CHAPTER TWO

THE ORDER OF SAINT CLARE

Clare of Assisi’s canonization did not resolve the long standing issue of the status of women within the Franciscan Order.1 The papal curia had intended her offi cial legend to promote her as a female fi gurehead for the Order of San Damiano, but this text alone was unable to create an institutional identity for the women’s order when they still lacked a common rule. Moreover, by valorizing Clare they had validated her desire for a tight bond between the sisters and , which continued to be a source of tension between the two groups. The Damianites were interested in strengthening their connections to the Franciscan Order even as the friars sought to constrain the growth of the female order and thus their obligations to minister to the sisters’ houses. Part of the problem for the brothers was that some demands for pas- toral care were coming from women who falsely claimed—so said the friars—to be sisters of the Order of San Damiano. They complained that although these women wore a Damianite habit, they were not cloistered and that the responsibility for their pastoral care properly belonged to the diocesan clergy. To a certain extent, this depiction seems a-historical. Alexander IV’s denunciation repeated verbatim the earlier condemnation of Pope Innocent IV against the Sorores Minores.2 This is not an indication of laziness on the part of the papal chancery. Rather, it indicates the continuing presence of a dissident movement

1 Parts of this chapter appeared in a different version as “Audacious Nuns: Con- fl ict between the Franciscan Friars and the Order of Saint Clare,” Church History 41 (2000): 41–62. 2 Alexander had reissued Innocent IV’s bull from 20 April 1250, see BF I, p. 541. Both bulls were addressed to local bishops, on behalf of the Friars Minor, directing the clerics to give no consequence to the claims of these women calling themselves Minor- esses. The Sorores Minores were primarily an Italian and southern French phenomenon (in the sense of the group against which the Franciscan Order protested at this time). However, when Pope Alexander approved a rule written by Princess Isabelle of France for the community she founded outside Paris, he rejected her preferred name—Soeurs mineures—because of its association with the heretical sisters. See Sean L. Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Identity and Franciscan Sanctity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 66–73. 58 chapter two of women who resisted papal efforts to regularize their communities.3 In some cases, these women had strong local support, but under the leadership of Minister General John of the resisted their claims on the Order.4 That Alexander repeatedly assured the fri- ars they could not be compelled to minister either to existing or newly founded communities suggests that the brothers nonetheless felt com- pulsion to do so. These pressures would become open hostilities during the pontifi cate of his successor, Urban IV (1261–1264), when for the fi rst time the two orders each had their own . In 1263 the Order’s Minister General, of Bagnorea, complained about recent turmoil between the two groups in a letter addressed to the Provincial Minister of Aragon. You are undoubtedly aware, dear Brother, just how much our Order has been plagued up to now with threats, troubles, and litigation occasioned by the monasteries of the Order of St. Clare. This has come to the point where they have petitioned the court of the Supreme Pontiff, alleging, among other charges against us, that the customary services provided for them by our brothers are in fact prescribed by law; thus our brothers have proposed to have nothing more to do with them unless they fi rst recognize our complete freedom by public written documents sent to said Holy Father.5 Bonaventure wrote these comments at the end of a bitter altercation that had seen the friars withdraw from the sisters’ houses. Although the legal obligation to provide pastoral care to the enclosed women defi ned this specifi c altercation, there always continued to be more at stake in confl icts between the Friars Minor and the sisters. The decade between 1253 and 1263, from Clare’s death to the promulgation of a new constitution for what was now named the Order of Saint Clare, was crucial for defi ning the status of enclosed women within the Franciscan Order. By the time matters reached a confrontation at the beginning of the 1260s, the disputes between

3 See the fuller discussion of this phenomenon in Maria Pia Alberzoni, “Sorores Minores e autorità ecclesiastica,” pp. 165–194. 4 For an example of local support for a group of Sorores Minores, see Giancarlo Andenna, “Le Clarisse nel Novarese (1252–1300),” AFH 67 (1974): 185–267. 5 Etudis Franciscans 37 (1926): 112–14, quotation from p. 112 (hereafter cited as “Aragon”). (Quotation from Bonaventure, “A Letter To The Provincial Minister Of Aragon,” in St. Bonaventure’s Writings Concerning the Franciscan Order, trans. by Dominic Monti (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, 1994), pp. 192–193).