Audacious Nuns: Institutionalizing the Franciscan Order of Saint Clare

Church History, March, 2000 by Lezlie Knox

Urban did not rely solely on this argument, however, but offered other reasons why the friars should resume their customary relationship with the women. He warned that without their involvement and guidance, the women they had inspired to enter religious life would become dissolute. The resulting scandal would be great since the Friars Minor had encouraged the daughters of kings and magnates to enter the order.(33) Having reminded the brethren of their responsibilities, Urban concluded by asking them to continue to provide spiritual care to the women in the accustomed manner (more solito) out of respect for himself and for the papal office.(34)

The Pisa Chapter of 1263 failed, however, to resolve the conflict as the pope had requested. The friars were unable to come to an accord or issue legislation concerning the nuns--the chapter's surviving statutes are exclusively liturgical.(35) Bonaventure's life of Francis, composed during the years of pastoral crisis and approved at the Pisa Chapter, shows evidence of the rift between the two groups. As in Thomas of Celano's Second Life of Francis (1247), also written during a period of tension between the friars and nuns, Clare and her followers are almost completely absent from the Major Legend.(36) In this text there is no mention of Francis's involvement with San Damiano or any other references to his relationship with the sisters.(37) Bonaventure instead incorporated stories of Francis's avoidance of women, thus following the pattern of the Second Life.(38) The brethren seem not to have wanted their official biography of Francis to draw attention to the women from whom they were seeking to separate themselves. Given the enmity that had grown up between the two orders, it is not surprising that the only resolution achieved at Pisa was the naming of a commission headed by the Minister General to bring closure to the conflict.(39)

Pope Urban again served as catalyst in the negotiations. On 14 July 1263, he removed Stephen of Hungary from his position as the sisters' protector and replaced him with Cardinal Orsini. Governance over the orders of San Damiano and of the Friars Minor thus was reunited under one cardinal protector. Once again we can only speculate about the pope's reasons. The friars' customary sustenance of the Damianites must have been regarded as a binding precedent.(40) Some credit must be given, moreover, to Urban's recognition in Spiritus Domini that the friars and nuns shared a common spiritual origin and thus deserved a more formal association. Whatever factors motivated him, the pope now was prepared to force the friars to fulfill their responsibilities toward the nuns. He requested that Orsini assign Friars Minor to provide the convents with spiritual care as allowed by their Regula bullata. If they refused, Orsini should compel them.(41) The cardinal in turn commissioned Bonaventure to restore the friars and their pastoral ministry to the women's communities.

The Minister General recognized that the friars would have to yield to papal wishes. Between July and October 1263 Bonaventure sent out encyclicals to the provincial ministers directing them to resume pastoral care for the Damianite communities.(42) These letters were surprisingly triumphant in tone, proclaiming that the friars had won their independence from the nuns: