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Saint Clare of Assisi: A Concise Biography comes complete with a Touch-or-Click Table of Contents, divided by each section, and the Christian Image Collection, a myriad of beautiful colorful religious images.
Clare was born in Assisi, Italy as the eldest daughter of Favorino Scifi, Count of Sasso-Rosso and his wife Ortolana. Ortolana was a very devout woman who had undertaken pilgrimages to Rome, Santiago de Compostela and the Holy Land. Later on in her life, Ortolana entered Clare's monastery, together with Agnes, Clare's sister.
Clare was always devoted to prayer as a child. When she turned 15 her parents wanted her to marry a young and wealhy man but she originally wanted to wait until she was 18. But when she was 18 she had heard Francis's preachings. Those preachings were beginning to change her life. He told her she was a chosen soul from God. Soon on Palm Sunday when people went to grab their palm branches she stayed. On that very night she ran away to go follow Francis.
When she got there he cut her hair and dressed her in a black tunic and a thick black veil. Clare was put in the Benedictine nuns near Bastia and was almost pulled by her father for originally he wanted her to marry at age of 15. Clare and her sister Agnes soon moved to the church of San Damiano, which Francis himself had rebuilt. Other women joined them there, and San Damiano became known for its radically austere lifestyle. The women were at first known as the "Poor Ladies".
San Damiano became the focal point for Clare's new religious order, which was known in her lifetime as the "Order of San Damiano." San Damiano was long thought to be the first house of this order, however, recent scholarship strongly suggests that San Damiano actually joined an existing network of women's religious houses organized by Hugolino (who later became Pope Gregory IX).
Hugolino wanted San Damiano as part of the order he founded because of the prestige of Clare's monastery. San Damiano emerged as the most important house in the order, and Clare became its undisputed leader. By 1263, just ten years after Clare's death, the order became known as the Order of Saint Clare.
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