Catherine M. Mooney

UNTIL RECENTLY, little scholarly attention has been paid to the life and writings of Clare of Assisi. For example, while scholars have searched assiduously for over a century for early manuscripts of the texts by and about Francis of Assisi, the same has not been true for texts by and about Clare. The thirteenth-century Process of Canonization, considered one of the key sources for her life, was located and published only in 1920^{1 [1]} . The Latin text of the Testament attributed to her, of utmost importance for the biographical details of her life, long depended on a seventeenth-century edition^{2 [2]} until curiosity finally stirred scholars to locate, between 1954 and the late 1980s, five earlier manuscripts.^{3 [3]} While the numerous documents by and about Francis of Assisi have been repeatedly-one is tempted to say "endlessly"-published, edited, interpreted, and debated, Clare's brief corpus did not even appear together in the original Latin until 1970.^{4 [4]}
Since then new editions of texts by and about Clare have steadily appeared.^{5 [5]} Although Franciscan scholars were slower than others to respond to the new interest in the field of women's history and, more important, to draw on the groundbreaking studies that have marked particularly the field of medieval religious women, studies about Clare have at long last begun to flourish, especially since the celebration in 1993/94 of the Booth anniversary of her birth.^{6 [6]}

A striking aspect of a number of these studies is the extent to which scholars of Clare see her not just as an influential figure for her contemporaries and subsequent history, not just as a woman able to achieve and [52] gain fame in a world and Church dominated by men, but as a woman whose life, writings, personality, spirituality, and theology are integrally connected to her gender. Marianne Schlosser, who discusses Clare's use of the terms mother, sister, and bride to describe herself or her sisters, calls Clare "uniquely feminine."^{7 [7]} We know that the same would not be said of Francis, although he too referred to himself as a mother,^{8 [8]} spoke of his friars as mothers to each other,^{9 [9]} and exhorted men and women in general to be mothers and spouses of Christ.^{10 [10]} His friars spoke of Francis as a mother as well,^{11 [11]} referred to him as the spouse of Christ,^{12 [12]} and followed his example and advice that they be mothers to one another.^{13 [13]} While relatively little is made of this feminine imagery so strikingly applied to Francis and other men in writings by and about Francis,^{14 [14]} Clare's sex and her quite conventional use of female imagery are regularly underscored in scholarly and nonscholarly commentaries regarding her. In 1993 Pope John Paul II, speaking of Clare's writings, commented on the difficulty of expressing "what only a woman's heart could experience."^{15 [15]} Chiara Lainati, one of the more prolific modern scholars of Clare, states that "Clare, as a woman, sums up in herself all the symbols that humanity past and present includes in the feminine, the `eternal woman,"' and "that no other woman has been so `Woman,' so `Madonna."'^{16 [16]} Clare, according to another writer, is "womanspirit."^{17 [17]} The noted Clare scholar, Jean-Franƒois Godet, refers to her feminine style of writing and argues that her "woman's way of seeing" and "speaking" are evident especially in the "feminine" themes and symbols of her writing.^{18 [18]} In 1990 the Franciscan journal Laurentianum devoted a volume to articles united by the theme "Clare: Feminine Franciscanism" and in 1991 a week-long gathering sponsored by the Tuscan Province of the Friars Minor took up the theme "Clare and the Charism of Women."^{19 [19]} While a few scholars have begun to delineate how social constructions of femaleness and femininity function within texts by and about Clare^{20 [20]} , many others continue to identify Clare as specifically feminine without nuanced discussion of the medieval or modern meanings attached to such a claim.

In the remainder of this essay, I will discuss one of the ways in which medieval and modern commentators have tended to see Clare in a specifically female category by exploring the theme of imitation, both imitatio Christi or imitation of Christ, one of the central spiritual themes of the high and late medieval period,^{21 [21]} and imitatio Mariae, the imitation of Mary, the Mother of God.^{22 [22]} The fact that we have authentic writings from Clare affords a critical control unavailable to us in the study of so many other [53] medieval holy women who did not leave texts of their own. Through comparison of her texts with those written about her by her male contemporaries we can begin to examine the extent to which medieval assumptions about women influenced or even skewed Clare's representation by these interpreters. Clare proves to be a particularly rich subject for analysis also due to her association with Francis of Assisi, an association so close in life and in the minds of many of their admirers that they might aptly be considered a couple. The proximity of these two saints, one female, one male, chronologically, geographically, in their religious ideals, and in friendship, provides yet another important control. Thus, while focusing on the theme of imitatio in texts by and about Clare, I will also digress occasionally to compare and contrast the same theme as it appears in the numerous texts by and about Francis. In this way, I shall highlight how hagiographers employed the pivotally important religious theme of imitatio in their interpretation of both saints, yet, by applying it diversely in their discussions of the two, used it also to distinguish the sanctity of Francis from that of Clare.
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Clare, Francis, and the Theme of Imitatio

Clare of Assisi was born about 1194 and survived to about age sixty, dying in 1253. A relatively well-known saint, she is familiar to most people as the female and lesser counterpart of Francis of Assisi. Francis had embarked upon his religious career as a simple layman, one of thousands of lay people at that time exploring new articulations of religious life, both formal and informal. Such men and women were searching to devote their lives to God, not in the monastic milieu which had predominated until then, but among people, in towns and cities, . free of the vast lands, riches, and feudal obligations which they viewed as encumbrances to an authentic following of Christ and his apostles, the vita apostolica as it was then termed.

Clare and Francis have traditionally been juxtaposed in a sort of partnership in this search for the vita apostolica, a partnership at once parallel and astonishingly asymmetrical. The parallels between the two are too abundant to enumerate exhaustively: it will suffice to point simply to a few of the most prominent parallels connecting the corpus of writings each has bequeathed to us and to several salient parallels in compositions by their contemporaries describing the two.
In their own writings, for example, Francis and Clare each left written Testaments, final Blessings, and rules for their respective followers. Both [54] Clare's rule and Francis's are introduced by papal bulls approving them, entitled Solet annuere.

There are other parallels in writings about these two saints. It is entirely to be expected, of course, that elaborate legends be composed about each of these prominent saints shortly after their deaths. Two years after Francis died in 1226, the Franciscan Thomas of Celano, following a commission, wrote the first life of Francis.^{23 [23]} Similarly, a commissioned vita of Clare appeared about two years after she died in 1253. It is notable that many scholars, indeed, most in the English-speaking world, have long attributed Clare's legend to Thomas of Celano. If they are correct, then Celano's authorship constitutes yet another significant resemblance joining the two. If, on the other hand, their supposition proves wrong, it suggests the degree to which observers of Clare and Francis have been conditioned to expect and predisposed to accept parallels between the two.^{24 [24]} Within a few years of the composition of both of these vitae, a versified text closely related to the earliest prose vita of each saint also appeared.^{25 [25]}
Given the central importance within Franciscan tradition of the motif of imitatio, such parallels are hardly surprising. Nor is it coincidental that Clare's Testament, Blessing, and Form of Life (sometimes known as her rule)^{26 [26]} -precisely the documents that would enhance her likeness to and imitation of Francis, who wrote similar texts-are the most dubious documents in her corpus. The Testament, which differs stylistically and linguistically from the other works attributed to Clare, is noteworthy for the explicit and intimate ties it establishes joining Clare and her sisters to Francis, a relationship many friars were already trying to ignore by the time of Clare's death but which her sisters and other friars, conversely, were anxious to emphasize.^{27 [27]} The earliest Latin manuscript of the Testament can be dated, perhaps, to the late fourteenth century. The Blessing, which shares the weak manuscript tradition of the Testament,^{28 [28]} conspicuously incorporates most of the Blessing which Francis, drawing from the Book of Numbers, gave to his follower, Brother Leo.^{29 [29] .} Although most scholars this century attribute the Form of Life largely to Clare's own authorship, only a few passages are written in her own first person voice. Many passages repeat or adapt sections of earlier rules given to Clare and her sisters or derive from the papally approved rule that Francis left his friars.^{30 [30]} Moreover, any contributions by Clare to the Form of Life plausibly involved significant collaboration by others, such as Rainaldo di Segni, the sisters' Cardinal Protector who later would become Pope Alexander IV That others saw this rule as likening Clare to Francis is clear from the fact that an ancient [55] tradition soon imposed upon it a division into twelve chapters, thereby enhancing its similarity to Francis's papally approved rule.^{31 [31]} Modern scholars who accept the authenticity of these texts point to them as evidence that Clare consciously took Francis as a model to be imitated.^{32 [32]} One sort of circular reasoning sometimes infused into the authenticity question of texts attributed to Clare are arguments that a particular text is "essentially a feminine" document.^{33 [33]} Whatever the truth regarding the authenticity of these documents, it is clear that somebody, be it Clare or another, sought to model her after Francis.
Clare's corpus, with or without these debated texts, is exceptionally brief. Virtually all scholars who study Clare, the majority of whom are Franciscans, accept as authentic Clare's composition of four letters to Agnes of Prague (totaling about fourteen pages in modern English editions) and the twelve-page Form of Life. The presence in the Form of Life of many passages taken from earlier rules does not diminish Clare's authorship in their eyes since they think Clare, as author, consciously incorporated these sections.^{34 [34]} Many scholars also accept as Clare's the five-page Testament and one-page Blessing despite periodic and vociferous objections to the contrary. Finally, few scholars accept in its current form a letter to Ermentrude of Bruges, although some believe it to be a conflation of two no longer extant letters to Ermentrude. For the purposes of this essay, I will rely above all on the letters to Agnes and secondarily on the Form of Life, Testament, and Blessing whose relationship to Clare is more open to question.
Imitatio Christi is one of the most prominent spiritual themes associated with Francis of Assisi. In his own life and even more in the early literature and iconography about him, Francis is repeatedly represented as another Christ, an alter Cbristus, a term first applied to him in the early fourteenth century.^{35 [35]} Poor, suffering, and preaching to the masses, Francis was so like Christ that he received the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ, physically, in his own body. In similar fashion, Clare's life as depicted in early writings about her appears to be patterned after that of Francis. Francis met with familial opposition to his conversion, and so did Clare. Each initially spent several days in a Benedictine monastery before embarking on their individual religious journeys. One of Francis's first religious acts after vowing to follow Christ was to rebuild the church of San Damiano; one of Clare's first religious acts after making vows before Francis was to take up residence within the church Francis had rebuilt. Francis founded the order of male Franciscans; Clare founded the corresponding [56] order for women. Just as a reluctant Francis was forced to become leader of the friars, so did he in his turn compel Clare, diffident and resisting, to take charge over her sisters. In 1224, the same year that Francis received the stigmata, Clare, significantly, contracted a debilitating illness which she bore until her death and which those around her similarly interpreted as a sign of her sanctity and union with the suffering Christ. After their respective deaths, the body of each saint rested for a short time in the church of Saint George until, in each case, the body was given final rest in a large basilica built in the saint's honor. Each saint, renowned already during life and beloved by the papacy, was canonized two years after death. It seems only logical then that two early texts call Clare emulatrix sancti Francisci, emulator of St. Francis.^{36 [36] .} One modern scholar has even called her an alter Franciscus, although the term never appears in medieval sources.^{37 [37]} One might point to other parallels, particularly Clare's faithful and oft noted following of Francis regarding the all-important issue of poverty, but the salient point is this: in most of these incidents, Francis is depicted by hagiographers as following, copying, or imitating Christ, while Clare is pictured as following Francis.
In other words, Clare's imitation of Christ, which most of her medieval and modern admirers acknowledge, is often one remove from Francis's imitation of Christ. The two are unequal partners, alike and yet not alike, corresponding, yet asymmetrical. Clare, for example, has been characterized-one might even say caricatured-by her contemporaries, later commentators, and, until recently, many scholars as the dedicated devotee and helper, docilely heeding Francis's directives.^{38 [38]} The order of men Francis founded was identified as the First Order; the "Poor Ladies,î the order which Clare established shortly after Francis's foundation, was eventually-and tellingly-designated as the Second Order. Despite notable differences, some scholars see Clare's order as a conscious copy of his.^{39 [39]} In contradistinction to Francis and his city-dwelling, street-preaching friars, the women who coalesced around Clare resided outside the town walls, confined within a small cloister, their voices silent in accord with the religious rules granted them-some would say imposed-by their ecclesiastical superiors. The cleric who composed the papal bull approving Clare's canonization clearly delighted in his characterization of her: "Clare was concealed, yet her life was revealed; Clare kept silence, yet her reputation cried aloud; she was hidden in a cell, but known throughout the towns."^{40 [40]} It is precisely these attributes which are underscored repeatedly in subsequent hagiographic depictions of Clare. In contrast, while these qualities [57] are not absent from Clare's own writings, they by no means constitute the central themes in any of her own texts.
It may surprise some readers to learn that, although Francis did indeed speak of "following Christ," to be discussed below, he never explicitly used the vocabulary of imitatio Christi, the term so many people today identify with his Christlike life. Early hagiographical texts only sporadically refer to Francis as imitating or being an imitator of Christ. The anonymous allegorical work, Sacrum commercium (ca. 1227), Thomas of Celano's Vita prima (1228-29), and Vita secunda (1244^-47) each include single references to Francis as imitator of Christ.^{41 [41]} Only with later hagiographical works do the term and notion gradually become more common. The term appears twice in the brief Testament attributed to Clare (ca. 1253), three times in Bonaventure's Legenda maior (1261-63), and five times in the Speculum perfectionis (1318)^{42 [42]} . The work most known for the parallelism it establishes between the life of Christ and the life of Francis, Bartholomew of Pisa's De conformitate vitae Beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu, was composed only toward the end of the fourteenth century, well over 150 years after Francis's death.
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Imitatio Mariae

