They are clean of heart who despise earthly things and always seek those of heaven, and who never cease to adore and contemplate the Lord God living and true, with a pure heart and mind.
WRITINGS OF SAINT FRANCIS
A YEAR AFTER the brothers settled at the Portiuncula another stronghold of prayer was established at San Damiano. Francis had known in the days when he was rebuilding San Damiano that nuns would live there, and so when he was confronted by a tall fair-haired girl, aged eighteen, telling him she wanted to be one of the Brothers Minor, his first shock would quickly have passed into reverent acceptance of a new but expected unfolding of the will of God. That was always the only supremely important thing to Francis and Clare, the will of God. The difficulties in which his acceptance of her as a member of the order would involve them both must have been foreseen by Francis from the first, but what appeared to others a difficult problem was for him extremely simple: God wanted Clare. He knew it and she knew it and so their duty was inescapable. As unhesitatingly as he had answered Pacifico’s appeal to him to take him away from the world and give him back to God he answered Clare’s, and as unhesitatingly as Pacifico and the other brothers Clare did what she had to do and never looked back. Her courage all through her life had a tough masculine quality. She was as doughty a fighter as any of them, and far more obstinate. At the end of her life she postponed death to get her own way in a matter near her heart and having got it died in peace.
The Lady Clare was probably born in the summer of 1193, when Francis as a boy of eleven was the prince among the children, leading them singing and dancing up through the streets to the high terraces of the city. She was a daughter of the house of Scefi, a cousin of Ruffino and possibly of Sylvester also, so that she was the third member of that noble family to enter the order. Her father was Favorino Scefi, Lord of Sasso Rosso, a castle on the slope of Monte Subasio, though he owned also a palazzo within the city of Assisi, and she was the third of the five children of Favorino and his wife Ortolana. From the beginning the Lady Ortolana, like the Lady Pica, must have known that her child was in some special way chosen of God, for shortly before the baby’s birth, when she was praying for a safe delivery, she heard the interior Voice say, “Fear not, woman, for you shall bring forth a light whose rays shall enlighten the earth,” and when the child was born she called her Clare, “the shining one.” And so even Clare’s name marked her for that order whose light had been seen in the dream of the Portiuncula falling upon the blind faces of the praying men.
Ortolana was a devout woman, fond of escaping from the world for a while and going on pilgrimage, and Clare was a devout little girl, who liked to escape to hidden corners to say her prayers in secret. She grew up in her two homes, the castle and the palazzo, hearing the topics of the day discussed around her, hearing the minstrels play and delighting in their music, learning to read and write and do exquisite needlework, a well-educated, cultured, and beautiful girl destined by her father for distinguished and suitable marriage. But as she grew older her inclinations began to take what her father must have thought an unsuitable turn and she became absorbed not in the thought of marriage but in the sufferings of the poor. She would have been about twelve years old when the young Francesco Bernadone began to serve the poor of Assisi. Perhaps one day, passing up the street with her mother or her nurse, she saw him bending over some poor wretch who was pouring out a tale of woe to him, and the sight of the compassionate figure remained a vivid memory with her. Perhaps even then he became her hero. Everyone in Assisi knew about his father’s treatment of him, his quarrel with his father, and the scene in the bishop’s palace, and so she would have known too and perhaps she wept for him. She was about fifteen when he began his costly service to the lepers, and when she too began to serve the poor she saw to it that her service also was costly. She did not condescend to them as a great lady, she denied herself her food to help them. Her family let her have her way in this service; possibly they could do nothing else, for her will was so strong that even the men stood in some awe of her. But to the poor she was all gentleness and her marvelous sympathy and understanding won her so much love that all men spoke of her, and of the light of heaven that seemed to shine about her in the dark and sorrowful places where she went. To many a poor sick creature, bedridden in some hovel, it must have seemed like the sunrise when the door opened and the Lady Clare came in, fresh and young and smiling, her fair hair gathered in its crespine of golden mesh, a long cloak worn over her plain belted gown. Under her cloak she carried a woven basket on her arm with bread and fruit in it, bandages and salves and bunches of sweet herbs. It was so that Francis heard of her, all love and light and courage, and he longed to see and speak with her.
