St. Clare of Assisi was the first woman to practice the life of entire poverty as taught by St. Francis. Placed by him at the head of a few companions in the small convent of San Damiano, she governed her community for forty-two years thus founding at the gates of Assisi the Order of Poor Clares. Their Rule included austerities hitherto unknown in monasteries of women. They went barefoot, slept on the ground, kept perpetual abstinence, and never spoke but when they were obliged to by the indispensable duties of necessity and charity. In her rule St. Clare recommends this holy silence as the means to retrench innumerable sins of the tongue and to preserve the mind always recollected in God and free from the dissipation of the world, which, without this guard, penetrates the walls of cloisters. St. Clare died on August 11, 1253, and was canonized two years after her death.