Colettine Reform

For a century after the death of St. Clare comparatively few of the convents had adopted the Rule of 1253. Most of them had availed themselves of the permission to hold property in the name of the community. Moreover, in the fourteenth century the order suffered very much during the Great Western Schism, which was responsible for the general decline of discipline (Manuale Histori? Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, p. 586).

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, however, the spirit of utter poverty was revived through the instrumentality of St. Colette (died 1447) who instituted the most vigorous reform the Second Order has ever experienced. Her desire to restore or introduce the practice of absolute poverty was put on a fair way to realization when, in 1406, Benedict XIII appointed her reformer of the whole order and gave her the office of Abbess General over all convents she should establish or reform. In 1412 St. Colette established a monastery at Besancon. Before her death (1447) she had founded 17 new monasteries, to which, in addition to the Rule of St. Clare, she gave constitutions and regulations of her own. These Constitutions of St. Colette were confirmed by Pius II (Seraphic? Legislationis Textus Originales, 99-175). After the death of St. Colette her reform continued to spread and by the end of the fifteenth century reformed convents were to be found throughout France, Flanders, Brabant, Savoy, Spain, and Portugal.

Subsequently the order experienced a rapid growth and the external development of the Poor Clares appears to have reached its culmination about 1630 in 925 monasteries with 34,000 sisters under the direction of the minister general. If we can credit contemporary chroniclers, there were still more sisters under the direction of the bishops, making the entire number about 70,000. After the opening years of the eighteenth century the order declined and the French Revolution and the subsequent policy of secularization almost totally destroyed it, except in Spain, where the monasteries were undisturbed.

In England and America

In 1807 a Poor Clare community of the Urbanist Observance, fleeing from the terrors of the French Revolution, took refuge in England and founded a monastery at Scorton Hall in Yorkshire. They were the first of their order to establish themselves in that country since the religious changes of the sixteenth century. Fifty years after their arrival they removed to their present home, the Monastery of St. Clare at Darlington, also in Yorkshire. Refugees from the French Revolution likewise found their way to America. In 1801 a community, presided over by Abbess Marie de La Marche, purchased property in Georgetown, D. C., and opened a school for their support. Their efforts met with little success and they returned to Europe. The suppression of the religious in Italy was the occasion of the first permanent settlement of the Poor Clares in the United States.