It is one matter to have a vision of life’s possibilities; it is another to give it concrete shape, and it is a third matter to sustain the vision. This process is necessary whether for an individual or community. The longer the vision must be sustained the greater the possibility of it becoming dimmed, and, concomitantly, the greater the need to renew and reinvigorate the original vision.
The Christian community calling itself Carmelite has attempted to sustain a vision for almost eight hundred years. The fact that the vision still energizes and challenges people is a testimony to its power. But it is a vision necessarily incarnated in human beings whose faithfulness to the vision suffers the vagaries of human existence. In other words, the Carmelites have frequently let themselves and others down, and have had to remorsefully pick themselves up. The history of the Carmelites, from one perspective, is a lesson about the danger of human hubris and the consequences of neglecting essential values; it is also a testimony to the human spirit which has the capability of going once more to the well of its imagination and drawing up an image of what once was and what still could be.
“Nor is it in any way good,” wrote the Carmelite Teresa of Avila, “for persons to complain if they see their order in some decline; rather, they should strive to be the kind of rock on which the edifice may again be raised for the Lord will help toward that.” (1) The story of Carmel is the story of just such people stepping forward time and again to call others to a renewal of the original vision, at the same time reminding them of their own deepest desires.
The following is a brief account of the beginnings of this community, and succeeding efforts by Carmelite men and women to take responsibility for their order and its vision.
The First Carmelites
The path to Carmel begins in a place of attentiveness to God, a mountainous ridge jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea. Mount Carmel forms the southern boundary of the Bay of Haifa in Israel. Here between heaven and earth, sea and land, people gathered in prayer, among them the prophet Elijah. He would be identified with the path which would be Carmel.
In the late 12th century AD, the original Carmelites gathered on the mountain and in its canyons in order to escape their former lives to be free of the pressures and expectations which imprisoned them, and to set straight their priorities. Probably most were from other countries, choosing to begin again in an unknown land.
They were from the West, Latins, living in a crusader-protected area called the Kingdom of Jerusalem, or simply the Latin Kingdom. Under The crusaders, all of Palestine was known as the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But Saladin, at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin in 1187, defeated the crusaders and restored most of the land to Muslim control. Richard the Lionheart of England recaptured Acre in 1191 and entered into a treaty which gave the crusaders control over a thin strip of land on the coast of Palestine, the remnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This coastal land included Mount Carmel. It is most probable that the first Carmelites began living on Mount Carmel sometime after this. Perhaps some of the hermits were from other eremitical locations in Palestine and Antioch, which had now become untenable. (2)
The original Carmelites settled on Mount Carmel by a spring known as the “fountain of Elijah.” The spring was at the opening of the wadi ‘ain es-Siah, which was approximately two kilometers inland from the point of the promontory. The wadi ran about a thousand meters east and west opening to the Mediterranean. Here Carmelites lived for the first one hundred years of their existence
These men left almost nothing in the way of written records. When history first took notice of them they were already a functioning community. Early in the 1200s, sightings of the Carmelites began to appear in reports of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. Pilgrims landed north of Mount Carmel at Acre and traveled south along the coast on the via maris, passing the location of the fountain of Elijah. Even at this early date the pilgrims were able to report that the church visible in the wadi was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
Jacques de Vitry, who was Bishop of Acre from 1216 to 1228, also left a testimony to their existence. Identifying locations in Palestine where the eremitical life flourished, he observed: “… others after the example and an imitation of holy solitary Elijah the prophet lived as hermits in the beehives of small cells on Mount Carmel… near the spring which is called the Spring of Elijah.” (3)
The earliest recorded communication from the Carmelites themselves has been preserved in the opening lines of their constitutions of 1281. These lines, identified as the Rubrica Prima, quite possibly date back to the 1230s when some of the Carmelites had begun migrating back to Europe and their identity was in question. This response was to be given by members of the order when questioned about their heritage:
We declare, bearing testimony 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 the New Testament, whom the contemplation of heavenly things drew to the solitude of the same mountain, have without doubt led praiseworthy lives there by the fountain of Elijah in holy penitence unceasingly and successfully maintained.
