This is an excerpt from Green Saints for a Green Generation (Orbis Books), edited by Libby Osgood, C.N.D.. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Before there was Saint Clare, there was Chiara Offreduccio. Born on July 16, 1194, Clare was the daughter of nobility on both her paternal and maternal sides. As a resident of Assisi, Clare and her family lived in la sopra, the upper side of town. As the child of nobility, Clare enjoyed numerous privileges, including a strong education, musical training, and needlework. But these privileges came at a price. The noble class also bore proximity to warfare, with her father being a knight. In her childhood Clare witnessed numerous civil wars between her class and the merchant class (of which Francis was a part). These conflicts sowed destruction on nobles’ properties and brief exile for Clare’s family and others.
Despite the underpinnings of bloodshed in her early life, Clare began to ascertain her desired life trajectory in her later years. She rejected suitors and offers for marriage (much to the chagrin of her parents) and chose, instead, to pursue the light of faith. Though the exact timeline is murky, at some point in this pursuit Clare met Francis, then Francesco Bernardone.
As the son of a wealthy merchant, Francis grew up in il sotto, the lower part of Assisi. He pursued his dream of becoming a knight through combat, partaking in two conflicts during his life. One involved ransacking nobles’ homes. The other resulted in his imprisonment and enduring sickness. During his period of recovery Francis underwent a religious awakening. He be- came attuned to the pull of God, hearing the call to “rebuild my church.” Francis undertook this task literally, rebuilding the structures of church ruins across Assisi. Clare, who at this time knew him, lent financial support to these projects. The first completed project was a church in San Damiano, which Francis insisted would house holy women. This project later became Clare’s residence.
Francis’s religious conversion was reflected not only in his deeds but also in his relationship with textiles and clothing. With his father being a wealthy linen merchant, Francis often sauntered around town in the finest clothes from France. His lavish dress built his persona and helped him maintain his popularity among the people (particularly the women) of Assisi. He also was primed for inheriting his father’s work, and so he became known as a clothier, too. As he grew deeper in his faith, his sartorial attitudes changed. In a striking hagiographical account Francis breaks with his former life by stripping off his clothes and returning them to his father. Here, he renounces his former persona of clothier, womanizer, and his proximity to wealth. Though he is soon after covered in the Bishop of Assisi’s mantle, Francis’s momentary nakedness bespeaks his desire to be adorned differently. This priority undergirds his theological vision and influences his religious order—the Franciscans—with adherents dressing in simple attire and sharing wares in common.
Given Clare’s interest and investment in Francis’s ministerial vision, it comes as no surprise that she followed in his ascetic footsteps. Coordinating with Francis, Clare fled her old life, distributing her wealth to others. Clare sold her entire inheritance, gave the proceeds to the poor, and embraced the call to religious life. When her distraught parents discovered her in the monastery where Francis had hidden her, she showed them her shaved head—her renunciation of the wealth of temporal beauty—convincing them of her faith commitments. In some retellings Clare began her journey in religious life in sumptuous attire, “dressed in a heavy satin robe, embroidered in gold and trimmed with ermine, her bodice jeweled and her hair glistening with pearls.” She traded these fineries for the monastic habit.
The commitment to relinquishing material possessions grounded the Franciscan vocation. Relinquishing one’s earthly goods, like clothing, was to unite oneself to Christ. What’s more, this orientation enabled monastic members to “not fear to live without possessions” through belief that God would always provide. Here, the Franciscan detachment from clothing offers insights to the beleaguered clothes wearer of today’s milieu. I do not think we need to don sackcloth and ashes, as Clare was rumored to. Instead, we are called to content ourselves with less, a countercultural practice in the face of unfettered production and consumption. Contentment with less does not necessarily translate to a suffocating deprivation—rather, such contentment helps to suffocate the flames of consumer capitalism, of overconsumption, and of unbridled production quotas, which threaten the physical and spiritual health of God’s creatures and creation.
The notion of contentment with less necessarily entails satiating ourselves with what we already have. In the instance of clothing, we are forced to contend with the contents of our bursting closets instead of turning our thoughts and bodies toward retail therapy, compulsive consumerism, and other actions that numb our wounds. We must face our clothes as loci of presence: of laboring hands and woven plants we may never meet or greet, of joys and pains, of social possibilities. To content ourselves with what we already have, we need to reacquaint ourselves with our clothes—but we also must learn how to regard them as esteemed gifts from the weary Earth. This regard requires skillful care, especially in today’s milieu, for two reasons. First, many contemporary garments are not made to last. Many are made from the cheapest fabrics possible (like polyester blends) and are speedily crafted by workers desperate to meet production quotas. Handiwork may be rushed and be reflected in weaknesses in the fabric, poor stitches, or unraveling construction. Such hasty construction limits our garments’ lives, without intervention. Second, the level of sartorial literacy in the everyday household has declined. While interest in sartorial skills grew at the start of the COVID-19 pan- demic, many wearers know little about which fabrics net a longer life (for example, cotton and linen offer more durability than a polyester blend), nor do they possess skills that extend the life of a beloved garment, such as mending a stitch, darning a hole, or repurposing a garment altogether. Lacking this knowledge, we limit our opportunities to demonstrate respect for creation and extend the lives of our clothes and textiles.
Here, we can turn to Clare for insight. Her own sartorial skillset inspires tenderness toward textiles and, by extension, the created world.
