Episode Description
Harmonia stands in the quiet stone courtyard of modern San Damiano and lets a single memory pull her back eight centuries --- the sound of shears, and a young noblewoman named Clare choosing, in one irreversible motion, to belong to no one but herself and her God. From a secret escape on Palm Sunday to a decades-long standoff with three successive popes over her right to keep her order in strict poverty, Clare's story is one of quiet, unshakeable resolve. She became the first woman known to author her own monastic Rule of Life, defending it to the very end, until it was confirmed just two days before her death. This episode closes Golden Thread's Women in Faith arc and opens the door to a seven-part series on the suffrage movement, beginning next with Abby Kelley Foster.