the aforesaid business, three demons under the likeness of three black spheres appeared again and again, and by divers suggestions so far led him on that he purposed to abandon that business, and, returning at once to his chamber, to burn what had already been done. But his mind being raised up by God, suddenly looking upon the Crucifix, the Vicar himself said: "Lord Jesus Christ, thou knowest that not only for this Clare, whom I have never seen, nor do I know who she was — nay, not even for St. Peter or for St. Paul, or for any greater Saint who is in paradise — would I be willing to be moved, save so far as thou shouldst will it, nor to move toward such things, save so far as I should believe it to please thy will. Therefore I beseech thee, Lord, that thou show me thy will, and what I ought to do concerning these things." I have sought in vain what is here to be understood by the name of black spheres, which are said to have appeared several times to Berengar. The praised Simplicien de Saint-Martin in the French Acts of St. Clare, page 548 of the Work already cited above, says that three demons appeared to that Vicar in the form of horrid specters. Whether therefore a typographical error has here crept into Mosconi — which also occur frequently elsewhere in this compendium of the Life — and whether for sperarum perhaps spectrorum should be read, may be doubted.

[50] unwillingly he made it far more illustrious. However it be, in the same instrument this immediately follows: The Vicar had scarcely completed his words when, behold, the aforesaid virgin Clare appeared, clothed in a certain white and shining garment with bands (that is, fillets, as I conjecture from the sense) of violet linen at the shoulders and at the feet, and with silken borders and edgings of divers colors about those bands, and along the slits of the sides and also of the sleeves, so that she seemed clothed in a dalmatic, not open at the sides but sewn on both sides. And her head, feet, and legs were covered with that garment, nor did anything bare appear in her, and she stood before the altar with bent knees, praying. And at the very coming of Clare's apparition, in the soul or mind of that Vicar, with a spiritual visitation and the greatest delight, it was said: "Behold Clare; when he shall say to her, see what thou hast, brother." The Vicar therefore, understanding and recognizing that Clare was holy and a virgin in the glory of the Blessed, and that it was the will of God that he should labor in that business, from that time was intent upon the prosecution of the business, and from a persecutor became a prosecutor. Berengar therefore, all things being carefully examined, undertook the cause of the canonization of Bl. Clare, and permitted those sacred mysteries of the Lord's Passion to be publicly shown, to which a vast multitude of people flowed together. Thus the veneration toward this blessed Virgin grew out of the very effort of the demon who had attempted to diminish it.

§ VI. The Blessed one's posthumous glory from other prodigies, from the long-continued integrity of her body, and from innumerable benefits.

Her blood at times wonderfully boils up, To these wondrous mysteries of the Lord's Passion which we recorded in the preceding paragraph are added other prodigies witnessing to the sanctity of this blessed Virgin, concerning which John Nævius the Augustinian in the Life of Bl. Clare, chapter 5, or in the Eremus Augustiniana, page 379, writes thus: The blood also which flowed from her heart when it was divided, the Sisters gathered into a glass phial and preserve; which, while it flowed fresh, spread abroad the odor of the sweetest balsam. This, when some grave tempest threatens the Church, is seen to grow hot and as it were to boil, and thus announces the coming tempest of God's wrath. Cornelius Curtius, praised above, in the Life of Bl. Clare, number 54, after other things makes mention of the same blood thus: Such a prognostic sign also more than once was given by the blood which flowed from the divided heart, and is preserved in a glass phial beside the sacred relics of Clare. Bosio is authority, in book 2 On the Signs of the Church, Sign 66, chapter 10, that this blood so boiled up when the fleet of the Turks had gone out against the Venetians and was storming Cyprus, that some of the overflowing drops stained the ground with blood. Piergili in the Italian Acts of Bl. Clare, part 3, chapter 18, adduces several examples of this wondrous boiling.

[51] Moreover Nævius in chapter 6 of the same Life, or page 379 and following of the cited Work, and in the place of the gall three little globes were found, records another posthumous prodigy of this blessed Virgin in these words: The bladder of the gall, which we said above to have been hard, Berengar the Vicar ordered to be examined by surgeons and physicians; who, when they opened it, found in it three little globes of ashen color sprinkled with red, which were all equal in size and weight, and hard as flint, and lay in that little bag in a triangular form. These clearly signified the mystery of the most holy Trinity: for they are in all things exactly alike one to another, and — what exceeds all wonder — one is equal in weight to two, nay, even to three. For if you place one of the three in one scale of a balance and two in the other, the scales remain equal, and neither sinks below the other. But if, one being placed in one scale, you place in the other a pebble, or anything else of equal weight with it, and then add the other two in the scale in which the globe is, the scales stand unmoved as before, and neither rises or falls. Which is a perpetual and most manifest miracle, and a token of unity as to essence and of diversity as to persons in the most sacred Trinity. And of these three globes one was of its own accord broken to pieces at that time in which France lately took up the Calvinist heresy and wrought great ruin in the Church. Isidoro Mosconi in the Compendium of the Life, to be published after this Preliminary Commentary, and Cornelius Curtius in the Acts of Bl. Clare relate the like concerning that wondrous equality of weight and the spontaneous division of one globe.

[53] Jacopo Filippo of Bergamo the Augustinian in his Supplement to the Chronicles, which are said to signify the mystery of the most holy Trinity, which was printed at Brescia in the year 1485, long before that breaking of one globe writes the following concerning the same prodigies, folio 287 verso: For when she was dead (namely Bl. Clare, whose eulogy he had there set forth), in her heart at once there was seen a clear and open image of the Crucified with the tokens of his Passion; in which also three little stones of the same weight were found. Which most evident token of sanctity a certain faithful and pious poet, beholding, sang this poem in her praise, saying:

Clare, most holy virgin, born of Montefalco, And perfected in the sacred rule of Augustine, with a chaste Heart so venerated God, and by day And night so longed to have felt the cross of Christ and all his torments, That when she had ended her last light, The flesh which had covered her inward parts was opened, And in the sacred heart there was seen at once the Cross, and the lance; And then the column was there, and after it each scourge. Moreover three little stones joined together in her gall, Whose color can scarcely be discerned: of these One is of just as much weight as two, or even as all together; And two as much as the three joined — which anyone may see Who diligently visits her native shrine.

[54] and to have a wondrous equality of weight. Various writers worthy of credit attest that they have themselves made trial of that equality of weight, as may be seen in the Italian Life of Bl. Clare, part 3, chapter XI, in Piergili, who, calling God to witness, asserts that in his own age that miracle of equal weight occurred in these globes in the presence of thirty and more persons. Yet he prudently adds there at the end that this will perhaps not always happen if anyone out of mere curiosity should wish to make trial of the matter, because, according to holy Scripture, God often hides his wonders from the wise and reveals them to little ones or to the humble.

[55] In this blessed Virgin No less admiration deserves the bodily integrity of Bl. Clare, which even to this day remains incorrupt, and of which the praised Nævius in the Eremus Augustiniana, page 376, or in the Life of this Virgin, chapter 4, makes mention in these words: And she died in the year of the Lord MCCCVIII on the day after the Assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary (more truly on the second day after the Assumption of the Mother of God, since she died on the XVII day of August), at the age of forty years. Her body was buried in her own monastery, where even today it is preserved entire and with its flesh, as though it had lately been laid there, all white like alabaster. It is exhibited to be seen by pilgrims who come thither for devotion's sake, and lies in the nuns' choir upon an altar behind the high altar of the outer church; which in the year of the Lord MDCXXV I saw there, and marveled at the stupendous works of the Lord.

[56] the long-continued integrity of the sacred body, The praised Jacopo Filippo of Bergamo in his work On Famous Women, where in chapter 150 he almost repeats what we have related above from him, adds there at the end this: Her almost divine little body also, which indeed I myself have seen, remains to this day in no part decayed. Since it still presents to beholders some appearance of one living, it brings all to admiration and veneration of its perfection and of her sanctity. Cornelius Curtius also was a beholder of these wonders, as he indicates in the Life of Bl. Clare, number 55, in these words: Moreover this inestimable treasure, the sacred body of the divine Clare, the mysterious heart, all the instruments of the Lord's Passion,

the three little globes, and the blood which flowed out, the monastery of the Augustinian virgins of Montefalco keeps entire even to this day and exhibits; which we also with these two eyes have seen more than once. Finally Thomas de Herrera reckons himself among the eyewitnesses of this bodily integrity, when in the Alphabetum Augustinianum, page 134, after a brief eulogy of Bl. Clare, he writes thus: We too have more than once seen the sacred body of the Virgin, wonderfully incorrupt after so many ages with the flower of unspotted purity.

[57] Yet none of these eyewitnesses expressed the tender affection of his mind concerning this visit more graphically which still remains, than the most eminent Giles of Viterbo, raised from the Order of the Augustinian Fathers to the Roman purple, who in Edmond Martène's Amplissima Collectio of Ancient Writers, volume 3, column [ ], sets forth his journey to his friend Seraphinus, and among other things declares the posthumous glory of Bl. Clare in this manner: Moreover I sought the arms of him of Tolentino, and at last the one certainty of our faith, the most divine virgin of Montefalco, the glory of my Religion, the single and manifest proof of the Christian cause. I shed tears at the shrine of Loreto, I shed them at the monuments of Nicholas; but when I had seen the prodigies of the Virgin Clare, I nearly died. Great God! How much she could do living with God, how much also dead! When I shall see thee, thou wilt understand wonders. The image of the Crucified, the three little stones, and the blood still living and conscious of things to come, not only draw forth tears, but snatch away the mind and the very heart. I say nothing of the beauty of the body, than which the world has nothing more elegant, more white, more lifelike: wouldst thou more truly say she is sleeping, or living among us? It terrifies beholders as though about to warn them of something, and it forewarns the peoples of all things to come: and often by night she runs through the city, being from time to time seen by very many. Other things when we meet. From Cimino, the II day of July MDV. In this fragment of a letter something occurs which, strictly understood, will displease theologians. But the hyperbole of a pious man may be kindly explained, and something must be indulged to his fervent devotion.

