St. Elizabeth, the daughter of Hungarian royalty, was betrothed at the age of four to Ludwig, the nine-year-old prince of Thuringia in southern Germany. Despite the arrangement, in which they had no say, the two children established a close friend- ship that eventually blossomed into a loving marriage. Elizabeth bore three children. But Ludwig’s family disapproved of her piety and especially her “inordinate” charity toward the poor and sick. The young princess, it was said, dressed too simply; she was too profligate in her almsgiving. After Elizabeth established several hospitals she aroused scandal by nursing the sick, even lepers, with her own hands.
Nevertheless, her instinctive spirit of poverty was only magnified upon the arrival of the first Franciscan missionaries in Germany. Elizabeth was captivated by the story of Clare and Francis (from whom she received the gift of his cloak), and she eventually embraced the rule of a Franciscan tertiary. During a time of famine, while Ludwig was away, she opened the royal granaries, thus winning the people’s devotion. Such generosity, however, only increased the scorn of elite members of the court.
She who had embraced the spirit of poverty now found herself happy to accept shelter in a pig shed.
In 1227, Ludwig died on his way home from a crusade. In a paroxysm of grief, Elizabeth cried out, “The world is dead to me, and all that was joyous in the world.” Without her husband’s protection, she was at the mercy of her in-laws. They banished her from the court, forcing her to leave the palace on a wintry night, carrying nothing but her newborn child. She who had embraced the spirit of poverty now found herself happy to accept shelter in a pig shed.
Eventually, to avoid scandal, she was provided with a simple cottage, where she supported herself by spinning and fishing. She continued to visit the sick in their homes or in the hospices she had endowed. Over time, her reputation for holiness spread, and she earned the grudging respect of those who had persecuted her. In 1231, she fell ill and announced calmly that she would not recover. She died on November 17 at the age of twenty-four. She was canonized less than four years later.
John Duns, later known as the Subtle Doctor, was called Scotus on account of his birth in Scotland. He entered the Franciscans at the age of fifteen and was later ordained a priest. After studies in Oxford and Paris, he went on to hold teaching positions in Paris and Cologne, where he was acclaimed as one of the greatest of the Scholastic theologians. His mystically charged theology held particular charm for the Franciscans, rendering in philosophical terms the creation-centered spirituality of their holy founder.
Like other scholastic theologians, Duns Scotus tried to present a philosophical “proof” for the existence of God. In his case, he focused on the observation that all things require some prior cause for their existence. From this, he predicated the existence of a primary infinite cause which owes its existence to itself alone. Yet he drew a distinction between what could be “proved” by reason and what could be known only by faith. There was a difference between a rational knowledge of the existence of God and a saving knowledge of the love of God.
Duns Scotus defined God as infinite love. He taught that the incarnation was not required as payment for sin; it was willed through eternity as an expression of God’s love, and hence God’s desire for consummated union with creation. Our redemption by the cross was likewise an expression of God’s love and compassion rather than an appeasement of God’s anger or a form of compensation for God’s injured majesty. He believed that knowledge of God’s love should evoke a loving response on the part of humanity. He wrote, “I am of the opinion that God wished to redeem us in this fashion principally in order to draw us to his love.” Through our own loving self-gift, he argued, we join with Christ in becoming “co-lovers” of the Holy Trinity.
“I am of the opinion that God wished to redeem us in this fashion principally in order to draw us to his love.”
– Blessed John Duns Scotus
Unlike philosophers in the line of Plato, Scotus did not value the ideal at the expense of the real. Created things pointed to their Creator not only by their conformity to an ideal pattern but by their individuality and uniqueness—what he termed their “thisness” (haecceitas). Thus, the path to contemplation should proceed not only through the mind but through the senses. This insight of Scotus especially endeared him to the most highly distinctive of Catholic poets, the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins. He paid tribute to the Subtle Doctor in one of his poems:
Of realty the rarest-veined unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece.
Duns Scotus died on November 8, 1308. He was beatified in 1993.
St. Joseph was born to a poor family in the small Italian town of Cupertino. His early life offered no evidence of any special gifts. He was considered slow-witted and easily distracted. He made several unsuccessful attempts to become a Franciscan before winning acceptance as a servant by the Conventual Franciscans at Tortella. There he received the habit of a tertiary, and was set to work in the stables. Though he remained a poor student—he could barely read and write—he won respect for his humility and deep faith. He was admitted as a novice, and eventually (by a stroke of luck in his examination), he was ordained as a priest.
From this point, Joseph began to display extraordinary spiritual gifts. At the thought of any holy mystery, he would be transported into a state of ecstasy. On such occasions, he would be visibly transported into the air. These levitations were documented by many reputable witnesses. While his reputation began to attract wide attention, his fits of “giddiness” aroused the suspicion of Church officials, who charged that he was “feigning holiness” and setting himself up as a “new messiah.”
Joseph was repeatedly called before the Inquisition and even brought to meet with the pope. He was cleared of any charges. Nevertheless, he was ordered not to say Mass in public, and ultimately he was assigned to a series of secluded friaries, forbidden to have any dealings with the outside world.
Joseph died on 18 September , 1663 He was canonized in 1767.
They feel as though they were taken into a wonderful gallery, shining with never- ending beauty, where in a glass, with a single look, they apprehend the marvelous vision which God is pleased to show them.
—St. Joseph of Cupertino, when asked what the souls in ecstasy behold
The story of St. Clare of Assisi is inevitably linked with St. Francis, the one she called her Father, Planter, and Helper in the Service of Christ. It was Francis who gave her a vision and enabled her to define a way of life apart from the options offered her by society. But her goal in life was not to be a reflection of Francis but to be, like him, a reflection of Christ. “Christ is the way,” she said, “and Francis showed it to me.”
Like Francis, Clare belonged to one of the wealthy families of Assisi. Like every- one else in the town, she was aware of the remarkable spectacle that Francis had made in abandoning his respectable family and assuming the poverty of a beggar. Doubtless there were those in Assisi who respected Francis as a faithful Christian, just as there were others who believed he was a misguided fool. It was bad enough that a man of his background was tramping about the countryside, repairing aban- doned churches with his bare hands and ministering to the poor and sick. But within a few years, he had begun attracting some of the most distinguished young men of the town to follow him in his brotherhood.
She crept out a back door, slipped through the gates of Assisi, and made her way through the dark fields and olive groves…
What Clare’s family thought of all this is not known. But we know what impact it had on Clare. She heard Francis deliver a series of Lenten sermons in 1212, when she was eighteen. She arranged in stealth to meet with Francis and asked his help that she too might live “after the manner of the holy Gospel.” On the evening of Palm Sunday, while her family and all the town slept, she crept out a back door, slipped through the gates of Assisi, and made her way through the dark fields and olive groves to a rendezvous with Francis and his brothers at the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels. Before the altar, she put off her fine clothes and assumed a penitential habit, while Francis sheared off her long hair as a sign of her espousal to Christ.
It is tempting to read into this episode the romance of a spiritual elopement. To understand Clare, however we must realize that it was not Francis whom she rushed to meet in the night. He provided the meeting place, but her assignation was with Christ. Yet after Clare had taken the plunge of rejecting her family and her social station, it was not clear what the next step should be. Apparently neither Clare nor Francis had considered that far ahead. Although she wished to identify with Francis’s community, it was not seemly that she should live with the brothers. Francis arranged for her to spend the night in a nearby Benedictine convent.
Her family and a company of angry suitors tracked her down some days later in Holy Week. When pleading proved fruitless, they laid hands on her and tried to drag her out by force. She finally stopped them short by tearing off her veil and revealing her shorn head. They were too late. She was already “one of them.”
Francis had long intended that a community of women, corresponding to his fraternity, should be established. In Clare he had found the partner he was seeking. She was easily persuaded to found a women’s community, which was established at San Damiano. It required considerably more effort by Francis to persuade her to serve as abbess. Nevertheless, Clare quickly attracted other women. Over time, these included a number of her personal relatives, including her sister Catherine and even her widowed mother. Within her lifetime, additional communities were established elsewhere in Italy, France, and Germany. Among her surviving writings are a series of moving letters to St. Agnes of Prague, a young princess who joined the movement and became one of Clare’s most beloved daughters.
Unlike the friars, the Poor Ladies, as they were originally known, lived within an enclosure. But Clare shared Francis’s passionate commitment to “Lady Poverty.” For her this meant literal poverty and insecurity—not the luxurious “spiritual poverty” enjoyed by so many other convents, richly supported by gifts and endow- ments. To defend this “privilege of poverty,” Clare waged a continuous struggle against solicitous prelates who tried to mitigate her austerity. This was the center- piece of the rule she devised for her community. When the pope offered to absolve her from her rigorous vow of poverty, she answered, “Absolve me from my sins, Holy Father, but not from my wish to follow Christ.” Two days before her death in 1253, she enjoyed the grace of receiving from Rome a copy of her rule embellished with the approving seal of Pope Innocent IV. A notation on the original document notes that Clare, in tearful joy, covered the parchment with kisses.
It was Clare who urged him to go into the world: “God did not call you for yourself alone but also for the salvation of others.
It has been said that of all the followers of Francis, Clare was the most faithful. Many stories reflect the loving bonds of friendship between them and the trust that Francis placed in her wisdom and counsel. According to one story, Francis put the question to Clare whether he should preach or devote himself to prayer. It was Clare who urged him to go into the world: “God did not call you for yourself alone but also for the salvation of others.” When Francis received the stigmata, Clare thoughtfully made him soft slippers to cover his wounded feet. During a period of dejection, Francis camped out in a hut outside the convent at San Damiano. It was there that he composed the “Canticle of the Creatures,” his exultant hymn to the universe.
Finally, as Francis felt the approach of Sister Death, Clare too became seriously ill. She suffered terribly at the thought that they would not meet again in this life. Francis sent word that she should put aside all grief for she would surely see him again before her death. And so the promise was fulfilled, though not as she had wished. After Francis’s death, the brothers carried his body to San Damiano for the sisters to say their goodbyes. Thomas of Celano records that at the sight of Francis’s poor and lifeless body, Clare was “filled with grief and wept aloud.”
Francis was canonized a mere two years later. Clare lived on for another twenty- seven years. In her own final “Testament,” written near the end of her life, Clare makes only a discrete reference to the pain of their separation and what it meant to her: “We take note…of the frailty which we feared in ourselves after the death of our holy Father Francis. He was our pillar of strength and, after God, our one conso- lation and support. Thus time and again, we bound ourselves to our Lady, most Holy Poverty.”
As she lay dying at San Damiano, Clare offered her final blessing to the daughters gathered beside her: “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He show his face to you and be merciful to you. May He turn his countenance to you and give you peace.”
St. Clare died on August 11, 1253. She was canonized in 1255.
Bonaventure, who was born to a wealthy family in Orvieto, joined the Franciscans around 1238 in the midst of his studies at the University of Paris. St. Francis had died only some dozen years before, but already his order was rapidly changing the face of the Church in Europe. To Bonaventure, it seemed that the Franciscan Order “was not invented by human providence but by Christ. In it, the learned and the simple lived as brethren.”
Bonaventure himself was definitely one of the learned. Franciscan simplicity might not have seemed an attractive fit for such a scholar. In fact, Francis had held learning in great esteem so long as it was subordinated to the pursuit of holiness. In this spirit, Bonaventure received support from the Order to continue his studies. In 1257, along with his Dominican counterpart, St. Thomas Aquinas, he received his doctorate in theology.
Rather than pursue the life of an academic theologian, however, Bonaventure was immediately elected to serve as minister-general of the Friars Minor—a role in which he left a lasting mark. During a time of contending factions within the order, Bonaventure tried deftly to steer a middle course between the radical freedom of Francis and the disciplined order of a religious community. To reinforce his moderate interpretation of the Franciscan charism, he composed an influential life of St. Francis. For his successful efforts, he would become known as the Second Founder.
“The perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner, and a constant fidelity in small matters is great and heroic virtue!”
– St. Bonaventure
He wrote a number of other important works, including his mystical treatise The Journey of the Mind to God. This was his attempt to translate Francis’s identification with Christ into philosophical terms—a journey of the soul along the path of holiness, leading from contemplation of the created world to an ever-deepening contemplation of the spiritual order, and progressing ultimately toward the goal of union with God.
In 1265, Bonaventure respectfully declined an appointment as archbishop of York. In 1273, however, Pope Gregory X ordered him to accept the title of cardinal-bishop of Albano. When papal legates arrived to present him with his red hat and insignia of office, he kept them waiting while he finished washing the dishes. Summarizing his spirituality, he observed: “The perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner, and a constant fidelity in small matters is great and heroic virtue!”
Bonaventure died in 1274. He was canonized in 1482 and later declared a Doctor of the Church. In recognition of his angelic virtue, he is known as the Seraphic Doctor.
St. Anthony, who was born in Lisbon, first entered religious life as an Augustinian canon in Coimbra. There one day he met a group of visiting Franciscans (St. Be- rard and his companions) on their way to Morocco. He was greatly impressed by these courageous missionaries, the more so when news came of their subsequent martyrdom, followed by the return of their remains by way of his monastery. At once, he was inspired to join the Franciscans. He was accepted and was even granted his wish to follow in the footsteps of the martyrs. But no sooner had he arrived in Morocco than he became so ill that he was forced to turn around.
In 1221, he attended—along with three thousand other friars—a great Franciscan gathering, the last held in the lifetime of St. Francis. Afterward, he received a lowly assignment to a small hospice for lay brothers at Monte Paolo.
But soon his star would shine. At an important occasion, where the preacher failed to arrive, Anthony was asked to extemporize. He astonished his audience with the unexpected elegance, conviction, and profound learning of his sermon. Word quickly spread, and Anthony received a letter from Francis himself autho- rizing him to preach and to teach theology to the friars.
…he was unsparing when it came to the failings of the clergy and worldly bishops, whom he called “the most impudent dogs, having a harlot’s forehead, refusing to blush.
Eventually, he was sent on a preaching mission that covered all of Italy. Thousands flocked to hear his open-air sermons, and his visits had the impact of a spiritual revival. He attacked the tyranny of the powerful, exhorting his listeners to compassion and charity toward the poor, and he was unsparing when it came to the failings of the clergy and worldly bishops, whom he called “the most impudent dogs, having a harlot’s forehead, refusing to blush.” So successful were his exhortations to charity that he earned the title “Friend of the Poor.”
Anthony died on June 13, 1231, at the age of thirty-six. He was buried in Padua, where he had spent his last years, and his canonization followed only a year later. In 1946, Pope Pius XII declared him a Doctor of the Church. (Popularly, he is often invoked for his help in locating lost objects.)