Such differences between a saint's own writings and those about him or her are evident in Clare's case as well. The subtle shaping of Clare's character by her medieval interpreters, virtually all of whom were men, and by some modern scholars as well, continues the theme of imitatio and centers on Clare's relationship to Christ and to the Virgin Mary. The earliest (albeit very indirect) suggestion that Clare resembled Mary may come from Francis himself, who once applied the epithet "spouse of the Holy Spirit" to Mary and who, in a quotation attributed to him and inserted into the 1253 Form of Life, spoke of Clare and her sisters as having "betrothed themselves to the Holy Spirit.î^{43 [43]} The unusual formulation, whether or not it was intended to establish an analogy between the sisters and Mary, is striking and occurs nowhere else in Francis's writings. A few months after her death, Clare is compared explicitly to other women and to Mary by witnesses testifying in the Process of her canonization. Three sisters each testify in almost identical terms that Clare's holiness was beyond description and that no other woman was greater than Clare, except for the Virgin Mary.^{44 [44] .} After fifteen sisters had testified, the ecclesiastics managing [58] the inquest assembled the entire convent of sisters who, led by their abbess Benedecta, "said with one accord ... that all that was found in the holiness of any other holy woman, except the Virgin Mary, could be truly said of and witnessed in Lady Clare.î^{45 [45]} Although it would hardly be surprising to hear that Clare's sisters placed her above other women (and below Mary), plentiful evidence shows also that much of their testimony was elicited from them as they responded to specific questions repeatedly put to them by their ecclesiastical interrogators.^{46 [46]} The comparison of Clare and Mary, whatever its origin, is memorable because medieval interpreters writing after the Process continue to juxtapose Clare and Mary, but instead of alluding to Clare's inferiority (however slight) to the Virgin, they begin to describe the two in more mutual terms, describing Mary as Clare's model, and Clare as Mary's imitator.^{47 [47]}
The first explicit suggestion that Clare modeled herself after the Virgin Mary is made by the anonymous author of the influential Legend, the account of Clare's life composed just a year or two after her death and based, in part, on the Process. He portrays Clare not only as a follower of Christ or as Christlike,^{48 [48]} but also as a follower of Mary, the Mother of God. He calls Clare the "footprint (vestigium) of the Mother of God,î and indirectly intimates that men pattern themselves after men, and women after women: "Let the men follow the new male disciples of the Incarnate Word; let the women imitate Clare, the footprint of the Mother of God, the new leader of women."^{49 [49]} Later, he writes of Clare that she, by her own manner of living, showed "her footprints to her followers.î^{50 [50]} The Minister General Bonaventure probably had such passages in mind when six years after Clare's death, in 1259, he urged the abbess and sisters of San Damiano to follow the "virtuous footprints of your most blessed mother [Clare].î"^{51 [51]}
The author of the Legend more subtly likens Clare to Mary. He glories in the fact that both Clare's and Francis's orders originated in a church named after Mary. Once again we encounter both analogy and asymmetry between the two saints. The hagiographer, who invokes both Mary's virginity and her maternity, is employing the most common language for Mary at this time. He remarks that the significance of this church of Saint Mary for the birth of the order of women is the fact that Mary is the preeminent Mother and Virgin, a model for Clare and her followers whose virginity and spiritual fecundity he underlines. The significance of the church for Francis and his followers, however, is that there the "Mother of mercies" brought them forth (parturire). Mary is birthing mother of both orders, but model for the women alone.^{52 [52]} [59]
Another early interpreter, Clare's friend, Bishop Rainaldo, in his introductory remarks to the1253 Form of Life, declares that Clare and her sisters followed in "the footprints of Christ himself and his most holy Mother.î^{53 [53]} Later, this same man, now Pope Alexander IV, appears as the probable author of a hymn in which he acclaimed Clare as "the footprint of the Mother of Christ," this time dropping altogether the allusion to Christ's footprints.^{54 [54]}
An arresting detail here is that in their discussions of Clare both of these men use the metaphor of "footprint," a common image in an age in which the notion of following Christ was gaining in popularity. Clare too revealingly employs the metaphor in her own writings, but in every case the footprints she is following are Jesus' not Mary's. In her second letter to Agnes of Prague (ca. 1235), Clare praises Agnes, who, emulating holy poverty, with a spirit of humility and charity, has clung "to the footprints of him to whom you have merited to be joined as a spouse.'^{55 [55]} In her third letter (ca. 1238) she states that Agnes wonderfully supplies what is lacking in Clare and in the other sisters in their imitation "of the footprints of the poor and humble Jesus Christ."^{56 [56]} In the Testament, Clare exhorts her sisters to persevere always in holy poverty, according to the form of life Francis had given them and as he had encouraged them in his words, examples, and many writings. His example was as a follower of Christ: "And our most blessed father Francis, having imitated [the Son of God's] footprints, did not while he lived ever turn away in his example or teaching from this holy poverty that he had chosen for himself and for his brothers.î^{57 [57]} Clare appears also to speak indirectly in two papal documents, both known as the Privilege of Poverty^{58 [58]} . Each document grants to Clare and her sisters the right to live without property and in each, the words of the pope in question seem to recall and recapitulate Clare's own words from her petition to the pope. Addressing Clare and her sisters, each pope writes: "you propose to have no possessions whatsoever, clinging in all things to the footprints of him who for us was made poor, the way, the truth, and the life.î^{59 [59]}
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Translation of the Third Letter to Agnes

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It is important to note that in the foregoing passages from the Testament and her petition to the pope Clare associates following the footprints of Jesus specifically with poverty.In her letter to Agnes, she associates following Jesusˆ footprints specifically with poverty and humility.Attention [60] to her own language in this regard provides the key, I think, to the meaning behind one final instance of her use of the term footprints. The passage appears in her third letter to Agnes. Its intepretation in one important translation, I want to suggest, has overlooked Clare's own use of the term footprints to describe a following of Christ in favor of later hagiographic depictions of Clare as a follower of Mary.
In 1988 the Franciscan scholar Regis Armstrong, in his introduction to his translation of works by and about Clare, alluded to the Vita prima of St. Francis composed by Thomas of Celano. Armstrong wondered whether Thomas perceived the role of Clare
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as similar to that of Mary, the Mother of the Church, to whom the apostles looked for embodied guidance and knowledge of Jesus after His Ascension? Certainly their positions bear resemblances. For at this very time the friars were beginning to see strong likenesses in the lives of Christ and Francis and to take seriously the theme of the "conformities" between the two. But Thomas makes no reference to the similarity between Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Clare.^{60 [60]}
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Although Armstrong thus acknowledges that there is no explicit evidence revealing Thomas of Celano's thoughts on the matter, he then proceeds to bolster the Clare/Mary analogy by citing the anonymous author of Clare's Legend who referred, as I noted above, to Clare as "the footprint of the Mother of God."
Armstrong's desire to see Mary as model for Clare and his cognizance of occasional hagiographic remarks likening Clare to Mary clearly influence his reading and subsequent translation of an important passage in her third letter to Agnes. In 1982, six years before he suggested the aptness of the Clare/Mary analogy, his co-translation with Ignatius Brady of this passage rendered her words thus:
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Therefore, as the glorious Virgin of virgins carried [Christ] materially in her body, you, too, by following in His footprints [cf. i Pet 2: 21], especially [those] of poverty and humility, can, without any doubt, always carry Him spiritually in your chaste and virginal body.^{61 [61]}
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In Armstrong's subsequent 1988 translation, where he speculated in his introduction regarding the resemblance of Clare to Mary, he translated the same passage thus:
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As the glorious Virgin of virgins carried [Him] materially, s0 you, too, by following in her footprints [cf. 1 Pet 2: 21], especially [those] of poverty and humility, can, without any doubt, always carry Him spiritually in your chaste and virginal body.^{62 [62]} [61]
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In some intriguing footwork of his own, Armstrong has reinterpreted Clare's advice to Agnes, in the process re-routing Agnes's direction from following Christ's footsteps to following Mary's. It is important to note that in both translations the phrases which have parallels in Scripture have been italicized. The partial italicization in the latter translation of the phrase "so you, too, by following in her footprints" (cf. 1 Pet z: 21) indicates, of course, that Armstrong is aware of his substitution of the feminine pronoun "her" for the masculine pronoun "his" present in 1 Peter 2:21, which clearly refers to following Christ's footprints.^{63 [63]}
What's going on here? In Armstrong's defense, it should be pointed out that the Latin text being translated, sequens eius vestigia, could be rendered as either "following his" or "following her footprints" since eius is both the feminine and masculine singular possessive pronoun. Translators, whose work rendering texts accessible to a wider audience is too little esteemed, perforce open themselves to criticism since the very nature of their task demands that they interpret the texts they translate. Nor is Armstrong the only translator to interpret Agnes as following Mary in this passage.^{64 [64]} However, it is clear from all of the above passages of Clare's writings that when she speaks of following the footprints of poverty, or poverty and humility, she is always referring to a following of Christ, just as the pope does when he repeats back to her her request to live without property.^{65 [65]} This is consistent with Francis of Assisi's own use of the footprints metaphor, which he employs in five different passages in his own writings. On every occasion, Francis is speaking of following Christ's footsteps, and he twice associates this following explicitly with poverty.^{66 [66]}
Clare's dense use of imagery in the third letter to Agnes as elsewhere in her writings is profound and subtle, but also clear upon careful examination. That the "footprints, especially [those] of poverty and humility" which Clare advises Agnes to follow are those of Jesus is made plain by the fact that earlier in this same letter Clare includes one of her explicit references (discussed above) to "the footprints of the poor and humble Jesus Christ."^{67 [67]} A few verses later, she states that Agnes, with humility, the virtue of faith, and poverty, embraces the treasure hidden in the field.^{68 [68]} Clare further signals Agnes's likeness to God when she calls Agnes God's coworker or assistant (adiutricem)^{69 [69]} and exhorts her to "transform yourself entirely through contemplation into the image of divinity itself."^{70 [70]}

`Elsewhere in her writings, but without using the metaphor of footprints, Clare speaks clearly of "following" (sequor) Christ as does Francis in his own writings^{71 [71]} . She counsels Agnes to "look upon him made con [62] temptible for you and follow him, making yourself contemptible in the world for him."^{72 [72]} In another letter she expresses her hope that Agnes (Agna), "together with the other holy virgins, sing a new song before the throne of God and the Lamb [Agni] ] and follow the Lamb [Agnum] wherever he may go.î^{73 [73]}

Moreover, in contrast to Francis's single use of the term imitatio, which appears in a variant reading and which Francis employs to refer to the saints,^{74 [74]} Clare employs the term eight times, a fact made more graphic when one considers that Francis's corpus is at least three times longer than hers, even if we accept all the works attributed to her as authentic.^{75 [75]} In her second letter to Agnes, Clare calls Agnes an imitatrix of God the Father;^{76 [76] ;} she advises her friend to copy or imitate the counsel (consilium imitare) of the then Minister General Brother Elias^{77 [77]} , not to imitate any contrary counsel;^{78 [78]} and finally, to gaze upon, consider, and contemplate Christ, while desiring to imitate him.^{79 [79]} In her third letter, she refers to Agnes's and the sisters' imitation of Jesus.^{80 [80]} In the Testament, she refers to Francis as imitator and lover of Christ,^{81 [81]} who imitates Christ's footprints,^{82 [82]} and she exhorts her sisters to imitate the simplicity, humility, and poverty taught them by Christ and Francis.^{83 [83]} Thus, with the exception of the two instances in which she alludes to imitating or copying the human counsel of Elias or others, when Clare speaks of imitation, she always is speaking of the imitation of Christ or, in one case, God the Father. Moreover, she speaks primarily of women carrying out this imitation. In no case does she mention imitation of Mary, female saints, or any other women. And the virtues with which she explicitly associates this imitation are, in descending order of their importance, poverty,^{84 [84]} humility,^{85 [85]} and, less prominently, simplicity,^{86 [86]} charity,^{87 [87]} and, a concept central to Francis's following of Christ, the passion of Christ.^{88 [88]}
Finally, elsewhere, using neither the explicit language nor the imagery of imitatio, vestigia, or "following" alone, Clare communicates that it is Christ after whom she and her sisters are to pattern themselves. For example, in one of the few passages of the Form of Life written in the first person and thus more likely to be her own composition, Clare says to her sisters: "And for love of the most holy and beloved [Christ] child wrapped in poor little swaddling clothes, laid in a manger, and of his most holy mother, I admonish, beg, and exhort my sisters always to wear poor garments.î^{89 [89]} Later, commenting on the fact that the sisters should own nothing, "serving the Lord in poverty and humility," she adds that they are not to be ashamed, because the Lord made himself poor for us.'^{90 [90]} Numerous [63] examples such as these can be drawn from her writings to highlight Clare's vision that she and her sisters, even while devoted to Mary, should each make herself an alter Christi.

