Agnes of Assisi (1197/1198 — 1253) was one of the founding members of the Poor Clares. Agnes eventually established the convent of Monticelli near Florence, then went on to establish orders in Verona, Padua, Venice, and Mantua. As one of the first women to be a Poor Clare and an abbess in several communities, she helped to shape the order and provided both an example and a space for the many women that would follow in her footsteps.
Agnes (born Caterina Offreducia) and her sisters, Clare and Beatrice, were daughters of a nobleman, Count Favorino Scifi. Agnes's childhood was spent between her father's home in the city of Assisi as well as his castle of Sasso Rosso on Mount Subasio with her sisters and their mother, Ortolana.´
On 18 March 1212, Agnes's elder sister Clare, inspired by the example of Francis of Assisi, left their father's home in secret to become a follower of Francis. Sixteen days later, moved by her desire to live like Christ, Agnes ran off to the Church of St. Angelo di Panzo, where Francis had brought her sister, resolved to share Clare's life of poverty and penance.
Angry at the loss of two of his daughters to the convent, their father sent his brother Monaldo and eleven other relatives and armed followers to the monastery to attempt to bring Agnes home and be wed. Agnes refused their demands, and the men began to ambush her, attempting to drag her from the church while striking and kicking her repeatedly. Her body suddenly became so heavy that the men could not lift her from the ground. This infuriated her uncle, Monaldo, who drew his sword to strike his niece. At that moment, his arm allegedly dropped to his side, withered and useless. Agnes's relatives, realizing that something divine protected her, allowed her to remain with Clare and live a life of celibacy and devotion to Christ. Her name was changed to Agnes when she became a nun, to reflect the Latin “agnus,” which means “lamb.”
Francis later established an enclosed convent for Clare and Agnes at the rural chapel of San Damiano. They were soon joined by other noblewomen of the city, and the Order of Poor Ladies, later known as the Poor Clares, began, with Clare as its abbess.
In 1221, a group of Benedictine nuns in Monticelli, near Florence, asked to become Poor Ladies. Despite being young, Agnes was chosen to lead the new community. As an abbess, Agnes was extremely loving, kind, and clever. Agnes knew how to make the practice of virtue attractive to her subjects. Although life in the Florentine convent was harmonious and without faction, she missed her sister greatly.
Agnes remained an Abbess for the rest of her life, and little is reported about her convents and their activities. She established multiple branches of the order in the cities of Verona, Padua, Venice, and Mantua. Agnes is said to have worn a hair shirt for most of her life, starting in her teen years, to deeper understand and appreciate the suffering and sacrifice of Christ.
A letter from Agnes to her sister, written from her monastery in Florence, illustrates the loss she felt during her separation from Clare. Agnes wrote that her body and soul suffered great distress and sadness and being apart from Clare brought intense sorrow upon her.
In 1253, Agnes returned to Assisi to nurse her sister Clare during the latter's illness. Clare died in August of 1253. Shortly thereafter, Agnes died on 16 November 1253. Her remains were interred with those of her sister at the Basilica of St. Clare in Assisi. Agnes's feast day is the anniversary of her death, 16 November. She was canonized in 1753, 500 years later, by Pope Benedict XIV.
In the late Middle Ages, women labored under a heavy burden of institutional and ideological disabilities. They were barred from political office; they were hampered by a host of legal restrictions; they were subjected to the authority of their male relatives; they were excluded from institutions of higher education. Women were also deemed physically, intellectually, and morally inferior to men. Yet from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, women assumed public roles of unprecedented prominence in the religious culture of their time in cities such as Assisi.
Church and society were inextricably bound up with one another, and in terms of landed wealth, political power, intellectual eminence, moral prestige, and cultural influence, the Catholic Church was a dominating presence. Ecclesiastical institutions owned approximately a quarter of all wealth. The exercise of church office was one way ruling families secured their power. Control over appointment to the church office was a primary means by which Assisi and other cities extended their control over subject territories. Control over the pulpit meant that clerics, and especially the great preaching orders of Franciscans and Dominicans, were responsible for cultural mediation on a scale that no other group could match.
During the end of the twelfth century, many European kingdoms, or states, as they are known today, began to form, shifting from a King and his land-holding lords to a larger, organized area with broader laws and the King's power somewhat controlled by a group of his nobles. Italy was nothing like that. There was a King in the Southern region of Sicily, but unlike France and England in Northwestern Europe, this King struggled to apply his rule to the daily life of the Italian city-states. Northern Italy was, technically, part of the Holy Roman Empire and therefore controlled by the King of Germany. However, the reality was much different. The Alpine Mountain range in Northern Italy made visits to that area difficult and infrequent for the German ruler, allowing the cities of Italy to form their governments.
The sovereignty held by Italian cities led to problems. Because Italy was technically held by the Holy Roman Empire, some city-states supported the German King. However, others felt more strongly that their true allegiance was to the Pope, who ruled Christendom and was geographically closer. This issue caused violent conflict between some neighboring city-states that did not agree on to whom their loyalty should belong. Assisi was one of these city-states, at war with the neighboring Perugia.
Ultimately, because these cities were independent and sovereign, they formed an identity based on the city itself. Many cities had coinage dedicated to the city itself instead of the person who ruled it. Cities passed laws and tried criminals. Cities also wanted to claim at least one saint who would represent how religious their people were. It is fitting, then, that the city of Assisi would foster three saints.
This period cultivated this religious movement because of the turmoil. When things are changing, people cling to what feels secure. In this case, that's God. Unfortunately for them, the church was corrupt. In the Catholic Church, lay people have to go through priests to get the sacraments they need, and priests are losing trust. For women, especially, religious life was a way to grow closer to God without having to involve another person. The church was not satisfactory, so Francis, Clare, and Agnes found another way to fulfill their spiritual desire for a relationship with Jesus. In the past, people had gone into the desert or wilderness. In the early thirteenth century, however, there were enough people upset with the state of the church that Francis was able to gain a lot of followers in monasteries. Along with spiritual growth, joining a monastery was a way to get away from the chaos that was happening in Italian cities. Monks and nuns did not have to go to war or live in a town where people were committing random acts of violence. It was an escape for people who wanted to get out of their dangerous, confusing cities.
This is also made possible by the spread of the Catholic Church. Italy was influenced by Catholicism, as the Pope's seat is in Rome. However, by the end of the twelfth century, Catholicism had spread to the entire continent of Europe and was beginning to have a lot of influence on rulers and common people alike. This made the Pope's position more respected and influential across a wider area, and after Francis went to him to have his order approved, it made his movement all the more legitimate to the people who agreed with him and wanted to join him. Whether or not Francis met with the Pope, which is disputed, doesn’t matter. What is important is that people think he did, and the Pope has a massive influence.