Sacred Energy

Clare of Assisi cut off her own hair the night she fled her family home to join Francis's new way of poverty

Clare's departure was a nighttime escape from her own noble family, and cutting her hair in front of Francis was the specific act that made her intention to live poor and unmarried impossible for her relatives to simply reverse.

Clare, born to a noble Assisi family around 1194, was drawn to Francis's new way of life as a teenager and, according to the traditional Franciscan account, left her family home secretly at night — on Palm Sunday in 1212 by most tellings — to meet Francis and his brothers at the Portiuncula chapel. There Francis is said to have cut her hair himself, a symbolic act with concrete legal weight in medieval Italy: a noblewoman's hair signified her marriageability and family honor, and shearing it publicly marked her as having left worldly and marital life for good, much as Francis's public disrobing had done for himself. Her family reportedly tried to physically retrieve her afterward, underscoring how genuinely disruptive the act was rather than a quiet private vow. Clare went on to found the Poor Clares, an order built on the same absolute poverty and celibate community life Francis had modeled, and she led it for over forty years.

Legend of Saint Clare

Written about in

• What celibate traditions say about money and property

  Clare of Assisi left her noble family at night and cut her hair in front of Francis, the one act her relatives could not simply undo the next morning.

• What the celibate traditions say about making a hard decision

  Clare left home at night as a teenager and Francis cut her hair at the Portiuncula. In medieval Italy a noblewoman's hair signified her marriageability, so shearing it was the one thing her family could not undo — they reportedly came to retrieve her and failed.