She longed to speak with him. She saw him frequently, for she made one of the large congregation that heard him preach in the cathedral, and as she listened to his sermons she knew that here was the man who would help her. For her life just now had reached an impasse. She had been allowed to remain unmarried for longer than most girls of her rank but now, a suitable husband having been found for her, marriage was being pressed upon her by her parents. But she knew she was not made for the conventional life of a married woman. What she wanted was nothing less than God himself. “Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O God.” But neither did she want the conventional life of a nun in one of the convents for women that were little more than appendages of the noble houses, where unmarriageable daughters could lead lives of gentle prayer interspersed with fine needlework and a little gossip. Her heroic temper was made for something more than this and what she wanted was total giving. Francis had given himself utterly and only he could understand and help her.
Her need seems to have communicated itself to him, for it was he, not Clare, who brought about their first meeting. Speechlessly she had cried out to him, as Pacifico had done, “Take me away,” and her chronicler says, “He was wishful to snatch this noble prey out of the reach of a wicked world.” He must have been extremely certain of God’s will for Clare, for to take the initiative in this way was unlike him. As a rule his dealings with women had a shattering simplicity. He avoided them whenever possible, but if they insisted on talking to him about their souls, he kept his eyes on the ground, or the sky, while the interview lasted. He was a naturally ardent and loving man who had cut women out of his life for God’s sake and he was taking no risks.
One would like to know where his first meeting with Clare took place; perhaps outside the cathedral after the Sunday sermon, with Clare in all her patrician finery curtsying to the shabby young friar who had been her hero for so long. After it Clare and her aunt the Lady Bianca Guelfucci, who understood Clare and knew all that was in her heart, often went down the hill to talk to Francis at the Portiuncula. Many other citizens of Assisi must have done the same, for his own sufferings had given him a rare understanding of troubled souls, and his natural gentleness and courtesy had been fashioned by prayer into a channel of the comfort of Christ. His visitors could not go inside the quickset hedge, where the conventual silence held, but Francis could come out to them and talk to them in the cathedral of the wood. And so it was “into the wood” that Clare went to speak with Francis of the love of Christ. It was here that she told him that she must do what he had done and he agreed with her. It was God’s will that the order should give to him the service of daughters as well as sons, and in the wood he strengthened her for what she had to do. It was early spring and the buds were thickening on the trees.
On Palm Sunday, April the 18th, 1212, the Lady Clare left the world. In the morning she went with her family to the cathedral for high mass and the blessing and distribution of the palms. Her chronicler says that she was dressed in the festival garments of a nobleman’s daughter, her scarlet robe girdled with a jeweled belt, a high stiff headdress on her head, and embroidered shoes on her feet. The cathedral was crowded, for the people of Assisi loved this Palm Sunday service, but among all the beautiful women gathered there, Clare of the oval face, fair hair, and delicate features was one of the loveliest. Her emotions must have almost torn her in pieces. She was here for the last time with her father and mother, brother and sisters. She must give up home and security, the fulfillment of marriage and children, of worldly dignity and gracious living, for a life of hardship for which nothing in her life so far had prepared her. And being what she was, there would be no turning back, for she was not of the type that turns back. Her world would be outraged and her family heartbroken. And all this she was doing at nineteen years of age for love of a God whom her eyes could not see and her human arms could not hold, and whom she would not truly find until after long struggle all the self-love in her had been destroyed. She was doing what she wanted to do but it is a paradox of human life that what we want to do with the noblest part of us is not accomplished without blood and tears. When the time came for them all to go up to the altar to receive their palms, Clare could not go with the others but had to stay kneeling and trembling in her place.
And then there occurred an incident that suggests that in what they were doing Clare and Francis had the approval and support not only of Bianca Guelfucci but of Bishop Guido too. When he saw that Clare had not come up with the others he left the altar, came to where she was kneeling, and put the blessed palm between her hands.
That night Clare left her home, and the little pointed doorway through which she went is still to be seen. Umbrian houses had a special door which was used only for the carrying forth of the dead and between each death was blocked up with stones. Afraid to leave the palazzo by the main door, in case she attracted notice, Clare somehow managed to move these heavy stones and passed out through the door of death. Perhaps it flashed through her mind, as she stepped out into the cool spring night, that the Lady Clare was dead and that she who now stood under the stars was Sister Clare.
