as they conceive it, such as it must
needs be to serve as a model for his disciples; thus they have made this
model somewhat according to the measure of those whom it is to serve, by
omitting here and there features which, stupidly interpreted, might have
furnished material for the malevolence of unscrupulous adversaries, or
from which disciples little versed in spiritual things could not have
failed to draw support for permitting themselves dangerous intimacies.
Thus the relations of St. Francis with women in general and St. Clara in
particular, have been completely travestied by Thomas of Celano. It
could not have been otherwise, and we must not bear him a grudge for it.
The life of the founder of an Order, when written by a monk, in the very
nature of things becomes always a sort of appendix to or illustration of
the Rule. And the Rule, especially if the Order has its thousands of
members, is necessarily made not for the elect, but for the average, for
the majority of the flock.[2]

Hence this portrait, in which St. Francis is represented as a stern
ascetic, to whom woman appears to be a sort of incarnate devil! The
biographers even go so far as to assure us that he knew only two women
by sight. These are manifest exaggerations, or rather the opposite of
the truth.[3]

We are not reduced to conjecture to discover the true attitude of the
Umbrian prophet in this matter. Without suspecting it, Celano himself
gives details enough for the correction of his own errors, and there are
besides a number of other documents whose scattered hints correspond and
agree with one another in a manner all the more marvellous that it is
entirely unintentional, giving, when they are brought together, almost
all one could desire to know of the intercourse of these two beautiful
souls.

After the sermons of Francis at St. Rufino, Clara's decision was
speedily taken; she would break away from the trivialities of an idle
and luxurious life and make herself the servant of the poor; all her
efforts should be bent to make each day a new advance in the royal way
of love and poverty; and for this she would have only to obey him who
had suddenly revealed it to her.

She sought him out and opened to him her heart. With that exaltation, a
union of candor and delicacy, which is woman's fine endowment, and to
which she would more readily give free course if she did not too often
divine the pitfalls of base passion and incredulity, Clara offered