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1 Spirit and Life 11 (2004) Structure of the Form of Life of Clare Jean-François Godet-Calogeras istory is made by all human beings, and yet it is usually written by only a few men. Franciscan history is no exception. The early Franciscan documents were written mostly by men, with just a few exceptions, and in those documents women are mentioned only here and there. In contrast, we should note that the thirteenthcentury popes from Innocent III to Alexander IV showed remarkable interest in the Franciscan women. From the 3,036 letters those popes wrote relating to the Franciscan Orders, an impressive number is to or about the women. Clare of Assisi is not only the first Franciscan woman, she is also, as far as we know, the first Franciscan woman writer. And yet, only a few of her writings have come to us. Few also are the studies on Clare and the Franciscan women compared to the loads of publications on Francis and the men. In recent years though, scholars, including women, have shown increasing interest in Clare and the early Franciscan women, realizing that they were not in the shadow, and that the whole picture of the Franciscan movement cannot be understood without them. The seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Clare’s death gives us an opportunity to take stock of as well as move ahead with our research. We know that Clare died at San Damiano, near Assisi, on August 11, 1253. She had just received what she had been working toward for years—a papal bull approving in writing the form of life of the community of women living at San Damiano. Pope Innocent IV had signed that bull in Assisi just two days before. One would have expected that document to become famous and spread throughout the communities of Franciscan women. This was not the case. Instead, ten years later, on October 18, 1263, another pope, Urban IV, signed another bull, Beata Clara. While it officially established the Order of Saint Clare, it also signaled a return to the canonical legislation the Roman Curia had imposed on the women H 2 JEAN FRANÇOIS GODET-CALOGERAS since the days of Cardinal Hugolino. The Form of Life written by Clare was diluted, quoted here and there, having totally lost its spirit as well as its identity. The Poor Sisters were no more. They had become the Enclosed Sisters, or the Sisters of Saint Clare. The word enclosure, never used by Clare, had become a leitmotif. A very different song, indeed. It is the Rule of Urban IV that became the Rule of the majority of Poor Clares. At some point, the bull given to Clare in 1253 even disappeared, and it does not look like anybody cared about it until the end of the nineteenth century around the seven-hundredth anniversary of Clare’s birth. And yet, the Form of Life of the Poor Sisters was the first rule for women written by a woman. The bull Solet annuere of August 9, 1253, never actually left Assisi. When the sisters moved from San Damiano to the new monastery intra muros in 1257, they certainly took the bull with them. But life at the Protomonastery was very different from life at San Damiano. It did not take long before the sisters of Assisi adopted the Rule of Urban IV and became Urbanist like the majority of the communities. Fortunately, however, the piece of parchment given to Clare was neither lost nor destroyed. The bull of 1253 begins with the words Solet annuere like the bull that, thirty years earlier in 1223, had confirmed the Rule and Life of the Friars Minor. Among the papal chancery templates, the Solet annuere is among the most commonly used. What is less common, in this case, is the kind of “double-decker sandwich” format. The text of Clare’s Form of Life is wrapped inside a letter of approbation from Bishop Raynaldus, Cardinal Protector of the Franciscan Order, written in Perugia on September 16, 1252. Raynaldus’s letter is in turn wrapped inside Pope Innocent IV’s letter, written in Assisi on August 9, 1253. It is also noteworthy that the bull, like a draft, bears several manual additions from the pope himself. This shows some kind of emergency. Since Clare was dying, there was no time for the chancery to produce a final, clean copy. What comes across easily to those who know the documents is that...

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