Bianca was waiting for her in the street and together they went down the dark hill from the city and made their way through the forest. As they came near the Portiuncula they heard singing and saw lights shining through the trees. All the brothers, having recited matins in the church, were coming to meet her carrying torches and candles and singing God’s praises. Taking Clare with them they returned again to Santa Maria degli Angeli and kneeling before the altar she made her vows, and Francis cut off her hair and put on her the cross-shaped habit of the order. She was with them when they sang the first mass of Holy Monday and from it she drew strength to face the persecution, the poverty, and suffering that she knew were coming. The epistle and gospel, the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah and the fourteenth chapter of Mark, must have seemed like a special gift to her. “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? This that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?” What could any suffering of hers be compared with the sufferings of the divine hero? And he would be with her through it all and at the end would be her prize. “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saves them. . . . thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer, thy name is from everlasting.” And when the gospel was read she heard the story of the woman who brought her treasure to Christ, “an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious,” and broke it and poured it out, and he accepted her total giving with love and compassion.
Mass ended and now it was the dawn, perhaps a chilly one, the lights had gone out, and what was Clare to do next? Francis had not a convent in one hand and a community of nuns in the other with which to endow her, and the kindly Bianca, who had helped them so gallantly up till now, must go home. It is open to question whether Francis, who lived with such childlike faith and trust for the moment only, had given much thought to this morrow, or even any thought at all, Christ in the Gospels having explicitly commanded otherwise. However, whether from aforethought or on the inspiration of the moment, he took Clare to the Benedictine convent of San Paola at Bastia, a quiet place at the edge of the forest where two streams met, and asked the nuns to take care of her until he could find a home for her. Then he went away and Clare was left alone to face the coming storm.
It did not take her family long to discover where she was and they came next day, deeply angry, to take her home. She fled to the church, and when they threatened to take her away by force if she would not come willingly, she uncovered her shorn head and clinging to the altar cried out that she belonged to God alone now and they could not take her away. She was so strong, so sure, that she convinced them. To the end of her life Clare could always convince people that she was right. She could subdue even popes to her will, so queenlike was she in her authority. And perhaps the Lady Ortolana, her mother, remembered that this child was Clare the “shining one” and suddenly understood that this was her daughter’s destiny. And so they left her before the altar.
A few days later she left San Paola and went to the convent of Sant’ Angelo in Panzo, not much more than a mile from Assisi on the slopes of Monte Subasio and fairly close to her father’s castle of Sasso Rosso, and here a little later she was joined by her sister, Agnes, who had run away too because she could not bear to be without Clare. Agnes was only fifteen, not such a resolute character as Clare but strong enough to know that where Clare went she must go and what Clare did she must do too, so dearly did she love her. But a second runaway child was more than the family could endure and this time an expeditionary force of twelve male members of the house of Scefi rode out from Assisi and up the mountain to the convent, bringing with them into the story the comedy that is never far away. The jingling clattering arrival of the cavalcade terrified the nuns, and sent the two girls running to the convent chapel for refuge, but the twelve men trooped in after them and stood around them where they clung together before the altar. At first, as the chapel was holy ground, they moderated their voices and struggled for a sweet reasonableness. But to Agnes nothing was reasonable except that she should stay with Clare, and with Clare there to strengthen her she did not give in. Then one of them, perhaps the girls’ brother Boso, lost patience, grabbed hold of Agnes by her long hair and pulled her out of the chapel and the convent into the open air, where they could all express themselves without the restraint that had been imposed upon them by the holiness of the place where they had been before. Clare remained on her knees before the altar, praying to God to save her sister, until above the noise that her relatives were making she heard Agnes’s voice crying out to her for help and knew that they were trying to take her away. Then she too ran out of the convent and overtook them on the mountainside. Agnes was lying on the ground and the legend says that through the power of Clare’s prayer she had become so heavy that the men could no longer carry her. Perhaps the truth is that she fought so hard that they could no longer hold her without hurting her. Clare came flying down upon them, took Agnes in her arms and commanded her menfolk to go home. And they went home, baffled and defeated by the calm imperious strength of this extraordinary girl.
Clare and Agnes stayed with the nuns at Sant’ Angelo for a year, a time of patient waiting, solitude, and prayer, and then the kindly Benedictines of Monte Subasio once more presented the order with a “place.” They gave San Damiano, the church and little house, to be the first convent of the Second Order, and Clare and Agnes came home rejoicing.