It was these same successors whom Albert the patriarch of Jerusalem, in the time of Innocent III, united into a community, writing a rule for them which Pope Honorius, the successor of the same Innocent, and many of their successors, approving this order, most devoutly confirmed by their charters. In the profession of this rule, we, their followers, serve the lord and diverse parts of the world, even to the present day. (4)
These first Carmelites were men who must have had a conversion in their life, a serious change of lifestyle, and a reordering of their values. As part of their conversion they went apart in solitude leaving traditional roles in society. And they were pilgrims, people whose conversion took them to the periphery of society and the church to live on the patrimony of Jesus Christ and their serve their liege Lord.
We do not know the names of these first Carmelites. (5) But we do know their hearts. From the beginning this tradition rooted itself in the deep hungers of the human heart. These men could only have located themselves on this mountain and begun a life together in response to such hungers, such “deep caverns of feeling,” later captured in the poetry of John of the cross. Why else live where they lived?
We can assume they had tried to feed these hungers with the normal food which nourishes life: relationships, possessions, plans, titles, reputations. They probably found that their efforts and their control brought little peace to their lives. They had not found food sufficient to feed their hunger.
And so they laid their lives down and began again. Perhaps they were escaping more than simply restlessness. Perhaps lives had come apart in deep disappointment; perhaps they experienced unbearable losses; perhaps they were chased from other places, or even were escaping the law.
But it was more than escape that brought them to Mount Carmel. They assembled there because of a call. I would think they were people who were haunted in some ways and who found one another on a mountain which evoked their desires. People today come to this tradition because they, too, experience themselves as pilgrims on this earth, having deep hungers, and are haunted by a call.
The conditions on Mount Carmel are inviting. The sight slopes to the waters of the Mediterranean. Its breezes cool the canyon. Within its walls the men living at slight distances from one another, spending time in reflection and prayer. They read Scripture and carried its lines in their hearts. They fasted, abstained from meat, and worked in silence. They gathered regularly: daily for mass, weekly for discussions. They lived a life of poverty, and what they owned they owned together. Their leader was elected, and he was to live at the entrance to the site. Life on Mount Carmel focused their scattered lives and settled their confused minds. It freed hearts that had been anxious about many things. The oratory in the midst of the cells invited them to find a center in the midst of their lives.
These elements were collected into a brief formula of life which became the Rule of the Carmelites. Albert, the Patriarch of Jerusalem who was living in Acre, gave this formula of life to the community sometime between 1206 and 1214. He concluded the document with an admonition: “Here then are a few points I have written down to provide you with a standard of conduct to live up to… see that the bond of common sense is the guide of the virtues.” (6) while not specifically mentioned in the rule, there are indications that the hermits on Mount Carmel engaged in some pastoral activity. Such activity would not have been incongruent with the eremitical life.
As early as 1238 Carmelites began to leave Mount Carmel for new sites in Europe. By 1291, after an existence of approximately a hundred years in the canyon, all Carmelites had withdrawn. Muslim and Christian warfare had made the mountain untenable. “The inroads of the pagans,” wrote Pope Innocent the IV, “have driven our beloved sons, the hermits of Mount Carmel, to betake themselves, not without great affliction of spirit, to parts across the sea.” (7)
They travelled to Cyprus, Sicily, France, and England. Initially they intended to continue an eremitical existence, but very quickly they were transformed into one of the mendicant orders, taking their place with the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians.
Their formula of life given by Albert changed into its final form in 1247 and became the official Rule of the Carmelites. The change strengthened their common life and allowed them to live, not only in solitude, but also where it was convenient for their way of life. (8)
The development of the order took place over a vast geographical panorama. By the end of the 13th century, sixty years after arriving in Europe, the order had grown from a small band of men in a narrow valley in Palestine to about 150 houses, divided into twelve provinces throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. With practically no official documentation of its beginning, except for its rule and constitutions, with no founder, and with an anonymous first community, Carmel closed the 13th century with its first doctorates in theology. Gerard of Bologna received his doctorate from the University of Paris in 1295. Two years later he was elected Prior General of the order.
