Jon M. Sweeney - Light in the Dark Ages: The Friendship of Francis and Clare of Assisi

FOR CHRISTINA

with respect and affection

Sweeney achieves a fine balance between excellent scholarship and sweet accessibility for every average reader. To learn the life of Francis, to learn to love that life, and at the same time to experience the time in which he lived, this is the book to read.

Walter Wangerin, Jr.,
author of St. Julian and The Book of God (for The Road to Assisi)

An informational yet personal account of the transformative power of the Catholic and Orthodox churches special role models. Sweeney, in very accessible concepts and language, presents a marvelously contemporary and inclusive theology of sanctity and saints both a miniature encyclopedia on saints and a book of spiritual reflection.

Catholic Library World (for The Lure of Saints)

A rich resource of information, insights and beauty. Both critical and reverential, Sweeney offers tribute to a young woman of courage who became Mother of the Lord and then herself an icon for unending prayers of intercession, consolation and thanksgiving.

Bishop Frederick Borsch,
Professor of New Testament and Chair of Anglican Studies,
Lutheran Theological Seminary (for Strange Heaven)

This attractively presented little book is truly pocket-sized and portable, but full of rich content.

The Living Church (for The St. Francis Prayer Book)

Sweeney examines his story and its meaning with unusual humility. He doesnt claim superiority to the people he came from, only an inability to accept all that they taught him His tone is thankful and affirming, meant to shore up bridges rather than burn them down.

Betty Smartt Carter,
Books & Culture (for Born Again & Again)

[Sweeneys] book walks non-Catholics through the notion of seeing saints as prayer partners and understanding how saints are canonized. In the end, he believes Catholics allow for the kind of spiritual mystery that, at times, better matches life experiences.

The Dallas Morning News (for The Lure of Saints)

Jon Sweeney is a fine, informative writer. He has a way of discussing a variety of religious matters in clear, common sense terms. Highly recommended.

Church and Synagogue Library Association

Sweeney presents a lively mix of material on saints from all ages who have fertilized everything with God. Best of all, these profiles of holy men and women might inspire you to take more seriously your own calling and aspiration to live as a saint today.

Spirituality and Health magazine (for The Lure of Saints)

One imagines Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, both deeply devoted to Mary and to Christian unity, reading Strange Heaven with glad smiles and prayers of thanksgiving.

Crisis Magazine

The Holy Conversation of Saints Francis and Clare

The Friendship of Francis and Clare of Assisi

Jon M. Sweeney

Light in the Dark Ages: The Friendship of Francis and Clare of Assisi

2007 First Printing

Copyright 2007 by Jon M. Sweeney

ISBN: 978-1-55725-476-4

Except for quotations from the New Testament Gospels, Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised StandardVersion Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Quotations from the NewTestament Gospels are taken from The New Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright 1985 by Darton, Longman &Todd Ltd. and Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc., and are used by permission of the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sweeney, Jon M., 1967

Light in the dark ages : the friendship of Francis and Clare of Assisi / by Jon M. Sweeney.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-55725-476-4

1. Francis, of Assisi, Saint, 1182-1226. 2. Clare, of Assisi, Saint, 1194-1253. 3. Christian saints--Italy--Assisi--Biography. I. Title.

BX4700.F6S93 2007

271.302--dc22

[B]

2007007060

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts
www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Holy Conversation of Saints Francis and Clare,
contemporary icon by Marek Czarnecki, reproduced in black and white frontispiece

All of the other illustrations are reproductions of Giotto, or School of Giotto, frescoes from Assisi, Padua, and Florence.

OTHER BOOKS BY JON M. SWEENEY

Praying with Our Hands

The Road to Assisi

The St. Francis Prayer Book

The Lure of Saints

Born Again and Again

Strange Heaven

The St. Clare Prayer Book

BEGINNINGS

W rapped in the colorful silks imported and sold by Peter Bernardone, most of the highborn girls in Assisi paid close attention to matters of courtship, honor, and family. Seasonal events in the cathedral church and the governors estate occupied their minds, and their hearts were wooed by the songs of young would-be troubadours carousing in the streets below their bedroom windows after dark. Francis Bernardone was once one of those young men. But by all accounts, Clare Favorone was never one of those girls.

Francis and Clare were both children of Assisi, Italy, where being baptized into the Church was once the equivalent of citizenship. They came from what we would call upper-middle-class families. Clare was a young teenager when Francis began his slow process of conversion. She was about fifteen and he was twenty-seven when she first heard him preach about poverty and joy at the San Rufinus cathedral. Her family home bordered the great church, and she was accustomed to regularly attending services there. Hearing Francis preach probably stirred the beginnings of conversion. Feeling Gods presence wouldnt have frightened her, for she was never easily frightened. Only two years later, Clare began her own rejection of vanity, self-interest, and wealth. She quietly renounced worldly affairs in March 1212 and became the first woman to join Francis and his friars. These were simple gestures, but they were nevertheless recognized by Clares contemporaries as the first marks of an independent woman.

The life of Francis is well-known, but Clares less so. Her first biographer tells us that she secretly wore hair shirtsrough garments of asceticism and penancefrom an early age, and while we may not take such a description as absolute fact, the point is that Clare was different. She didnt pine for the latest fabrics and dyes that Peter Bernardone brought back with him from his trips to France. She wasnt looking anxiously for her future husband or counting the days until her wedding. From an early age, she seemed to others to be out of step with the expectations of a fortunate girl from a promising family.