The Second Order of the Poor Clares increased as quickly as the First Order of the Friars Minor. Almost at once other women came from Assisi to join the two sisters, one of the first being Bianca Guelfucci, and after the death of Clare’s father the Lady Ortolana and her daughter Beatrice came too; and so five ladies of that noble family were together in the order. Agnes remained with Clare at San Damiano for seven years and then, as other houses of the Poor Clares were springing up all over Italy and needed women who were already experienced in the life of prayer and poverty to guide them, she was sent, at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, to be abbess of the convent of Monticelli near Florence. She lived there for more than thirty years, and through all those years she never saw her adored Clare. The parting must have been anguish to the two sisters, but when they took their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience they had known and accepted the suffering that obedience might bring. When Clare was dying Agnes was allowed to come to her and the two were together again, and the next parting was short, for Agnes outlived Clare by only three months and was buried near her sister. In the convent and church of Santa Chiara at Assisi two precious relics are preserved. One is the casket containing the curling fair hair that Francis cut off when Clare knelt before the altar of Santa Maria degli Angeli on the night of Palm Sunday, and the other is the skull of Agnes. It is very small, suggesting that Agnes was a little creature, and that those thirty years of being an abbess without Clare to help her stand for one of the unknown heroisms of this world.
OF ALL THE FRANCISCAN HOLY PLACES San Damiano is the least changed. A great church now encloses the Portiuncula and the little church of Santa Maria degli Angeli cowers down inside it, as though terrified by all the grandeur piled on top, but San Damiano still stands under the open sky, simple, humble, and holy as it always was. You can still see, almost unchanged, the chapel where Clare and her sisters knelt in adoring love before the crucifix that spoke to Francis, and the worn stone staircase outside the chapel door leading to the sisters’ dormitory, stairs where Clare went up and down for over forty years, and the refectory where they ate their simple meals. Celano says of San Damiano, “This is that happy and holy place,” and here, more than anywhere, the pilgrim of today can feel near to the man and woman whose holiness still so enlightens the earth, can reach back through the centuries and make some contact with them. Here it is not hard to imagine the life of the sisters as it was so steadfastly lived right through the years until the death of Clare. It was modeled as closely as possible upon that of the brothers, except that the Second Order was an enclosed order and the sisters might not leave the precincts of their convent. With them, as with the brothers, prayer came first, the saying of the offices and the hidden costly discipline of contemplative prayer, and intercession, that supported their labors for the sick. As they could not leave San Damiano they could not nurse the lepers as the brothers did but other sick people were brought to them at San Damiano to be cared for. They mended the clothes of their sick, patched the habits of the brothers and spun the thread for the altar cloths and corporals which they made for the brothers to distribute among the poor churches of the district. They worked hard within their enclosure, nursing, spinning, weaving, sewing, cooking, and cleaning, and looking after their vegetable garden. When the food produced by their garden was not enough the brothers went questing for them, and they ate at the table of the Lord with the same joy and thankfulness that Francis had felt when he sat down with his first platter of scraps of food and found it was a sacrament.
Yet in all this it is probable that there was an element of tragedy for Clare. She had not wanted to be an enclosed nun. She had great strength of character, high courage, and a love of adventure, and she had wanted to do as the brothers did and carry the love of Christ to the dark places of the earth, to the poor and the wicked in their squalor and misery, to the prisoners, the lepers and the heathen. She was a woman who would have found herself understood by Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, but she was born before her time, in which the choice was between marriage or enclosure, and her longing to serve Christ adventurously seems not to have been understood even by Francis. But she was utterly obedient to Francis from the beginning to the end, accepting the rule he had devised for her as the will of God himself and finding her peace in the perfection of obedience. Only once was there an outbreak of passionate longing that shows how hard to bear, at times, the frustration must have been. When she heard of the heroic death of the Franciscan missionaries in Morocco she cried out that she must go out there and be a martyr too, and Francis had hard work to restrain her from breaking her enclosure and setting out at once, as Teresa of Avila had done as a little girl.
She obeyed, turning back again to her own private venture of heroic prayer. For if she had to be an enclosed nun, hers was no ordinary enclosure. Like Angela of Foligno a little later she set to work to strip herself of every smallest comfort, even those things which most people consider necessities, that she might take poverty to her heart as entirely as Francis had done and be set free to have nothing but Christ and be nothing but the thrall of Christ. Her bed was a pallet and her pillow a piece of wood. But she slept little, for like Francis she had trained herself to be as abstemious over sleep as over food. When compline, the last office for the day, had been said, and the sisters had gone to bed, she stayed on alone in the chapel, kneeling before the crucifix and praying the crucis officium, the prayers in honor of the cross of Christ which Francis had arranged and taught her. When she left the chapel she would go softly, like a mother to her nursery, to the dormitory where her nuns lay sleeping to see if all was well with them, and if the night was chilly she would spread an extra covering over the delicate ones that they might not catch cold. Though she held them to their strict discipline, she had for them the same exquisite tenderness that Francis had for the brothers, and all her maternity was poured out upon them. It was she who woke them in the morning, lit the lamps, and rang the bell for early mass.