[58] For the rest, if by the testimony of this most eminent Cardinal the body of St. Clare be still so lifelike that she seems only to be asleep, judgment may be given by eyewitnesses concerning the likeness of that same holy Virgin which I here exhibit engraved in copper.

The True Likeness of St. Clare of Montefalco

Beneath the old prototype of this image, which more than a hundred years ago was given to our Reverend Father Jacques Tirin, was subscribed in French: This is the true likeness of St. Clare of Montefalco. We have given it here with the same fidelity with which we found it, and meanwhile we leave free judgment concerning the truth of this likeness to eyewitnesses: for our Elders, two of whom saw the entire body of St. Clare in the year 1660, noted nothing concerning her true form, as will appear from the following.

[59] in the year of Christ 1660 Among the other innumerable eyewitnesses of these prodigies are also to be reckoned two of our predecessors, namely Godfrey Henschen and Daniel Papebroch, who in the year 1660 visited the sacred relics of this blessed Virgin, as Papebroch noted in his manuscript Roman Itinerary, page 278 and following, in these words: On the XIX day of December about dawn we took care to be conducted on the way toward Montefalco, the weather being somewhat foggy; whence the falling moisture made the ascent of the hill, otherwise difficult, still more difficult for us. And when we had arrived there, we went at once to the church of blessed Clare, which has been newly built with notable workmanship outside the walls of the town; in the front part of which there are three arches between pillars supporting a cornice, above which are windows of due size; and as many altars beneath the side vault on either hand, but as yet unadorned, as also the rest of the church, whose choir I know not whether it be built. The aisles at least I saw on both sides, and the left one occupied with a music gallery and organ. But beneath the right one there is a noble altar of plaster of the divine Clare herself, beneath whose panel, behind the altar at which Father Godfrey had celebrated, there was shown us within the wall the body of that holy Virgin, still entire after three hundred and fifty-two years, in a silver shrine; but whose side was transparent with crystal windows.

[60] after countless others, was beheld by Henschen and Papebroch, In the same place two small reliquaries were shown, in one of which was a finger of St. Anne, given to this Saint by Cardinal Soliman: in the other was enclosed a phial with that blood which flowed from the heart after it was opened after death. And the heart itself indeed, marked with the mysteries of the Passion, was shown us within the enclosure of the nuns, which is on the Gospel side, in a most noble breast-image of this Saint, the silver plate which forms the garment covering the breast being drawn back; and it has the size of an infant's head. From it certain more notable parts, taken out, are kept in a cross of noble workmanship, which is set beside the aforesaid statue in a nobly adorned case whenever these relics are exhibited to be seen — which is not done without much light of tapers, the vicar of the monastery being always present, who with singular courtesy served us in a surplice, Dom Giovanni Fattiboni, Canon of Spello. And this contains in the middle the Crucified, formed of the Saint's flesh in her heart, and at the foot the discipline or scourge, equal to the Crucified: at the remaining extremities hang those three admirable globes, expressing by the miraculous equality of their weight the mystery of the undivided Trinity; of which the one that hung upon the left arm of the cross, though of a most hard material, had then fallen apart into five pieces, when the madness of the Lutheran heresy was rending the unity of the Church. All these things having been seen and heard with veneration, we sought a lodging, etc. I scarcely doubt that in the meantime that church has been finished, which these two hagiographers of Antwerp in the year 1660 saw not yet fully completed or adorned. But I do not know whether these sacred relics are still placed in the same spot in which Papebroch then described them. I shall now briefly premise a few things in general concerning the benefits with which Bl. Clare has favored her clients after her death.

[61] Torelli asserts, on the authority of the writers of her Life, that within the space of ten years three hundred and more miracles were wrought by the patronage of Bl. Clare, and finally frequent miracles openly declare the sanctity of this Virgin. as Agostino Maria Arpe in the Pantheon Augustinianum, page 129, attests. Whence it need not seem wonderful that the often-praised Cornelius Curtius prefixed to those few miracles which he chose out of very many this prologue: To call these into number and upon paper will be no less difficult for me than to force the sands of the shore under the reckoning of arithmetic. Clare was a sea of benefits, with which she abounded and, as with a continual tide, overflowed upon men, both while she still dwelt among mortals and after she was received among the heroes of heaven. Some few I shall here relate briefly in compendium, from which, as the lion from his claw, her sanctity and her piety pleasing to God may be recognized. Then he narrates some particular ones, which will also be read below in our compendium of the Life. Piergili in the Italian Acts of Bl. Clare gathered many more of her miracles and divided them into various classes. It does not please me to translate all these into Latin, both because I do not sufficiently understand the Italian proper names of persons and places, and because the chief ones are at least briefly related in the compendium of the Life now to be published. Nothing therefore remains but that we reprint the mentioned work of Mosconi, and from time to time correct it where corrupted by the printers, and illustrate it with our accustomed annotations.

LIFE

By Isidoro Mosconi,

Faithfully extracted from the most ancient codices found in the monastery of the Holy Cross.

Clare of the Cross, virgin, near Montefalco in Umbria (Bl.)

By Mosconi.

CHAPTER I.

The Blessed one's pious childhood with her parents, her manner of living under the governance of her recluse sister, and various exercises of virtue.

Clare, a most religious virgin, to whom a burning love toward the cross of Christ and the mysteries of the cross imprinted upon her heart gave the surname of the Cross, The Blessed one's country, parents, and infancy, born of pious parents, Damian and Jacoba, at Montefalco, a town of Umbria, while Clement IV ^a sat, was from her earliest years so given to prayer that, scarcely four years old, she recited the Lord's Prayer, the Angelic Salutation, and many other prayers with bent knees, hands folded, and face raised to God, with so great piety of soul that she was a wonder to all. Nay rather, when she was at times occupied with household business, she flew to the neighboring church of St. John the Baptist to pray more ardently. To her prayers she joined frequent fasts.

[2] And that she might learn a holier manner of praying, she frequently went to her elder sister Joanna, who was greatly devoted to the offices of Christian piety, and was accustomed to pray with her at length. Moreover she so retained that frequency of prayer throughout her whole life her zeal for prayer hateful to the devil that she was hateful to the foulest enemy of the human race; wherefore he strove by all means to draw her away from the path of the heavenly life she had begun: for sometimes with soothing speeches, sometimes with outcries, sometimes with a noise raised, sometimes with various phantoms and feigned specters, sometimes even with sharper threats he tried to frighten the girl from the practice of prayer; so that, even taking a woman's form and with a masked face, he thus addressed the girl: "Beware, beware, Clare: for if hereafter thou shalt come to pray with thy sister Joanna, I will punish thee with death, as I did thy sister Theodorutia" — for Theodorutia had died scarcely after her birth.

[3] with fasts and vigils. But Clare, despising these snares of the demon, gave herself with greater zeal and sharper effort to prayers, vigils, and fasts: and she was so sparing of sleep that she rarely went up to her little bed to sleep, but lay upon the ground if ever necessary sleep overcame her. Nay rather, whereas at that age children are wont to seek out daintier fare and more sumptuous dishes, she, content with barley bread, seemed to herself to feast sumptuously. But if any seasoning seemed needful, it was sought from wild herbs and the shoots or tendrils of vines; and she quenched her thirst with cold water.

[4] How holy and how joyful her entry But when a little after her sister Joanna had entered, with certain other virgins, that cell which they called the new one, near the prisons of St. Leonard, that she might there more fervently, all the noise of earthly cares being silent, give herself to prayers and the offices of piety, Clare left no stone unturned that she also might be admitted to that sacred place, where the best morals were cultivated and uprightness and holiness of life flourished. But since those sacred virgins had chosen Joanna, Clare's sister, as their superior, to whom they had promised obedience, poverty, chastity, fasting, penance, prayer, and silence, Clare pleaded with Joanna with the greatest entreaties that she might be received into that sacred fellowship. Her sister Joanna resisted, and wished to be entreated many times, and, before she should satisfy her wish, to examine her mind diligently; for it is by no means lawful to admit anyone into cloisters of this kind unless you have proved her will and constancy, as gold in the fire.

[5] into her Sister's cell was: When, therefore, the time had come at which Joanna, overcome by frequent entreaties, received her sister

Clare, it was brought about by a plainly divine counsel that on the day on which she was to enter the cell, Thomas ^b, bishop of Spoleto, was present, from whom the virgin received a blessing as it were by a divine hand. When Clare saw that this had turned out according to her wish, she resolved to give thanks to God as diligently as possible, to pay a fast of one whole week for so great a benefit, and to taste nothing beyond half a loaf with an apple. There were added frequent prayers to God, in which the ardor of her spirit boiled up beyond what anyone can believe: for it often happened that, while she prayed by night, she shone with an unwonted light; while by morning she was overshadowed with the darkness of night, just as though light and darkness favored her by turns, God granting it ^c; and if it had been in her power, she would have spent the whole time entirely in such an occupation, since so much delight redounded to her from that exercise that neither her tender age nor the weakness of her strength held her back: for she so eagerly enjoyed intercourse with God that she had no feeling at all of pain or trouble.