Holy Handiwork: Considering Clare’s Craft
As the daughter of nobility, Clare learned to wield a needle. Noblewomen busied themselves with hand embroidery to pass the time. Clare’s practice was not a frivolous one—in fact, it aided her in supporting her religious community. What’s more, scholar Margaret Carney notes that for those women in Clare’s community who came from the minores (the cottage industry), “work in some aspect of cloth trade was a way of life.” The Poor Clares channeled their combined skillset into producing linens needed for celebrating Mass and for housing the eucharistic host and relics. This skill was coveted in churches across Umbria, after liturgical developments in the Lateran Council that prioritized clean linens and worthy receptacles. Clare’s community could meet these decrees.
So Clare and her kin fashioned yarn into fineries worthily adorning sacred places, spaces, and objects. Clare spun yarn into cloth, then her sisters fashioned the cloth into the appropriate form. After being organized and packaged, their handiwork was sent to parishes throughout the region.
Clare was devoted to this craft, continuing to spin even after becoming confined to her bed in her later life. Unmoved by her ailing body, she continued her handiwork. In Carney’s words, Clare spent “many hours . . . creating corporals and altar linens using linen and thread.” It is no surprise, then, that Clare’s skills crafted her status as the patron saint of embroidery, needlework, and laundry.
As someone acquainted with this craft, Clare likely understood the power and priority of care in creating and handling textile wares. Though her work was in the service of financially supporting her community, it was also a devotional act. The Poor Clares’ textiles amplified the beauty of the liturgy and meaningfully adorning the liturgical space, sacraments, and the remnants of holy people in the Catholic tradition. If we approach this work with a sacramental vision in mind, we see how the sacraments illuminate the splendor of God’s creation, and God’s care for God’s creatures. We can see this in textile creation, too.
In the third chapter of Genesis we encounter God’s tactile tenderness, mediated through textiles. Faced with Adam and Eve’s slipshod leaf clothes, God fashions them new attire—presumably of animal skin. Lauren Winner suggests that God, here, stitches a gift of “utter tenderness.” I perceive Clare’s handiwork as tender, too—a tenderness reciprocated for God, who is made present in the liturgy, mediated through matter; and a tender- ness stitched and sewn into the dressings of the liturgical space.
Here we encounter Clare’s handiwork as reminiscent of God’s handiwork in Eden; two textile makers, tasked with adorning creation. Clare’s work also emerges as a vocation within her vocation, and a devotional work. We can imagine Clare’s devotion in her spinning and sewing and using her talents to ensure that church linens would be durable and “live full lives” as a sign of her love for God, whose love is knit into creation. I can’t help but wonder how her skills also aided her in extending the life of garments, particularly those shared in her community. Clare is said to have exchanged her habit with a sister’s shoddier one; I can imagine her tending to this worn garment to ensure its survival. Every reinforcing stitch and repair would have pro- claimed her commitment to her vows, her spiritual priorities, and inadvertently, her care for God’s creation, which gave her the matter to make and mend these wares.
Clare’s devotion offers spiritual insight and environmental implications. In the face of shoddy garments on sale racks and objects easily broken due to poor construction, Clare’s talents offer a reprieve from planned obsolescence—the practice of designing products that soon break down and must be discarded—which is a symptom of a larger throwaway culture. Clare’s handiwork, I believe, proclaims the value of attentiveness toward creation, and commitment to sustaining an object’s life, in a way that rings countercultural. How might her handiwork change our hearts?
Consider, for instance, donation habits in Global North countries, like the United States. In college I used to co-lead a service project for unhoused populations in Manhattan. The project collected food and clothing for these communities, and we had to state explicitly in the donation guidelines that ripped, torn, and heavily worn garments were not acceptable. Despite this, I would find the occasional ripped or stained garment a donation collection. We may think that we “do good” by passing our used wares on, but we often pass along garments and other textiles that are in poor shape. These garments are often shipped to places like the Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana, where they have been sorted into bales and purchased by merchants. Despite the efforts of market workers to repair worn clothes, 40 percent of the garments entering the market are unusable and thus discarded, causing environmental ruin in the region. Here, countries and communities in the Global South pay the price for the Global North’s environmental sins.
Our disinterest in our wares fuels environmental ills in com- munities, making them vulnerable. It also fuels ecological sin, what the Vatican’s 2019 Synod on the Amazon defined as acts and habits of pollution and destruction of environmental harmony. Clare’s talents can inspire us to resist the all-too-tempting tendency to thoughtlessly discard broken, worn wares and to cultivate invested care. In practice, this might look like bringing a worn-down garment or cloth to a tailor or neighbor with sartorial skills or learning how to darn, repair stitches, and replace buttons on woven objects. These and other objects give wares a second chance while demonstrating care for communities and ecosystems burdened by their afterlives.
Clare’s handiwork can also transform our perception of creation. Encountering her handiwork as godly creativity holds the potential to approach textiles like clothing as a sacred gift from laboring hands, from hewn crops, and from skinned creatures. If we regard garments as environmental gifts that we are chosen to steward, perhaps we can regard our closets less as inconveniences and more as sacred sites. Our new purchases can be transformed from mind-numbing conquests to our responsibilities to people and the planet. Here, our interest in impulse purchases, in growing our hoards, and in purging out of exasperation, can wane, much to the Earth’s benefit (and our own).
Image: Wikimedia Commons. Santa Chiara, Giovanni Battista Moroni. (CC BY-SA 4.0, Sailko).
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