There are just two instances in Clare's writings in which Mary is mentioned along with Christ as a model to be followed, both, it should be noted, from texts with a more tenuous connection to Clare. The first appears in the 1253 Form of Life, in another of the few passages written in the first person:

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And so that we, and indeed those who will come after us, would never turn away from the most holy poverty with which we had begun, a little before [Francis's] death he again wrote to us his last will, saying: "I little brother Francis wish to follow the life and poverty of our most high Lord Jesus Christ and of his most holy mother, and to persevere therein until the end." And I entreat you, my ladies, and I counsel you to live always in this most holy life and poverty.^{91 [91]}
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In this passage, then, the admonition to follow not only Christ, but also Mary, belongs first to Francis and only secondarily to Clare. The second passage in which both Jesus and Mary are presented as models appears in the more contested Testament. Clare is exhorting her sisters to be faithful to the poverty which she and they have promised to the Lord and to Francis and for which they had received privileges from Pope Innocent III and his successors.
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For this reason, with bended knees and deferential spirit, I commend all my present and future sisters ... to the Lord Cardinal Protector ... so that, for love for God who lay poor in a manger, lived poor in the world, and remained naked upon the cross, [the Lord Cardinal] always ensure that his little flock observe holy poverty, which the Lord Father begat in the Church by the word and example of our most blessed father Francis who followed the poverty and humility of his beloved Son and his most glorious virgin Mother, and which we promised to the Lord and to our most blessed father Francis.^{92 [92]}

In this allusion, Mary is an example of poverty and humility along with Christ, but it is Francis who is said to be following the example of Christ and his Mother. For their part, Clare and her sisters are to "observe" (observari) the poverty that they promised to the Lord and Francis. And if, even without more explicit reference to following or imitatio, it were to be argued that Clare in this passage is dynamically following anyone, it would be Francis. Thus, in keeping with hagiographic depictions of her mentioned earlier in this essay, it is only subsequent to Clare's following of Francis and by virtue of his own imitation that she could be said to be [64] following, at one remove, Christ and his Mother. A structural analysis of this text shows that the example of Mary is at the furthest remove from Clare, separated from her by both Christ and Francis as exemplars to be emulated.^{93 [93]}

In passages in Clare's writings where Mary does appear, her role is overwhelmingly that of mother, Christ-carrier, and God-birther. This throws important light on Mary's role in the debatable translation from her third letter. In this passage, it is Agnes's following of Christ's footsteps, in his poverty and humility, which secondarily likens her also to Mary, but only insofar as Agnes's virginal body is spiritually analogous to Mary's material body as a receptacle for Christ. Clare makes her meaning clear by setting up various analogies apparent in the letter's structure, language, and imagery. Structurally, Clare first describes Mary's material role; then, speaking generally, she describes the faithful soul's analogous spiritual role; and finally, speaking more particularly, she remarks upon the expression of this spiritual role in the person of Agnes herself. In her language and imagery, note the analogies Clare establishes between Mary's physical "womb" and "lap," which enclose and hold the "Son whom the heavens could not contain," on the one hand, and the "dwelling place" and "throne" for Christ within the faithful soul, on the other hand, which, spiritually speaking, similarly contain the Creator whom "the heavens and the rest of [his] creatures cannot hold." It is Agnes's conformity to Christ's poverty and humility, mentioned earlier in the letter, which then liken her, spiritually, to Mary's material roles as virgin mother, Christ-carrier, and God-birther.

I speak of him, the Most High Son, whom the Virgin bore and after whose birth remained virgin. May you cling to this most sweet mother, who gave birth to a Son whom the heavens could not contain, but whom she nevertheless carried within the small enclosure of her holy womb and held on her girlish lap.

For who would not shudder at the snares of the enemy of humanity, who, by means of the arrogance of transitory things and deceptive glories tries to reduce to nothing that which is greater than heaven? For surely, by the grace of God, it is clear that the soul of the faithful person, the most worthy of [his] creatures, is greater than heaven, since the heavens and the rest of [his] creatures cannot hold the Creator, and the faithful soul alone can be his dwelling place and throne, and this solely because of the charity which the impious lack. [He who is] the truth said, "Whoever loves me is loved by my Father, and I will love him, and unto him we shall come and we shall make our dwelling within him."
Therefore, just as the glorious Virgin of virgins [carried Christ] materially, thus you, following his footprints, especially [those] of humility and poverty, can, with [65] out any doubt, always carry [him] spiritually in your chaste and virginal body, containing him in whom you and all things are contained.^{94 [94]}
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Consistent with all her other writings, Clare here advises Agnes to follow Christ's footsteps, a following which will then liken her to Mary in terms of spiritual motherhood.^{95 [95]}

A collective examination of all the passages in which Clare alludes to Mary powerfully corroborates that for Clare, Mary is first and foremost identified with the related notions of mother, God-birther, and Christ-carrier,^{96 [96]} then virgin,^{97 [97]} and finally intercessor.^{98 [98]} The subordination of Mary's role to Jesus' is also consistent throughout Clare's writings. In her letters, the Form of Life, and the Blessing, Clare never mentions Mary independently of Jesus and always makes her secondary to him.^{99 [99]} The Form of Life refers to the Marian feast of the Assumption within a list of seven feasts upon which the sisters are to receive communion.^{100 [100]} Mary is mentioned in the Testament always in conjunction with other holy persons or things, for example, Jesus, St. Francis, the saints, the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant.^{101 [101] .} Mary appears in Clare's writings, but never as a major focus of concern or devotion.
Francis also refers to Mary in numerous passages. Like Clare, he most often describes Mary as mother, God-birther, and Christ-carrier.^{102 [102]} Along these same lines and serving as important corroborative evidence for understanding Clare's imitation of Mary as limited to her virginal body being a receptacle for Christ, Francis repeatedly alludes to Mary as receptacle of Christ. She is, for Francis, Christ's palace, his tabernacle, his home, his garment.^{103 [103] .} In the words of Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure, Francis "embraced the Mother of Jesus with an inexpressible love because she had made the Lord of Majesty our brother."^{104 [104]} Alongside this overwhelming emphasis on the related notions of Mary as mother, Godbirther, and Christ-carrier, is the equally important epithet "Virgin" which Francis applies to Mary on a dozen occasions.^{105 [105]} All of these descriptions position Mary in relationship to Christ and secondary to him.^{106 [106]} In a revealing passage, Francis states that men and women can be the mother of Christ by "carrying him in our heart and our body" and "give birth to him through holy deeds."^{107 [107]} For Francis, then, as well as Clare, one is like Mary insofar as one carries Christ within oneself.
Thus the evidence within Clare's own writings, which significantly parallels the meanings conveyed in Francis's texts, shows overwhelmingly that Clare understood herself and her sisters to be following Christ's foot [66] steps, conforming their lives to his, in a word, becoming Christlike. Clare gives far less attention to Mary as model, limiting its meaning strictly to carrying Christ spiritually within herself. Although it is beyond the purview of this essay to discuss this point fully, it should also be noted that while Clare speaks of an active following of Christ's footprints, the anonymous author of her Legend and Pope Alexander both referred to her as being the "footprint of the Mother of God;" a phrase insinuating imitation, but placing Clare in a passive rather than active role.^{108 [108]}
Why then do those who write about Clare gradually introduce the notion of Clare as imitator (or imitation) of Mary when everything we know of her own views has her following Christ? Here I propose three likely possibilities regarding the medieval theological context which newly interpreted Mary's role as mediatrix between heaven and earth; the difficulty medieval men had in thinking of women, even an extraordinary woman such as Clare, as their spiritual equals in imitatio Christi and the ease with which they elided their views of Mary with notions regarding women; and the particular circumstances of the Franciscan order during and after Clare's life.

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Theological Context

The pressure to move Clare in line behind Mary receives unambiguous support from the theological context of the high Middle Ages. While Mary held a prominent position in the theology of many fourth- and fifth-century Greek Fathers who stressed her role as the mother of God in their attempts to explain the union of humanity and divinity in Christ, her role remained relatively minor in the western Christian tradition. Although the Council of Ephesus in 431 defined her divine motherhood and solemnly declared her to be Theotokos, God-birther, western theologians at the time seldom employed the equivalent Latin term, Genitrix Dei, in their discussions of Mary, nor did the western Church witness the proliferation of Marian feasts so evident in the east.^{109 [109]} Mary's prominence grew gradually in the western Christian tradition: early theologians such as Ambrose (d. 397) and Jerome (d. 419/20) commented on her virginity, for example, and later theologians such as Paschasius Radbertus (d. 865) began to highlight her role as a medium for the communication of grace.^{110 [110]}
Nevertheless, it was only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that Mary engaged the passion of western theologians and faithful alike, as at [67] tested by the many cathedrals erected in her honor and her prominent place in Christian iconography, literature, drama, homilies, prayers, such as the popular Ave Maria, and theological speculation.^{111 [111]} Lives of our Lady, accounts of Marian visions, and collections of her miracles conspicuously multiply in both Latin and vernacular versions beginning in about the twelfth century. Devotions to Mary's relics proliferated, ranging from her "sacred tunic" to the very milk from her breasts, sold in the marketplaces of many cities. In both eastern and western Christianity, fashioning new titles for Mary and employing old ones became a kind of growth industry. Titles such as queen of virgins, enclosed garden, silent and humble maid seemed peculiarly suited to the virtues Clare's contemporaries wished to accentuate in their portrayals of her.
Peter Damian (d. 1072), Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), and Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) are among myriad theologians who reinvigorated the ancient theological parallel drawn between the adversaries Eve and Mary, the Second Eve. In their eyes, it was appropriate that a woman reverse the victory the devil won over the first sinner, the woman, Eve.^{112 [112]} Whether these theologians helped shape the assumption evident in works about Clare that women are appropriately patterned after women and men after men, or whether they merely reflect the commonly held assumptions of their worlds, we can see how easy it would be for learned churchmen who came after them, the men who wrote about Clare, to mirror the same assumption.
Marian devotion and doctrine at this time are redolent with the theme of imitatio. A storm of debates swirled around the question of Mary's immaculate conception: was she, like her son Jesus, conceived in a sinless state by her own parents? She was also considered to be cosufferer and coredemptrix with her son. Her lamentations at Christ's death were celebrated in a new liturgical genre, the planctus Mariae; biblical exegetes and devotional writers included dialogues between Mary and her son in which she beseeched him to let her die with him.^{113 [113]} It was commonly believed that Mary, paralleling Christ's own Ascension, had been bodily assumed into heaven. In popular piety, people even speculated that Mary, like her son, had been resurrected shortly after her death.^{114 [114]} Yet the question arises: if theologians could devote endless treatises to discussions of Mary's likeness to Christ, then why might some of them tamper, albeit unconsciously, with Clare's own self-presentation as a follower 0f Christ?

