The Foundation of the Carmelites

Nothing about the Carmelite foundation can be understood if one looks, as with the other orders, for a man and a precise date. Here, the birth is diffuse: it stretches over several decades, with no single founding act, and the earliest written sources are late and rare.

The silence of the origins

The honest historian must admit it from the outset: the oldest reliable written testimonies to the presence of Latin hermits on Mount Carmel go back only to around 1220, with another important text dated 1263 — one or two generations after the events.^[6][7] Everything before that belongs to reconstruction, oral tradition, and later hagiography. That is why the dates put forward for the very first hermits — often placed in the second half of the 12th century — remain approximate.

A precious external clue comes from the East, however. Around 1185, a Greek pilgrim monk, John Phocas, visited Mount Carmel and met there a "Calabrian" — that is, Latin — monk who had gathered around him some ten hermits, near the ruins of an ancient monastery and the "cave of Elijah."^[8][9] This testimony, independent of any Carmelite source, attests that by that date a small Latin eremitical community did indeed exist on the mountain.

Mount Carmel, Elijah's mountain

The choice of place is no accident: it is the key to the whole identity of the order. Mount Carmel is, in the Bible, the mountain of the prophet Elijah: there he defied the prophets of Baal and brought down fire from heaven (1 Kings 18), there his servant saw rising from the sea the little cloud announcing rain — an image tradition would read as a figure of the Virgin.^[10] Since antiquity, the mountain has drawn solitaries; its prophetic memory makes it a great centre of eremitical life.

"[…] The servant went up, looked, and said, 'There is nothing.' Elijah said seven times, 'Go back.' At the seventh time, he said, 'Behold, a little cloud rising out of the sea, like the hand of a man.' […]" — First Book of Kings 18, 43–44 (excerpt)^[11]

The Latin crusaders, masters of the region since the First Crusade (1099), found this living tradition on the spot. Pilgrims, penitents, former soldiers of Christ sought solitude there instead of returning to Europe. They settled above all in a secluded valley on the western slope, Wadi 'ain es-Siah — "the valley of the spring" — near a living spring identified with "Elijah's fountain."^[12] It was there, and not in a monastery built in one stroke, that Carmel began.

Berthold of Calabria and Brocard

Tradition has given faces to these anonymous beginnings. It names as the first head of the community a crusader turned hermit, Berthold of Calabria, said to be related to Aymeric, the Latin Patriarch of Antioch; he is said to have died around 1195.^[13][14] At his death, the brothers are said to have elected Brocard (or Brocardus), of French descent, reputed to be learned in Scripture. It was under his priorate, at the beginning of the 13th century, that the hermits asked for a written rule; he died around 1231.^[15]

These names must be received with the caution the material demands: the Rule of Saint Albert is addressed to a superior designated only by the initial "B.", whom tradition identifies with Brocard without any documentary proof confirming it.^[16][17] Berthold and Brocard are therefore not "founders" in the full sense: they are the first priors of an already existing community, the figures the order's memory fixed in order to give a face to its hazy origins. The enigma remains: Carmel has no founder, but it has fathers.

If the Carmelite community exists in fact from the end of the 12th century, it becomes a recognized institution only on the day it receives a written rule. That founding act bears an approximate date — between 1206 and 1214 — and a name: that of Saint Albert Avogadro.

Saint Albert Avogadro, Patriarch of Jerusalem

Albert Avogadro (c. 1149–1214), a canon regular and then Bishop of Vercelli, was appointed Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1205 and papal legate in the Holy Land. Because Jerusalem was then in Muslim hands, he resided at Acre, the de facto capital of the Latin kingdom, not far from Mount Carmel.^[18][19] It was to him, the ecclesiastical and juridical authority of the place, that the hermits turned to obtain a form of life (formula vitae) that would give their experience a canonical framework. The patriarch was assassinated at Acre in 1214: the Rule is therefore necessarily earlier than that date. His own biography is treated in his dedicated article.