[6] This I shall not here omit: that when blessed Clare was in the ninth year of her age, her wondrous chastity from the ninth year of her age; she was rebuked by her sister Joanna the superior because in sleeping she had unwittingly uncovered part of her foot. The cause of this was that, wearied with vigils and prayers and overcome by unlooked-for sleep, she had not been able sufficiently to provide for modesty. But from that thing she conceived so great a sorrow of soul that she washed away this slight stain upon her conscience, as though it had happened on purpose, with many tears and groans. Therefore thereafter she always observed this when about to sleep, that she placed her tunic between her legs, lest flesh should touch flesh, and bound her tunic down to her ankles. She never permitted any of the nuns to touch her hands: and if she saw any of them with her garments tucked up, she charged her with immodesty, saying that not even in a dark place is it fitting to bare any parts of the body, but that everywhere modesty must be kept and unseemliness driven away. Which she herself so observed that she would not uncover any part of her body even to a physician: for she said that sight is the source of very many evils, because the sense of the eyes is the sharpest enemy of the soul; and therefore that ought not to be looked upon which it is not lawful to desire.

[7] Nor were there wanting heavenly consolations with which she refreshed her soul: the consolations of angels, the temptation of the demon; whence we have received from her sister Joanna that the place in which Clare prayed was very often lit up with a wondrous brightness; and that when she sometimes suffered from ill health of body, she was so soothed with angelic harmonies that she recovered her former strength. Why then should we wonder if (as has been said) she not seldom detected the snares and hidden frauds of the demon, since she was upheld by divine help? that she warned her sisters to be on their guard, [if] he should appear; and likewise made known how he shook the window with a violent noise to strike her with fear; how he put on the false person of the Superior, and, feigning truth, would counsel in place of good instructions things that would bring much ruin; how with angry face he threatened each one if they should say anything of the kingdom of God; how he ran about through the monastery like a roaring lion seeking prey; how with a light cackle he delighted in a stir among the nuns. All these things being easily seen through, she watched the more with a more ardent mind in the worship of God, and nourished her sisters with pious discourses as with daily food, teaching above all that nothing better can be desired in this life than an upright conscience fortified with prayer, and especially if one seek not the applause of the crowd but glory for God.

[8] From daily talk she so shrank that it is established that only once in her life she broke silence, silence; and that she did this at her mother Jacoba's urging, who had come to her for the sake of conversation. And over this, as over a most grievous crime, she grieved most grievously, and judged that it had come to her in place of a great punishment; therefore she paid the penalty of the fault committed, when in the greatest cold and the harshest winter, treading the icy snows with bare feet, a hundred times over she recited the Lord's Prayer with the deepest lowliness of soul. It was forbidden from Compline until the third hour of the following day to speak even among the nuns themselves. Those who frequented the monastery were with great difficulty admitted to converse with their own daughters, nor did the superior grant such conversations unless necessity urged: when leave was given, they betook themselves to the iron gratings, and these covered with a cloth on the inside, that they might not be seen; and one of the sisters, appointed by the directress, was present at the conversations. They greatly detested talkativeness; and if occasion arose, they expressed their meaning in the fewest possible words; but during the time when silence was enjoined, they turned over the divine mysteries in their minds.

[9] her abstinence in the tenth year of her age Then Clare took wondrous delight in them, and drew thence so great a pleasure of gladness that she many times forgot the food with which, meager as it was, she was content. The nuns, learning of this exceedingly harsh manner of life, began greatly to fear lest (since especially she had not yet passed her tenth year) if she persisted in it, her strength should fail her along with her last breath; wherefore, overcome by the coaxing of words and by the entreaties of the sisters, that she might refresh a body wearied with labors, she once tasted an egg without the Superior's leave: and having done this, she afterwards conceived so great a sorrow of mind that, pouring forth for many days a vast flood of tears, she was able most abundantly to wash away the stain of the sin, if any there were. What more? Flesh, in a manner the delight of men, she not only did not taste, but did not touch even with her fingertips.

[10] how severe she was, This one thing we read: that when her sister Joanna the superior saw her too much worn out with vigils and fasts, she commanded her by authority to take a piece of meat which she herself had brought, to restore her strength: which although she did not at all refuse at that time, yet, when the superior was not looking, she threw it away, that she might not swerve from the plan of her life. Afterwards, when she recognized that she had been less obedient to her word than was fitting, moved by grave anxiety she did not rest until she had made ample satisfaction by paying the penalty: a meager diet and dress delighted her; she avoided richer fare, using this saying frequently: "We eat food that we may live, not that we may enjoy it; that the body may be sustained by it, not delighted." Hence an easy approach lay open to weakness of strength and to contracting disease; into which, when she had fallen, she burned with a longing (as is wont to happen to the sick) for casiato (so they call a certain kind of food made of cheese and grain); nevertheless she preferred to command her desire rather than to obey it: in place of the casiato she asked for bread, in which, by her own testimony, she recognized the savor of casiato.

[11] and how her desire was, as it were, dead. By such means she restrained the desires of her soul. For virtue had subdued all things; nor is there reason why I should wish to enumerate her several gifts, since in all she so advanced that, as they would require a longer discourse and a greater store of time, it is better to be silent than to say too little. For she was pure, simple, fearing God: from frauds, lies, and shameful pleasures she shrank as from a pestilent poison; she had so subjected to reason that part which is agitated by the various disturbances of the passions that she took care that both should be employed in observing the law of God: in the praise of modesty and temperance she yielded to none: in short, you would have found nothing in her that you could blame, and very much that you could commend. Such a life Clare led in the cell, day by day more pleasing to God, and most delightful to her other companions, who, kindled with the divine spirit, were thinking of another convent and of a certain rule of life to be received.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

There an abbey is made with the rule of St. Augustine, in which, succeeding her dead sister, she presides most holily.

A new monastery is built in the year 1281 But since they did nothing according to their custom without first imploring God's help, they all with one voice and mind press on, pray, and implore his aid, that of his kindness he would show what counsel should be taken. A place, then, was divinely shown to Joanna the superior, that they should there set their new dwelling where the Cross of Christ had been found. When they had labored long upon this matter, at length in the hill of St. Catherine of Bottaccio, beside the walls of the town, many found one beautiful, gleaming, and adorned with a very great number of women — the very one which the superior herself had seen shown her from heaven. Whence the greatest gladness seized them all, and as soon as God's will was known, alms having been sought, they laid the foundations of the house; which in that year could not be brought to completion: for poverty forbade the finishing hand to be laid to it.

[13] Meanwhile the virtues of Clare (as commonly happens) were followed by the greatest envy, not without envy of the Blessed one, and her charity which thereafter overflowed upon the whole sisterhood: wherefore, since her good name was being disparaged with wicked speeches, no slight hindrance was brought to the finishing of the building: those most holy virgins nevertheless, turning all their hope and thoughts to God, migrated into the new convent, leaving the old; although they had neither firm roofs nor cells sufficiently fit for habitation; from which it came about that through the inclemency of the air, the injuries of the weather, the violence of the rains, and almost six hundred other discomforts they fared ill; yet they bore all things with a more even mind. But Clare meanwhile seemed to triumph, as though in delights, inflamed with a wondrous charity — to take away much from her own comfort that others might enjoy it; to lead the other sisters into the safer part of the dwelling; to cherish most diligently with her own coverlets those admitted into her cell; and to perform other services with which she herself, since she was a daughter and not a mother, ought rather to have been served. In these straits of life a year passed by, after which, when abundance of things was supplied both for food and for erecting the buildings, they brought the dwelling to completion: so that, when it had begun to be built in the year MCCLXXXI, at which time Clare was in her fourteenth year, it was afterwards wholly completed in the year MCCXC.

[14] completed in the year 1290, In that interval of time the nuns had had no certain rule or institute to which to give themselves, but had directed their life by their own prudence ^a. The monastery therefore being built, they besought Gerard, bishop of Spoleto, by letter, that he would impart to them some right norm of the religious life; who indeed gave them the rule of St. Augustine, as from his

letter appears, transmitted the rule. We have judged that a copy of the letter should be set down here: "Gerard, by divine mercy bishop of Spoleto. To our beloved in Christ, Joanna, daughter of Damian, of Montefalco, and to the sisters dwelling in the houses of St. Catherine of Bottaccio near the town of Montefalco, of the diocese of Spoleto, greeting in him who is the true salvation of all. Those who lead a religious life ought to be aided with effectual support, that by the welcome helps of such assistance they may be able perpetually to serve the Lord in holy religion. Now on your part humble supplication has been made to us that, whereas the houses of the Holy Cross and of St. Catherine of Bottaccio near the town of Montefalco, of the diocese of Spoleto, in which under regular observance you purpose to render a service pleasing to God — since they seem sufficiently fitted for this, being suitable for religion — we would deign of special grace to grant you a certain rule, and other things which befit a regulated place.

[15] when the rule of St. Augustine was given to the nuns, "We therefore, commending your laudable purpose in the Lord, having invoked the name of Christ, have thought good to grant you by the authority of these presents the rule of blessed Augustine, which we will and command to be perpetually and inviolably observed, so far as shall be possible, by you and by the other sisters who shall be in the same place for the time being; and we give you full and free faculty and grant power to make a burial place [*] for yourselves and for your sisters and lay sisters, and to receive as companions and sisters persons fleeing from the world. And in acknowledgment of the said grant we will that you pay one pound of wax to us and to our successors every year. In witness whereof we have caused these present letters to be made and to be fortified with the appending of our seal. Given at our parish church of St. Fortunatus of Montefalco, in the year of the Lord MCCXC, in the third year ^b of the Pontificate of the Lord Pope Nicholas the Fourth, in the third Indiction, and on the tenth day of the month of June." These letters being received, and the building being fully completed, they give thanks to God as diligently as possible.

