Carmelites

Based on Wikipedia: Carmelites

In 1251, a Carmelite prior named Simon Stock experienced something that would transform his order forever. While the world around him crumbled—with crusader kingdoms collapsing and Latin hermits fleeing the Holy Land—he received a vision of the Virgin Mary, accompanied by angels, holding a scapular in her hands. "Receive, my dear son, this scapular of your Order," she declared, "as the distinctive sign of the mark of the privilege that I have obtained for you and the children of Carmel; it is a a sign of salvation, a safeguard in perils and the pledge of peace and special protection until the end of the centuries." This moment, believed to be Simon Stock's vision atop Mount Carmel, became the catalyst for one of Catholic Europe's most distinctive religious orders—a order that would not trace its spiritual lineage to a charismatic founder, but instead to an Old Testament prophet.

The Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel—known simply as the Carmelites or sometimes by synecdoche as just "Carmel"—emerged from the rocky caves of one of Christianity's most ancient spiritual landscapes. The order's historical records remain shrouded in uncertainty, but what scholars accept is that sometime in the 12th century, likely around 1185, hermits began inhabiting the caves of Mount Carmel following the prophetic footsteps of Elijah. The precise date of founding remains questionable—the tradition holds that a group of hermits led by Berthold of Calabria began to inhabit these caves after the Third Crusade, though written evidence is sparse.

The spiritual ancestry the Carmelites claim is unlike any other monastic order in Christendom. Rather than pointing to a charismatic human founder, they look instead to Elijah—the prophet who fled the wrath of King Ahab and retreated to Mount Carmel, where God revealed himself in a gentle whisper. This connection runs deep: tradition indicates that long before Christian hermits arrived, Jewish and then Byzantine monks lived, prayed, and taught in the very caves used by Elijah and his disciple Elisha. The first chapel built within these hermitages was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and quickly, the spirituality of the order turned entirely toward Mary—she became what they called "the queen and mistress of Carmel." This devotion to the Mother of God would define everything about their faith.

Before the Carmelites arrived, in the 6th century Byzantine monks built a monastery dedicated to Saint Elijah in a valley a few kilometers south of what would become the present monastery. This foundation was destroyed in 614 by the Persians of Khosrow II—part of a wave of conquests that reshaped the Holy Land. Around 1150, a Greek monk from Calabria established a community of about ten members among the ruins of this ancient Byzantine monastery which he rebuilt and renamed Saint Elijah.

The oldest reliable written accounts of Latin hermits on Mount Carmel date back to 1220, with another text appearing in 1263. In what became known as the first monastery—located in an east-west facing valley 3.5 kilometers south of where the current monastery now stands—the hermits began their peculiar life. Their leader was supposedly Brocard, though written evidence is lacking entirely; instead, the Carmelite rule references only "Brother B." who asked the patriarch for a rule of life for hermits. Tradition established that it was Brocard—second prior general of the order—who asked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Albert of Vercelli, to provide the group with a written rule of life. This request would change everything.

The rule, dated 1209, centered entirely on prayer and defined the exact way of life these hermits would follow: contemplative, austere, devoted to silence and solitude. The first act of the Order of Brothers of The Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel was to dedicate a chapel to the Virgin Mary under the title of Mary, Star of the Sea—Stella Maris—a name that would echo through centuries of Carmelite devotion. But before this new order could fully establish itself in the Holy Land, the world around it collapsed.

By the end of the first crusade led by Louis IX of France in the Holy Land in 1254—the Seventh Crusade—Louis brought six Carmelites back to France who joined with those who since 1238 had started to seek and found houses all over Europe. The fall of Saint-Jean-d'Acre in 1291, and the fall of the Latin state of Outremer, led to the destruction of the last Carmelite convents in the Holy Land. The Carmelites who had chosen to remain there were massacred by the Mamelukes. Those who survived fled Europe—returning to their homelands—and brought with them a new monastic tradition that would reshape Catholic spirituality across the continent.

Back in Europe, the hermits of Carmel encountered numerous difficulties. Their eremitic life did not adapt well to their new settlements; they were scattered across different nations and found themselves in direct "competition" with other mendicant orders. Pope Innocent III wished to bring all the mendicant orders together under the direction of the Order of Friars Minor and the Order of Preachers—Francescan and Dominicans—and in 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council decided to group existing Mendicant orders under these two primary ones.

In 1274, the Second Council of Lyon disestablished all mendicant orders founded after 1215; only four remained: the Franciscans, the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), the Carmelites, and the Augustinians. The Carmelites—barely spared—were forced to change their way of life from eremitic to mendicant. Gradually, during the 13th century, Carmelite hermits returning from Mount Carmel resettled throughout Europe: Cyprus, Sicily, Italy, England, southern France.

Some dates and locations are known with remarkable specificity: in 1235, Pierre de Corbie and his companion settled in the Duchy of Hainaut (Valenciennes); in 1242, Carmelites settled in Aylesford, Kent, England; in 1244, Carmelites disembarked in Marseille, France, and settled in caves in Aygalades; in 1259, Carmelites settled in Paris, France; in 1279, Carmelites settled in Dublin, Ireland. Each new house became a seed for what would eventually become the global expansion of this remarkable order.

Yet it was Simon Stock—the prior general of the Carmelites—whose desperate prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary may have saved the entire order from extinction. Faced with dissolution by the Catholic Church itself and deeply worried about the very difficult situation his order faced, he intensely prayed for aid. In 1251, Our Lady of Mount Carmel appeared to him accompanied by a multitude of angels, holding in her hand the Scapular of the Order.

The vision's message was clear: "Whoever dies in this garment will be preserved from eternal fires." Following this vision and the spread of the scapular—woven brown wool, representing the habits worn by Carmelite monks—the order endured and spread rapidly throughout Europe. The historicity of these events is disputed among scholars, but the spiritual impact was undeniable.

The rule of Saint Albert was not approved by a pope until 30 January 1226 in the bull Ut vivendi normam of Honorius III. In 1229, Pope Gregory IX confirmed this rule again and gave it the status of Regula bullada—effectively codifying the Carmelites as a recognized order within the Catholic Church.

The order of Carmelite nuns was formalized much later, in 1452—a testament to how this unusual order grew and adapted over centuries. The Discalced Carmelites, who split off from the older order in 1562, eventually grew to have more members than the original Carmelites—known now as the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance or very rarely the Calced Carmelites (a reference to some religious orders going barefoot or wearing sandals instead of shoes).

Today, few can visit Mount Carmel without encountering the legacy of this unusual order. Jerg Ratgeb painted a fresco retracing the life of the Carmelites at the beginning of the 16th century on the walls of the refectory of the Carmelite monastery in Frankfurt—a testament to how this tiny band of hermits, fleeing the collapse of crusader kingdoms, ultimately transformed Catholic spirituality worldwide.