Poor Clares

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Damianites" redirects here. Not to be confused with
Damianists
.
For the Elizabeth Gaskell story, see The Poor Clare (short story).

Saint Clare and nuns of her order, Chapel of San Damiano, Assisi

The Poor Clares, officially the Order of Saint Clare (

Franciscan branch of the order to be established. Founded by Clare of Assisi and Francis of Assisi on Palm Sunday in the year 1212, they were organized after the Order of Friars Minor (the First Order), and before the Third Order. As of 2011, there were over 20,000 Poor Clare nuns in over 75 countries throughout the world. They follow several different observances and are organized into federations.[1]

The Poor Clares follow the

Constitutions, are the Colettine Poor Clares (PCC) (founded 1410), the Capuchin Poor Clares (OSCCap) (founded 1538) and the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration
(PCPA) (founded 1854).

Foundation and rule

Saint Clare receives the Formula Vitae ("little rule") from Francis of Assisi. 18th-century azulejo panel in the Convent of Louriçal, Portugal.

The Poor Clares were founded by

Benedictine
monasteries, first at Bastia and then at Sant' Angelo di Panzo, for her monastic formation.

San Damiano in Assisi

By 1216, Francis was able to offer Clare and her companions a monastery adjoining the chapel of San Damiano where she became abbess. Clare's mother, two of her sisters and some other wealthy women from Florence soon joined her new order. Clare dedicated her order to the strict principles of Francis, setting a rule of extreme poverty far more severe than that of any female order of the time.[3] Clare's determination that her order not be wealthy or own property, and that the nuns live entirely from alms given by local people, was initially protected by the papal bull Privilegium paupertatis, issued by Pope Innocent III.[4] By this time the order had grown to number three monasteries.

Spread of the order

The movement quickly spread, though in a somewhat disorganized fashion, with several monasteries of women devoted to the Franciscan ideal springing up elsewhere in Northern Italy. At this point Ugolino, Cardinal Bishop of

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 (OSC) or the Urbanist Poor Clares.[5]

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.[4] 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" (PC) or Primitives. Many sources before 1263 refer to them as Damianites (after San Damiano).[6]

The situation was further complicated a century later when

Alcantarines, also followed the strict observance.[5] 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

Marseilles was founded directly from Assisi in 1254.[4] The Poor Clares monastery founded by Queen Margaret in Paris, St. Marcel, was where she died in 1295.[7] King Philip IV and Queen Joan founded a monastery at Moncel in the Beauvais diocese.[7] By A.D. 1300 there were 47 Poor Clare monasteries in Spain alone.[3]

Europe

United Kingdom

The first Poor Clare monastery in England was founded in 1286 in

Abbey of the Order of St Clare. The order gave its name to the still-extant street known as Minories on the eastern boundary of the City of London
.

After the

Poor Clare monastery founded in 1609 at Gravelines by Mary Ward.[8] Later expelled from their monastery by the French Revolutionary Army in 1795, the community eventually relocated to England. They settled first in Northumberland, and then in 1857 built a monastery in Darlington,[8]
which was in existence until 2007.

Following Catholic emancipation in the first half of the 19th century, other Poor Clares came to the United Kingdom,[9] eventually establishing communities in, e.g., Notting Hill (1857, which was forced to relocate by the local council in the 1960s, and settled in the village of Arkley in 1969),[10] Woodchester (1860–2011), Levenshulme (1863),[11] Much Birch (1880), Arundel (1886), Lynton (founded from Rennes, France, 1904–2010s), Woodford Green (1920–1969), York (1865–2015)[12] and Nottingham (1927-2023).[13][14]

The community in Luton was founded in 1976 to meet a shortage of teachers for local Catholic schools. It was originally based at 18 London Road in a large Edwardian house. In 1996, the community refocused on a ministry of social work and prayer, and moved to a smaller, modern home at Abigail Close, Wardown Park.[15]

