Poor Clares - Spread of The Order

Spread of The Order

The movement quickly spread, though in a somewhat disorganised fashion, with several monasteries of women devoted to the Franciscan ideal springing up elsewhere in Northern Italy. At this point Ugolino, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia (the future Pope Gregory IX), was given the task of overseeing all such monasteries and preparing a formal Rule. Although monasteries at Monticello, Perugia, Siena, Gattajola and elsewhere adopted the new Rule - which allowed for property to be held in trust by the papacy for the various communities - it was not adopted by Clare herself or her monastery at San Damiano. Ugolino's Rule, originally based on the Benedictine one, was amended in 1263 by Pope Urban IV to allow for the communal ownership of property, and was adopted by a growing number of monasteries across Europe. Communities adopting this less rigorous rule came to be known as the Order of Saint Clare (O.S.C.) or the Urbanist Poor Clares.

Clare herself resisted the Ugolino Rule, since it did not closely enough follow the ideal of complete poverty advocated by Francis. On 9 August 1253, she managed to obtain a papal bull, Solet annuere, establishing a Rule of her own, more closely following that of the friars, which forbade the possession of property either individually or as a community. Originally applying only to Clare's community at San Damiano, this Rule was also adopted by many monasteries. Communities that followed this stricter rule were fewer in number than the followers of the Rule formulated by Cardinal Ugolino, and became known simply as Poor Clares (P.C.), or Primitives.

The situation was further complicated a century later when Saint Colette of Corbie restored the primitive rule of strict poverty to 17 French monasteries. Her followers came to be called the Colettine Poor Clares (P.C.C.). Two further branches, the Capuchin Poor Clares (O.S.C. Cap.) and the Alcantarines, also followed the strict observance. The later group disappeared as a distinct group when their Observance among the friars was ended, with the friars being merged by the Holy See into the wider Observant branch of the First Order.

The spread of the Order began in 1218 when a monastery was founded in Perugia, new foundations quickly followed in Florence, Venice, Mantua, and Padua. Saint Agnes of Assisi, a niece of Clare, introduced the Order to Spain, where Barcelona and Burgos hosted major communities. The Order further expanded to Belgium and France where a monastery was founded at Reims in 1229, followed by Montpellier, Cahors, Bordeaux, Metz, and Besançon. A monastery at Marseilles was founded directly from Assisi in 1254. By A.D. 1300 there were 47 Poor Clare monasteries in Spain alone.