Pope Innocent IV (1243-1253). - 377 

well-being, We attend to it with prompt and vigilant dispositions of mind and to how these things should progress with due increases.

Since, therefore, We have been led to correct your Rule and form of living because of whose exceeding difficulty your consciences were being weighed down by the anxiety of ambiguity, and besides an intolerable loss was threatening various persons, just consider especially that now many different forms of dispensations will be made concerning it because of which there seemed to be not one but many different professions.

In bestowing on you anew a sure Rule and form of living, We are by the authority of these documents setting up a Rule and way of living which is newly revised and which under Our Bull We are directing to your whole community, both to you and to those who will succeed you, that you may diligently observe them for all time.

As for the rest We decree that you are not bound to anything other than what is in the Rule and way of living itself, notwithstanding any precept, vow, or letter that you sought from the Holy See.

Therefore, let no one infringe on this page of Our constitution or oppose it with rash temerity. If anyone does, etc.

Given at Lyons on the 23rd of August in the fifth year of Our Pontificate.

1252
Haberi percepimus, June 6

Innocent, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God: to the Abbess and Sisters of the Monastery of Saint Elisabeth in Brixen of the Order of Saint Damian.

We have noted something constant in your desire, namely, that by careful affliction of the flesh you merit the reward of the blessed. However, the readiness of the spirit is so deadened by a weakness of nature that you would hardly be strong enough to endure the rigor of the formula of your life without the use of discernment in everything. Indeed, Our venerable brother, Bishop of Ostia and Velletri, to whom your Order had been committed by the Apostolic See, reflecting with paternal affection on this

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Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, p. 377