Ireland

In Ireland there are seven monasteries of the Colettine Observance. The community with the oldest historical roots is the monastery on Nuns' Island in Galway, which traces its history back to the monastery in Gravelines. The community has a rare book collection which is the most comprehensive single collection of early-modern Clarissan material in English in the world.[16]

Originally a separate community of

Penal Laws and war led to repeated destruction of their monastery and scattering of the community over two centuries, until 1825, when fifteen nuns were able to re-establish monastic life permanently on the site.[17]

Later monasteries were founded in 1906 in both

Second Order, under this Observance.[18]

There is Poor Clares monastery in Faughart, County Louth.[19]

Continental Europe

Gothic altar in Cologne Cathedral dedicated to Poor Clare saints

Currently there are communities of Colettine Poor Clares in Bruges, Belgium, as well as in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and in Larvik, Norway. There are several monasteries in Hungary, Lithuania and Poland of the Urbanist and Capuchin Observances.

There are notable Clarissine churches in Bamberg, Bratislava, Brixen, and Nuremberg. There also is a small community in Münster, Germany, and a Capuchin monastery in Sigolsheim, France.

The last six Poor Clare nuns from a convent in Belgium were able to sell their convent by selling luxury vehicles, and move to the South of France.[20]

Scandinavia

See also: St. Clare's Priory, Stockholm

Americas

United States

After an abortive attempt to establish the order in the United States in the early 1800s by three nuns who were refugees of

Revolutionary France
, the Poor Clares were not permanently established in the country until the late 1870s.

A small group of Colettine nuns arrived from

Omaha, Nebraska, in 1878.[21]

Currently[

Denver, Colorado, founded from Mexico in 1988.[37]

Canada

There are three monasteries of the order in Canada:

Valleyfield, Quebec.[37]

Latin America

Mother Jeronima of the Assumption, PCC, by Diego Velázquez (1620)

There have been monasteries of the order in Mexico since colonial days. The Capuchin nuns alone number some 1,350 living in 73 different monasteries around the country.[38]

A monastery was founded in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, by nuns from the community in Memphis, Tennessee, in November 1981, in the early days of a bloody civil war which ravaged that country; as of 2011, it consisted of seven nuns; five Guatemalans and two Salvadorans.[39]

Asia

Monastery Saint Claire in Jerusalem [he]

The Poor Clares were massacred at

creation of Israel
.

Philippines

The Poor Clare in the

Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor to go there to found a monastery. She was from Toledo, Spain and left Madrid in April 1620 in her 60s and arrived in Manila on 5 August 1621 with other 14 sisters. They are the first contemplative nuns who arrived in the Philippine archipelago to support the active works of evangelization of the Franciscans
working in the country through their life of contemplation, penance, poverty, and enclosure.

Together with the Alcantarine Friars who came to the Philippines in 1578 and strive to live the ideals of Francis of Assisi in a very rigorous way, the Poor Clare sisters also professed the Rule and life of Clare of Assisi. They heightened their witnessing of the "privilege of poverty" of Clare by not having a permanent income but rather opened their gates of the Divine Providence through alms and the generosity of the people.

Their Monastery in Intramuros was severely devastated by an earthquake. However, through the efforts of the people around, it was rebuilt and has a larger space compared to the former monastery. During the war for independence in the year 1945, the monastery was destroyed again and the sisters were forced to evacuate the place. For the meantime, they were sheltered at the Minor Seminary of the Franciscans in San Francisco del Monte, Quezon City for 5 years. The present location of the Monastery is at Aurora Boulevard, C5, Katipunan, Quezon City. Because of the zeal for the contemplative life, the founder's cause is ongoing for beatification.

Apart from the said monastery, it also expand its presence from the different parts of the country. The country has 27 monasteries in total:

San Jose, Antique (2004); Borongan, Eastern Samar and Malasiqui Pangasinan (2011) and Tabuk
, Kalinga (2017). The Poor Clare Monastery in Palawan province is founded by the Monastery from China.

Furthermore, their expansion does not only limit in the Philippine archipelago but also helped the aging communities in

Hongkong
.

