Audacious Nuns: Institutionalizing the Franciscan Order of Saint Clare

Church History, March, 2000 by Lezlie Knox

In 1263 Bonaventure of Bagnoreggio, Minister General of the Franciscan order, complained about recent turmoil between the Friars Minor and Franciscan nuns 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 Saint 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 first recognize our complete freedom by public written documents sent to the Holy Father."(1)

Bonaventure wrote these comments at the end of a bitter altercation that had seen the friars withdraw their pastoral ministry from the sisters' houses.(2) Surprisingly, scholars have paid little attention to this conflict and its significance for the institutionalization of the enclosed nuns attached to the Franciscan order (familiarly known as Clarisses).(3) Herbert Grundmann's magisterial study of medieval religious movements remains the standard account of the problem of organizing religious women in the first half of the thirteenth century, but he allotted only one paragraph to the period after 1254.(4) Even though this particular confrontation was relatively brief (it lasted from 1261-63), its implications were profound. More than an isolated incident, this conflict helped shape the institutional identity of both orders. The concentrated legal and political battle that erupted between the friars and sisters forced each group to make accommodations and compromises between the demands of their religious ideals and institutional organization. This study therefore seeks to enhance our understanding of the pressures each group faced in the battle over women's incorporation into the Franciscan order.

I. THE FRIARS MINOR AND THE FRANCISCAN NUNS, 1212-54

Francis of Assisi had promised Clare, his first female follower, that he and his successors always would care for her community of San Damiano.(5) In practice, this meant that the brothers often visited the sisters and ministered to them. They also collected alms for the women's sustenance, since Clare intended her followers to live without material support just as the Friars Minor did. As the number of convents of "Damianites" grew, however, the friars began to protest that the need to minister to these women prevented them from fulfilling their own vocations.(6) Those brothers who wanted to limit the number of houses dependent on the Friars Minor testified that San Damiano was the only convent Francis was prepared to tolerate.(7) Their anecdotal memories about Francis's attitude toward women must be read with some caution, however, since they equally testify to their own deep-felt desire to exclude women from the order.(8)

Nonetheless, Francis of Assisi seems not to have intended the friars' obligation to enclosed women to extend beyond San Damiano. Although his affection and respect for Clare was great,(9) he himself was not interested in organizing or directing an order of enclosed women. When his female followers included only Clare and her companions, he saw no reason that the friars and nuns should not have a close relationship. Yet as his frustration grew over his order's rapid growth and its shift away from his apostolic ideals, Francis withdrew from this position. When the number of convents making claims on the friars increased and the brothers grew so numerous that he ceased to have personal influence on their formation, he tried to separate the men and women and complained about the friars' obligations to these convents. When Cardinal Hugolino dei Segni, Protector of the Poor Ladies, tried to name Fra Philip Longo visitator to the Damianite communities in 1221, he quickly aroused Francis's anger.(10) Francis cursed Philip as an ulcerous tumor and destroyer of the Franciscan order. Hugolino quickly retreated and appointed a Cistercian cleric to oversee the sisters' houses.(11) Thus, up to the time of Francis's death in 1226, only San Damiano could expect the friars to see to their spiritual needs, even though Clare was sending out sisters to help establish new communities in central Italy and beyond.(12) Over the next three decades the friars' responsibilities to female communities expanded, along with their protests against the burden.

In 1227 Pope Gregory IX--the former Cardinal Hugolino--issued a bull commanding the Franciscan Minister General to provide pastoral care to the Order of Poor Ladies of San Damiano.(13) While this bull legally incorporated existing Damianite houses--that is, convents where sympathetic friars were accustomed to provide pastoral care--into the Franciscan order, the brothers objected to any obligation to care for new foundations. Over the next two decades, the papacy frequently had to intervene between the friars and nuns as Clare led the fight for her followers' incorporation into the Franciscan order. The sisters' new cardinal protector (the pope's nephew Cardinal Rainald dei Segni) was her ally in this struggle. Since 1220 he had been protector of both the Friars Minor and the Order of San Damiano. The Cardinal believed that the friars should be responsible for these women. He may have done so out of recognition that their shared love of apostolic poverty meant that the women deserved the brothers' care.(14) Yet the friars' assignment was also a matter of convenience and necessity. By the 1220s, both established religious orders and the secular clergy were reluctant to provide spiritual or material care to enclosed women.(15) It was thus expedient for the cardinal protector to assign the friars, over whom he had authority, to minister to the women's order. It was an assignment that would be protested.