Central to understanding this issue is a characteristic of Mary brought [68] distinctively into relief in this period-her role as mediatrix, a title that achieved prominence in the west in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when Mary became commonly identified as well as Genitrix Dei. As Bernard of Clairvaux put it, Mary, the mediatrix, was "the way through which the Saviour came" to us and also the one "through [whom] we ascend to him who descended to us through [her]."^{115 [115]} In a famous formulation, he called Mary the "aqueduct" through whom the waters of eternal life flow to us and through whom we can draw close to Christ and the Father.^{116 [116] .} Because the mediator Christ's divinity might intimidate us, Bernard regarded the wholly human Mary to be the mediator par excellence: through her we could communicate with Christ.^{117 [117]}

This theological formulation of Mary as mediatrix is echoed strongly in both learned and popular accounts of the saints' lives in which women, much more than men, are viewed as mediators, channels, or bridges connecting this world with the supernatural world. A review of Italian male and female saints from the period immediately preceding Clare and especially the period following her indicates that holy women were customarily portrayed as conduits.^{118 [118]} On the physical plane, it is obviously women who bring human life into the world through their own bodies. But spiritually too, holy women were depicted as conduits through whom divine knowledge flowed to humanity. They are called "vessels" far more often than men. Their interior bodies were so intriguing to men both physically and spiritually that in the cases of Clare of Montefalco and Margaret of Citta di Castello, the clerics and physicians peering inside the women during embalming found startling physical evidence in the form of the instruments of the crucifixion and stone etchings of the Holy Family of the women's interior connection to the spiritual realm.^{119 [119]} While the sanctity of men tended to be based more on their "this-worldly" offices and achievements, such as preacher, priest, or learned theologian, holy women's sanctity derived more from their relatively easy access to the other world through visions, locutions, and divinely infused forms of knowledge. It is worth noting that among these same saints Mary, biological mothers, and other women often played pivotal roles in men's conversions. By contrast, female saints tended to accord much less importance to Mary, their biological mothers, or the mediating role of other women. As women themselves, gifted with intuitive visions or other paramystical powers, they had their own access to the other world. This provides one explanation for the more minor role which Clare accords to Mary in her own writings, and the ten [69] dency of some of her male interpreters, who viewed Mary and women as mediatrices of the divine, to discover parallels between Clare and Mary, despite Clare's assertion that she followed Christ.^{120 [120]}
Another important facet of the theological context regards the longstanding association of men with spirit, rationality, and even divinity, on the one hand, and women with body, physicality, and humanity, on the other. These associations assume new relevance in the high medieval period, when devotion to Christ began to focus above all on his humanity and suffering physicality. As Caroline Bynum remarks,
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Whereas male writers used the traditional dichotomy of male and female to criticize particular women and to differentiate sharply between male and female roles, male and female characteristics, women used the dichotomy differently. To women, the notion of the female as flesh became an argument for women's imitatio Christi through physicality. Subsuming the male/female dichotomy into the more cosmic dichotomy divine/human, women saw themselves as the symbol for all humanity.^{121 [121]}
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Bynum's point is consonant with the translation I rendered above regarding Clare's advice to Agnes to follow Christ and become, secondarily, like Mary insofar as Mary's material body was a receptacle for Christ. Bynum notes that "Women's devotion was less to Mary's social or religious role as woman than to her physical role as bearer of humanity."^{122 [122]}

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Christ, Model for Men; Mary, Model for Women

The tendency of some medieval authors to model Clare after Mary rather than Jesus is a subtle and perhaps unconscious effort to reserve Jesus, who is after all God, as the model par excellence for men, leaving women in their appropriately subordinate position. Ecclesiastics and hagiographers devoted to Clare subtly distanced her from Christ and enhanced the spiritual stature of Francis by depicting Clare, more than her own words or life justified, as a follower of Francis who himself was a follower of Jesus. Clare's proximity to Christ is further diminished when, evidence to the contrary from her own writings notwithstanding, she is portrayed as a follower of Mary. While such a description places her in a decidedly exalted position vis-a-vis most women and men, it is still secondary to a following of Christ. Although both Francis and Clare spoke repeatedly of following Christ, hagiographic and iconographic depictions of Francis increasingly emphasized his imitatio Christi, while those of Clare diminished her own [71] claims in this regard and enhanced instead the role of Mary as her model. In a telling extension of this same logic, Clare is increasingly proffered as the model par excellence for other women. By the time the well-known Italian treatise The Considerations on the Holy Stigmata was composed, sometime between 1370 and 1390, Clare's transformation is plainly apparent. The anonymous author reasons that just as Christ had renewed his life and passion in a man (uomo), Francis, through whom many (molti) in the world would be drawn to the path of truth and penance, so had "the Mother of Christ promised to renew her virginal purity and humility in a woman (femmina), sister Clare, in such fashion that through her example she would snatch many thousands of women (femmine) from our hands."^{123 [123]}
While it is reasonable to assume that Clare would be presented as (and indeed was) a leader and model for her sisters just as Francis was for his friars, there is no reason why her followers should be less encouraged than the friars to pursue the Christian life by imitating Christ, who was God, or even Francis, who was thought by the friars and many others to be the closest copy of God. The assumption that women more aptly follow women than men meant that Clare and her sisters were encouraged, far more than men, to imitate the female and thus subordinate side of the asymmetrical pair, Mary/Jesus, and Clare's sisters and other women were encouraged to follow the lesser side of the asymmetrical pair, Clare/Francis. Such female identification and self-replication, while not surprising, has the logical effect of ensuring that female/male asymmetries continue. It is also by no means peculiar to representations of Clare. Barbara Newman's essay in this book on Hildegard of Bingen and Anne Clark's on Elisabeth of Schoenau each point out that, although these women tended to compare themselves to prominent biblical men, their hagiographers stressed their likeness to biblical women.

The Franciscan Context

The tendency to portray Clare as a follower of Mary and women as followers of Clare (and Mary) is probably related to the friars' growing desire, evident even within Clare's own lifetime, to renounce all responsibility and relationship with the female branch of their order.^{124 [124]} One need only examine the shift in attitudes toward the Poor Ladies apparent in the first two official vitae of Francis by Thomas of Celano. Celano composed his first vita about 1228-29 around the time of Francis's canonization on July 16 [71] 1228.^{125 [125] .} He drew upon things he himself had heard Francis say in addition to reports from "faithful and trustworthy witnesses."^{126 [126]} Sometime between 1244 and 1247, Celano composed a second vita, this time drawing on information elicited by the General Chapter of 1244, which had invited all the brothers to report anything they knew to be true "concerning the life, signs, and wonders of blessed Francis.î^{127 [127]} While Celano's Vita prima may be viewed as a simple and relatively spontaneous attempt by Francis's followers to record his deeds soon after his death and honor him on the occasion of his canonization, the Vita secunda represents a more anxious effort to scour the order for those pieces of information about him which were "true" and "reliable" as opposed to so many other views being propagated about Francis in numerous texts circulating within and without what had by then become a deeply divided order.
Clare and her sisters are mentioned but incidentally or not at all in most of these accounts of Francis, a powerful reminder of women's secondary status. Celano refers to them in both his vitae, yet there is an unmistakable shift in tone between his Vita prima and his Vita secunda. In the first vita, after narrating how Francis had rebuilt the church of San Damiano, Celano warmly relates how this church later became "the blessed and holy place where" Francis founded "that glorious and most excellent order of poor Ladies and holy virgins" just six years after his conversion. Clare, says Celano, was the "strongest and most precious stone" in the foundation of this structure. He grandiloquently enumerates her many qualities and heaps further extravagant praise upon the order itself, "a noble structure of the most precious pearls" beyond our capacity for understanding and certainly beyond the meager limits of human expression, outstanding in charity, humility, virginity, poverty, silence, patience, and prayer.^{128 [128]} Later in the vita, Celano returns to the subject of Clare and her sisters when he recounts Francis's death and the moving scene in which the saint's coffin was solemnly carried to the church of San Damiano to allow the women to see their beloved father one final time. Poignantly and at length, Celano describes their lamentation and pitiable cries, their struggle to let him go, and the grief this aroused in those observing their leavetaking.^{129 [129]}
Less than twenty years later, with Clare still alive, Celano composed his second vita of Francis. By this time, there was already significant controversy among the friars regarding their obligations to serve as chaplains for and otherwise assist the Poor Ladies, some being strongly committed to Clare, whom they saw as faithful to Francis's ideal, and others strongly opposed. Signs of the struggle are plentiful. A few years before Celano began [72] the Vita secunda, the Franciscan Minister General Haymo of Faversham (1240-44) succeeded in convincing Pope Gregory IX to release the friars from any duty to serve the sisters as spiritual directors. Clare vehemently objected. She immediately sent away those friars who assisted her and her sisters in obtaining food. If they had to live without their spiritual "food,î then they could certainly forgo material food. Her pointed action convinced the pope to reimpose upon the friars their duty to serve the women spiritually. Events such as these are further elucidated by information regarding specific friars, such as a certain Stephen, who is known to have adamantly opposed any association between the friars and the Poor Ladies and who is thought to have influenced Celano along these same lines.^{130 [130]}
In this context, it is hardly surprising that Celano's Vita secunda simply leaves out the touching scene of Francis's funeral procession pausing at San Damiano to allow Clare and her sisters a final farewell. In fact, Clare is not mentioned a single time by name. Celano gingerly walks a fine line, at one moment acknowledging the intimate ties joining the "poor ladies" with Francis and the friars, and in the next defining strict boundaries between them. He astutely tries to have it both ways. After praising the women's order, he adds that "though their father [Francis] gradually withdrew his bodily presence from them, he nevertheless gave them his affection in the Holy Spirit by caring for them." His care for them, which at first seems to be a crystal-clear offer of service to the women is, once stated, immediately qualified. Francis
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firmly promised them and others who would profess poverty in a similar way of life that he would always give them his help and counsel and the help and counsel of his brothers. This he always carried out as long as he lived, and when he was close to death, he emphatically commanded that it should be always so, saying that one and the same spirit had led the brothers and the poor ladies out of the world.
At times the brothers wondered that Francis did not visit the holy servants of Christ with his corporal presence more often, and he would say: "Do not believe, dearest brothers, that I do not love them perfectly. For if it were a fault to cherish them in Christ, would it not have been a greater fault to have united them to Christ? Indeed, not to have called them would not have been a wrong; not to care for them once they have been called would be the greatest unkindness. But I give you an example, that as I have done to you, so you also should do. I do not want anyone to offer himself of his own accord to visit them, but I command that unwilling and most reluctant brothers be appointed to take care of them."^{131 [131]}

The import of this studied ambiguity is clinched in Celano's next two passages. The first recounts several incidents illustrating Francis's objections to [73] friars visiting female monasteries.^{132 [132]} It is possible that the strictures Celano here places in Francis's mouth reflect certain indiscretions committed by some of the friars in the years since their founder's death. But it is notable that no distinction is made between the strictly cloistered women of San Damiano, for whom no evidence of any indiscretions survives, and any of the (in any case) few other nuns who might possibly have had irregular contacts with any friars. The second passage relates the well-known story in which Francis, forced against his will by his vicar to preach to the Poor Ladies, goes and instead sprinkles himself with ashes to teach them

that they should regard themselves as ashes and that there was nothing in his heart concerning them but what was fitting this consideration. This was the way he acted toward these holy women; his visits to them were very useful, but they were forced upon him and rare. And this was his will for all his brothers: he wanted them to serve these women in such a way for Christ, whom they serve, that like them that have wings they would always guard against the snare laid out for them.^{133 [133]}
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At the most obvious level of interpretation, Francis is simply preaching penance by doing penance. The stern ending of the episode, however, and especially its location at the conclusion of a series of passages warning of women's dangers, subtly suggests a darker interpretation, an inextricable association between women and the need for penance-penance for men so easily ensnared when they attend to women and penance for women who are, by virtue of their sex, part and parcel of that very snare.