The brief time on Mount Carmel forevermore shaped the ancient path of the Carmelite tradition. Each major figure on the path of Carmel returned to the mountain in memory and in heart to be renewed by the original impulses which gathered the group in cells and around the oratory. Perhaps, too, each person read back into the beginnings what he or she needed to find. For example, John of Hildesheim (d. 1375) evoked their memory, but with some romanticism: “The primitive dwellers on Mount Carmel were simple hermits, unlettered, poor, they possess no parchments, nor were they writers. They were accustomed to prey rather than to write.” (9)
Later travelers of the ancient path continued to mine the mountain, going deeper into the themes and implications of that long-ago existence. When Teresa of Avila began her reformed convents of Carmelite nuns she had as a blueprint in her mind the original Carmelite setting on Mount Carmel. Earlier reforms, as well, attempted to return to the original vision.
Decline, the Reform of Mantua, and John Soreth
In the 14th century Carmel produced the outstanding figures of St. Andrew Corsini and St. Peter Thomas. Andrew Corsini (d. 1374), from Florence, received a doctorate in theology from the University of Paris, was elected provincial, and then appointed Bishop of Fiesole. He was known for the simplicity of his life, his care for the poor, and his excellent preaching. Peter Thomas (d. 1366), from Aquitaine, became an advisor to Avignon popes and was sent on numerous diplomatic missions for the papacy, including missions to Serbia and Constantinople for the promotion of church unity. He was appointed Archbishop of Crete and Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.
However, the fervor of the order began to wane in the late 14th century and the malaise grew worse in the 15th century. Religious life slowly entered a period of decline everywhere. The general population of Europe was decimated by a plague, the Black Death, in the years 1348 and 1349. It is not known how badly the disease affected the order directly, but it is known that during a General Chapter in Metz in 1348, two hundred friars died, either during the sessions or travelling to and from the sessions. The Hundred Years’ War was another type of plague which affected religious life. During this warfare between England and France (1337-1453) about thirty of the ninety Carmelite houses in France were destroyed either through fighting or for use in building defenses.
In 1432, Eugene IV modified the Rule of Carmel. This “second mitigation” allowed the friars, on suitable occasions, to remain and walk about in their churches and cloisters and their periphery, and to eat meat three times a week. Later legislation reduced abstinence days to Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Although not written in to the official text of the Rule, this second mitigation concluded the process of the hermits on Mount Carmel gaining mendicant status. Actually, the mitigation merely ratified the lifestyle already prevalent. However to many people these changes were an indication of a gradual loss of Carmel’s original vision and spirit. Later reformers, including Teresa of Avila, often rejected this mitigation.
Blessed John Soreth (c. 1395-1471), who had received a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1438, was elected Prior General of the order in 1451. A reform minded general, Soreth nonetheless defended the changes in the Rule. Movement about the churches and cloisters was a fact and a necessity and did not necessarily undermine the prescription to remain near one’s cell. He wrote:
To remove the scruples of the weak, this has been declared by Eugene IV to mean that it is permitted to remain and freely walk about in churches, cloisters, and precincts of convents, meditating on the law of the Lord, or praying, and serving in proper occupations. (10)
He also defended changes in the abstinence prescriptions:
Our mendicant state does not possess streams nor sources whence fish for the nourishment of the brethren may be obtained…our Father Basil says in his rule that those foods must by all means be used that can be more easily and cheaply obtained; but in many places meat is of this kind. Therefore out of a sort of pressing need we poor friars are obliged sometimes to eat it, lest on account of abstinence we be found to seek after food of a more expensive kind and difficult to obtain. (11)
Although he defended the changes, John Soreth was well aware of the unhealthy state of the order. “The Rule and institutions of the order now lie everywhere neglected. Who keeps them, or who knows them?” he complained. (12) The decline of religious life was marked by an absence of a vital prayer life, serious lapses in the practice of poverty, and a general disregard for the common life.