[16] and by the fame of Bl. Clare many nuns are gathered together, But Clare had won the hearts of all to herself (such was her humility and the excellence of her character), and she everywhere flourished with such great sanctity, her fame flying hither and thither, that many virgins, stirred by her admirable example, flowed together to that place. The number of the nuns being increased, since the food gathered from pious persons was insufficient, they appointed certain servants who should beg bread and food from door to door. When she learned this, Clare left no stone unturned and strove with all her might that she might be admitted into their number; for she knew how much submission conduces to the Christian life. And when she had obtained it, with the cloak in which she was wrapped she covered her head, hands, and feet, nor did she go out before she had received leave to go forth from the superioress and necessity had urged. Then she, with downcast eyes, sought alms at the door of every house, and with a more cheerful spirit returned to those houses from which before, having received nothing, she had often been sent away, that, bearing adversity better, she might exercise humility. She never departed from her companion's side; she did not utter a word upon the road; she did not enter strangers' houses; she preferred to become the sport of winds and rains rather than to shelter herself in the houses she passed. When this came to Joanna's ears, when a month was over in which she had gone out only eight times, she forbade her sister such an office; whose command she so diligently observed that thereafter she kept herself always at home.

[17] Nay rather, when Bl. Clare so struck her body with rods and scourges that blood flowed abundantly, until, at her sister's death her sister Joanna, moved with compassion, secretly took away and hid the scourges which she found sprinkled with blood. But Clare with anxious mind was troubled with the greatest cares, because it seemed that too great a relaxation of penance was being made, but most of all because she saw that the harshness of her life, which she desired to be hidden from all, was becoming known to certain persons. Meanwhile Joanna, who with the highest praise had ruled the monastery for five years, closed the last day of her life ^c. Whence a very great anxiety suddenly seized the nuns, since they were altogether ignorant whom they should put in the dead woman's place. They therefore press God with many prayers that he would direct their thoughts to the best superioress. At length they choose Clare, as one who far surpassed the rest in innocence of life and singular prudence. She refused the dignity with all her strength, nor could she by any means be brought to accept it, unless the command of the vicar of the bishop of Spoleto were added, whose will she judged should be preferred to her own prudence.

[18] Clare, having received this office, understanding that so many virgins were committed to her trust, she was chosen abbess, kindly to others; watched with the greatest care and omitted nothing at all that pertained to their common good: for this reason she almost never rested either in mind or in body; she provided for her sisters' comforts with the most diligent care she could; she was also by the uprightness of her life an example to the rest; nor did she command anything to others before she herself began to perform it; and thence by a most gentle method she drew them to obedience and to the observance of the laws. For the rest, such was the integrity of her life that it seems rather to be admired than imitated: for at night, like a soldier keeping the night watches, in the obscurity of darkness she covered herself now with this, now with that cloak of the sisters, to deceive the eyes of the nuns, and in the hidden parts of her cell scourged herself severely. Nor did she always afflict her body in the same manner; but sometimes she used little cords, sometimes nettles, that she might keep the spirits of the flesh, now subdued, held down: she moreover very often had her bed strewn with nettles: and variety of garments she so mocked that she said it was foolish to seek the delights of clothing in a hairshirt.

[19] So long as her life lasted, she was content with one tunic only, and that with sleeves and reaching to the ankles, but toward herself without mercy with which she covered her bare limbs; another she sometimes put on, sewn of coarse patchwork; and lest she should be exposed to hostile eyes, she wrapped her whole body entirely in a woolen cloak: she had two hairshirts, of which the one was woven of horsehair, the other of pig's bristles, and she used them alternately: she always went barefoot, unless the gravity of illness or some other most necessary cause hindered. The bed on which she was to take rest she had spread in the middle of her cell, and she kept it rather out of a certain propriety and custom than because she deemed it necessary, and very often slept lying upon the ground. But when from so great a harshness of living she fell into ill health, she suffered a mattress stuffed with straw and a hard pillow under her head to be placed for her: yet when she had recovered her former strength, she gave herself wholly again to her former austerities, so that she might perpetually preserve that hardness of life which she had cultivated (as they say) from her tenderest nails.

[20] chiefly in fasts and prayers; So great indeed was her abstinence that she sometimes passed whole days without bread: for she took delight (as I said above) in a most sparing diet; nay, she shunned garden herbs as too dainty a fare, saying that nature is content with few things, and therefore that meaner foods should be sought out, and asserting that to procure many things for food is superfluous. Solitude she so loved that, if it could have been done with modesty preserved, she would easily have hidden herself in places remote from all men's eyes. What more? To the appointed fasts she added other days also, as the sixth day of the week, on which she recalled the memory of Christ the Savior, and the Sabbath, on which she recalled that of the Most Blessed Virgin; and besides other days which preceded the feast days both of Saints and of Virgins. At other seasons of the year she sometimes took food at the ninth hour or toward evening with her companions; she never sat at table without a companion.

[21] so that fear was had for her life. Kindled therefore with the divine spirit, she embraced with her whole soul that prayer by which we are made pleasing to God; and every day, no witnesses being by, prostrating her body upon the ground, she kissed the earth; and, as could be observed, in the evening after Compline she bowed herself in veneration five hundred times, and gave as many signs of veneration and humility in the morning, nor was any moment of time given her which she did not spend in praying, resting upon heavenly thoughts: and if various affairs hindered her, yet she in no way turned her mind from God. For this cause, amid so great severity of life, the nuns feared greatly for her; both because forgetfulness of food, and also because the utmost intentness of mind, weakened her bodily strength, so that for the most part she seemed half alive.

ANNOTATIONS.

. Perhaps to be read: to make a place of burial*.

CHAPTER III.

The Blessed one's humility, modesty, purity of intention, zeal for the Christian faith, and prophetic spirit.

Thus indeed she baffled The canonical Hours, the Office for the dead at the appointed times, likewise the commemorations of the Saints, the Lord's Prayer, and other prayers she directed to Jesus Christ our Savior and to the holy Virgins with a vehement ardor of devotion: not seldom she took anxious care that a sermon upon Christian discipline should frequently be preached in the sacred building: on the festivals and octaves of certain Saints whom she honored with especial veneration, she was so intent upon the contemplation of heavenly things that, as though loosed from the bonds of the body, she seemed to be with Christ; and when she held her gaze fixed upon heaven, one might see her eyes shining more brightly than the sun, and the place in which she gave herself to prayer flooded with the clearest light; all which gifts Clare obtained by divine favor: moreover with learning gained not by human labor but at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, she was adorned with heavenly wisdom and so greatly fortified that (as has already been said above) she could be deluded by no arts or deceits of the evil spirit, although he left nothing untried in any place or time by which he might hold back the most holy Virgin from this happiness.

[23] Nay rather, she not only disclosed to the other nuns his devices the devil's arts, of whatever sort, by which he tried to strike terror with a violent knocking at the door and shaking of the turn-box, but even put him to flight as he went about and pursued one of the sisters. Hence it came to pass that

the demon, angry at Clare because the perversity of his own wit endured such strength of hers, tried the more to deceive her: wherefore that old trickster painted upon the wall the figure of the Crucified with a beauty almost incredible and with an altogether elegant form of body, that he might stir up the little fires of lust already lulled to sleep. But when he had accomplished nothing by his crafty arts, being stirred to greater fury thereby, he hurt her with frequent blows and drove her to the ground (so the nuns found her): yet she was so far from succumbing to snares of this kind that she rather by her prudence opened to others a way of overcoming them.

[24] Nor yet, although she was head and governess of the convent, toward all her sisters lowly and humble, did she give herself the first place in food, clothing, speech, or in anything whatever; but she dealt most courteously with all, so that they took wondrous delight in her uprightness in daily intercourse. The poor she cherished with such charity that very often, stripping herself of her own garments, she clothed them. If any of the nuns was afflicted with ill health, disease, or sores, she would come to her with vehement charity, tend her, perform the nauseating services, handle them with her own hands, feeling no loathing but rather pleasure. She was, in short, a pattern of humility, the splendor of modesty, a specimen of uprightness, the safest dwelling place of virginity and of the other virtues; with which ornaments, although most men, if they have them, are wont to glory, she nevertheless shrank from them exceedingly, and confessed that whatever good was in her must all be attributed to God alone. She had at length come to that degree of perfection that, according to the saying of the wisest man — that is, "know thyself" — she lived most happily upon earth. Therefore in the sixth book of the Revelations ^a it stands that, while she was pouring out prayers to God in the inner parts of her oratory, her neck and head were beheld by many nuns adorned with most elegant garlands of violets. Which thing symbolically signified the knowledge of herself: for she so hated the glory of her own name and of her deeds that she attributed to herself not more than was fair, but less than the reckoning of her office required; since she had conceived such an opinion of herself that among the least she thought herself the least.

[25] and a most watchful guardian of herself and of her virgins, What more? She guarded all things of hers with such moderation and prudence, and led a life so cheerful and tranquil: for to be free from fault is a great consolation. Curiosity, which easily falls upon a woman's mind, she never loved. About those things which in no way concerned her she did not trouble herself; she even avoided the sight of them. If anything had to be done outside the monastery, or within, in the way of a confessor or of medicine, she went, wrapped in her cloak, with downcast face, and with so great modesty that neither her uncovered face nor her bare hands might be seen by anyone. That others should do the same she was always the promoter. She willed that the names of the sisters should not be known even to the confessor, lest occasion should be given for mutual affection, nor did she permit any sister to speak with anyone with no witnesses by: for virginity ought to flee the meetings and companionships of men, otherwise it is brought into the utmost peril: in this therefore Clare applied herself as diligently as possible, so that she would not so much as look upon any likeness of a man. And from this it came about that, when unexpectedly and against her intent she had seen a man, she was (as a certain Brother Severinus ^b relates) vehemently disturbed, and took no light penalties upon herself for what she called her immodesty, thinking that she had overstepped the bounds of modesty, of which she had always been the most watchful guardian. And often she spoke with her nuns of the beauty of virginity, kindling all to the love of it, extolling it with almost divine praises, saying that it brings back in a mortal life an immortal glory; that it is like a sweet-smelling balsam by which corpses are preserved incorrupt; and that the same, fortified with a divine guardian, can by no means be injured by men, since it is the brightness of the eternal light. These things and very many others to this effect she used to say.