This characterization of the Poor Ladies as potential temptresses is consistent with other comments in the Vita secunda regarding Francis and women, passages which betray a harsh misogynism absent in the Vita prima. Celano's newly misogynistic Francis, for example, considered "familiarities with women" "a honeyed poison ... which lead astray even holy men." He told the friars that "avoiding contagion from association with [women] ... was as easy as walking in a fire without having the soles of one's feet burned." Women were so unwelcome to Francis that, says Celano, "you would think that his caution was not a warning or an example but rather a dread or a horror."^{134 [134]}
The shift in attitude toward Clare and her sisters so patently evident in comparing these two vitae by the same author appears in later Franciscan history and writing as well. In 1260, just a few years after her canonization, Pope Alexander IV rebuked a friar for publicly preaching against Clare's cult.^{135 [135]} Venerated by the papacy and the citizens of Assisi, Clare received scant recognition in Franciscan sources after the generalate of Bonaventure [74] (1257^-74).^{136 [136]} Given the desire of so many friars to minimize their obligations to the Poor Ladies, Franciscan writers had good reason to characterize them as temptresses and to downplay Clare's importance. Wittingly or not, they minimized her role by depicting her less as a follower of Christ (which following put her on a par with their founder Francis) or even as his follower, and more as an imitator of Mary and an apt model for imitation by other women. Such distinctions maintained the men and the women in fully discrete categories, the way most friars seemed to want it.

Iconography

Early iconographic depictions of Clare confirm both the growing tendency among her interpreters to identify her with Mary and also the friars' increasing reluctance to be associated with the Poor Ladies. The only surviving thirteenth-century narrative depiction of her life, the famous Santa Chiara Dossal of 1283, depicts Clare and Francis together and also includes a scene depicting the miracle where she multiplies bread, a scene likening her to Christ.^{137 [137]} The nuns of Clare's community likely wanted the two saints to appear together on the dossal to affirm the connection of Clare's order to Francis and the friars. As Jeryldene Wood notes, it served as a visual rebuke to the friars who wished to repudiate the women.^{138 [138] .} By the early fourteenth century, various depictions of Clare were associating her clearly with Mary. In the painting by Pietro Lorenzetti (d. 1348), Clare stands beneath Mary at the foot of the cross, with Francis positioned beneath John the Evangelist who, according to Franciscan tradition, prophesied Francis's stigmata.^{139 [139]} In the vault above the high altar of the church of Santa Chiara in Assisi, Clare is depicted alongside Mary in one of four quadrants of eight female saints.^{140 [140]} In yet another early fourteenth-century work, this one commissioned, significantly, for a house of her own followers, Clare's death is likened to Christ's, Mary's, and Francis's.^{141 [141]}
Indeed, it is notable that the thirteenth-century images which do survive of Clare, including those which depict her together with Francis, appear to have been commissioned largely by houses of her own followers.^{142 [142]} The friars' churches, in contrast, are virtually bereft of images of Clare. Clare does not appear once in any of the scenes in the ten historiated panels dedicated to Saint Francis. In the few images where she does appear, her importance derives not from any suggestion that she herself was a great follower of Francis or saint of the Franciscan order, but from [75] her association with the city of Assisi, virgin martyrs, or the church of San Damiano that Francis rebuilt. Clare appears once in the famous fresco cycle in the basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi: there she mirrors the Sorrowful Mother, Mary, mourning over the dead body of Francis, the alter Christus. In keeping with textual evidence of the desire prevalent among many friars to disassociate themselves from Clare's followers, early male Franciscan iconography tends to ignore even Clare's significance as the founder of Francis's Second Order. In keeping with the textual tendency to distance Clare from Francis and her followers from his, each tended to be depicted apart from the other in frescoes, panels, and altarpieces, reinforcing their distinct identities as exemplars, respectively, for women and for men.^{143 [143]}
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Clare's understanding of herself as a follower and imitator of Christ is so consistent throughout her writings that few medieval texts focused on her could ignore it. It is also clear, however, that hagiographic texts and iconography tended increasingly to portray Clare as a follower of Mary. This evolving portrayal of Clare and the correlative depictions of her female followers as imitators of Mary and Clare served to distance them from the centrally important Christian motif of imitatio Christi and consequently reinforced their secondary position vis-a-vis Francis and his male followers. Indeed in the very period during which Clare's identification with Mary, and her followers' identification with Mary and Clare, were being enhanced, the explicit language of imitatio Christi-which appeared in Clare's writings but not in Francis's-began to be employed on a recurrent basis to describe Francis, by then identified as the preeminent alter Christus.
It is important to note that I do not mean to imply by this one example that medieval women did not sometimes consciously pattern their lives after Mary. Until recently, however, and certainly in the case of Clare, too little attention has been paid to the distinction between a saint's own writings and writings about the saint, to the gender of authors who represent saints, and to the gender of the saints they so portray.^{144 [144]} This is particularly critical with regard to female saints, the vast majority of whom left no writings of their own and are known to us only through the vitae of their male contemporaries. Close attention to the varied use of imitatio and its related notions, and the shifting meaning of the metaphor "footprints" in texts by and about Clare and Francis, suggests that similar differences of emphases might also have set apart other female saints' self-understandings from portrayals of them by male hagiographers, however sympathetic and [77] well-intentioned.One might question, for example, whether or not the Italian saints Bona of Pisa (d. 1207) and Fina of San Gimignano (d. 1253), both of whom are depicted by their hagiographers as imitators of Mary, would have agreed with this representation.^{145 [145]} Although it is unlikely that we will ever find texts by Bona or Fina or the majority of female saints who might have wished to tell their stories in their own words, close comparison of the writings of saints like Clare with male-authoredn texts about them provides critical clues as to how male representations of female sanctity plausibly altered and misrepresented the self-understandings of the many women whose voices are lost to us.

¹ I wish to thank Caroline Walker Bynum and Francine Cardman for reading an earlier draft 0f this paper and offering many insightful suggestions.

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^[1] "Il Processo di Canonizzazione di S. Chiara d'Assisi," ed. Zeffirino Lazzeri, AFH 13 (1920): 439^-93
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^{2 [2]} Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum seu trium ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum (Quaracchi: Ad Claras Acquas, 1931), vol. 3, ad annum 1253, pp.^. 340^-43.

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^[3] Giovanni Boccali, "Testamento e benedizione di S. Chiara: Nuovo codice latino," AFH 82 (1989): 273-81.
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^{4 [4]} Escritos de Santa Clara y Documentos Contempordneos, ed. Ignacio Omaechevarr⁄a et al. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos,1970; rev. and enl.. 1982).

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^[5] Notably, Textus opusculorum S. Francisci et S. Clarae Assisiensium (Assisi: Ed. Portiunculae, 1976), ed. Giovanni M. Boccali; published with Italian translation as Opuscula sancti Francisci et scripta sanctae Clarae Assisiensium, trans. Luciano Canonici (Assisi: Ed. Porziuncola, 1978). The best edition at present of Clare's corpus in Latin, with concordances and indices, is Concordantiae verbales opusculorum S. Francisci et S. Clarae Assisiensium, ed. Boccali (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola,1976; rev. and enl. 1995) A more accessible edition, with Latin and French on facing pages, is Claire d'Assise: Ecrits (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985), ed. and trans. Marie-France Becker, Jean-Franƒois Godet, and Thadd?e Matura. An English translation of texts attributed to Clare and medieval texts about her is Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong (New York: Paulist Press, 1988; rev. and enl. Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1993); except when noted otherwise, all references to Armstrong's edition are to the 1993 edition.
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^{6 [6]} For bibliography, see Bibliografia di Santa Chiara di Assisi: 1930-1993, ed. Isidoro de Villapadierna and Pietro Maranesi (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1994); St. Clare of Assisi and Her Order: A Bibliographic Guide, ed. Mary Frances Hone (St. Bonaventure, N.Y: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1995)
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^{7 [7]} Marianne Schlosser, "Mutter-Schwester-Braut: Zur Spiritualitaet der hl. Klara," Laurentianum 31 (1990): 176. All translations of primary and secondary sources throughout this essay are mine unless otherwise noted. Marie Aimøe du Christ, "Charism proph?tique de Claire pour la femme de tous les temps," Laurentianum 26 (1985): 865-82, also considers Clare's use of these terms. See Greyfriars Review for English translations of these and some other foreign language essays about Clare.
.

^{8 [8]} Epistola ad fratrem Leonem 2, p. 109. All references to Francis's and Clare's writings are from Concordantiae verbales, cited in n. 5. Others who wrote about Francis also cite him as having spoken of himself as a mother and woman: Thomas of Celano, Vita secunda 16-17, 82, and see 18o, in AF 10 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1926-41); Legendum trium sociorum: Edition critique, ed. Th?ophile Desbonnets, AFH 67 (1974) 51: 127; 63: 138. In 1219 Odo of Cheriton said that Francis referred to himself as a woman, impregnated by the Lord, who bore spiritual children; "S. Francisci parabola in sermonibus Odonis de Ceritonia," AFH 22 (1929): 585.
.

^{9 [9]} Regula non bullata 9, 14, p. 29; De religiosa habitatione in eremo 3, p. 73; 7, p. 73; 10, p. 74; 11, p. 74; 12, p. 74; and see Regula bullata 6, 10; Thomas of Celano, Vita prima 98, in AF 10; Celano, Vita secunda 164.
.

^{10 [10]} Epistola ad Fideles [recensio prior], p. 218d; Epistola omnibus fidelibus 10, 6, p. 84; 10, 9, pp. 84-85; see also Celano, Vita prima 74.
.

^{11 [11]} See, for example, Celano, Vita prima 60, 79, and see 61; Celano, Vita secunda 137; Legendum trium sociorum 50-51, pp. 126-27. Other descriptions of Francis as a woman or that employ feminine terms include Celano, Vita secunda 16-17, 82, 93, 164; Bonaventure, Legenda maior (in AF i0) VII, 6 (compare with III, 10); Legenda minor (in AT 10) III, 7, 8.
.

^{12 [12]} Celano, Vita secunda 94.

^{13 [13]} For example, Legendum trium sociorum 41, p. 121.

^{14 [14]} But see Caroline Walker Bynum's discussion of this in Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 94-102, 282-88; and Richard C. Trexler's discussion of gender boundaries breached in pictorial representations of Francis's renunciation in Naked Before the Father: The Renunciation of Francis of Assisi (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), esp. pp. 98-99, 101-2, 108-9.

¹⁵ .
^[15] L'Osservatore Romano, Eng. ed., n0. 34 (1304), 25 August 1993, p. 1.

^{16 [16]} Chiara Augusta Lainati, "Santa Clara de Asis, Mujer Bella," trans. Juan Oliver, Selecciones de Franciscanismo 21 (1992): 369.
.

^{17 [17]} Susan Muto, "Clare of Assisi: A Woman of Spirit, a Model of Strength for Today's World," in Clare of Assisi: A Medieval and Modern Woman, ed. Ingrid Peterson (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1996), p. 189.
.

^{18 [18]} "Claire et la vie au f?minin: Symboles de femme dans ses Ecrits,' Laurentianum 31 (1990): 150, 158, 161-68. Godet uses highly stereotyped understandings of femininity and masculinity to argue that both exist within Clare, but stresses above all her womanly/feminine qualities.
.

^{19 [19]} Laurentianum 31, 1-2 (1990); Lainati, "Mujer Bella,' pp. 367, 369.
.

^{20 [20]} For example, Cettina Militello, "Chiara e il `femminile'," Laurentianum 31,1-2 (1990): 62-105; Davide Covi, "Il Femminile nel linguaggio morale di Chiara d'Assisi," Laurentianum 31,1-2 (1990): 106-47. These and other essays appearing in the multi-lingual Laurentianum 31, 1-2 (1990) all appear in Italian in Chiara: Francescanesimo al Femminile, ed. Covi and Dino Dozzi (Rome: Edizioni Dehoniane; Edizioni Collegio S. Lorenzo, 1992).
.

^{21 [21]} For a thorough discussion 0f the theme and its various meanings from New Testament times through the late Middle Ages with abundant references t0 primary and secondary sources, see Giles Constable, "The Ideal 0f the Imitation
0f Christ," in Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 143-248. For twelfth-century treatments 0f this theme, see Inos Biffi, "Aspetti dell'imitazione di Cristo nella letteratura monastica del secolo XII," La Scuola Cattolica 96 (1968): 451^-90; Erich Kleineidam, "Die Nachfolge Christi nach Bernhard von Clairvaux," in Amt and Sendung: Beitrdge zu seelsorglichen and religidsen Fragen, ed. Kleineidam, Otto Kuss, and Erich Puzik (Freiburg: Herder, 1950), pp. 432-60.