A reform had already begun early in the 15th century when LaSelve, a community located between Florence and Pisa, declared itself a “house of observance.” It was joined by another community in Mantua. Soon these houses and others who joined them became a distinct entity in the order, the Mantuan reform, and were placed directly under the jurisdiction of the general.
The Mantuan reform stressed silence and a cloister, forbidding entrance to outsiders. The friars were not allowed to be aimlessly outside the convent. Money was distributed from a common chest, and the reformers rejected the mitigation of the Rule which allowed them to include meat in their diet three times a week.
A leading reform figure, Blessed Baptist of Mantua (1447-1516), explained, “The Mantua Congregation, rising at the inspiration of God from the sordid neglect into which practically the whole order had fallen, strives to pattern its life and customs after the ancient fathers.” (13) The reform grew under the generalate of John Soreth. By the time of the death of Baptist of Mantua the Congregation of Mantua had thirty-one houses of friars and seven houses of nuns.
Carmelite Sisters
As part of the renewal of the order, John Soreth encouraged the establishment of communities of Carmelite women. The Carmelites had been exempted from responsibility for women’s communities in 1261. (14) But in 1452 a papal bull, Cum Nulla, gave Carmelites the authorization to affiliate women’s communities with the order. The first communities of Carmelite women, formally constituted, were in Guelders in the Netherlands, and in Florence. Another early example, initiated under Soreth, was the incorporation of a community of nuns established by Francis D’Amboise in 1460. D’Amboise, who received the habit from Soreth, reminds one of a later Carmelite nun, Teresa of Avila, when she says, “Tthe rule is not longer for one than for another… to consider and be concerned with who is the grandest and comes from the noblest and richest family is the doctrine of the devil.” (15) The communities of nuns established by Soreth were cloistered.
John Soreth never visited Spain, and consequently communities there developed differently, but most began after Cum Nulla. The Incarnation in Avila, founded in 1479, was the earliest Carmelite women’s community in Castile. The Carmelite provincial gave the habit to Doña Elvira Gonzalez who became the first superior. In 1513 the Incarnation moved to bigger quarters outside the city. In 1535 Teresa de Ahumada, to be known as St. Teresa of Avila, entered the Incarnation.
The Reform of Albi
Hearing of the Mantuan reform, the Bishop of Albi in Aquitaine, France, contacted members of the reform in northern Italy and invited friars to come to his diocese and reform the Carmelites. He had previously reformed the Franciscans and Dominicans. When only one friar returned as a candidate for the reform, the bishops sought vocations at the University of Paris. Twenty-six candidates responded, twenty-two of whom would eventually enter the order. They lived in the bishop’s palace for a month, receiving instruction in the Carmelite life. The twenty-tworeceived the habit of Carmel in the episcopal palace. The bishop then invited the local community of Carmelites to dinner. As the local convent was deserted, the novices and the novice master entered and took possession. The former community were compelled either to join the reform of Albi or go to other communities.
Just as the Mantuan congregation became a separate congregation within the order under a vicar-general, so too the Congregation of Albi received a special status. Baptist of Mantua, previously vicar of the Mantuan congregation, had been elected general of the entire order. He warmly welcomed this new reform different. He wrote:
As from the beginning, I recall, I favored your congregation, when at the request of the Lord Bishop of Albi, I sent Friar Eligius, said to be still living, so ever since I have with a view to your advantage always favored it, favor it now and will continue to favor it, as long as God grants me life. I praise, approve, and commend the privileges which His Holiness our Lord the Pope has granted you and your congregation. I exhort you never to abandon your proposal of leading a holy life, but to adhere to it more strongly and constantly day by day. By doing so you will win salvation for yourselves; and those who have set out down the wide road you will provide an incentive for reconsideration and for recalling and pondering the meaning of their vows. (16)
As with the Mantuan reform, the reform of Albi produced many holy men. The Albi congregation, because it eventually included the student house at the University of Paris, also counted a number of scholars of the order. Neither reform impacted the entire order.