[26] whom she also stirred up by examples of beneficence toward their neighbors The Lives of the holy Virgins she read constantly day and night; their good deeds she turned over in her mind and so well expressed in her own conduct that she has been enrolled among their fellowship, as appears in the sixth book of the Revelations: and very many indeed obtained many and great benefits by Clare's good offices. Moreover she was not so much temperate in prosperity as patient in adversity: all cares, anxieties, weakness of strength, injuries, and six hundred reproaches she bore gently and calmly, exulting with the Apostle in these words: Gladly will I glory in mine infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

[27] and of mercy, There was added the highest charity and an almost incredible compassion toward the poor: wherefore in her supplications she was mindful before God not so much of those who loved her as of those who slandered her, which is proved by the testimony of eleven men: and in the extremest want, what food there was she distributed to others rather than kept for herself, being content with a most meager diet. To the same kind of abstinence she exhorted her companions, saying that in our actions we must regard what is lawful, not what delights us. In both of these virtues she struck the deepest roots, as you may easily judge from her works; and chiefly from this, that by her prayers she freed a notary unjustly accused, and very many others who bore minds hostile to the monastery: for the beginnings of great things are commonly assailed with hatred and ill will. When other nuns of that same town greatly disparaged her reputation, she did not deny them help when they had fled to her. Nay, being wholly forgetful of injuries, she provided for them much more diligently than for her own nuns. When no slight dissension had arisen between the people of Trevi ^c and her own townsmen, she reconciled peace between them by her prayers; and likewise between the people of Perugia, Arezzo, and Spoleto. She rescued the vicar of the bishop of Spoleto from captivity and set him at liberty, and strove to be at hand for all in whatever ways she could. She snatched Master Walter from the hands of his enemies. A certain captive released from prison she covered with her own cloak. She moreover established this custom, that when bread was baked in the house, twelve loaves should be made in honor of the Apostles and distributed to the poor, which she commanded to be observed thereafter.

[28] All human things she so held in contempt despising all human things, and seeking God alone; that she called those wretched who followed these fleeting and perishable things, and still more wretched those who called them goods: for a good makes better him in whom it is; but honors, riches, wealth, and the rest which are thought goods torment the mind continually and render their possessors of a worse condition. Therefore she admonished the nuns that they should induce no one to deserve well of the convent by favor or by any hope of human advantage: for God is offended when the goods of the spirit are bought with the goods of the body. If anything therefore was given in alms, providing for the necessity of the monastery, she paid out the rest to the poor. In receiving girls into the number of the nuns she looked not at dowries nor at kinship or eminence of family, but had regard only to a will inclined to the pious worship of God. It happened once that the nuns, without her knowledge, admitted into their community a certain girl whose father was a friend of the convent: being gravely disturbed thereat, she safely foretold that the girl's uncle, for whose sake they had received her, would one day be a most bitter enemy of the monastery: and when this afterwards happened contrary to the expectation of all, she admonished them that, kindled by hope of any human advantage, they should not venture such a thing, affirming that spiritual things are not to be bestowed for the sake of kinship or friendship, but according to each one's merits and worth. And she used to say that what held the first place in Christian perfection was to provide for the salvation of souls.

[29] But it was divinely announced to Clare in what manner the girl Bizzola, as she showed by admitting one rejected and poor. who was born in the district of Signa, had been rejected by the sisters when she desired to be enrolled in their fellowship, because the goods of fortune necessary for her maintenance were wanting; and therefore on the most holy day of Good Friday, while Clare was with attentive mind meditating on the last torments of our Savior, she saw that her salvation was despaired of unless she were received into her community; and being made certain of this, she first indeed rebuked the nuns themselves, but then received her into the monastery and called her Christina, because while contemplating the most bitter sorrows of Christ she had learned that girl's condition.

[30] The Catholic faith she defended with the greatest zeal, and very often by disputation confuted the false doctrines of heretics; She shone with zeal for the Catholic faith, and with a prophetic knowledge for there was in her so great a wisdom that she seemed to have attained plainly all knowledge of divine things. For why should I recall those things which are credible to none save to those who saw them? The future actions of men she beheld as though present, being marked with the gift of prophecy, and she knew minds and the inmost feelings of the soul. It is worth while, since we have fallen upon mention of such things, to recount a few predictions. To a servant of her monastery she foretold long beforehand the coming of a certain Brother Giles of the Order of Preachers on a certain day and hour, and what he was turning over in his mind. When he had come to the convent at the time named, being carefully informed of all things by the servant, he was seized with the greatest wonder, and desired to know Clare by sight.

[31] of hidden things. To the same servant she foretold that Margaret the Frenchwoman, journeying to Rome, would come to her chapel when she turned aside from the road; and Clare, being admonished by a divine spirit (as it is fitting to believe) of her coming, ran to the iron gratings of her chapel, saluted the pilgrim by her own name, and spoke with her in French until evening. She declared that Matthiola of St. Paul's, a nun of the convent, who was in sorrow, would be freed from it in three days. Let there be added James Colonna, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, most richly adorned with every kind of virtue, whom she warned that many perils would befall him, and that at length he would be most honorably restored to his former dignity; she taught him the cause of the matter and showed him what was to be done. All these things being fulfilled to the letter, mindful of so great a benefit, born of a most noble family and endowed likewise with a renowned and excellent spirit, giving a token of a grateful mind, he presented her with a finger of St. Anne, mother of the Virgin Mother of God ^d; which, so long as Clare lived, she honored with the highest veneration; and after her death it is preserved with her body, and is shown to those who visit Clare's body with the greatest wonder and sense of devotion, and it seems the finger of a living woman, not of a dead one. To the bishop of Spoleto, her own prelate ^e, she foretold that within a certain time he would be raised to a higher degree of dignity; and a little after he was declared Cardinal and named of Ostia.

[32] She shone. To her own nuns she very often disclosed their hidden habits, discourses, and feelings of soul, bestowing all labor and care to draw their minds from errors of this kind. One among the rest she admonished to wipe away the stain with which she had defiled her conscience, since she had not seldom seen the demon pursuing her, and she declared that he would depart from her within six months. She admonished Alacra the novice not to allow a certain hidden sin to be concealed from the confessor through shame. The abbot of St. Erasmus, who had determined to visit her unexpectedly, she charged with hidden crimes. Her own brother Francis, who, driven by diabolical fraud, had wished to lay aside the religious habit, she rebuked most sharply. Innumerable other things of this kind the subject itself would require; but time warns us to hasten elsewhere: for it is enough to understand that she was both a prophetess and, of all the sciences,

was called mistress; and that her fame was spread so far and wide that there was a most frequent concourse from every side of bishops and of most eminent men, for the sake of speaking with her, of hearing her, and of seeing her (which indeed was chiefly difficult). Hence alms flowed in, although beyond the need of daily food nothing at all was retained.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER IV.

She is communicated by Christ; she will not have her nuns distracted from meditating on his passion; her humility, and the mysteries imprinted upon her heart.

She receives the Eucharist from heaven; she despises all earthly things. This highest praise of piety and religion in the most pure Virgin Christ the Savior attested, from whom she deserved to touch with her own hands the Sacrament of the most holy Eucharist offered to her, since she could not receive the Sacrament of the Lord's body together with the others. The other consolations of this world, esteeming them as useless and vain, she made little of, exclaiming: "How various are the chances of our life, in which we change both willing and not willing according as things fall out. I once rejoiced in prosperity and grieved in adversity; then, my reckoning being changed, I grieved in prosperity and rejoiced in adversity: now I recognize neither what is to be rejoiced in nor what is to be grieved over." For she judged that all things must be borne with an even mind. For thus men appear happy in adversity and most fortunate in prosperity.

[34] In speaking, with her eloquence was joined so great a charm and such a composure of her whole countenance and body How learned she was in governing, that she greatly stirred the minds of her hearers. Concerning her teaching indeed it has been handed down in the records that this saying was once heard: "What is more divine than Clare's teaching? What more certain? Whose speech unravels all obscurities and drives away all the darkness of ignorance." No wonder, then, if she was most prudent in governing, since singular prudence and gravity of counsel followed her uprightness of morals. She published many pious ordinances for living well and blessedly, which she appointed to be recited and expounded every week to the nuns gathered together in one place.

[35] And first indeed she admonished that the Sisters should not receive anyone into friendship; and prudent, lest any occasion of idleness but should root out utterly the causes of all such intimacies; nor, if a suitable business arose, did she permit any to approach the iron gratings, unless covered with a cloth (as has already been explained) and with a companion present. Then she ordained that the enclosure should be so kept by all that it should be lawful neither for the nuns to go out of the monastery nor even for outsiders to enter, since, as one rightly writes:

Unwedded maidens must be guarded with unsleeping Care; love spreads its snares on every side.

But if a physician or a confessor had to be received within the cloister under urgent necessity, two of the elder nuns accompanied them, while the rest took refuge in the more retired parts of the house. If any alms were bestowed, it was applied to the common good; this she said was ordained by nature and by the divine law. Silence she enjoined with such severity that not Pythagoras or Harpocrates delivered precepts to their disciples in a better manner; since she willed that not even the least word should be uttered by them unless it redounded to the glory of God. When the canonical Hours were completed, she ordered the Office for the dead and other kinds of prayers to be recited: in honor of the Lord's passion she commanded five hundred genuflections to be made in the evening and as many in the morning; which, if they had not fulfilled them at the appointed hours, they completed over a longer time; and she allowed none at all to be exempt from them. If she saw any one less fitted for prayers, she trained her for the fitting services of the monastery: she rooted out every occasion of idleness as a pestilent root, lest they should be deceived by the demon's fraud.