²² .
^[22] On this theme, see Rosemary Hale, "Imitatio Mariae: Motherhood Motifs in Devotional Memoirs," Mystics Quarterly 16 (1990): 193-203; Martina WehrliJohns, "Haushaelterin Gottes: Zur Mariennachfolge der Beginen," in Maria, Abbild oder Vorbild? Zur Sozialgesehichte mittelalterlicher Marienverehrung, ed. Hedwig Rockelein, Claudia Opitz, and Dieter R. Bauer (Tuebingen: Diskord, 1990), pp. 147-67; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland Circa 1300 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 88-104. The impossibility 0f imitating Mary, both virgin and mother, is discussed by Marina Warner, an early proponent of this point, in Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Knopf, 1976), to be used with caution.
.

^{23 [23]} Vita prima, in AF i0, pp. 2-117.

^{24 [24]} Georges Mailleux, the compiler of the concordance 0f Celano's four works regarding Francis together with the Legend of Saint Clare remarks that if
the Legend is indeed by Celano, then it shows an astonishingly diverse vocabulary from the works he indisputably authored; Thesaurus Celanensis, Vita prima, Legenda ad usum cbori, Vita secunda, Tractatus de miraculis, Legenda sanctae Clarae virginis (Louvain: CETEDOC, 1974), p. xi n. ii. Regis J. Armstrong reviews the debate regarding authorship in "Clare of Assisi, the Poor Ladies, and their Ecclesial Mission in the `First Life' 0f Thomas 0f Celano," Laurentianum 32 (1991): 131-37, slightly expanding his remarks in Early Documents, pp. 246-49.

²⁵ .
^[25] Henry of Avranches, "Legenda in versi del Beato Francesco," ed. and trans. Antonio Cristofani, Il Pià antico poema della vita di S. Francesco dAssisi scritto innanzi all'anno 1230 (Prato: Ranieri Guasti, 1882); "Legenda Versificata S. Clarae Assisiensis, Saec. XIII;' ed. Benvenutus Bughetti, in AFH 5 (1912): 237-60, 459-81; see 235-36, 621-31.
.

^{26 [26]} Although this document has traditionally been called a "rule" and is identified in the Latin text I employ as the "Regula S. Clarae_," I join the recent practice 0f some scholars in identifying it in my own text as the "Form 0f Life" since the term formula vivendi, not regula, is employed within the document.
.

^{27 [27]} The animated scholarly debate regarding the Testament's authenticity, which began nearly a century ago, has recently been reignited by Werner Maleczek, "Das Privilegium Paupertatis Innocenz' III. and das Testament der Klara von Assisi. Ueberlegungen zur Frage ihrer Echtheit," Collectanea Franciscana 65 (1995) 5-82, esp. 41-75, who casts doubt 0n the document's authenticity; responding to Maleczek and arguing for authenticity is Niklaus Kuster, "Das Armutsprivileg Innozenz'III. and Klaras Testament: Echt oder raffinierte Faelschungen?" Collectanea Franciscana 66 (1996): 5^-95.

²⁸ .
^[28] See n. 3.

²⁹ .
^[29] The Blessing of Clare is found in four 0f the manuscripts containing the Testament. On the doubtful authenticity 0f the Blessing, see Emote Paoli, in Fontes franciscani, ed. Enrico Menestš and Stefano Brufani (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1995), pp. 2251-60.
.

^{30 [30]} The Regula bullata, pp. 55-62, written in 1223. An earlier rule written by Francis in 1221, the Regula non bullata, pp. 19-5o, did not receive papal approbation.
.

^{31 [31]} Livarius Oliger, "De Origine Regularum Ordinis S. Clarae," AFH 5 (1912): 431-32.
.

^{32 [32]} For example, Lothar Hardick, Spiritualit? de Sainte Claire (Paris: Editions Franciscaines, 1961), pp. 19, 34.
.

^{33 [33]} Such reasoning appears in both early and recent scholarship, for example, Paschal Robinson's comments regarding the Testament, "The Writings of St. Clare of Assisi," AFH 3 (1910): 443; and Godet's regarding the formula vivendi, "Claire et la vie au f?minin," p. 158.
.

^{34 [34]} For example, Margaret Carney, The First Franciscan Woman: Clare 0f Assisi and Her Form of Life (Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1993) pp. 65^-97, esp. 77-97; Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, "A Medieval Woman's Utopian Vision: The Rule of Clare of Assisi," in Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 66-79.
.

^{35 [35]} In the Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius: Nuova edizione postuma di Jacques Cambell, ed. Marino Bigaroni and Giovanni Boccali (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1988), chaps. 6.1, 18.27. Conceptually, the notion appears as early as the letter Elias wrote upon Francis's death: Epistola encyclica de transitu S. Francisci, in AT 10, pp. 525-28. On its gradual development from the official vitae of Celano and Bonaventure through unofficial Franciscan sources after the Actus, see Stanislao da Campagnola, LAngelo del sesto sigillo e l"alter Cbristus": Genesi e sviluppo di due temi francescani nei secoli XIII-XIV (Rome: Laurentianum; Antonianum, 1971). On its iconographic development, see ibid. pp. 284-92; H. W. van Os, "St. Francis 0f Assisi as a Second Christ in Early Italian Painting," Simiolus 7 (1974): 115-32; Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. pp. 16-24.
.

^{36 [36]} "Compilatio Assisiensis" dagli Scritti di fr. Leone e Compagni su s. Francesco dAssisi, ed. Marino Bigaroni, 2nd ed. (Assisi: Biblioteca Francescana di Chiesa Nuova,1992), p. 13; Le Speculum perfectionis ou M?moires de frøre L?on, ed. Paul Sabatier, vol. 1 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1928), chap. 108, 1, p. 309 (aemulatrix praecipua beati Francisci ). The Speculum has been dated to 1318. Scholars differ in dating the Compilatio but generally agree that significant portions of the text were first gathered in 1246. The Compilatio has been known by a variety 0f names, including Legend of Perugia, not t0 be confused with Anonymous of Perugia; and I Fiori dei tre compagni (ed. Jacques Cambell [Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1967]), not to be confused with the Legendum trium sociorum (ed. Desbonnets).

³⁷ .
^[37] Marco Bartoli, Clare 0f Assisi, trans. Sister Frances Teresa (Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1993) p. 132. Hardick, Spiritualit? de Sainte Claire, p. 26, calls her a "deuxiøme Franƒois"; and see Daniel Elcid, Clara de As⁄s: La bermana ideal de San Francisco, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1994), p. 113.
.

^{38 [38]} Much recent scholarship, alternatively, presents Clare as a spiritual leader in her own right whose insights, while complementary to Francis's, were also deeply original; see for example Patricia Ranft, "An Overturned Victory: Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church," Journal of Medieval History 17 (1991): 123-34; Carney, The First Franciscan Woman; Petroff, "A Medieval Woman's Utopian Vision: The Rule of Clare."

³⁹ .
^[39] Hardick, Spiritualit? de Sainte Claire, pp. 34^-35.
.

^{40 [40]} "Latebat namque Clara, sed eius vita patebat; silebat Clara, sed sua fama clamabat; celabatur in cella, et in urbibus noscebatur." Legenda 3, in Escritos, p. 118

^{41 [41]} Sacrum Commercium s. Francisci cum Domina Paupertate (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1929), 4, 1; Vita prima 84, 6; Vita secunda 216, 3.
.

^{42 [42]} Testamentum 5, p. 185; 36, p. 188; Legenda maior XI, 2; XIII, 2; XIV 4; Le Speculum Perfectionis, vol. 1: chap. 14, 1, p. 39; chap. 73, 1, P. 217; chap. 88, 6 (twice), p. 262; chap. 88, 9, p. 262. Imitation not only of Christ, but also of Francis and others were expanding notions in Franciscan literature.

^{43 [43]} Antiphona "Sanctae Maria Virgo" 2, p. 146 ("sponsa Spiritus Sancti"); Forma vivendi 1, p. 75 ("Quia divina inspirations fecistis vos filias et ancillas altissimi summi Regis Patris caelestis et Spiritui Sancto vos desponsastis"). See Chiara Augusta Lainati, in Fonti francescane, ed. Feliciano Olgiati (Assisi: Movimento Francescano, 1977), p. 2221; Optato van Asseldonk, Una Spiritualit… per domani:: Maria, Francesco e Chiara (Rome: Collegio s. Lorenzo da Brindis, 1989), pp. 3234, 419^-32; Oktavian Schmucki, "St. Francis's Devotion Toward the Blessed Virgin Mary," Greyfriars Review 5 (1991): 224-26.

⁴⁴ .
^[44] "Processo di Canonizzazione" v.2; VII.ii;XI.5.

^{45 [45]} "Benedecta allora Abbadessa, con le altee Monache del predicto monasterio de Sancto Damiano, dissero de una volunta ... the tucto quello the se trovava de sanctit… in alcuna sancta the sia de po la Vergine Maria, se pš veramente dire et testificare de la sancta memoria de madonna Chiara:' "Processo di Canonizzazione" XV 1 [b]; trans. Early Documents, pp. 179-80.

⁴⁶ .
^[46] To offer but one example: examination of the testimony of sisters other than the three noted above suggests that they too were asked, in more or less similar terms, if any human explanation was possible to account for Clare's virtue and
holiness or if her goodness could be fully described; see, for example, III.2; VI.5; VIII.1; IX.1; X.2; XII.7; XIV. 4; see also XIII.3. In keeping with canonization procedures of the time, the papacy had compiled a list of questions (interrogatoria) to be posed to the witnesses; see Escritos, p. 67, 5. This list did not survive and those interrogating the witnesses may have added questions of their own. On the format of canonization inquests and questions posed, see Andr? Vauchez, La Saintet? en Occident aux derniers siøcles du moyen age d'aprøs les procøs de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques, Bibliothøque des Etudes Franƒaises d'Athønes et de Rome 241 (Rome: Ecole Franƒaise de Rome, 1988), pp. 50-60 and fig. 5. For a more detailed discussion 0f the implications 0f male clerical questioning, see Dyan Elliott's essay in this volume, chap. 9.

⁴⁷ .
^[47] Lainati, Fonti francescane, p. 2393 n. 4, states that the sisters in the Process of Canonization spoke of Clare as a "perfect copy of the Mother of the Lord," but Lainati here misinterprets the Process in light of later documents; see below.
.

^{48 [48]} The terminology "following Christ" (Christi sequela) is applied to Clare once: Legenda 14, in Escritos, p. 149. Elsewhere, for example, she is depicted multiplying bread: 15, p. 150; 0r being joined to Christ by sharing his experiences: 31, pp. 166-67.
.
.

^{49 [49]} "Sequantur ergo viri viros Verbi incarnati novos discipulos; imitentur feminae Claram, Dei matris vestigium, novam capitaneam mulierum." Legenda, "Proemialis Epstola," in Escritos, p. 134.
.
.

^{50 [50]} ". . . incessu proprio signat vestigia secuturis." Legenda 10, in Escritos, p. 143; see also II, p. 145.
.

^{51 [51]} . "[Ego] exhortans [dilectas filias] et inducans, ut beatissimue matris vestrae ... virtutum vestigia sollicite comitantes," in Escritos, pp. 367-68, and see 366.

⁵² .
^[52] Legenda 8, in Escritos, p. 141.
.

^{53 [53]} " .. ipsius Christi eiusque sanctissimae Matris sequentes vestigia." Prooemium 2, in Escritos, p. 267.

⁵⁴ .
^[54] ". . . Matris Christi vestigium." "Concinat plebs fidelium," 1, in Sister Mary Immaculata Cashal, Hymns in Honor of Saint Clare of Assisi: An Exhaustive Analysis of Their Contents and Structure (Mohegan Lake, N.Y.: Ladycliff Academy, 1964), p. 292 (I thank Sister Mary Francis Hone, O.S.C. for this reference). On thirteenth- through fifteenth-century hymns relating Clare to Mary see Cashal, "Hymns," pp. 136-37, 180, 200-210.

⁵⁵ .
^[55] ". . . eius adhaesisti vestigiis, cuius meruisti connubio copulari." II Epistola 7, p. 203.
.

^{56 [56]} ". . . to novi et arbitror vestigiorum pauperis et humilis Iesu Christi tam in me quam in aliis ceteris sororibus imitationibus mirifice supplere defectum." III Epistola 4, p. 207.
.

^{57 [57]} "Et beatissimus pater noster Franciscus, eius vestigia imitatus, sanctam paupertatem suam, quam elegit per se et per suos fratres, exemplo suo et doctrina dum vixit ab ipsa nullatenus declinavit." Testamentum 36, p. 188.
.

^{58 [58]} The authenticity 0f the first of these, attributed to Pope Innocent III (1216), is still debated; see the authors cited in n. 27 above. The Privilege 0f Poverty attributed to Gregory IX (1228) is generally accepted as authentic.

