If he had been a simple man he might have loved them and followed them.
Perhaps he even had thought of doing so.[27] Alas! he was a prince of the Church; he could not help thinking of what he would do in case he should be called to guide the ship of St.Peter.
He acted accordingly; was it calculation on his part or simply one of those states of conscience in which a man absorbed in the end to be attained hardly discusses the ways and means?
I do not know, but we see him immediately on the death of Innocent III., under pretext of protecting the Clarisses, take their direction in hand, give them a Rule, and substitute his own ideas for those of St.Francis.[28] In the privilege which as legate he gave in favor of Monticelli, July 27, 1219, neither Clara nor Francis is named, and the Damianites become as a congregation of Benedictines.[29] We shall see farther on the wrath of Francis against Brother Philip, a Zealot of the Poor Ladies, who had accepted this privilege in his absence.

His attitude was so firm that other documents of the same nature granted by Ugolini at the same epoch were not indorsed by the pope until three years later.
The cardinal's ardor to profit by the enthusiasm which the Franciscan ideas everywhere excited was so great that we find, in the register of his legation of 1221, a sort of formula all prepared for those who would found convents like those of the Sisters of St.Damian; but even there we search in vain for the name of Francis or Clara.[30] This old man had, however, a truly mystical passion for the young abbess; he wrote to her, lamenting the necessity of being far from her, in words which are the language of love, respect, and admiration.[31] There were at least two men in Ugolini: the Christian, who felt himself subdued before Clara and Francis; the prelate, that is, a man whom the glory of the Church sometimes caused to forget the glory of God.
Francis, though almost always resisting him, appears to have kept a feeling of ingenuous gratitude toward him to the very end.

Clara, on the contrary, had too long a struggle to be able to keep any illusions as to the attitude of her protector.

After 1230 there is no trace of any relations between them.
All the efforts of the pope to mitigate the rigor of Clara's vow of poverty had remained vain.

Many other nuns desired to practise strictly the Rule of St.Francis.Among them was the daughter of the King of Bohemia, Ottokar I., who was in continual relations with Clara.