The Order of Poor Ladies, also known as the Poor Clares, the Poor Clare Nuns, the Clarisse, or the Minoresses is a Franciscan order founded by Saint Clare of Assisi. As of 2004 there are over 20,000 Poor Clare Sistersliving (http://www.poorclare.org/) in over 76 countries throughout the world.
On 18 October of that year the sovereign pontiff issued the rule which is in the most general observance among the PoorClares and which has given the name "Urbanist" to a large division of the order.
The original Bull of Innocent IV confirming the Rule of St. Clare was discovered in 1893 in a mantle of the saint which had been preserved, among other relics, at the monastery of St. Clare at Assisi (Robinson, "Inventarium documentorum", 1908).
In 1807 a PoorClare community of the Urbanist Observance, fleeing from the terrors of the French Revolution, took refuge in England and founded a monastery at Scorton Hall in Yorkshire.
The life of a PoorClare is occupied with work and prayer, penance and contemplation.
The habit is a loose fitting garment of gray frieze; the cord is of linen rope about one-half inch in thickness having four knots representing the four vows; their sandals are cloth.
There are two branches of PoorClares, the Colettines, so called because their Rule was modified by Saint Colette, and the Urbanists, whose Rule was modified by Pope Urban IV.
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