[36] or of distraction The business of the monastery to be transacted with men (as necessity required) she had delegated to a certain nun, who likewise had the care of the door; and she used to inform the abbess of all these things before they were done; and lest human cares should call them away from the divine worship, she provided by rule that she who was over the door should not communicate to the nuns what she had heard outside: she exhorted them rather to recall diligently in mind the torments of Christ, which was her own constant practice: for she very often thought with attentive mind upon the most bitter sufferings of Jesus Christ: wherefore she was afflicted with the deepest sorrow; and although she did not dissolve into tears, which quickly dry, yet the grief remained fixed in her soul; although she could not always contain herself but that these too flowed forth as from a most abundant spring. And afterwards, when she had long dwelt in that contemplation, she began to entreat God with the highest prayers that what she beheld with the eyes of her mind she might taste also with the very sight of the body; and her prayers so prevailed with God that she most easily obtained what she desired. For to Clare by a certain singular privilege there were laid open to the letter those things which happened in the Lord's passion.

[37] might call them back from contemplating Christ's passion; Upon this vision she had bent all the force and keenness of her eyes, when suddenly a voice of this kind was heard from heaven: "What is more welcome or more desirable to thee, Clare, than to be made a partaker of my sorrows and torments, so that thou shouldst not only have been present at them, but hadst even presided over them?" Thence she conceived the greatest hope of the divine benevolence; and she so tenaciously persisted thereafter in that thought that she seemed to taste in her very food the bitterness of the gall and the sharpness of the sorrows. Hence it came about that all her discourse looked to the Lord's cross, and that with all the ardor and effort of her mind she kindled her sisters to the meditation of it; how much she profited by her speaking, the most abundant showers of tears which burst from the nuns' eyes easily showed, and their changed manner of life. While these things were going on, there was one out of the number of the nuns who served Religion by name rather than in fact: "I," said she, "experience no such delights or kinds of consolation in these meditations." She moreover carped at Clare because she attributed to herself more than humility itself required.

[38] For this reason she was somewhat lifted up in mind, as she herself related; having experienced for eleven years how terrible our enemy is. whence God willed her to be bereft for eleven years ^b of the sweetest fruit of his bounty: which she used to say profited her greatly; for in that space of time she began to afflict her body and flesh in various ways, and, as though set in a contest, to lead the life of a gladiator: although it was not the honor of this world but eternal salvation that was at stake. Then she broke the powers of the devil, overwhelmed the ticklings of the senses and the little sparks of lust, and counted vile all vain things that are in the world: set in such great perils, she was worn out with sorrow and sadness and shed frequent tears; then, being too much weakened, she fell as though dead; and when this sometimes happened, just like one laid low in the battle line, when she had recovered her strength, by fasting, disciplines, vigils, and divine prayers she went down again into the arena and bore off the victory. For to conquer oneself is then at last the true victory. This struggle of vices and virtues kept her from being occupied with divine meditations as she was wont, and took away that cheerfulness with which she seasoned the miseries of the present life: yet she enjoyed this one consolation, that she made all the depraved impulses of her mind subject to reason, and by the greatness of her virtue overcame the frauds of the demon. Therefore she often consulted her confessors, inquiring what might avail for retaining the divine meditations; and they, when they knew the matter, briskly exhorted the virgin to the contest, touching upon the difficulty of the kingdom of heaven, which no one can attain without the greatest labor: then she, as far as she could, aspired with a most ardent heart to eternal happiness.

[39] Which God himself approved: for esteeming the gifts of her soul worthy of a crown, She makes very much of humility: at that same hour in which, as we said above, she had fallen half dead, when she had recovered her former strength, there seemed to her the likeness of a man who carried in one hand a lamp full of oil, and in the other stalks of straw; and he said: "Straws are not burned unless they be first smeared with ointment"; and straightway she saw them, anointed with oil, consumed by the fire: the meaning of which vision she afterwards interpreted at the dictation of the divine spirit. Namely, that the soul is the straw which, unless it be anointed with the oil of humility, cannot be burned with the love of God; hence she learned why she had so long dwelt in sorrow: casting down her face and her mind to the earth, she stretched out her hands to God, praying most often that he would make her humble, and giving undying thanks that he had thus far kept her salvation and her life unharmed; and God most liberally granted both tranquility of mind and whatever she had asked; and when she had now passed her fifteenth year ^c, he soothed his handmaid before her death with an incredible kind of consolation, such as none of the greater ones has hitherto been able to attain.

[40] For Christ, taking the form of a pilgrim, clothed in a white garment, the mysteries of Christ's passion are imprinted upon her heart: bearing a cross upon his shoulders, greeted her with gentle words: "Hail," he said, "daughter: as I have long been thinking what I might chiefly offer thee for the highest gladness of soul, receive this cross with thy sweetest embrace, which can nowhere be more firmly fixed; therefore give me thy heart, daughter, that thou mayest die upon this cross." Which speech indeed was so vehement that it inflicted a wound in her very heart. At that time the mysteries of the Lord's passion are thought to have been imprinted upon her heart. O boundless love! O heart burning with incredible charity: since she so pleased God that Christ found her alone worthy of so great an honor.

[41] she wishes to be scourged by her nuns: But since she took a wondrous delight in the remembrance of these torments, that she might the better hold in memory those tortures with which he was afflicted on the day of the Parasceve, she gave her nuns heavier cords of rods and wished to be beaten by them; judging that the cross of Christ is the pattern of good actions. Each one severally rehearsed the mysteries of Christ, that they might follow his footsteps. Thence she instituted certain prayers and other actions by which that memory might be renewed; whereby it came to pass that she was most dear to God, and, though living a life on earth, was yet made a partaker of the heavenly glory. Meanwhile the most skillful virgin Joanna

the nun ^d observed Clare's sanctity as diligently as she could. Therefore she related that on the night of Christ's nativity Clare's devotion was wont to shine like a light, and that while the morning Hours were being recited she used a most pleasing modulation of the voice and uttered the sweetest harmonies.

[42] meanwhile fed with heavenly delights: What more? Did not her dwelling shine forth in the darkness, and had not rays of heavenly light encircled the body of the most blessed Clare as with a girdle? Whence by a certain singular favor she saw the most hidden secrets of the Incarnation: the angels singing, the shepherds watching, the Magi approaching as suppliants, and at last she most plainly recognized the infant laid in a lowly manger. From the day of Epiphany to the Purification of the most blessed Virgin, while she gave herself to prayer, she understood how great is the majesty of Christ sitting in that last judgment as judge of the human race, how to the quick he must cut off the impious; and she saw almost innumerable kinds of torments, torturings, six hundred miseries, the horrible aspects of demons and their most grievous fellowship, the terrible place of hell, which no man's thought can conceive: there she seemed to herself to hear a sound, a gnashing, a din, a roaring, and great cries, terrified by which she fell down, and, faint with pallor and terror, remained so for some time; then, her strength recovered, she was turned to the sight of the divine blessedness, which when with lifted eyes she beheld with the utmost attention, a most sweet voice was heard: "Come, Clare; for thy coming shall be most delightful and most longed for by me." To which another voice answered in turn: "Wait a little, for thy day has not yet come": whence she was permitted to gather the certainty of her salvation. On another day she beheld the image of Christ the Lord filling heaven and earth with his greatness, whose splendor surpassed the brightness of the sun: this she venerated with the submission of heart and body; and then she was worthy to see him with outstretched arm signing with holy blessings, with kindly hand, the monastery and the chief places of the city of Spoleto.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER V.

Her disease, and the death of the Blessed one, confirmed by the disclosing of the mysteries.

The Blessed one's last illness, and her meditations: At length, her stomach being ill affected by continual vigils and weakness of strength contracted, fifteen days before her death she fell into sickness, and for ten whole days gave herself to meditations so diligently that she never failed of her purpose. Wherefore the nuns began greatly to fear for Clare, lest indeed she should be gravely oppressed by the injury of some disease on account of her frequent meditations: whence, that she might restore her strength, she orders for a little while a portable bed; and going up upon it, thus addresses them: "Soon," she says, "sisters, ye shall relieve me of all sickness," foreshowing her now imminent death. Yet above all she was engaged in her cares, and, persisting with a fixed gaze of countenance, she spoke divine things with herself; and by her attendants indeed these words were heard: "Angel of God, announce to the most Holy Virgin that she receive me into her dwelling." And a little after, as though she were singing a triumph: "Let us all exult and rejoice in God, and sing praise. We praise thee, O God, since my Bridegroom comes to me to lead me to his glory." These things Joanna — not Clare's sister, but a certain other nun — heard.

[44] But another sister said that she had heard this with her ears: [she puts the devil to flight: she exhorts her nuns to virtue and to meditation on the Passion:] "I see all things which God has made, and they are very good; but the demon seeks to destroy all." Whence they perceived her contending with the demon and putting him to flight with these words: "What dost thou seek of me, bloody beast? Go forth, accursed one, and fly hence, thou who for five thousand years hast been under curses, and livest accursed for ever." When one of the sisters heard this, fearing that she had been affrighted by the deceits of the demon, she came near and fortified her with the sign of the cross. To whom Clare, just as though she were waking from sleep, said: "There is no reason for thee to doubt of me, daughter: for I bear the cross with Christ imprinted upon my heart." Nay, she also said to another nun: "If thou seekest the cross of Christ, take my heart, in which thou wilt find Christ crucified": and, intent upon these thoughts, she soothed the nuns with a certain most sweet singing, although her words were not sufficiently distinct. This is most certain, that when she had come to her last day she had frequent converse with God, in which a certain mutual love was signified; and when the day of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin had come, at the evening hour, at her last breath, she did not cease to preach of the boundless mercy of God and of the most bitter cross of Christ, and to exhort her companions to obedience, chastity, humility, and holiness of life, asserting above all that the meditation of the Lord's passion is the incitement of our salvation.