⁵⁹ .
^[59] ". . . nullas omnino possessiones habere proponitis, illius vestigiis per omnia inhaerentes, qui pro nobis factus est pauper, via, veritas, atque vita." "Privilegium paupertatis," in Escritos, p. 232.
.

^{60 [60]} Early Documents, 1988 ed., p. 13; and see 1993 ed., p. 13, for the virtually identical passage. Elcid, Clara de As⁄s, p. 200, calls Clare "another Mary" (otra Mar⁄a) in counterpoint t0 Francis, the alter Christus.
.

^{61 [61]} Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady, trans., Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), Letter 3, 24-25, p. 201. For the Latin, see n. 94.
.

^{62 [62]} Early Documents, 1988 ed., Letter 3, 24-25, p. 45; and also 1993 ed., p. 46.
.

⁶³ .
^[63] 1 Peter 2: 21: "It was for this you were called, since Christ suffered for you in just this way and left you an example, to have you follow in his footsteps." Armstrong again employs this translation in a discussion of the image of Mary in Clare's letters, "Starting Points: Images of Women in the Letters of Clare," Collectanea Franciscana 62 (1992): 85-93, esp. 90; see also 99.
.

^{64 [64]} Ignatius Brady, The Legend and Writings of Saint Clare of Assisi (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1953), P. 94; Jan Kapistran Vyskocil, The Legend of Blessed Agnes of Bohemia and the Four Letters of St. Clare, trans. Vitus Buresh (Cleveland: Bell and Howell, 1963), p. 198. Translations into the romance languages are able to preserve the apparent ambiguity of the Latin: Escritos, ed. Omaechevarria, p. 391; Ecrits, ed. Becker, Godet, and Matura, p. 107; Le Lettere di Santa Chiara dAssisi (Marigliano [Naples]: Scuola tipografica "Istituto Anselmi," 1975), p. 20.

⁶⁵ .
^[65] Ranft, "An Overturned Victory," p. 130, also noted that Clare's association with imitatio Mariae originated in male-authored texts and differed from Clare's own insistence 0n imitatio Christi.
.

^{66 [66]} Regula non bullata 1, 2, p. 19 (associated with poverty); 22, 2, p. 40; Epistola omnibus fidelibus 2, 10, p. 80; Epistola capitulo generali 63, p. 97; Epistola ad fratrem Leonem 3, p. 109 (associated with poverty).
.

^{67 [67]} III Epistola 4, p. 207. See n. 56.
.

^{68 [68]} 111 Epistola 7, pp. 207-8, emphasis mine.

^{69 [69]} III Epistola 8, p. 208.
.

^{70 [70]} ". . . transforma to ipsam totam per contemplationem in imagine divinitatis ipsius. . . ." III Epistola 13, p. 208.
.

^{71 [71]} See, for Francis, Verba admonitionis 6, 2, p. 8; Regula non bullata 1, 34, pp. 19-20; 9, 1, p. 28; Ultima voluntas 1, p. 77 (as given in the 1253 Form 0f Life 6, 7, p. 175; this passage refers also to Mary, see below).
.

^{72 [72]} "Vide contemptibilem pro to factum et sequere, facta pro ipso contemptibilis in hoc mundo." II Epistola 19, p. 204.
.

^{73 [73]} ". . . et cum reliquis sanctissimis virginibus ante thronum Dei et Agni novum cantare canticum et quocumque ierit Agnum sequi," IV Epistola 3, p. 213. In Epistola ad Ermentrudem 9, p. 217, the letter of doubtful authenticity, Clare
writes, "take up the cross and follow Christ who goes before us" (tolle crucem et sequere Cbristum qui nos praecedit); note also 12, p. 217, where Clare writes that Ermentrude should meditate on the mysteries of the cross and the agonies of Christ's mother.

⁷⁴ .
^[74] See the critical apparatus for Verba admonitionis 6, 4, p. 8.
.

^{75 [75]} Opuscula sancti Francisci; Scripta sanctae Clarae: Concordance, Index, Listes de fr?quence, Tables comparatives, ed. Jean-Franƒois Godet and Georges Mailleux (Louvain: CETEDOC, 1976), p. ix.
.

^{76 [76]} II Epistola 4, p. 203.
.

^{77 [77]} II Epistola 15, p. 204.
.

^{78 [78]} II Epistola 17, p. 204.

⁷⁹ .
^[79] II Epistola 20, p. 205.

⁸⁰ .
^[80] III Epistola 4, p. 207.

^{81 [81]} Testamentum 5, p. 185.

⁸² .
^[82] Testamentum 36, p. 188.
.

^{83 [83]} Testamentum 56-57, p. 191.
.

^{84 [84]} II Epistola 7, p. 203; 111 Epistola 4, p. 207; Testamentum 36, p. 188; 56, 191.

⁸⁵ .
^[85] 11 Epistola 7, P. 203; III Epistola 4, p. 207; Testamentum 56, p. 191.

^{86 [86]} Testamentum 56, p. 191.
.

^{87 [87]} 11 Epistola 7, p. 203.
.

^{88 [88]} II Epistola 20, pp. 204-5.
.

^{89 [89]} "Et amore sanctissimi et dilectissimi pueri pauperculis panniculis involuti, in praesepio reclinati, et sanctissimae matris eius moneo, deprecor et exhortor sorores meas, ut vestimentis semper vilibus induantur." Regula S. Clarae 2, 25, p. 170.
.

^{90 [90]} "Sorores nihil sibi approprient, nec domum nec locum, nec aliquam rem; et tamquam peregrinae et advenae in hoc saeculo, in paupertate et humilitate Domino famulantes, mittant pro eleemosyna confidenter; nec oportet eas verecun
dari, quia Dominus pro nobis se fecit pauperem in hoc mundo." Regula S. Clarae
8,1^-3, p. 176.

^{91 [91]} "Et ut nusquam declinaremus a sanctissima paupertate quam cepimus, nec etiam quae post nos venturae essent, paulo ante obitum suum iterum scripsit nobis ultimam voluntatem suam dicens: Ego frater Franciscus parvulus volo sequi vitam et paupertatem altissimi Domini nostri Iesu Christi et eius sanctissimae matris, et perseverare in ea usque in finem. Et rogo vos, dominas meas, et consilium d0 vobis, ut in ista sanctissima vita et paupertate semper vivatis." Regula S. Clarae 6, 6-8, pp. 174-75.

⁹² .
^[92] "Quapropter flexis genibus et utroque homine inclinato, sanctae matri Ecclesiae Romanae, summo Pontifici et praecipue domino cardinali, qui religioni fratrum minorum et nobis fuerit deputatus, recommendo omnes sorores meas, quae sunt et quae venturae sunt, ut amore illius Dei, qui pauper positus est in praesepio, pauper vixit in saeculo et nudus remansit in patibulo, semper gregi suo pusillo, quem Dominus Pater genuit in Ecclesia sua sancta verbo et exemplo beatissimi patris nostri Francisci, insequendo paupertatem et humilitatem dilecti Filii sui et gloriosae virginis Matris suae, sanctam paupertatem, quam Domino et beatissimo patri nostro Francisco promisimus, faciat observari, et in ipsa dignetur favere ipsas semper et conservare." Testamentum 44^-47, pp. 189^-90.
.

^{93 [93]} It should be noted that the language in the Form 0f Life echoes language from Francis's own Regula bullata 12, 5, p. 62, but modifies it by the addition 0f Mary's name.
.

^{94 [94]} ". . . illum dico Altissimi Filium, quem Virgo peperit, et post cuius parturn virgo permansit. Ipsius dulcissimae matri adhaereas, quae talem genuit Filium, quem caeli capere non poterant, et tamen ipsa parvulo claustro sacri uteri contulit et gremio puellari gestavit.
Quis non abhorreat humani hostis insidias, qui per fastum momentaneorum et fallacium gloriarum ad nihilum redigere cogit quod mains est caelo? Ecce iam liquet per Dei gratiam dignissimam creaturarum fidelis hominis animam maiorem
esse quam caelum, cum caeli cum creaturis ceteris capere nequeant Creatorem, et sola fidelis anima ipsius mansio sit et sedes, et hoc solum per caritatem qua carent impii: Veritate dicente: Qui diligit me diligetur a Patre meo, et ego diligam eum, et ad eum veniemus et mansionem apud eum faciemus.
Sicut ergo Virgo virginum gloriosa materialiter, sic et tu, sequens eius vestigia, humilitatis praesertim et paupertatis, casto et virgineo corpore spiritualiter semper sine dubietate omni portare potes, illum continens, a quo et to (et) omnia continentur." III Epistola 17-26, pp. 208-9.

⁹⁵ .
^[95] The remarks 0f Godet, "Claire et la vie au f?minin" pp. 171^-72,172 n. 96, suggest that he too interprets the passage's meaning in this sense.
.

^{96 [96]} Mother: I Epistola 24, p. 200; 111 Epistola 18, p. 208; Regula S. Clarae 2, 25, p. 170; 6, 7, p. 175; 8, 6, p. 176; 12, 13, p. 181; Testamentum 46, p. 190; 75, 77, p. 193; see also Epistola ad Ermentrudem 12, p. 217. God-birther: III Epistola 17, p. 208 (Filium, quem Virgo peperit); III Epistola 18, p. 2o8 (quae talem genuit Filium); Benedictio 7, p. 196 (genitrix). Christ-carrier: III Epistola 24, p. 209 (Sicut ergo Virgo virginum gloriosa materialiter ... portare).

⁹⁷ .
^[97] . I Epistola 24, p. 200; III Epistola 17 (twice), p. 208; 24, p. 209; Testamentum 46, p. 190; 75, 77, p. 193.
.

^{98 [98]} Testamentum 77, p. 193; Benedictio 7, p. 196.
.

^{99 [99]} 1 Epistola 24, p. 200; 111 Epistola 17, P. 208; 18, p. 208; 24, p. 209; see also Epistola ad Ermentrudem 11-12, p. 217; Regula S. Clarae 2, 25, p. 170; 6, 7, p. 175; 8, 6, p. 176; 12, 13, p. 181; Benedictio 7, p. 196.
.

^{100 [100]} Regula S. Clarae 3, 14, p. 171.
.

^{101 [101]} Testamentum 46, p. 190; 75, 77, p. 193.
.

^{102 [102]} Mother: Regula non bullata 23, 12, p. 46; Epistola omnibus fidelibus 2, 3, p. 8o; Salutatio beatae Virginis 6, p. 127; Antiphona "Sanctae Maria Virgo" 2,
p. 146; Ultima voluntas 1, p. 77 (as given in the 1253 Regula S. Clarae 6, 7, p. 175). God-birther: Regula non bullata 5, p. 45 (verum Deum et verum hominem exgloriosa semper Virgine beatissima sancta Maria nasci fecisti ); 23, 5, p. 45; Salutatio beatae Virginis i, p. 127 (genetrix); Psalmus ad Vesperam in Nativitate Domini (V sch.) 3, p. 161 (natus fuit de beater Virgine). Christ-carrier: Verba admonitionis 1, 14, p. 4; Epistola omnibus fidelibus 2, 1-2, pp. 79-80; Epistola capitulo generali 26, p. 93; and see Epistola omnibus fidelibus 10, 6 and 9, pp. 84-85. For Francis's understanding 0f mother as one who carries and gives birth, see also Psalmus ad Matutinum (I sch.) 4-5, p. 147; Psalmus ad Nonum (III sch.) 5, p. 158.

¹⁰³ .
^[103] Salutatio beatae Virginis 4-5, p. 127; see also Epistola capitulo generali 26, p. 93; Verba admonitionis 1, 16, p. 4; Epistola omnibus fidelibus 2, 1, p. 79.

¹⁰⁴ .
^[104] Vita seeunda 198; Legenda maior IX, 3.
.

^{105 [105]} Verba admonitionis 1, 16, p. 4; Regula non bullata 9, 6, p. 29; 23, 5, p. 45; 23, 12, p. 46; Epistola omnibus fidelibus 2, 1, p. 79; 2, 3, p. 8o; Epistola capitulo generali 26, p. 93; 48, p. 96; Salutatio beatae Virginis 2, p. 127; Pater noster
(Laudes ad omnes horas) 16, p. 142; Antiphona "Sancta Maria" 1, p. 146; Psalmus ad Vesperam in Nativitate Domini (V sch.) 3, p. 161.

