ST. CLARA 185 who immediately disappeared. Clara was abbess for abont ten years, and died Feb. 27, 1204. Brocchi, Santi e Beati Foreniini, Razzi, Etruscan Saints, She is mentioned in all the accounts of the rise of the Order of St. Francis, and in the Life of St. Clara of Assisi. Hen- schenius, AA.SS. Boll., Pr«<er., writing in the 17 th centnry,did not consider her worship authorized. St. Clara (4), Aug. 18, V., called St. Clara of the Cross, and of Aniri. 1275-1808. Abbess and patron of Montefalco. Of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine. Represented (1) holding a pair of scales, and a heart pierced with three wounds or cut open and showing the instruments of the Passion of our Saviour ; (2) with a lily in one hand, and throe balls or coins on the palm of the other, — sometimes the balls are on the scales, two on one, and one on the other. She was born at Monte Falco, a little town about ten miles north of Spoleto. Her father's name was Damian, her mother's Jacquelina. She had an elder sister Jane, who, though scarcely more than a child, was leading the life of a nun at a place called St. Leonardo, with a company of young girls whom she had gathered around her, spending all their time in devotional practices, though not attached to any order. From her earliest childhood Clara was religious an 4 self- denying, and longed to join her sister's little community. At six she was allowed to do so, and prepared herself for the privilege by excessive austerities. At St. Leonard's she fasted rigorously, slept on a plank on the ground, wore a hair shirt and the roughest and coarsest clothes, and used a scourge. Her sister gave her a small oratory, and there she had several visions. This community of devout children grew until its first habitation was too small. The girls ono day saw a cross of light shining over St. Catherine's, a neighbouring hill, and a procession of nuns passing over the summit. They therefore built a humble monastery on the spot, which they con- sidered was pointed out to them by the finger of God. They were in the diocese of Spoleto, and they requested the bishop to give them a rule ; he gave them that of St. Augustine. As they had spent all their .money in building, they were obliged to live by begging. Clara volunteered to be one of the mendicants, notwithstanding her extreme repugnance to the task. She never would pass the threshold of a house where she begged/ but stood outside the door, whatever the weather might be. This was partly lest she should be tempted to break the rule of silence. The sisters, finding her worn out with the fatigue of her expeditions, changed her duties, and kept her in the house. She sought the hardest and lowest work, she helped any overworked sister. She became more and more detached from the world. She imposed severe penances on herself for every sin into which she fell ; for instance, haying spoken without sufficient necessity, she punished herself by standing barefooted in ice-cold water while she repeated the Lord's Prayer a hundred times. Jane fell ill, and was restored to health for a while by the prayers of Clara. Eight years after the building of the monastery on St. Catherine's Hill, Jane, who had been its superior all that time, died. Clara saw in a vision that her sister had entered into eternal life. Clara was chosen abbess in her sister's place. She abated nothing of her self-mortification, nor of her dislike and avoidance of the parlour, though this was very grievous to the ladies of tho neighbourhood, who loved to come and gossip to the nuns. But she provided well for the bodily needs of her nuns, lest their spiritual life should suffer from earthly cares and the fear of too great privation. Once when that part of Umbria was suffering from famine, angels in visible forms brought baskets of bread to the sister- hood, and this supply lasted until the famine was over. Her charity to the poor and the sick was unbounded, and for love of the fiuthful departed not yet resting in peace, she had the Office of the Dead recited daily in the choir. Her devotion to the Passion of our Lord was the ruling motive of her life. It was always in her thoughts and in her in- structions to her nuns. She prayed that
