Clare of Assisi: Gentle Warrior

Murray (A Mended and Broken Heart), a former Time correspondent, offers a revealing glimpse into the life of St. Clare (1194–1253), who was canonized in 1255. When Murray initially came across records of Clare, she considered Clare elusive and difficult to understand, and conflicting accounts of medieval historians left Murray “deciphering the nub of the story beneath the distortions.” During her life, Clare wrote extensively about the joy found in poverty, eternal virginity, and spiritual matrimony. However, Murray also discovered that, after St. Francis was canonized, Clare’s role in narratives about Francis’s life gradually diminished; as a strong woman, she was considered “problematic” by Christian historians and largely forgotten. Despite gaps in Clare’s history, it is known that she was the firstborn daughter of noble lineage and she gave up a life of privilege to follow Francis. In 1212, after Clare gave away her dowry to the poor, she was placed as a servant in the San Paolo commune in Brescia. Clare later moved to the church of San Damiano, where Francis made her abbess, but even with more power she “forged her own path and established her own rules” by creating a women’s Benedictine order. Readers looking for accounts of women pivotal to the growth of Christianity will relish Murray’s welcoming portrait. (July)