As her holiness grew so did the power of her prayer. Mysteriously, as the years passed, her light shone out, and without anyone but God knowing quite how it was happening she became a great power in the world. Her prayers were asked for, her advice sought, not only by her beloved poor but by queens, popes, and cardinals; for it was one of the paradoxes of the Franciscan movement that although vowed to poverty and pledged to the service of the poor and suffering, it took the rich by storm. Perhaps it laid such siege to their hearts because Francis, and his sons and daughters taught by him, saw no difference between the rich and the poor. “A man’s worth,” said Francis, “is what he is in the sight of God and no more.” But if he thought no better of a man because he had a fine castle and fine clothes, neither did he, like so many reformers, think the less. He wooed the rich for Christ with exactly the same gentle love as he wooed the outcasts, and they responded as readily. So with Clare. She turned from nursing her sick to answer the letters of Queen Agnes of Bohemia and Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, and sometimes it was a poor beggar who came knocking at her door, and sometimes it was the pope, and all alike were the children of her love and prayers. The great Cardinal Ugolino wrote to her with humble love: “Although I have always felt myself to be a poor sinful man, now that I have become acquainted with the pre-eminence of your merits, and with my own eyes have seen the austerity of your religion, now, I say, I know for sure that I am not in a state to die: I am so weighed down by the burden of guilt and have offended so grievously against the Lord of the whole earth, that I can never hope to be gathered to the company of the elect unless by your prayers and tears you obtain for me forgiveness of my sins.” The strength that her prayers were to Francis he knew, perhaps, but no one else could know.
Her loyalty to him was unshakable. At no time, either during his lifetime or after his death, when changes that were contrary to his wish and will were taking place in the First Order, would she allow any lessening of the austerity of the rule of the Second Order. Francis had laid down evangelical poverty as its foundation stone, and she would have no other. Four popes in succession begged her, now that the times were changing, to accept a little property, but she would never give in. Pope Innocent IV managed to stand out against her determination for some while but though she was ill and dying she beat him in the end. Her reply to an offer to release her from her vow of poverty was, “Holy Father, free me from my sins, but not from following our Lord Christ.” Two days before she died she received and kissed a parchment bearing the pope’s signature and securing for the Poor Clares of San Damiano the right to live to the end as Francis would have wished.
Clare lived for twenty-four years after the death of Francis, and for much of this time she was ill, for she too had worn out her body with austerities. She was ill when the army of the emperor once more came down upon them, laying waste the valley of Spoleto and besieging Assisi, and Saracen archers surrounded San Damiano. The nuns, terrified, ran to Clare, but though she was so ill she was not alarmed. She had herself carried to the door of the convent that she might be the first to bear the brunt of what might come, and she sent some of the sisters to the chapel to fetch the silver and ivory ciborium that held the Host. Then kneeling before the Host she prayed aloud. “Doth it please thee, O my God, to deliver the defenseless children whom I have nourished with my love into the hands of these beasts? Protect them, good Lord, I beseech thee, whom I at this hour am not able to protect.” And when she had prayed she heard the Voice say to her, “I will always be your guardian,” and she got up from her knees confident and unafraid, to comfort her nuns. The Saracens changed their minds about breaking into San Damiano and took themselves off elsewhere.
Toward the end of her life, when physical activity was over for her, she would lie in her tiny garden sewing, surrounded by her flowers, for this one Franciscan luxury, flowers, was one that she did not deny herself. These first Franciscans, with their wholesome common sense which protected their austerity from the morbidness which crept into the mortifications of so many saints, never turned their backs on anything that spoke to them of God’s love and care and beauty. Birds and flowers, trees, sunlight and water, were not luxuries but the Word of God. Her little garden was only a terrace four paces long, but creepers grew over it and in it she planted lilies, roses, and violets, that they should speak to her of the purity, love, and humility of Christ. Her life of enclosure is described by Celano in words that bring this garden vividly to mind. “Here she found shelter from the storm of the world, and here she remained as long as she lived, shut up as it were in a dungeon for love of Jesus Christ. Here, in a hole in the wall like a most fair dove, she made herself a nest.” From this little place there is a wonderful view. One can see Rivo-Torto, the Portiuncula, the winding roads, the olive groves, and the distant blue mountains. Probably there was not a day of her life that she did not come here and look out toward the dwelling place of Francis, for whether his physical presence was there or not it held his spirit. The nature of the love that this man and woman felt for each other has been a source of worry to some of their biographers, who do not seem to have been content to leave it where they themselves left it, in the hands of God. Francis always spoke of the nuns of San Damiano as “the ladies,” but Clare herself he called Christiana, and there we have it in a nutshell. Everything in the lives of both of them was so subordinate to the love of Christ that it could have no existence apart from him.
