Clare and the Beguines
Clare and Marie d’Oignies (1167-1214) had two powerful mutual friends. Bishop Jaques de Vitry who gives the earliest written account of Franciscan women in Assisi, also wrote Marie d’Oignies biography. Gregory IX, both as Pope and as Cardinal Hugolino knew, esteemed and wrote to them both.
After Clare had received the habit from Francis at the Portiuncula in 1212 he took her first to the Benedictines at San Paolo and then on to what we now know, according to Regis Armstrong OFM Cap, to have been a Begiunage, at San Angelo de Panzo on a remote and rather grim mountainside. The earliest biographer of Clare said that her spirit was not at rest there. But the Beguines saw these things differently; they, themselves, according to Arnaldo Fortini, became Poor Ladies and were the second Clare Convent in Assisi.
Graphic: Marie d’Oignies, courtesy of Wikimedia