A formula vitae, the shortest of rules

What Albert wrote is not yet a "rule" in the full canonical sense, but a formula vitae: a brief text, intended for a group of fervent faithful embracing the evangelical life. It is remarkable for its brevity — about 2,000 words in the Latin original, sixteen short chapters — making it the shortest of all written rules of consecrated life.^[20][21] Its second characteristic is to be woven almost entirely from quotations of Scripture: beneath its bareness it hides a spiritual depth that eight centuries of Carmelites have never ceased to explore.

Its intention is stated from the opening, in a formula that would become the programme of the whole order:

"To live in obedience to Jesus Christ and to serve him faithfully with a pure heart and a good conscience." — Saint Albert of Jerusalem, Carmelite Rule, Prologue (§ 2)^[22]

What the Rule prescribes

Beneath its brevity, the Rule outlines a very precise way of life, between Eastern eremitism and Latin monasticism. Its main prescriptions are:

• obedience to a prior, elected by the brothers, to whom each promises obedience;^[23]
• separate cells, distributed across the site according to the layout of the land: each brother lives, prays and works alone in his cell;^[24][25]
• an oratory in the midst of the cells, where the brothers gather each morning for Mass;^[26]
• the continual meditation of the Law of the Lord, "day and night," which is the contemplative heart of the Rule;
• silence, kept above all from compline until morning, as the setting for union with God;
• fasting and abstinence from meat, poverty and the pooling of goods;
• manual work, following the example of Saint Paul, so as to be a burden to no one.^[27]

The text ends with a famous exhortation to put on the spiritual armour described by Saint Paul — the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit — making the Carmelite a contemplative combatant.^[28][29]

"Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the wiles of the devil. […] Take above all the shield of faith, with which you shall be able to quench all the flaming darts of the evil one." — Saint Paul, Ephesians 6, 11 and 16, quoted by the Carmelite Rule^[30]

The oratory of Our Lady: the order of the Virgin

One material detail has immense significance. In the midst of their cells, the hermits raised an oratory dedicated to the Virgin Mary — probably around 1220.^[31][32] This choice decided everything: Carmel would be, from the very beginning, the order of Our Lady. From this oratory comes the full and official name of the order, "Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel," and it is this primitive Marian dedication which later blossomed into the devotion of the brown scapular and the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The bond between the Virgin and Carmel is not a later devout addition: it is written into the very stones of the foundation.

A rule given by a local patriarch is not enough to secure an order's future: the guarantee of the Apostolic See is needed. Yet between 1215 and 1247, that guarantee was both given and constantly reworked.

Honorius III (1226) and Gregory IX (1229)

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) had forbidden the creation of new religious orders and new rules: every young community now had to adopt an already approved rule.^[33] The Carmelites, born before the council but recognized after it, found themselves in a fragile position that would long weigh on their existence. The first Roman approval of their Rule came from Pope Honorius III, through the bull Ut vivendi normam of 30 January 1226.^[34][35] It was confirmed by Gregory IX on 6 April 1229, giving the text the status of a regula bullata.

Innocent IV: the definitive approval (1247)

It was Innocent IV who gave the Rule its lasting form. After a confirmation on 8 June 1245, he solemnly and definitively approved the text as a true rule through the bull Quae honorem Conditoris of 1 October 1247.^[36][37] But this approval came with a decisive mitigation, which transformed the very nature of the order — as we shall see below.

The foundation of Carmel took place in the Holy Land; its future was decided in Europe. For at the very moment the order received its rule and its first bulls, the Latin kingdom was collapsing under the blows of Islam, and Elijah's mountain was becoming a place where survival was no longer possible.

Muslim pressure and the fall of the Latin states

After the recapture of Jerusalem by Saladin (1187) and the failure of the following crusades, the Christian positions in the Holy Land shrank to almost nothing. Mount Carmel, exposed, became dangerous. From the 1230s–1240s onwards, groups of brothers began to leave the mountain to found convents in Christian lands, carrying with them their Rule and their Marian devotion.^[38][39]

Cyprus, Sicily, Marseilles, England, France

The spread followed the routes of the returning crusaders. Around 1238, colonies left for Cyprus, Sicily, Marseilles and Valenciennes.^[40] The first English foundations — including Aylesford and Hulne, in Northumberland — appeared around 1241–1242, brought by returning English crusaders.^[41][42] In 1254, the King of France Saint Louis, back from crusade, brought six Carmelite hermits with him and settled them at Charenton, near Paris.^[43] Within a few years, the order born on a mountain in the East had taken root throughout Western Christendom.

