Queen of Cups – St. Clare
Originally written by me December 2006.
I first encountered St. Clare in the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon by Franco Zeffirelli in 1973. St. Francis and St. Clare were portrayed as very ethereal and given to mooning about in ecstatic bliss, but I never felt they were seen as real people. Apparently, in the newness of their faith, they were prone to ecstatic episodes, Clare was supposed to exhibit an ethereal light from her face when praying sometimes, so there is that.
However, after the initial bliss comes the work. You don’t build an order and organize and administer a group of people by continually detaching from the world into God-inspired trances. I’m sure it helps energize you, but there is still the plain old work to be done. Leadership in faith requires some pragmatism as well, and Francis needed a strong leader for the women who wanted to join his order. She was only eighteen when she left her wealthy family and joined Francis, so she must have been very able intellectually and perceptive and wise with people to take on such a responsibility.
I was surprised to learn that Clare was often sick. Whether she was sick before her calling, or sick after her vow of poverty and the subsequent deprivations is unknown. She wasn’t robust physically and suffered from pain, but beyond that there aren’t any particulars to go on. She still lived longer than Francis though, dying in 1253 at about the age of 60; she had ruled as abbess at San Damiano for 40 years.
One thing her life says to me is that no matter how much you withdraw into contemplation, silence, and prayer, human politics always interferes. Before they had their own order, she and the other nuns had to live in a Benedictine order. Even when they finally got permission to start the order of the Poor Clares, connected to the Franciscans, there was quite a wrangle about the final Rule of the order as Francis had only given them a basic formula to go by. Some in the Church administration felt the order and their absolute poverty was too extreme, I think because they were women, and so wrote a rule that echoed that of the Benedictine order. This was definitely against the intention of St. Francis, who was dead by then.
Clare, in a rather heroic stand, albeit in a quiet way, firmly refused, and Pope Gregory IX was eventually impressed with her unworldliness and gave in. After his death, the new Pope again tried to change things and give them a new rule, but she again refused and two days before she died, the new rule was finally written, satisfactory to her insistence on the principle of absolute poverty. Like I said, she must have had extraordinary leadership ability and a personal charisma and wisdom that impressed people. Not just a pretty nobleman’s daughter, but a capable, queenly ruler.
On his card, Robert Place has depicted a classic story about her. In the Saracen attack in 1234, the walls of San Damiano were scaled as the foreign army prepared to attack the town of Assisi. The religious community was terrorized and Clare was helpless to prevent the harm, she was also sick in bed, but got up and took the ciborium (pyx) that held the Eucharist wafers from her chapel and held it high as she faced the invaders, and they fled from the monastery at the strange light emanating from the chalice.
This brought me to an exploration of the pyx in history. Hundreds of years ago the name “pyx” applied to any vessel that the Church used for the communion wafers. Over time, the main, large chalice that held hundreds of wafers used in Church services came to be called a ciborium, and pyx became the name applied to a smaller box containing wafers used for visiting the sick. Some people use the terms interchangeably, and Robert Place uses the term “pyx” which seems historically correct for the time.
I went online to see if I could find some images of a pyx from St. Clare’s time, but there was no standard style and each church had vessels made that were dependent on the materials available and the wealth of the church. They used ivory, gold, silver, copper, leather, wood, whatever was available and affordable. I have attached a picture of some fascinating and beautiful examples.
In the attached engraving of Clare she is shown holding a pyx much like the gold and copper vessels on the left in my picture. Fairly plain, but having a little window or some filigree work that allowed you to see the wafers, and in Clare’s case, allowed the light to shine out and frighten the attackers.
Clare definitely had the watery wisdom and nurturing abilities of the Cups Queen. She was a very deeply wise and spiritual person of compassion who understood and loved other people. Place says that at its deepest level, this card represents mystery, and I see that in Clare’s life of religious ecstasy, contemplation, and silence. Faith is a secret, a mystery.
This is a rare holy card from the collection of a priest that was featured in the book Patron Saints. I found the border of this beautiful card interesting as a design, and it really enhances the painting of Clare with her pyx.
Tags: pyx, Queen of Cups, St. Clare, Tarot of the Saints
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