But St. Clare deserves more than a footnote appearing in a life of another saint. Unlike Francis, she was a noblewoman, being groomed to marry a wealthy knight or even duke, but she forsook a life of privilege to live in the same abject poverty as St. Francis and his earliest disciples, founding a woman’s branch of the Franciscan Order. Despite her austerities and constant poor health, she nursed Francis in his final days of suffering and blindness and outlived him, going on to become an adviser to bishops and Popes