The principal area of renewal in the order was north of the Alps where John Soreth had long labored. His renewal of Carmel included a restoration of the common life, a renunciation of possessions, a commitment to the contemplative life, and careful observance of the Rule, constitutions, and liturgies of the order.
Soreth’s reforms did not spread to Spain, nor did he or any other general visit Spain in the fifteenth century. An early sixteenth-century report on the Carmelite Castilian houses of Toledo, Avila, and San Pablo de la Moraleja judged them to be in deplorable condition, with a number of the friars giving public scandal. Matters were probably not much better in other Spanish Carmelite communities. The crown became involved in religious life renewal, and after the Council of Trent, when reform was introduced into the entire church, the often difficult relationships among Rome, the crown, and order authorities added to the difficulties of renewal.
Nicholas Audet and a Program of Renewal
In 1523 a major program for renewal of the order was published by Nicholas Audet (1481-1562), former provincial of the Holy Land and now vicar-general of the order. Audet was one of the great generals of the order who labored for thirty years to renew the spirit of Carmel. He was appointed by Pope Adrian VI and confirmed by Pope Clement VII with the authority to visit and reform communities in the order. After consulting with princes and prelates before taking up his task Audet expressed concern at the situation of the order:
From frequent conversations with them we learned of what sordid conduct many of our brethren are guilty and what a great threat hangs over the good because of their bad example, unless all of us together quickly come to our senses and reform our conduct…We are threatened unless we quickly confront and immediately provide a remedy for a number of wrong and wicked deeds committed in our Order. (17)
Audet’s program for beginning a reform was titled Isagogicon, and it included a number of specific prescriptions, among them:
Within three days of receipt of the prescriptions, each friar is to hand to the prior a list of all his possessions. It is emphasized that what they have is not their own but for their use.
Specific academic disciplines are recommended for the various levels of formation of candidates and further training is recommended, including university training, to raise the intellectual level of the Order.
No one is to live outside a house of the Order; anyone outside the order is to return. Sermons are to be given on all Sundays and feast days and each day in Lent.
Superiors are to receive only legitimate income and must cease selling certain privileges such as the office of prior, academic degrees, and permissions to live outside the Order.
Detailed prescriptions are to be followed for liturgical services and presence in the choir.
Friars are allowed to leave the house only twice a week, in pairs, and with white mantles.
Few laymen are to be admitted into the house and no women, except those of the nobility who cannot be refused entrance.
Professed students are to follow detailed instructions regarding studies and behavior. When playing sports they must wear their habits.
All are to eat in the refectory; silence is the norm and there is to be reading from the Bible or other suitable books. No bread and wine may be taken to one’s room. (18)
With this program, additional reform decrees from the general chapter, and a revised version of Soreth’s Constitutions, Audet began a visitation of provinces, beginning in Italy, in an attempt to carry out the necessary reforms. The turmoil of the Protestant Reformation added to his difficulties, especially in countries where reform efforts might prove effective. Audet spent three years in France and Germany and managed to introduce reforms in more than one hundred houses. A number of men left the order under pressure to reform. In the Spanish province of Castile, more than half the friars walked away.
In 1553 Pope Julius III ordered the development of a plan for the renewal of religious life. The text of the Bull was submitted to certain superiors for comment, and Audet’s comments have been preserved. His supportive, tactful, and moderate suggestions show the wisdom gained in his years of struggle to call the order to a faithful following of its original impetus. By the time he died in 1562, a movement had begun in Spain which, had he known about it, would have received his full support. As it was, his successor, John Rossi, gave quick encouragement to this burgeoning reform effort beginning in Castile.
