POOR
253
POOR
are arranged in a new order and are divided into
twenty-six chapters. For the most part the very
words of the previous rule are employed. One impor-
tant change must be noted. Innocent IV had left the
Second Order in charge of the general and provincial
of the Friars Minor. Urban IV \iithdrew from these
officials practically all their authority over the Second
Order and bestowed it on the cardinal protector.
III. Meanwhile, St. Clare had secured from Inno- cent IV the confirmation of a new rule differing widely from the original rule drawn up by Ugolino, and modi- fied by his successors on the papal throne. For forty years she had been the living rule from which the com- munity at San Damiano had imbibed the spirit of St. Francis. A few days before her death she placed the convent under a rule which embodied that spirit more perfectly than did Ugolino's Rule. The Bull "Solet annuere", 9 August, 12.5.3, confirming St. Clare's Rule, was directed to the Sisters of San Damiano alone. The new rule was soon adopted by other convents and forms the basis of the second grand division of the Poor Clares. It is an adaptation of the Franciscan Rule to the needs of the Second Order. Its twelve chapters correspond substantially to those of the Franciscan Rule, and in large sections there is a verbal agreement between the two rules. In a few instances it borrows regulations from the original rule and from the modified form of that rule pubUshed by Innocent IV. The most important characteristic of St. Clare's Rule is its express declaration that the sisters are to possess no property, either as indi\-iduals or as a com- munity. In this regulation the new rule clearly breathes the spirit of the seraphic founder. It is im- probable, however, that St. Francis was the author of it or that it was approved by Gregorj' IX, as is some- times asserted. With the data obtainable no categori- cal answer can be given to the question of authorship, though the compiler may well have been St. Clare her- self (Lemmens in "Rom. Quartalschr.", I, page 118). The original Bull of Innocent IV confirming the Rule of St. Clare was discovered in 1893 in a mantle of the saint which had been preserved, among other reUcs, at the monastery of St. Clare at Assisi (Robinson, "Inventarium documentorum", 1908).
IV. While the rule was undergoing these various modifications, the order was rapidly spreading throughout Europe. At San Damiano, St. Clare's sister, Agnes, and her aunt, Buona Guelfuccio (in re- ligion Sister Pacifica), played a large part in its early development. In 1318 permission was obtained from the Bishop of Perugia for the establishment of a mon- astery in that city. The following year Agnes founded at Florence a community which became the centre of numerous new foundations, namely, those at Venice, Mantua, and Padua. Monasteries of the order were soon to be found at Todi, Volterra, Foligno, and Be- ziers. St. Clare's niece, Agnes, introduced the new order into Spain. The cities of Barcelona and Burgos became thriving communities. The first foundation in Belgium was effected at Bruges by Sister Ermen- trude, who, after thedeath of St. Clare, displayed great zeal in spreading the order through Belgium and north- ern France. The earliest community in France, how- ever, was planted at Reims in 1229 at the request of the archbishop of that see. The monasteries at Mont- pelier, Cahors, Bordeaux, Metz. and Besangon sprang from the house at Reims; and that of Marseilles was founded from Assisi in 12.54. The Royal Abbey at Longchamp, which enjoyed the patronage of Bl. Isa- bel, daughter of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, is usually though with some question counted as a branch of the Poor Clares. (See article I3.\bel of France.) Among the earUest foundations in Ger- many was that of Strasburg, where Innocent IV's re- vision of the rule was accepted in 125.5. In Bohemia the order had an illustrious patroness. Princess Agnes (Blessed Agnes of Prague), a cousin of St. Elizabeth of
Hungary. Agnes was but one of the ladies of high rank
who, attracted to the new order, put aside the vani-
ties of their social po.sition to embrace a Ufe of poverty
and seclusion from the world.
V. For a century after the death of St. Clare com- paratively few of the convents had adopted the Rule of 1253. Most of them had availed themselves of the permission to hold property in the name of the com- munity. Moreover, in the fourteenth century the order suffered vers' much during the Great Western Schism, which was responsible for the general decline of discipline (Manuale Historiae Ordinis Fratrum Mi- norum, p. 586). At the beginning of the fifteenth cen- tury, however, the spirit of utter poverty was re\ived through the instrumentality of St. Colette (d. 1447), who instituted the most \igorous reform the Second Order has ever experienced. Her desire to restore or introduce the practice of absolute poverty was put on a fair way to realization when, in 1406, Benedict XIII appointed her reformer of the whole order and gave her the office of Abbess General over all convents she should establish or reform. In 1412 St. Colette es- tablished a monastery- at Besangon. Before her death (1447) she had founded 17 new monasteries, to which, in addition to the Rule of St. Clare, she gave constitu- tions and regulations of her own. These Constitutions of St. Colette were confirmed by Pius II (Seraphicae Legislationis Te.xtus Originales, 99-175). After the death of St. Colette her reform continued to spread and by the end of the fifteenth centuiy reformed convents were to be found throughout France, Flanders, Bra- bant, Savoy, Spain, and Portugal. The number of sisters at that time exceeded 35,000 and they were everywhere commended by the austerity of their lives (Pidoux, "SainteColette",p. 1.58). From the year 1517 the spiritual direction of the Poor Clares, the Colet- tines not excepted, was given to the Obser\-ants. This was a return to the condition e.xisting before the year 1263, at which time the Friars Minor, under the lead- ership of St. Bonaventure, at the General Chapter of Pisa sought to resign the spiritual care of the Second Order (Archivum PVanciscanum Historicum, October, 1910, 66t-79). The first quarter of the sixteenth cen- tury witnessed a widespread re\'ival of the Urbanist Rule. Towards the end of the same century, though the reUgious wars had destroyed many monasteries, there were about six hundred houses in existence. Subsequently the order experienced a rapid growth and the external development of the Poor Clares ap- pears to have reached its culmination about 1630 in 925 monateries with 34,000 sisters under the direction of the minister general. If we can credit contempo- rary chroniclers, there were still more sisters under the direction of the bishops, making the entire number about 70,000. After the opening years of the eigh- teenth centun,' the order declined and the French Revolution and the subsequent pohcy of seculariza- tion almost totally destroyed it, except in Spain, where the monasteries were undisturbed.
VI. In 1807 a Poor Clare community of the Urban- ist Observance, fleeing from the terrors of the French Revolution, took refuge in England and founded a monasterj- at Scorton Hall in Yorkshire. They were the first of their order to establish themselves in that countrj' since the religious changes of the sixteenth century. Fifty years after their arrival they removed to their present home, the Monastery of St. Clare at Darlington, also in Yorkshire. Refugees from the French Revolution likewise found their way to Amer- ica. In 1801 a community, presided over by Abbess Marie de la Marche, purchased property in George- town, D. C, and opened a school for their support. Their efforts met with httle success and they returned to Europe. The suppression of the religious in Italy was the occasion of the first permanent settlement of the Poor Clares in the United States. In August, 1875, two sisters by blood as well as in religion, Maria Mad-
