Clare of Assisi (above, with halo), one of the first followers of St Francis, and the founder of the Order of St Clare, was born today in 1194. Despite being the daughter of a wealthy Count, Clare embraced a life of radical poverty and prayer at the age of 18, after hearing Francis preach during Lent. She was soon joined by her sister, and then by other women, and after four years, became the leader of the new Franciscan community. In her own lifetime, she was regarded as a second Francis, and she was the first woman to write the rule of a monastic order, setting out the the way of life she and her sisters had chosen to follow.
‘Let the sisters not appropriate anything, neither a house nor a place nor anything at all; instead, as pilgrims and strangers in this world who serve the Lord in poverty and humility, let them confidently send for alms. Nor should they be ashamed, since the Lord made himself poor in this world for us. This is that summit of the highest poverty which has established you, my dearest sisters, heiresses and queens of the kingdom of heaven.’ Rule of St Clare
Today is a big day in the story of the Great Schism between the Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) Churches. At 3pm today in 1054, three legates of the Pope went into the cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, marched up to the altar before all the Greek clergy who were assembled for the Eucharist, and threw a bull of excommunication on it. Pope Leo IX, whose name was on the bull, had died three months earlier, so Cardinal Humbert, the obnoxious legate who delivered it, was acting way above his pay grade, and the accusations in the bull were full of factual errors. But the argument between the Eastern and Western Churches had been brewing for a long time, and once the Eastern side had excommunicated in return, it was hard to find a way back. The excommunications were only withdrawn in 1965.
Today in the year 622 saw the Hejira (‘migration’), Muhammad’s exodus from Mecca to Medina. Having failed to convert Mecca to his Islamic revelations, and facing increasing persecution from the merchants he was criticising for greed and idolatry, Muhammad and his followers left and went to Medina, an oasis town 200 miles away. After he won over Medina, he used somewhat more military evangelistic methods to bring Mecca to submission. The Hejira is reckoned as year zero of the Islamic calendar.
The Council of Trent decreed today in 1562 that lay people are not allowed to receive the wine at Mass. The Western Church had almost completely stopped giving wine to the people some 300 years earlier, in the 13th century, but this made it official Church policy, and anyone who said otherwise was anathema.
‘If anyone says that each and all the faithful of Christ are by a precept of God or by the necessity of salvation bound to receive both species of the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, let him be anathema.’ Council of Trent
Pope Innocent III, one of the most powerful Popes of the Middle Ages, died suddenly today in 1216. He instigated a crusade against the Cathars, a heterodox Christian movement in southern France, which caused the death of some 20,000 men, women and children. He also called for the Fourth Crusade, which unexpectedly caused the sack of Constantinople in which many thousands of Christians died. After his death, St Luthgard, a Belgian mystic nun, had a vision of Innocent in Purgatory, engulfed in flames. He has never been made a saint.
Image: Gunnar Bach Pederson