The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women (review)

Abstract

The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women. By Joan Mueller. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2006. Pp. x, 182. $40.00.) With Clare ofAssisi, it is practically obligatory to identify as the first woman to write a monastic rule for other women. This achievement, the culmination of a decades-long battle with the papal curia to secure the right for a female monastic community to live without endowments, is Joan Mueller's subject. As a Franciscan herself, Mueller writes sensitively about what it meant for these women to choose radical poverty following the model of the Poor Christ. For historians, main contribution is that of bringing Clare together with the Bohemian princess, Agnes of Prague, to show how some women could negotiate effectively with the papacy to define how their institutions developed. When Francis ofAssisi died in 1226, Clare realized that community at San Damiano needed ecclesiastical recognition of their commitment to radical poverty. However, papal efforts to monasticize San Damiano and likeminded communities with endowments provoked a crisis. Mueller characterizes Pope Gregory IX as moving from sympathetic regard for the sisters' evangelical vocation, to an adversarial role in which the commitment to radical poverty became mere rhetoric (p. 36) and pious flourishes (p. 48). Apparent victories, such as the Privilege of Poverty granted to San Damiano in 1228 (and a few other houses at later times), were rather temporary compromises offered in the hope that the women eventually would accept possessions. By 1230, Clare and the pope were at loggerheads, and Mueller asserts rather dramatically that her soul, identity, and the quality of the monastery were at stake (pp. 51-52). Enter Agnes of Prague, whom Mueller casts as Clare's collaborator and soul mate. These chapters, drawing on earlier studies, represent the book's most original contribution. The women and their allies used diplomacy to achieve their goals, while invoking spiritual authorities for their commitment to evangelical poverty. Agnes also secured exemptions that allowed community to live without possessions, but the papacy remained determined to secure their welfare. In 1247 Pope Innocent IV issued a new rule designed to unify standards within female Franciscan communities. It required endowments, a situation that was not unwelcome to many houses. …