[45] After the sisters, therefore, had received precepts of this kind, she asks for the holy oil: Clare, blessing them with hand outstretched with the most holy sign of the cross, said: "May God, who rules heaven and earth, guard you, keep you, and preserve you with perpetual protection." At this token the nuns, calling to mind her approaching death, poured forth a vast flood of tears in emulation of one another, although Clare strove to soothe their grief. At length she wished to be anointed with the Sacrament of unction; and on Friday, which was the sixteenth day of the month of August, she gave herself most steadfastly to prayer, from which she could never be called back either by the counsel of the physicians or by the entreaties of the nuns; nay rather, she rebuked them in these words: "Why are ye disturbed? What, I pray you, troubles you? Do ye not know that while I serve God I am unharmed, and that where I am nearer to God, there I am the stronger; and that if ye should try with scourges to draw me from such contemplation, the food of my soul, I should always be of greater strength?" Having said this, she orders all the nuns to be assembled, that if she had by chance committed any negligence in reciting the Hours, they should make it good by reciting them again in order with her.

[46] she sees heaven opened: she speaks with her brother: When these things were finished, with a burning mind and truly lifted up to God, she said: "Too much, too much, too much is the reward of thy glory to me, O Lord": then, turning to the Sisters, she said: "Lead me to my Bridegroom: for I see heaven opened, and the holy Apostles and the virgins of God, who await me with the highest joy." While these things were going on, Francis, Clare's brother (he was a Minor, custos of St. Francis in the city and dominion of Spoleto), arrived; and when they had discoursed much together about the kingdom of God, Clare commended the monastery and her Sisters most diligently to his trust: and since she seemed to rejoice more than the gravity of her illness would allow, she gave Francis no small hope of her recovery of her former health. But Clare, to whom death was clear, warned him to return to her on the next day. Seeing at last on the Saturday, which was the eighth day from the solemnity of St. Lawrence the martyr, namely the sixteenth of the Kalends of September ^a, that a happy life was to be exchanged for a most unhappy one, at the very departure she prayed more vehemently. Wherefore she ordered herself to be carried on a portable bed to her chapel: there, when she had prayed a little while, turning at last to the Sisters, she made a discourse of this kind:

[47] she exhorts her sisters, and dies in the year 1308, on the 17th day of August. "The hour has now come, most loving Sisters, in which I must fly forth from the bonds of this body as from a prison to the heavenly God, and render him my spirit; therefore I beg you again and again that ye lay up this memorial of mine deep in your mind, and commit it as diligently as possible to your memory; namely, that your ears may be open day and night to the divine laws and admonitions, and that they may be wholly deaf to other things; and that such a life at last may be sought by you as shall shine forth in the virtues of soul and body." She afterwards cleansed the stains of her conscience (if indeed there were any) in the hearing of Brother Thomas her confessor; then with joined hands and face raised to heaven, as though sleeping, none observing it, she gave up her spirit among the nuns, who thought her rather to be held by her meditations; but, deceived in that opinion, they learned that she had died. And approaching, they saw her face shine forth beyond its wont, and afterwards cease. But what among other things gave cause for wonder was that that body, just like a living one, was still preserved fresh and incorrupt, and brought the greatest devotion to all. And this was the death of Clare of the Cross: nor is it wonderful; since from the highest happiness of living the highest happiness of dying also is to be looked for. And she died in the fortieth year of her age, in the year MCCCVIII after the birth of Christ, on the sixteenth of the Kalends of September, on Saturday at the third hour, under Pope Clement V, in his third year ^b.

[48] Her body is still preserved entire, and lies open to all who journey thither. [Her body is opened by the Sisters, and the great heart is taken out with the vessel of the gall:] But when Clare's spirit had flown away, it left the body in the monastery, which the nuns honored with many tears, and at the same time all inspected it as diligently as possible, both that her memory might be preserved, and that by such a sight, as by a certain example, the faithful might be the more stirred up to the worship of God. When, therefore, mature counsel had been taken as to what should be done with that body, as though admonished from heaven they come to the hope that, if the inward parts should be drawn from her body, it would be permitted to behold the hidden mysteries of the Lord's Passion which, while living, she always turned over in her mind. And so, prostrate with an almost singular token of humility at the dead woman's feet, they render the solemn ceremonies (as is the custom of Christians) and the religious rites; and since they cannot conceal their grief, they open the body further: there they find a heart like the head of a child, and the seat of the gall harder than nature bears: all which begat the greatest wonder in the beholders. This service one of the nuns performed, and they placed the little case of the gall with the other parts, laid up in an urn, at the altar of the chapel. But when they came to the place of the heart, the greatest dissension arises; and so they put off the rest until the next day. At that time they were weighed down by the loss of so great a Virgin, nor did they know what to do; whence they humbly asked of God that he would govern their thoughts and disclose what would be best.

[49] Their prayers being ended, they all determined by common vote that the heart should be divided. on the following day the heart, piously opened into two parts On the eighteenth day of the month of August, therefore, the nun Francesca, upon whom that office had been laid, holding that heart in her hand, having first shed tears, began to consider in what manner

it should be cut, and asks in what order: here all hesitate, and are in a greater labyrinth than before. At length with a razor she cuts it into two parts; the outer flesh was felt to be soft, but the inner hard enough: straightway all, as they had eagerly awaited the outcome of the matter, carry tapers in their hands and search out all things diligently; nor did hope deceive them: for they saw with their eyes the torments of Christ and admirable mysteries: at the greatness of which, although there could be no satiety in beholding it, they marveled in a wondrous manner. What increased the wonder was that in that cutting no injury or damage at all had followed; thence they exult openly with gladness, triumph with joy, and give undying thanks to God, who had granted such a grace. The surface of the heart was smooth on either part; and the several mysteries were separated one from another and distributed in a certain order.

[50] In the right part of the heart was an image of Jesus Christ Crucified, of the size of a woman's thumb, displayed the mysteries of Christ's passion though somewhat longer, holding its arms outstretched and somewhat raised, the head bent and turned aside beyond the shoulders. The right part of the body, in which the wound is placed, bore a livid color, being covered with blood. But in the left you would have seen a linen cloth sprinkled with tiny drops of blood. The wound in the side flowed with much gore. In this same part a circle made of little sinews delineated the crown of thorns ^c, which consisted of rough thorns and twisted prickles: in the same place three little sinews, like three threads, hung on one part, at the end of which hung bound iron nails, of sharp point, black, harder to the touch than flesh; of which the two shorter are bound with a shorter thread also, and the other, larger, hung by a larger thread; beneath the place of these nails was another little sinew signifying the lance, whose point was truly sharp, of a rusty color and hardness, and which Berengar, holding the place of the body ^d, on touching, felt his hand pricked as with sharp goads; and the same stood up from the surface, as though the point were issuing from his side. There was likewise in this part a certain confused mass of little sinews of red color, whose shape was uncertain; and this they interpreted as the sponge upon the reed.

[51] one by one In the left part of the heart was a scourge bound of five bent little sinews with several knots; a hanging small piece of flesh, soft and slender, represented the rest, from which the scourge is suspended: after it followed a fleshy sleeve, but like wood, and in the same manner there were little cords stained with black blood, raised and separate from the flesh: all which are shown even today in the tomb of Clare herself. Nearby was another little sinew which marked a straight column, hedged about with bent and slender little cords. The lowest part of it was joined to the flesh; and such little sinews as, like ropes, girded the middle of the column, were of the color of blood: all these things remained entire when the heart was cut apart. Moreover those likenesses which represented the mysteries of the Lord's Passion, although they were of flesh, yet had the color and the hardness of those things of which they were the copy: which the nuns, when once and again and often they inspected and touched, being as it were beholders of certain divine things, were struck with the strangeness of the matter. But lest anything should seem to have been done rashly, they took care that the bishop of Spoleto should be informed of all. Having received the letters, the bishop did not so easily give them credence; yet he sent thither his vicar Berengar, of Saint-Affrique by birth, who, when the truth of the matter had been well examined, should report all things as diligently as possible; so that either he might drive away by reason of faith the error which the novelty of the matter had brought, or approve the truth by his judgment and authority. The Vicar, obeying the bishop's command, hastened to the monastery by the greatest journeys, and beholds all things with the utmost attention of mind, watchfulness, labor, and diligence, and handles them with his own hands.

[52] rightly inspected and approved Having seen these things, he stood motionless with amazement; then he ordered them to be severally separated from the flesh, which, being separated, so stood as though they were resting in their own model. Not all of them, but certain of them, when there was question of her canonization, were brought to John XXII, Supreme Pontiff, sitting at Avignon. But that heart, as most holy, they preserved with singular diligence. The blood likewise which had flowed out, gathered into a glass phial, they placed in her tomb, which breathes forth a wondrous odor, and, if any grave peril threatens the Church of God, foretells it by its boiling. But today in Clare's tomb the mysteries of the Crucified and of the scourges are shown, placed in a glass vessel adorned with silver plates.

[53] together with the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity in the gall. When these things were found in the heart, the nuns, keeping in fresh memory the hardness of the gall, burned with the greatest desire of seeing what might also lie hidden there; for this reason they ran to the altar of the chapel, and, the urn being taken, separated from the other parts the little case of the gall of which we made mention above, as Berengar, who was present at all these things ^e, had determined: and when he found it hard, he commands the physicians and orders it to be divided: whereupon three round solid globes are found, colored like ashes, equal in image, color, and weight, and so arranged in that little case that they formed the shape of a triangle, by which (as Clare related before her death) the secrets of the most sacred Trinity are represented: since it is related by common consent that those little orbs are equal to each other and equal in weight, not only if each be taken separately, but even (which surpasses human comprehension) if one be set against two, or one against one, or all together, an equal weight is found. Nor indeed do I think that this should be omitted: that when France fell away from the Catholic faith and followed heresies, one of them was broken into several parts ^f; although at first, when they were found, being firm as adamant, they could be broken by no hammers or blows: this broken orb foretold that shipwreck of the Church, than which perhaps she has never suffered a greater; and, had not God in his mercy been at hand, it seemed as though it would be everlasting. Very many things concerning these Berengar related (as is contained in his compendium), which are shown laid up in the tomb of that same Virgin. In these things therefore God plainly showed that the virgin Clare was uniquely loved by him; since he not only bestowed privileges of this kind, but by her merits and in her name affords sure consolation and safe help to the faithful. And so the miracles themselves have proved her most holy life.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER VI.