The massacre at Wadi 'ain es-Siah (1291)

The end of Eastern Carmel was tragic. On 18 May 1291, the fall of Acre, the last great Latin stronghold, sounded the end of the crusader states. The brothers who had remained at Wadi 'ain es-Siah, around their church of Saint Brocard and their chapel of Our Lady, were massacred that year by the Muslim conquerors.^[44][45][46] The valley kept the name "valley of the martyrs." The ruins of that first monastery, excavated by archaeologists, remain the mute witness of the abandoned cradle: the order would return durably to Mount Carmel only in the 17th century, at another site, with the Stella Maris monastery.

The most consequential event in this whole history is not a foundation, but a transformation. In leaving the East for the cities of the West, the order born of the desert could no longer live as in the desert. In 1247, Rome drew the consequences of that exile: Carmel changed its nature.

The chapter of Aylesford and Simon Stock

In 1247, a decisive general chapter was held at Aylesford, in England, which elected at the head of the order Saint Simon Stock (date of birth unknown — late tradition places his birth around 1165 — died 16 May 1265).^[47][48] Under his government, the order, now established in the university and merchant cities of Europe, asked the pope to adapt the Rule to this new setting. The figure of Simon Stock — and the tradition of the vision of the scapular attached to him — belongs to his own article and to the article on the scapular; what matters here is the institutional turning point he accompanied.

The mitigation of Innocent IV

In response to this request, Innocent IV entrusted the revision of the text to two Dominicans and approved the mitigated Rule in 1247.^[49][50] The relaxations concerned the points incompatible with urban life: foundations were no longer reserved to deserts but could be made in towns; the brothers could take their meals in common; fasting and silence were softened; the possession of common goods (livestock, revenues) was permitted.^[51] Through these changes, Carmel ceased to be an eremitical order and became one of the mendicant orders, alongside the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

The table below measures the scale of this transformation.

This transformation was experienced by some as a betrayal of the desert ideal; in reality, it was the condition for the order's survival. A Carmel that had remained purely eremitical would probably have disappeared with the Holy Land, like so many other Eastern foundations. Having become mendicant, it could take root, grow, and produce, centuries later, the great doctors of prayer. But nostalgia for the desert of the origins remained inscribed in the heart of the order — and would nourish all its future reforms, down to that of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross.

Passing to the rank of mendicant order did not end the dangers. The Second Council of Lyons (1274), anxious to limit the proliferation of orders born after the Lateran Council of 1215, suppressed or suspended many young mendicant congregations.^[52][53] The Carmelites — like the Hermits of Saint Augustine — were gravely threatened. They owed their salvation to one decisive argument: they could claim an origin earlier than 1215, going back to the hermits of Mount Carmel. The council retained them provisionally, and their position among the approved mendicants was then confirmed.

This rescue sheds light on what followed. Never to be threatened in its existence again, the order would have to prove its antiquity — and this juridical and vital necessity largely explains the construction of the Elian memory that asserted itself immediately afterwards.

An order born without a founder, threatened with suppression, forced into exile, had a vital need to know where it came from. This question became pressing when young brothers, in the West, had to answer those who questioned them about their origins. The official answer was inscribed at the head of the Constitutions of 1281, drawn up at the general chapter of London: the famous Rubrica prima.^[54][55]

The Elian filiation

The Rubrica prima declares that, since the time when the prophets Elijah and Elisha dwelt devoutly on Mount Carmel, holy Fathers of the Old and the New Testament have led without interruption a life of holy penance at Elijah's fountain — down to the brothers of Carmel who would be their direct heirs.^[56] The text thus presents an unbroken chain of solitaries linking the medieval brothers to the prophet of the Old Testament.