¹⁰⁶ .
^[106] Francis applies a variety of other descriptions, but they are scattered and mostly single instances: she is intercessor, queen, handmaid, spouse, daughter, and beggar; see Pater noster (Laudes ad omnes horas) 16, p. 142; Antiphona "Sancta Maria" 2-3, p. 146; Salutatio beatae Virginis i, p. 127; 6, p. 127; Regula non bullata 9, 6, p^. 29

¹⁰⁷ .
^[107] "Mattes eius sumus quando portamus in corde et corpore nostro per amorem et puram et sinceram conscientiam et parturimus eum per sanctam operationem, quae lucere debet aliis in exemplum." Epistola omnibus fidelibus 10, 9, pp. 84^-85; and see 10, 5-8, p. 84.
.

^{108 [108]} See nn. 49 and 54 above.
.

^{109 [109]} Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 pts. (Westminster: Christian Classics; London: Sheed and Ward, 1963, 1965), pt. 1, pp. 49, 100, 160, and 0n the general evolution of Marian theology in the eastern and western churches, pp. 48-161.
.

^{110 [110]} Ambrose, Concerning Virgins, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2d set., vol. 10, Saint Ambrose: Letters and Select Works (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 361-87; Jerome, "Liber adversus Helvidium de perpetua virginitate B. Mariae," PL 23: 183-206; Paschasii Radberti: De partu virginis, ed. E. Ann Matter, CCCM 56C (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985).
.

^{111 [111]} On Marian devotion in this period, see Elizabeth A. Johnson, "Marian Devotion in the Western Church," in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt (New York: Crossroad, 1987), pp. 392^-414. On new uses 0f the Song of Songs to re-create the history 0f Mary's human life, see Rachel Fulton, "Mimetic Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song 0f Songs," Viator 27 (1996): 85-116. On iconography, see Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University 0f Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 43^-75.

¹¹² .
^[112] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology (b00-1300), vol. 3 0f The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 167; Graef, Mary, pt. 1, pp. 206-7, and 0n earlier theological speculations regarding the parallel, passim.

¹¹³ .
^[113] Fulton, "Mimetic Devotion," p. 106.
.

^{114 [114]} Pelikan, Growth of Medieval Theology, pp. 72, 171-73; Graef, Mary, passim.

^{115 [115]} "Ipsa est via, per quam Salvator advenit.. . . studeamus ... ad ipsum, per eam ascendere, qui per ipsam ad nos descendit." Bernard of Clairvaux, "In adventu Domini: Sermo secundus," 5, in Obras completas de San Bernardo, ed. Cistercian Monks of Spain, 8 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de autores cristianos,1983-93), 3:76; Pelikan, Growth of Medieval Theology, p. 165. On Mary as mediatrix, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 125-36.
.

^{116 [116]} "De aquaeductu," in Obras completas, 4:418-38; for these points, pars. 3, 7; Johnson, "Marian Devotion;' p. 401.
.

^{117 [117]} "Dominica infra octavam Assumptionis," 1-2, in Obras completas, 4: 39496; "De aqueductu," 7, in ibid., 4: 424-26; Johnson, "Marian Devotion," pp. 401-2.

¹¹⁸ .
^[118] Catherine M. Mooney, "Women's Visions, Men's Words: The Portrayal of Holy Women and Men in Fourteenth-Century Italian Hagiography" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1991).
.

^{119 [119]} "La Plus ancienne 1?gende de la b. Marguerite de Citta di Castello," ed. M.-Hyacinthe Laurent, ATP 10 (1940): chaps. 25-26, pp. 127-28 (both chapters are inadvertently designated as chap. 26); "Vita beatae Margaritae virginis de Civitate Castelli," ed. A. Poncelet, AB 19 (1900): chap. 8, pp. 27-28; Berengar 0f Sant'Africano, Storia de S. Chiara da Montefalco secondo fin antico documento dell'anno 1308, ed. P. T. De Toeth (Siena: Tipografia Pontificia S. Bernardino, 1908), pp. 97-103.
.

^{120 [120]} On women's and men's diverse perspectives 0n Mary, see also Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 261-69.
.

^{121 [121]} Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 263; see also her study, " `. . . And Woman His Humanity': Female Imagery in the Religious Writing 0f the Later Middle Ages," in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), pp. 151^-79.
.

^{122 [122]} Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 269.
.

^{123 [123]} "Similemente, la Madre di Cristo promise di rinnovare la sua purit… verginale e la sua umilt… in una femmina, cioø in suora Chiara, per tale modo the per to suo esempio ella trarrebbe molte migliaia di femmine delle nostre mani." Le Considerazioni sulle Stimmate 5, in I Fioretti di San Francesco, ed. Guido Davico Bonino (Turin: Einaudi,1968). For a similar example of the Christ/Francis and Mary/Clare parallels in the late fifteenth century, see Lzaro Iriarte, "Clara de As⁄s en la tipolog⁄a hagiogrfica,"Laurentianum 29 (1988): 459.
.

^{124 [124]} Male monks' and mendicants' reluctance to serve the spiritual needs of women is well documented: see John B. Freed, "Urban Development and the `Cura Monialium' in Thirteenth-Century Germany," Viator 3 (1972): 311-27; Herbert Grundmann, Relgioese Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Untersuchungen fiber diegeschichtlichen Zusammenhaenge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden and der religioesen Frauenbewegung im 12. and 13. Jahrhundert und ueber die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik (1935; rpt. with additions, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1961; Eng. trans., 1995), passim. Less frequently cited are cases of collaboration: Penny Schine Gold, "Male/Female Cooperation The Example of Fontevrault," in Medieval Religious Women, vol. 11, Distant Echoes, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 11984), pp. 11511-68; Constance H. Berman, "Men's Houses, Women's Houses: The Relationship Between the Sexes in Twelfth-Century Monasticism," in The Medieval Monastery, ed. Andrew MacLeish (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 11988), pp. 43^-52.

¹²⁵ .
^[125] See n. 23.
.

^{126 [126]} Vita prima , Prologus 1.

^{127 [127]} Vita secunda, in AF 10, pp. 1127-268; Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis Minorum, in AT 3 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1897), p. 262.
.

^{128 [128]} "Hic est locus ille beatus et sanctus, in quo gloriosa religio et excellentissimus ordo pauperum Dominarum et sanctarum virginum ... exordium sumpsit"; "Clara ... lapis pretiosissimus atque fortissimus"; "pretiosissimarum margaritarum nobilis structura"; Vita prima 18-20.
.

^{129 [129]} Vita prima 116-17.
.

^{130 [130]} Legenda 37, in Escritos, pp. 171-72; Iriarte, "Clara en la tipolog⁄a hagiogrfica," pp. 444, 437.
.

^{131 [131]} ". . . licet pater illis paulatim suam praesentiam corporalem subduxerit, affectum tamen in Spiritu Sancto ad ipsarum curam extendit.. . . promisit eis et aliis paupertatem in simili conversatione profitentibus firmiter suum et fratrum suorum auxilium et consilium perpetuo exhibere. Haec semper, dum vixit, diligenter exsolvit, et fieri semper, cum morti proximus esset, non negligenter mandavit: unum atque eumdem spiritum, dicens, fratres et dominas illas pauperculas de hoc saeculo eduxisse.
Mirantibus quandoque fratribus, quod tam sanctas Christi famulas sua praesentia corporali non saepius visitaret, dicebat: `Non credatis, carissimi, quod eas perfecte non diligam. Si enim crimen esset eas in Christo fovere, nonne mains fuisset eas Christo iunxisse? Et quidem non eas vocasse nulla fuisset iniuria, non curare vocatas summa est inclementia. Sed exemplum do vobis, ut quemadmodum ego facio ita et vos faciatis. Nolo quod aliquis ad visitandum eas spontaneum se offerat, sed invitos et plurimum renitentes iubeo ipsarum servidis deputari'." Vita secunda 204-5; trans. Placid Hermann, in St. Francis of Assisi, Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, ed. Marion A. Habig, 4th rev. ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), p. 526.

¹³² .
^[132] Vita secunda 206.
.

^{133 [133]} "Opere docuit illas se cinerem reputare, nihilque cordi eius aliud approximate de ipsis, nisi hac reputatione condignum. Haec erat conversatio eius cum feminis sanctis; haec visitatio illarum perutilis, coacta tamen et rara. Haec voluntas eius pro fratribus omnibus, quos eis ita pro Christo, cui serviunt, servire volebat, ut semper, velut animalia pennata, laqueos coram positos praecaverent." Vita secunda 207; trans. Hermann, in Omnibus, p. 528.
.

^{134 [134]} "Mellita toxica, familiaritates videlicet mulierum, quae in errorem inducunt etiam viros sanctos.. . . Harum contagionem evadere conversantem cum eis ... tam facile dixit quam, iuxta Scripturam, in igne ambulate nec comburere plantas.. . . Siquidem femina usque adeo molesta erat, ut non cautelam vel exemplum crederes, sed formidinem vel horrorem." Vita secunda 112; and see 113, 114; trans. Hermann, in Omnibus, pp. 454^-55. On Francis's attitude toward Clare and Celano's vitae, see Jacques Dalarun, "Donne e Donna, femminile e femminizzazione negli scritti e le leggende di Francesco d'Assisi;' in Chiara di Assisi (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 11993), pp. 237^-67.

¹³⁵ .
^[135] Vauchez, La Saintet?, p. 1135, identifies the friar as Franciscan; Iriarte, "Clara en la tipolog⁄a hagiogrfica," p. 447, as Dominican.
.

¹³⁶ .
^[136] Bartoli, Clare of Assisi, p. 1199, notes her absence in Franciscan sources, although he incorrectly states that Bonaventure's biography failed to mention Clare (see Legenda maior IV, 6; XII, 2; XIII, 8; XV, 5) and that the laity of Assisi were inattentive to her cult; see Giovanna Casagrande, "Presenza di Chiara in Umbria nei Secoli XIII-XIV" Collectanea Franciscana 62 (11992): 4811-505. On the friars' struggle during this period to be released from their responsibilities toward the Poor Ladies, see John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 213-15.

¹³⁷ .
^[137] Jeryldene M. Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), figs. 3, 9; and see eadem, "Perceptions of Holiness in Thirteenth-Century Italian Painting: Clare of Assisi," Art History 114 (1991): 301-28.
.

^{138 [138]} Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, p. 311.
.

^{139 [139]} William Cook, "The Early Images of St. Clare of Assisi," in A Medieval and Modern Woman, ed. Peterson, p. 20.
.

^{140 [140]} Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, figs. 12-16.

¹⁴¹ .
^[141] Cook, "Early Images of St. Clare," pp. 24, 26-27.

¹⁴² .
^[142] Cook, "Early Images of St. Clare," pp. 24, 26.
.

^{143 [143]} Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, pp. 311-32, fig. 117; Cook, "Early Images 0f St. Clare," pp. 16-17, 24-27. See Fabio Bisogni, "Per un census delle rappresentazioni di Santa Chiara nella pittura in Emilia, Romagna e Veneto sino alla fine del quattrocento," in Movimento religioso femminile e francescanesimo nel secolo XIII (Assisi: Societ… Internazionale di Studi Francscani, 1980) for some fourteenth-century images underlining Francis's likeness or proximity to Christ (figs. 4-5, 11, 14, i9, 26) and Clare's to Mary (fig. 14, and esp. figs. 19, 26; see commentary pp. 154-55, 157). Some other images from the region depict both saints with Mary or Christ.

¹⁴⁴ .
^[144] Examples 0f studies addressing these issues include Caroline Walker Bynum, " `. . . And Woman His Humanity"'; Ute Stargardt, "Male Clerical Authority in the Spiritual (Auto)biographies of Medieval Holy Women," in Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen (Goeppingen: Kummerle,119911), pp. 209-38; John Coakley, "Friars, Sanctity, and Gender: Mendicant Encounters with Saints, 11250-11325," in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 91-110; Catherine M. Mooney, "The Authorial Role of Brother A. in the Composition 0f Angela of Foligno's Revelations;' in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance, ed. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia: University 0f Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp^. 34^-63;
Anne I.. Clark, "Repression or Collaboration? The Case of Elisabeth and Ekbert of Schoenau," in Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, I000-1500, ed. Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 151-67.

¹⁴⁵ .
^[145] Anonymous Augustinian canon, "De S. Bona Virgine," AASS, May, vol. 7 (Paris and Rome, 1866), May, pp. 142-6o; Giovanni del Coppo, "De S. Fina Virgine," AASS, March, VOL 2 (Paris and Rome, 1865), pp. 232-38.