There are also monastery from Kiryū, Gunma, Japan, which was founded from the monastery in Boston in 1965.[40]

Connections with television

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ "Poor Clare Sisters". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  2. ^ Michael Walsh (ed.). Butler's lives of the Saints, Burns and Oates (1991) p. 246.
  3. ^ a b Farmer, David (ed.) Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press (1997), p. 103
  4. ^ a b c d "Poor Clares". The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent. Retrieved 10 November 2009.
  5. ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007, Vol.9. p. 603
  6. ^ Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Brill, 2013), p. 2.
  7. ^ a b Queen Isabella (c.1295/1358) and the Greyfriars: An example of royal patronage based on her accounts for 1357/1358, Michael Robson, Franciscan Studies, Vol. 65 (2007), 328.
  8. ^ a b c "History of the Poor Clare Order in Britain - The Poor Clare Monastery, Hereford". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  9. ^ McKeown, Paul. "Franciscans and Poor Clares(UK) - Links to Franciscans and Poor Clares". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  10. ^ "Arkley Poor Clare Monastery". Archived from the original on 23 January 2011.
  11. ^ "Manchester (Levenshulme) – St Mary of the Angels and St Clare". Retrieved 26 November 2022.
  12. ^ Lewis, Stephen (13 February 2015). "Convent life on the quiet". York Press. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  13. ^ "Community of Poor Clare Colettines, Bulwell in Nottingham". Retrieved 26 November 2022.
  14. ^ Zagnat, Olimpia (3 May 2023). "'Our loss' as nuns leave city after failing to raise money for new monastery". NottinghamshireLive. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
  15. ^ "Luton". Sisters of St Clare.
  16. ^ Goodrich, Jaime.(2021). “The Rare Books of the Galway Poor Clares.” Library 22.4:: 498–522.
  17. ^ Team, Marek Mazur &. "Poor Clares Galway - Ireland". Archived from the original on 2 November 2016. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  18. ^ "Poor Clares of Drumshanbo "History"". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2011.
  19. ^ Life is beautiful for the Poor Clare sisters by Olivia Ryan, The Argus, 9 July 2014.
  20. ^ Goldsmith, Charles (6 April 1990). "The adviser to aging nuns who sold their convent..." UPI.
  21. ^ "Home - Poor Clare Sisters of Omaha". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  22. ^ "Poor Clare Monastery of Mary, Mother of the Church". Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  23. ^ "Home". 3 December 2009. Archived from the original on 3 December 2009. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  24. ^ "Poor Clare Nuns Belleville - Who We Are Today". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  25. ^ "Poor Clares of Chicago -- Home Page". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  26. ^ "Poor Clares Cincinnati". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  27. ^ "Poor Clare Sisters of Evansville, Indiana, the Second Order of St. Francis". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  28. ^ "Community of Poor Clare Nuns of Kokomo IN, Inc". Community of Poor Clare Nuns of Kokomo IN, Inc. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  29. ^ "Capuchins,, Memphis". poorclare.org. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  30. ^ "Bethlehem Monastery - Barhamsville, Virginia". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  31. ^ "Poor Clare PA – Langhorne, PA". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  32. ^ "Clare Colettine Nuns, Rockford, Illinois".
  33. ^ "Poor Clares of Roswell". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  34. ^ "Called by Joy - The Poor Clare Sisters of Spokane, Washington". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  35. ^ "Welcome". Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, Washington, DC. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  36. ^ "Dwelling For The Lord". Poor Clares of New York. Archived from the original on 8 December 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
  37. ^
    ISBN 978-2-7468-2569-7
    Published by Editions du Signe, France
  38. ^ "Capuchin". www.capuchins.org. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  39. ^ Hermanas Clarisas "Sobre Nosotras" [1](in Spanish)
  40. ^ "Poor Clares, Japan". poorclare.org. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  41. ^ "Poor Clares Arundel". www.poorclaresarundel.org. Archived from the original on 19 November 2009.

External links

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