"We declare, bearing witness to the truth, that from the time when the prophets Elijah and Elisha dwelt devoutly on Mount Carmel, holy Fathers, both of the Old and of the New Testament, whom contemplation of heavenly things drew to the solitude of this mountain, have undoubtedly led a praiseworthy life there, in holy penance, near the fountain of Elijah." — Rubrica prima of the Carmelite Constitutions (1281)^[57]

History or legend?

The Catholic compass invites accuracy here, with neither modernist contempt nor credulity. Historically, it is impossible to establish an institutional continuity between the prophets of the Old Testament and the Latin hermits of the 12th century: historians, including Carmelites, recognize that the Rubrica prima belongs to claimed tradition, not documented chronicle.^[58][59] Medieval Carmel was indeed founded by Latin hermits of the crusader period, not instituted by Elijah.

But to reduce this filiation to a fiction would be unjust. Mount Carmel really is Elijah's mountain; the eremitical life was really led there century after century, by Jewish, Christian and Byzantine solitaries, before the Latins; and the first brothers really wished to live "in the footsteps of Elijah," whom they held to be the model of every contemplative. The Elian filiation is therefore not a lie, but a spiritual and typological reading of history: Carmel understands itself as the resumption, under the New Covenant, of the prophetic ideal of the desert. Understood thus — as a spiritual fatherhood and not as a juridical succession — Father Elijah remains, rightly, the inspirer of the order.

From this complex history, a few features can be drawn that make the Carmelite foundation unique among all those of the Middle Ages.

First, a birth with no birth certificate: where the Carthusians date their foundation to June 1084 and the Franciscans to the approval of their propositum in 1209, Carmel has neither day, nor founder, nor single foundation — but a slow emergence of hermits, fixed afterwards by a rule.

Next, a foundation in two stages: that of the desert (the Mount Carmel hermitage, the Rule of Saint Albert) and that of the town (the mendicant transformation of 1247). The same order was born twice — as an Eastern contemplative, then as a Western mendicant — and it will always carry within it this double memory, the source of its fruitfulness as of its tensions.

Finally, a Marian and prophetic foundation: from the primitive oratory onwards, Carmel is the order of Our Lady; from the Rubrica prima onwards, it is the order of Elijah. Mary and Elijah — the Virgin and the prophet of fire — stand over its cradle and give the order that unique face of contemplative solitude under the gaze of the Mother of God. It is that seed, planted in a valley of the Holy Land in the shadow of the crusades, which would produce one of the greatest trees of Christian spirituality. Its later history, its reforms and its saints are told in the article on the Carmelite order.

• Sources and founding texts: the Rule of Saint Albert of Jerusalem (formula vitae), edited and commented by the Carmelites (O.Carm. and O.C.D.), notably on ocarm.org and carmelite.org; the Rubrica prima of the Carmelite Constitutions of 1281; the oldest documents on the hermits of Mount Carmel (c. 1220 and 1263).
• Reference studies: Wilfrid McGreal, O.Carm., At the Fountain of Elijah. The Carmelite Tradition (Orbis Books, 1999), on the origins and the construction of the Elian memory; Joachim Smet, O.Carm., The Carmelites. A History of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel; works on the Rule and on Saint Albert (Kees Waaijman; Carlo Cicconetti).
• Notices: Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "The Carmelite Order" (New Advent); "Carmelites" and "Rule of Saint Albert" (Wikipedia); biblewalks.com for Wadi 'ain es-Siah and the ruins of the first monastery.
• Related articles on Ignispedia: the Carmelite order as institution and spiritual family (reforms, branches, saints, today); Carmelite spirituality (prayer, night, interior castle); the sanctuary of Mount Carmel (Stella Maris); Saint Albert of Jerusalem, author of the Rule; Saint Simon Stock and the brown scapular; the prophet Elijah, spiritual father of the order. For comparison with the other great foundations: the Carthusians (1084), the Cistercians, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, born in the wake of the First Crusade and the 13th-century reform.