The Cult of St Clare of Assisi in Early Modern Italy by Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby (review)

In this richly illustrated study of the cult of St Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby analyses both images and textual material, especially sermons, to document the long history of representations of one of the earliest acolytes of St Francis and the founder of the order of the Poor Ladies, later known as the Poor Clares, or Clarissans.

According to Debby’s narrative, after her death and prompt canonisation, Clare was initially remembered as a civic saint who had defended her convent from a band of roving Saracen mercenaries. The story featured in a hagiography by Thomas of Celano and was depicted in a panel painting of 1360 by Guido da Siena, which shows the saint with a monstrance of the Holy Eucharist, the dazzling sight of which caused the infidels to retreat in disarray. In the fourteenth century, however, Clare was all but forgotten. She was marginalised in the male Franciscan tradition and hardly appeared in visual depictions of the life of St Francis.

It was only when female saints such as Catherine of Siena and Birgitta of Sweden gained popular followings, and thanks to the efforts of the fifteenth-century preacher John of Capistrano and Clarissan nuns such as Battista Alfani, that St Clare returned to prominence. Thereafter, she became a prominent heroine of the Catholic Reformation, often depicted with the miracle-working Eucharist, as in Bernini’s statue of her in St Peter’s Square. In Assisi, the memory of Clare’s victory over the Saracens was celebrated in sacred representations and sermons during the annual Festa del Voto, which began in 1624. Debby documents the ways in which each age constructed a different St Clare, using and discarding elements of a cult that ebbed and flowed over time. From civic heroine, pious abbess, and then miracle-working Eucharist saint, Clare emerged in modern times as the patron saint of television and the protector of cats.

Debby’s engaging book will interest a wide range of scholars, since it skilfully blends art and social history with sermon and gender studies.