Christian Mission and Poverty

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Christian Mission and Poverty

At the end of his life . . . he was so poor on the wood of the cross that neither the earth nor the wood could give him a place to lay his head. He had nowhere to rest it except on his own shoulder.

~ Catherine of Siena

C lare of A ssisi (1194–1253) Background

Clare was born to a wealthy family of nobles in Assisi in what is now the country of Italy. Destined to be married to another noble or a ruler for the economic power that such an alliance would provide, Clare saw the ways in which money and land rights were used to keep others poor. She learned of another child of wealth who had forsaken his inheritance to live among the poor, a young monk named Francis. Because many medieval monasteries were rich and powerful and were involved in the very land conflicts that displaced people who were poor, Francis had petitioned the Pope to allow him to start a new religious order. As a woman in the medieval west, Clare could not start her own religious order. But she could seek solace and protection from the Franciscans, the monastic order that followed Francis. She fled the violence, wealth, and debased sexuality of the noble class to live a life devoted to God and the pursuit of poverty and chastity. While Francis of Assisi has now become a household name, it was Clare who more fully understood how power and money were aligned in ways that destroyed people.