Clare of Montefalco

The work of Clare of Montefalco is intertwined with the life of the community she directed. Having become abbess in 1291, she ensured the observance of the Rule of Saint Augustine, adopted by the monastery the previous year, and was demanding first of herself, setting the example of a life of austerity, fasting, and prolonged prayer. Sources present her as the "mother, mistress, and spiritual guide" of her sisters, attentive to the interior formation of the community as much as to its discipline. Under her governance, the monastery developed: Clare promoted the expansion of the buildings and the construction of the Church of the Holy Cross, approved by the diocesan authority, where she would breathe her last. Although cloistered, she enjoyed a reputation for wisdom and counsel that extended beyond the monastery walls; people came to consult her for her spiritual discernment. All her actions were ordered toward the contemplation of the Passion of Christ, which constituted the center of her interior life and the source of her spiritual authority over her sisters.

Clare of Montefalco developed a spirituality of the Passion that anticipated by about a century that of her compatriot Saint Rita of Cascia. Tradition reports that at the beginning of the year 1294, she had a vision in the monastery garden of Christ as a pilgrim and sufferer, carrying his cross; according to the accounts, the Lord told her he was looking for a place to firmly plant his cross, and Clare replied that she welcomed it into her own heart. From then on, she declared that she bore the cross of Christ interiorly in a sensible and permanent way. Her spiritual life was thus placed under the sign of compassion for the suffering of Christ, lived in austerity, prayer, and penance. Her reputation for holiness was confirmed in a striking manner after her death by the phenomena discovered in her body, but it rested first, during Clare's lifetime, on the recognized depth of her life of prayer and the solidity of her discernment. The historian André Vauchez emphasized that her canonization process was the first in which the candidate's visions and revelations were the subject of an in-depth examination.

In the aftermath of Clare's death on August 17, 1308, her body was opened. Tradition reports that figures evoking the instruments of the Passion—notably a cross and a scourge—were discovered in her heart, and in her gallbladder, three small spheres of equal weight, interpreted as a symbol of the Holy Trinity. These signs immediately fueled her reputation for holiness. An informative process opened at the beginning of the 14th century, followed by an apostolic process, during which a great many witnesses were heard. The procedure was, however, interrupted in the 1330s upon the death of Pope John XXII and remained dormant for a long time. The confirmation of the cult occurred in 1737. The canonization was not pronounced until much later: Pope Leo XIII inscribed Clare of Montefalco in the catalogue of saints on December 8, 1881, in the Vatican Basilica. Her liturgical feast is fixed for August 17, the day of her death.

Clare of Montefalco remains one of the great figures of Augustinian spirituality and the mysticism of the Passion in central Italy. Her body, which has remained incorrupt according to tradition, is preserved in the Augustinian monastery of Montefalco, where the reliquary containing her heart as well as the spheres found in her body are also venerated; the sanctuary dedicated to her remains a place of pilgrimage. She is honored as the patroness of Montefalco, where her feast is celebrated with solemnity every August 17, and she is particularly venerated within the Augustinian religious family. Popular devotion readily invokes her for heart ailments, by association with the signs of the Passion discovered in her cardiac organ. Her influence extends beyond Umbria: communities and parishes, as far as the United States and the Philippines, bear her name. Her case has also attracted the attention of historians of the Middle Ages and of science, due to both the antiquity of her process and the singular preservation of her relics.