The title of Bert Roest’s monograph seems more than appropriate for a religious order that challenged traditional models of female spirituality and continued to test those boundaries throughout its history. Similar to the male Franciscan tradition, the Clarissan also suffered from chronic internal debate over the degree of observance to the ideals of their founder. Trying to wrestle the first three centuries of this complex tradition into one volume is a heroic task, and Roest makes no pretense of providing a complete history. Similar to the still essential survey of Franciscan history by John Moorman, what Roest does provide is an open-ended but meticulous examination of certain facets of the female order’s history within the framework of a broad study. The meat of the volume lies in the first four chapters, which focus upon the institutionalization of the tradition from the time of Clare through to the fifteenth-century observant reform movements. It helps that Roest has decided to focus in particular upon the tripartite relations of Clarissan authorities, the Franciscan hierarchy, and the papacy to follow the permutations of the tradition over time and across space.

As Roest carefully unveils the path — or rather paths — taken by the followers of Clare of Assisi, one begins to understand why a detailed study of Clarissan history has yet to be done. To begin with, there was no one clear mandate for the development of a unified order despite papal and other efforts to implement one. Very quickly the Clares fragmented into diverging interpretations as new communities were formed. The battle over cloister was certainly one of the reasons for this fragmentation, and it is an issue that preoccupies the first three chapters. But as Roest also shows, tension within the male Franciscan communities over providing direction to female communities also significantly complicated the process of institutionalization.

Chapter 1 provides a good overview of the early days of the tradition during the life of Clare, and also introduces us to the reforms of the papal legate, Ugolino. Ugolino developed a plan to impose a more strictly cloistered model of female religious life, known as the Forma Vitae. Chapter 2 delves more deeply into relations between the Clares and Franciscan administrators following the death of Francis of Assisi. Here we find a Franciscan leadership that was deeply ambivalent about assuming direction of the female communities, in part because of its possible impact upon their evangelical role in society. In contrast, Clare and many of her followers actively pushed for this Franciscan supervision because they believed it provided them with greater autonomy to protect their own understanding of the Franciscan ideal. The importance for Clare of protecting evangelical poverty in particular comes through quite strongly in this section. Chapter 3 looks at the expansion of the tradition outside of Italy, and it is here that we can see just how difficult it is to characterize the size and nature of the tradition by the end of the fourteenth century. What formally constituted a Clarissan community at any given time is unclear, especially given that negotiations were generally piecemeal and heavily influenced by the demands of local patrons as well as religious authorities. The final two chapters turn our attention to the social and cultural life. Chapter 5 discusses the impact of enclosure and patronage upon the internal life of the communities. As one knows from other studies on female communities, even traditions dedicated to poverty became wealthy over time, and internally came to mirror the social order outside of convent walls. And yet, Roest finds the continuing influence of the spirituality of Clare upon the later communities as reform movements sought to revivify earlier traditional practices in communal living. Chapter 6 discusses the rich literary and artistic life of Clarissan communities. Beyond its nuanced examination of institutional relations and rich integration of multiple strands of scholarly research, an important contribution of this volume is its relational approach. As we discover here, the relationship between Clare and Francis transcended their lifetimes, forever marking their followers as members of a shared and distinctive religious culture.