EVENTS IN ASSISI

Feast of St. Clare - 11 August

The 11th of August in Assisi is the day of St. Clare. The relationship between St. Francis and St. Clare is one of the most important spiritual marriages at the core of Catholicism. All of the stories that speak of St. Clare adamantly depict her as the female mirror of St. Francis, the dearest sister of the saint. Like Francis, she rejected the well-to-do life that her family had reserved for her, the bourgeois marriage, abandoning her heritage and wealth to be reborn to a new life in poverty and in accordance with God’s rule. The stories of the canonization tell of how she ran away at the age of eighteen to reach the first Franciscan settlement in the church of the Porziuncola. Originally a Benedictine, Clare was at odds with the monastic order’s practice of accumulating wealth so she embraced the strict Franciscan vow of poverty, living most of her life in the convent of San Damiano where she was soon joined by her sister and mother.

According to popular belief, there are two famous stories from the life of the saint. The first tells of her efforts to defend Assisi against the Saracen troops under the command of Frederick II. Clare allegedly displayed the monstrance outside the walls of the convent and a blinding light caused the army, that was ready to devastate the city, to flee. The second is what made her the patron saint of television and telecommunications, recalling the Christmas night when Clare, ill and constrained to bed rest, had a vision of the mass celebrated by St. Francis.

Clare died on the 11th of August in 1253. Pope Innocence IV presided over her funeral. Canonized just 2 years after her death, she founded the order of Poor Clares, which today counts almost 600 monasteries scattered throughout the world. Her body lies in the church dedicated to her memory in the historic centre of Assisi, a masterpiece of Umbrian Romanesque architecture. On the 11th of August, the date of her death, Assisi remembers one of its dearest daughters.