Some of her miracles.

The Blessed one's miracles, both while living, At times she wiped away mourning, soothed sorrows, turned sadness into joy. In short, she denied her aid to none who implored help: for from her death down to ten years afterwards miracles altogether innumerable were discovered, all which it would be very difficult to reduce into a short little book; yet it has seemed good to gather a few out of the innumerable into one place. Those, therefore, who with especial diligence inquired into her acts have left it in writing that Clare while living recalled the dead to life. First of all her own nun Andriola, when dead, before she was committed to the earth, returned to life by her prayers: for when her father had heard that his daughter was dead, weeping, he ran to the convent, complaining bitterly that he had not been able to see his daughter before her death. But Clare, moved by his weeping, obtained her former life from God: and she, having spoken with her father, a little after departed again from life without any sign of dying. A certain Paganicus, a sand-digger, digging sand, was buried under its mass and exchanged life for death; at whose death his kinsmen did not so much grieve as at this, that he had not been able to abhor his sins by confession. Paganicus therefore returned to the airs of life by Clare's merits, until he had made confession. Moreover she restored several who labored under grave disease to firm health by her prayers and by the sign of the most holy cross. Among whose number was Joanna, afterwards superioress. She, when she suffered from consumption and could in no way be healed by the arts of the physicians, fled to Clare, and by her prayers recovered her former strength. A certain Vagnolus, afflicted with the falling sickness, was set free when the Virgin's help was implored. Julian, when his foot was hurt with an incurable wound, and by the judgment of the physicians it had to be cut off, when Clare's aid was besought, the wound was straightway healed. Lucia, a nun possessed by a demon, being covered with Clare's cloak, was straightway freed. Corraducius, covered with the greatest crimes, she led to true penance and salvation. Many who labored with the heat of fever, so that they had lost memory, senses, and voice, she restored to entire health. She came to the aid of her own nuns when they were in the utmost want and were troubled with the anxiety of seeking food: for the servants appointed to that office found a great quantity of bread in the oratory, as though God were returning grace for the fasts kept in her life; for after these, from the twentieth year of her age, she used food so meager that in the judgment of skilled men she could in no way be sustained by it, whence she seems to have been supported by a divine rather than a human sustenance. Nor indeed did she make her life illustrious with miracles only, but after her death also she again and again granted very many gifts to mortals.

[55] and when she had departed this life, Five dead she recalled to life. A certain boy Martinellus, five years old, was crushed by a very great heap of straw; while he was being carried home, the help of Clare is implored by the neighbors, and thereupon life is given him. Julia, a woman from the estate of Verani (so it is called), six years old, and the woman Ceuccia, drowned in the waters, and Pauluccius returned to life by the prayers of blessed Clare. Cecchus of Spello, a fellow townsman of blessed Clare, born with feet quite distorted, although he could in no way support himself, yet, having the greatest hope placed in Clare,

wished to be carried to her tomb; and when he had sat there a little while, he felt shortly after by Clare's favor that his feet were firm, and in the sight of all he began to walk. A benefit not unlike she conferred upon Antony, a fellow townsman, who, having his left knee grievously injured and disabled so that he could in no way support himself, was set free when Clare's help had been implored and a taper brought to her tomb.

[56] A certain Lucarellus of Spoleto, having the pupils of his eyes hanging about his cheeks, are recited in compendium; and every hope of living being cast aside, when his father had brought him to Clare's tomb and had implored help with the highest prayers, his pupils being fitted back into their place, he carried off the benefit of sight. To the woman Flora likewise, born at Cortignano, when she had wrapped Clare's altar with her cloak, the faculty of hearing was restored by the Virgin's benefit. Cecilia of Spoleto, suffering from the falling sickness, after a vow was made was restored to health within fifteen days. John, a boy, suffering from a rupture; the girl Letitia, from difficulty of urine; Flora, from pains of the womb — obtain entire health by Clare's good offices with God. Angelettus of Spoleto, struck with a sword so grievously that his bowels fell to the ground, presently, when they had been washed and put back into his belly, escaped whole from that wound by Clare's help. Philip, born at Bevagna ^a, when the river Timia ^b had overflowed all the fields, was overwhelmed by the waves; Andreucius, grievously wounded with a knife, having fallen from an almond tree when the knife had pierced his shoulder and could by no art be drawn out by anyone, came as a suppliant to Clare with humble mind; and thereupon he felt the blade drawn out by her benefit.

[57] Nardus, taken by robbers and being in the utmost peril, but a few beseeching Clare's aid (meanwhile no slight dissension arose among them about him), was thereupon saved by one of them. Hence it came about that the demon greatly dreaded her name; wherefore Claruccia, a nun of Todi, possessed by demons, is freed by God through Clare's prayers, when she had sat a little while beside her body. As Servia Cassignata, vexed and grievously injured for the space of seven years by the wickedness of demons, was being dragged to Clare's tomb, the demons strove to hinder it with gnashing, outcry, and plainly frenzied gestures; yet as soon as she was brought to that tomb, she recognized the power of Clare's merits. Peter, born at Poggio, raving and out of his mind, who more than once came into peril of drowning, of hanging, and of death, is restored whole by Clare's favor. To Cola of Spoleto in a fever, to the woman Mattheuccia who was tormented with the greatest pain of the head, and to plainly innumerable others laboring under divers diseases, Clare obtained health both of body and of soul. Witness is Nicholas of Spoleto, who, when he was so oppressed with heat and fever that the physicians despaired of his life, by vows made to Clare by his mother overcame the gravity of his disease. Peter of Spoleto, suffering the greatest pain of the stomach, and Chiola, of the teeth for more than twenty years, obtained health by Clare's aid.

[58] The fame of all which spread so far and wide out of many; that day by day men eminent in dignity, distinguished in nobility, born of the most illustrious parents, and other almost innumerable pilgrims, not only from nearby but from far distant regions, flowed together to her tomb and paid their vows for the benefits received. Inspired also by the divine spirit, she made known the state of certain of the dead, that by prayers, alms, and other such suffrages they might be snatched from the great punishments of purgatory. It has also been handed down in writing that she disclosed to a certain man the state of his wife who had died before him, and showed that she could be helped by prayers. To Ciotto of Spoleto she foretold penalties to be paid in turn. The same woman knew the state of her sister Joanna: all which things, pertaining both to the living and to the dead, God for his love toward her willed to be known to Clare.

[59] and other sufficiently clear tokens of her sanctity. Nor indeed are the things which we have set forth proved so much by miracles as by the testimony of religious men who, being given to divine contemplation, were admonished of these things. Whence we have received that Claruccia ^c saw Clare playing with a certain reverence in the bosom of the most blessed Virgin, and that Peregrina ^d, while she was praying in the cathedral church of Spoleto, beheld Clare lit up with the brightness of a divine light. The same Comptes and Etorius ^e, most holy men, related concerning Clare's sanctity. The physician Philip, when he gave no credit, or certainly very little, to these matters, was admonished by God because he disparaged Clare's glory with envious words, and heard a heavenly voice: that within a circuit of ten thousand paces there was none holier than Clare. Nay, it befell another who disparaged this most holy Virgin's devotion that he was tormented with a most grievous pain of the tongue; and although he seemed to himself to suffer this in his sleep, yet by a most certain token it is clear that it was true; and when afterwards he had fled to Clare's help, he found his tongue restored.

Blessed Ventura ^f, born in the territory of Trevi, a man endowed with the highest holiness of life, when, withdrawn from the intercourse of the world, he was passing his life in a rocky cave, was wont to proclaim the praises of Clare in these words: that in the town of Montefalco there was one above all others who served God most holily; and by the strangeness of the matter he stirred up men's minds in a wonderful manner. Which oracle was afterwards made clear, when in Clare's heart the mysteries of Christ were found. Another man notable for devotion, while he was setting forth many things worth hearing concerning Clare's praises and virtues, fearing lest it should be too much imputed to him for vanity or arrogance in discharging this task, and sadly turning these things over in his mind, was admonished from heaven that he had not sufficiently celebrated the most approved praises of this Virgin, which he ought to have proclaimed in a long discourse.

[60] The author's epilogue. But let this suffice to have been said of the Life of blessed Clare. For if we accept by divine judgment that such great praises cannot be confined within a brief compendium, it remains indeed that we desist from the labor begun, especially since there is not in us that richness of wit or that flood of eloquence which could — I will not say adorn her praises by praising, but not even count them by numbering; nor yet have we deserved any reproach if perchance we seem to have undertaken, against the Horatian precept, what our strength or shoulders could not bear: for our purpose was not to heap together the several praises of blessed Clare (which cannot be done), but to set down only some, from which the reader may, as they say, judge the lion from his claw, and may meditate in mind and heart the rest which we have not been able to attain in speech, and at the same time be kindled to meditation upon her; for if we all hold the same rule of living, it is not to be doubted that we shall obtain the same rewards also. Meanwhile let us give undying thanks to God, who is wonderful in his Saints, by whose intercessions we obtain pardon of our sins, and let us the more earnestly seek to direct our thoughts and actions to him, and, following the footsteps of so great a Virgin, that not only while we live we may be strengthened by her help on earth toward heavenly blessedness, but also, when we have lived out our life, may together with her enjoy eternal happiness in the heavenly kingdoms.

ANNOTATIONS.