Clare died on August the 11th, 1253, the Feast of San Ruffino the patron saint of the cathedral, when she was sixty years old, comforted in her dying not only by Agnes but by three old men who had loved Francis as dearly as she had, Brother Leo, Brother Angelo and Brother Juniper. Celano writes of her death with simplicity and beauty. “It seemed that her agony was to be a long one, and during those last weary days of labor, the faith and devotion of the people increased more and more. Nay, every day, and many times a day, prelates and cardinals came to visit her for all men were thoroughly convinced that this dying woman was in sooth a great saint. And strange to say, although during the last seventeen days of her life she was unable to take any kind of food, the Lord comforted her with such fortitude that all who beheld her were strengthened in the service of Christ.” When she was exhorted to patience “she made answer with a stout heart, ‘From the day when I first knew the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ through his servant Francis no pain has seemed grievous to me, no penance hard, no sickness difficult to bear.’ And when the Lord took pity on her and was knocking, as it were, at the gate, she desired to have the assistance of priests and devout men, and that they should tell her the story of Christ’s passion, and amongst them that came to console her was Brother Juniper, that mighty hurler before the Lord, who used to hurl from his very heart the words of the Lord red-hot. . . . Then she blessed all who had been kind to her, women as well as men, and she blessed, too, all the monasteries of poor ladies, present and to come. The rest – who can tell it without weeping? There were present then two of the holy companions of blessed Francis. One of them, Angelo, with his own eyes streaming with tears, was striving as best he could to comfort the weeping sisters; and as for the other, Leo, he knelt down and kissed the couch on which the dying saint was laid. . . . But blessed Clare was communing thus with her own soul softly: ‘Go forth, Christian soul, go forth without fear, for thou hast a good Guide for thy journey. Go forth without fear, for he that created thee hath sanctified thee, always hath he protected thee, and he loveth thee with the love of a mother.’ And when one of the sisters asked her to whom she was talking: ‘I am talking to mine own soul,’ she said; and truly her glorious Guide was not far off, for presently, turning to one of them, she said, ‘Can you see the King of Glory whom I see?’ . . . Thus was the passing of blessed Clare. . . . Her holy soul went forth and, exulting in its freedom, soared on the wings of gladness to the place which God had prepared for it.”
THERE IS A STORY in The Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Francis and Clare together, and though it would seem to be a legend, for we are told that Clare never left the precincts of San Damiano, it nonetheless tells the truth about them both. The story tells how she longed to share a meal with Francis, and when he came to visit the sisters she would beg him that they might eat together, but he would not grant her wish. Then the brothers remonstrated with him for his severity. It was because of his preaching, they said, that Clare had forsaken the world, and could he not let her have her wish in this? So Francis yielded and said he would arrange a little feast for her at the Portiuncula. The day came and Clare with one of her nuns came out from her convent, and was met by the brothers and brought into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, as they had brought her on the night when she ran away from home, and before the altar where she had made her vows she knelt and prayed. Then, “her salutation to maid Mary given,” she was led to the feast, which was laid on the bare ground. As this was a feast and not a mere meal perhaps there was a salad of herbs, and vegetables from the garden, as well as bread and water, and Francis at the first dish was overwhelmed by the thought of God’s bounty, and began to speak of his love so wonderfully that they were all caught up into prayer. Everything was forgotten except God, they sat there adoring him and the light of heaven streamed out from the wood so brightly that the people of Assisi, looking down from the city, thought the Portiuncula and the trees around it were on fire and ran down the hill to the rescue. They found no fire but only the two saints and their companions sitting around the untouched meal rapt in contemplation of the glory of God.
If the climax of the story was suggested to its writer by the message to Clare’s mother, “You shall bring forth a light whose rays shall enlighten the earth,” no story about Clare and Francis could have a more satisfying ending.