(Text from Scaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion - revision and extension, and correction in some places, needed)
Carmelites (in
Latin Ordo fratrum Beatæ Virginis Mariæ de monte Carmelo) is the name of a Roman Catholic
order founded in the
12th century by a certain Berthold (d. after
1185) on
Mount Carmel[?], whence the order receives its name. Carmelite tradition traces the origin of the order to a community of hermits on Mount Carmel that succeeded the schools of the prophets in ancient
Israel, although there are no certain records of monks on this mountain before the ninth decade of the twelfth century. Berthold, who had gone to
Palestine from
Calabria either as a pilgrim or as a crusader, chose Mount Carmel as the seat of his community because it was the traditional home of
Elijah. It was but natural that this community of Eastern
hermits[?] in the Holy Land should gain constant accessions from pilgrims, and in
1209 they received a rule from the patriarch
Albert of Jerusalem[?]. This consisted of sixteen articles, which enjoined strict obedience to their prior, residence in individual cells, constancy in prayer, the hearing of mass every morning in the oratory of the community, poverty and toil, daily silence from vespers until terce the next morning, abstinence from all forms of meat except in cases of severe illness, and fasting from Holy Cross Day (
Sepember 14[?]) to Easter of the following year. This rule received the approval of
Pope Honorius III in
1226. With the increasing cleavage between the West and the East, however, the Carmelites found it advisable to leave their original home, and in 1238 they settled in
Cyprus and
Sicily. In
1240 they were in
England, and four years later in southern
France, while by
1245 they were so numerous that they were able to hold their first general chapter at
Aylesford, England, where
Simon Stock[?], then eighty years of age, was chosen general. During his rule of twenty years the order prospered, especially by the establishment of a monastery at
Paris by St.
Louis[?] in
1259.
The original rule of the order was now changed to conform to that of the mendicant orders on the initiative of
Simon Stock[?] and at the command of
Pope Innocent IV. Their former habit of a mantle with black and white or brown and white stripes was discarded, and they wore the same habit as the
Dominican[?], except that the cloak was white. They also borrowed much from the Dominican and
Franciscans rules. Their distinctive garment was a scapular of two strips of gray cloth, worn on the breast and back, and fastened at the shoulders. This, according to the traditions of the order, was given to Simon Stock by the Virgin herself, who descended from heaven and promised that all who wear it in this world, or at least in the hour of death, should be saved, she herself going each Saturday to purgatory to rescue those to whom this might apply. Thus arose a sodality of the scapular, which affiliated a large number of laymen with the Carmelites. The order speedily became infected with arrogance, however, contesting the invention of the rosary with the Dominicans, terming themselves the brothers of the Virgin, and asserting, on the basis of their traditional association with Elijah, that all the prophets of the Old Testament, as well as the Virgin and the Apostles, had been Carmelites. Their second general,
Nicholas of Narbonne[?] (
1265-
1270), protested in vain, only to be deposed from his office.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Carmelites, like other monastic orders, declined, and reform became imperative. Shortly before
1433 three monasteries in
Valais,
Tuscany, and
Mantua were reformed by the preaching of
Thomas Conecte[?] of
Rennes and formed the congregation of Mantua, which, was declared independent of the order by
Pope Eugenius IV. In
1431 or
1432 the same pope sanctioned certain modifications of the Carmelite rule, and in
1459 Pope Pius II left the regulation of fasts to the discretion of the general.
John Soreth[?], who was then general, and had already established the order of Carmelite nuns in
1452, accordingly sought to restore the primitive asceticism, but died of poison at
Nantes in
1471. In
1476 a bull of
Pope Sixtus IV founded the Carmelites of the Third Order, who received a special rule in
1635, which was amended in 1678. The sixteenth century saw a number of short-lived reforms, but it was not until the second half of the same century that a thorough reforation of the Carmelites was carried out by St.
Theresa of Avila, who, together with St.
John of the Cross, established the Discalced Carmelites. In conscious opposition to
Protestantism the order was now inspired with an asceticism and a devotion hitherto unknown to it. In
1593 the Discalced Carmelites had their own general, and by 1600 they were so numerous that it became necessary to divide them into the two congregations of
Spain and of
Italy, or St. Elise, the latter including all provinces except Spain. Henceforth there were four Carmelite generals: the general of the Observantines, of the independent congregation of Mantua, and of the two congregations of the Diacalced Carmelites.
By the middle of the seventeenth century the Carmelites had reached their zenith. At this period, however, they became involved in controversies with other orders, particularly with the
Jesuits. The special objects of attack were the traditional origin of the Carmelites and the source of their scapular. The
Sorbonne, represented by Jean Launoy, joined the Jesuits in their polemics against the Carmelites. Papebroch, the
Bollandist editor of the Acta Sanctorum, was answered by the Carmelite Sebastian of St. Paul, who made such serious charges against the orthodoxy of his opponent's writings that the very existence of the Bollandists was threatened. The peril was averted, however, and in 1696 a decree of Rocaberti, archbishop of
Valencia and inquisitor-general of the
holy office, forbade all further controversies between the Carmelites and Jesuits. Two years later, on
November 20,
1698,
Pope Innocent XII issued a brief which definitely ended the controversy on pain of
excommunication, and placed all writings in violation of the brief upon the Index.
The
French Revolution and the sequestration of monasteries in southern Europe were heavy blows to the Carmelites. At the present time there are five provinces of Calced or Old Order Carmelites (
Rome,
Malta,
Iceland,
England, and
Galicia) and eight of Discalced (
Rome,
Genoa,
Lombardy,
Venice,
Tuscany,
Piedmont,
Aquitaine, and
Avignon), in addition to a number of isolated cloisters and priories of both Calced and Discalced Carmelites in various countries.