Carmelites

Carmelites , Roman Catholic order of mendicant friars. Originally a group of hermits, apparently European, living on Mt. Carmel in Palestine, their supervision was undertaken (c.1150) by St. Berthold. In 1238 they moved to Cyprus, and thence to Western Europe. St. Simon Stock (d. 1265), an Englishman, was their second founder. He transformed them into an order of friars resembling Dominicans and Franciscans and founded monasteries at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and Bologna. They rapidly became prominent in university life. An enclosed order of Carmelite nuns was established. The Carmelites, like other orders, declined in the 15th cent. They were revived by St. Theresa (of Ávila) and St. John of the Cross in 16th-century Spain. These great contemplatives gave the order a special orientation toward mysticism. Their reformed branch is the Discalced (or Barefoot) Carmelites; it is now more numerous than the Carmelites of the Old Observance. The Discalced Carmelites cultivate the contemplative life in all aspects, and they have produced many works on mystical theology. St. Theresa (of Lisieux) is a well-known Discalced Carmelite of the 19th cent. In 1790 the first community came to the United States and settled near Port Tobacco, Md. There are presently about 6,900 priests and brothers living in Carmelite communities, with 500 living in the United States.

Bibliography: See E. A. Peers, Spirit of Flame (1944, repr. 1961); P. Rohrback, Journey to the Carith (1966).

Carmelites (officially Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel) Order founded by Saint Berthold in Palestine c.1154. An order of Carmelite sisters was founded in 1452. The Carmelites devote themselves to contemplation and missionary work.

Carmelites. The ‘Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel’ dates from the late 12th cent. A group of hermits living on Mount Carmel accepted an austere rule written c.1208 by St Albert, the Latin Patr. of Jerusalem. By the mid-13th cent. the instability of the Crusader kingdom led some of the hermits to migrate to Europe and in 1247 Innocent IV allowed foundations not only in desert places but also in towns and cities and made other changes. The Order then grew rapidly. Communities of women, who adapted the Rule of Albert, were associated to the Order and formally incorporated into it in 1432. Also in 1432 Eugenius approved a second mitigation of the Rule. This, together with the decline in religious observance in the later Middle Ages, led to attempts at reform which were encouraged in the revised constitutions of 1456. After losing the French provinces in the Revolution and its aftermath, the Carmelites have rebuilt their European provinces and expanded in the New and Third World. There are now Carmelite Friars (of the Ancient Observance), Discalced Carmelite Friars (who look to the ‘Teresian Reform’ as their inspiration) and Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (founded in India in 1831), enclosed communities of Carmelite Nuns, congregations of active Carmelite Sisters, and Secular Institutes of lay people.