CLARENO, ANGELO. - Franciscan (more correctly A. da Chiarino, also called da Cingoli), leader of the zealots or Spirituals (v.), b. at Chiarino (Recanati; or at Fossombrone), d. at S. Maria d'Aspro (Lucania) on 15 June 1337. Having entered the Order around 1270, he was soon caught up in the repression of the Spirituals, and with them condemned to perpetual imprisonment; once freed (ca. 1289), however, he was sent to Lesser Armenia (Cilicia). Returning to Italy in 1294, he fled with his followers to Greece (ca. 1296).
Repatriated in 1305, he stayed in the environs of Rome, then was at Avignon (1311-18), where in 1317 he was tried and acquitted. When the Spirituals, of whom C. had been the head since 1307, were condemned and excommunicated by the bull Sancta Romana (30 Dec. 1317), and his protector Cardinal Giacomo Colonna died (12 Aug. 1318), he returned to Italy and, without submitting, continued, sheltered at Subiaco, to govern his followers. Feeling unsafe because of the activity of the Inquisition, in 1334 he took refuge in Lucania, where he died.
Venerated by his followers as a saint, a friend of the bl. Simone da Cascia, C. appears a man of upright character and lofty ideals, but incapable of subordinating his ideas to higher commands, and not devoid of a certain culture, as his writings show. These are: 1) Historia septem tribulationum Ord. Min., that is, the history of the persecutions of the Spirituals from the time of St. Francis down to about 1318: a reliable source for the period in which the author lived. A complete edition is lacking. An old Italian translation was published by L. Malagoli: Cronaca delle tribulazioni di A. C., Turin 1931. 2) Expositio regulae fratrum Minorum, ed. L. Oliger, Quaracchi 1912. 3) Epistola excusatoria ad papam (John XXII), published by Fl. Annibali da Latera: Ad Bullarium franciscanum supplementum, Rome 1780; Animadversiones, pp. 153-164. 4) Epistolario (1311-36), published in part by F. Ehrle, in Archiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte, 1 (Berlin 1885), pp. 543-69. 5) Praeparantia Christi Iesu habitationem... in nobis..., published by N. Mattioli, Il b. Simone Fidati da Cascia (Autologia agostiniana, II), Rome 1898, pp. 467-71. 6) Brevilogium super doctrina salutis ad parvulos Christi, ibid., pp. 471-87. Moreover, he translated from Greek into Latin the Rule of St. Basil, the Scala of John Climacus, and a Dialogo attributed to St. Macarius; on these translations cf. Expositio Regulae, ed. L. Oliger, pp. XXXIV-IV.
Bibliography7 works
Livario Oliger