CHAPTER THREE

THE POLITICS OF “INFANTS’ MILK” CLARE OF ASSISI AND THE PRIVILEGE OF POVERTY

There is a story in Clare’s canonization process that seems a bit out of place in light of Clare’s otherwise ordinary, medieval life. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Clare’s life at S. Damiano was focused mainly on love of God and neighbor. Nearly absent are extraordinary flights of rapture and ecstasy. The fruit of Clare’s prayer is simply exemplary works and good words for her sisters and those coming to the monastery for spiritual or temporal needs. If anything, Clare was known for her ability to heal, rather than for extraordinary gifts of prayer. While her prayer was intense, Clare focused on contemplat- ing biblical mysteries rather than experimenting with altered states of consciousness. It is Sister Filippa, a sister who had known Clare since childhood and had lived with Clare at S. Damiano for thirty-eight years, who introduces a vignette into her testimony before the commission for Clare’s process of canonization that seems to challenge the above observation. According to Filippa, Clare claimed to have seen herself in a vision effortlessly climbing a long staircase toward S. Francis in order to bring him a bowl of hot water and a towel for wiping his hands. When she reached Francis, the saint bared his breast and said, “Come, take, and drink.” After Clare had sucked from Francis’s breast, the saint admonished her to imbibe yet again. Clare related that what she tasted was indescribably sweet and satisfying, and that after she had drunk, the nipple of Francis’s breast remained between her lips. When she took the nipple out of her mouth and examined it, it seemed to be clear gold and so bright that everything could be seen in it as in a mirror.1

1 Process 3:93–98. Concerning this vignette see Alfonso Marini, “Pauperem Chris- tum, virgo pauper, amplectere: Il punto su Chiara e Agnese di Boemia,” in Chiara e la diffusione delle Clarisse nel secolo XIII, ed. Giancarlo Andenna and Benedetto Vetere, 121–32 (Galatina: Congedo, 1998); and Alfonso Marini, “La forma vitae di San Fran- cesco per San Damiano tra Chiara d’Assisi, Agnese di Boemia ed interventi papali,” Hagiographica 4 (1997): 179–95. 66 chapter three

Other sisters related this same story. The scribe noted that Sister Amata, Clare’s niece who had lived with Clare at S. Damiano for twenty-five years, said the same as Sister Filippa concerning Clare’s vision and the breast of S. Francis.2 Sister Cecilia, one of Clare’s first companions at S. Damiano who had lived with Clare for forty-three years, related the same vision as Sister Filippa, except that she did not remember the detail concerning the nipple of the breast that Clare held in her mouth.3 Sister Balvina, the blood sister of Sister Amata and a cousin of Clare who had lived with Clare for thirty-six years, stated that Clare had also related to her the vision of the breast of S. Francis as Sister Filippa had reported.4 Obviously Clare’s sisters at S. Damiano felt that this vision and its telling were essential. While one may be tempted to interpret this vision as an obvious example of sublimated erotic love erupting from Clare’s subconscious, the episode must first be examined in its context.5 Visions concerning adult men and women drinking from each others breasts were, in fact, common in medieval religious jargon. Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022), a mystic of the Eastern church—and one must remember that the Roman church of Clare and Francis’s age was actively influ- enced by the Greek church—stated that Christ comes to those who are spiritual infants appearing as a breast of light that is placed in the mouth of their intellects to suckle them.6 Christian iconography depicted the Madonna lactans, the nursing Madonna, as the virgin who nurtured Christ with the milk that fed his sacred body and blood. The image had obvious Eucharistic overtones and was linked in medi- eval art to mercy and active service to the poor.7 In his commentary on Benedict of Nursia’s steps for humility, Bernard states that beginners cannot yet digest solid food and so are nourished in the meanwhile

2 Process 4:51. 3 Process 6:37. 4 Process 7:10. 5 Concerning this point, see Jacques Dalarun, “Francis and Clare of Assisi: Differ- ing Perspectives on Gender and Power,” FS 63 (2005): 11–25. 6 Symeon the new Theologian, On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, vol. 2, On Virtue and Christian Life (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 20. 7 See Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 269–79; and Rebecca Lynn Winter, “Conscripting the Breast: Lactation, Slavery and Salvation in the Realms of Aragon and Kingdom of Majorca, c. 1250–1300,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 164–84.