The Reform of Teresa of Avila
In sixteenth century Spain, at the age of forty-seven, after living twenty-seven years in the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation in Avila, Teresa de Ahumada gave fresh impetus to the tradition of Carmel. Dissatisfied with the size and atmosphere of the Incarnation, she envisioned small communities of women whose prayer would further the work of the church. These groups of women were to be friends with God and friends with one another.
In her time the Incarnation the community had grown to more than 140 solemnly professed nuns. During one period of time more than fifty were living outside the convent, in part because of the difficulty in feeding so many. The Incarnation had a cloister, but it was easily entered by relatives, servants, and young girls for education. Many of the nuns had their own patrimony. Nuns who were of the nobility might have suites with kitchens, as did Teresa who was a doña; poorer nuns lived in the dormitories. Singing the divine office took up much of the day. All things considered, the Incarnation was an observant community, but crowded. In too many ways it was entangled with, and mirrored, the surrounding society.
Teresa had a high regard for many of the women in the Incarnation. Later, when others were complaining that Teresa’s reform was draining the Incarnation of its best members, she replied that there were more than forty left who could be foundresses themselves. (19)
Remembering the beginnings of the order on Mount Carmel, Teresa wanted to reestablish the eremitical conditions which prevailed in the wadi. She wanted her nuns to understand themselves as solitaries in community. They were to follow the primitive rule of Carmel, meaning the Rule of 1247, which she understood was “without mitigation.” (20)
The atmosphere of the houses of Teresa’s reform was to be conducive to an attentiveness to God. The quiet of the caves and huts on Mount Carmel permeated the rooms and corridors of the new Carmels. Teresa encouraged the women to speak trustingly with Christ, as though with a friend. They could imagine their friend beside Him, or within Him, especially in the Gospel settings where He is alone and might appreciate company. Hermitages were established within the convent gardens for times of greater solitude.
But they were also to take time to be present to one another and nurture loving relationships. If you want to know God, she wrote, know God’s friends. Initially Teresa allowed no more than thirteen women in each community, a number allowing for levels of relationships, with the possibility of each woman being known at some depth by every other woman. Teresa set a clear, but challenging, goal: “all must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped.” (21) As friends they recreated, prayed the psalms in the chapel, and attended celebrations of the Eucharist.
As with the men who were drawn to Mount Carmel, Teresa’s women were looking for conditions which would provide a setting, a structure, a support for attending to the mystery which haunted their lives and made them restless and unsatisfied with other forms of living. Teresa herself said, “I wanted to live (for I well understood that I was not living but was struggling with a shadow of death), but I had no one to give me life, and I was unable to catch hold of it.” (22) For many of the women, to enter such a community was like coming home. “It seemed to me,” wrote Anne of Saint Bartholomew, one of the first members, “that from my earliest childhood until this, I had lived this kind of life and had dwelt among these Saints.” (23)
When Teresa made her first foundation in 1562, John Rossi was vicar-general of the order. The next year the Council of Trent ended, and Rossi had the task of visiting, correcting, and reforming the houses of the order. In 1564 Rossi was elected general and the Counter Reformation and implementation of the decrees of Trent began. Rossi was appreciative and supportive of Teresa’s efforts to renew the order. When he died, Teresa expressed deep sorrow.
Teresa would eventually create an inner space to complement the outer space of her convents. In The Interior Castle she imagined the soul as a castle, and life’s journey was through the various rooms of the castle to a central room where the king lived. The king, almost imperceptible at first, invites those wandering outside the castle walls to enter within and join him in a loving union. Teresa’s new communities were to be the settings for this interior journey. But she needed allies in her reform.
St. John of the Cross
Juan de Yepes was restless in his new life with the Carmelites. He had recently completed his novitiate in the order and was now a student of theology at the University of Salamanca. But he wanted something more—or something else. He was considering joining the Carthusians. Obviously, whatever his dissatisfactions were, they had something to do with the deeper hungers of his heart and the conditions in which these could be nourished.
Just at that point in his life, he was introduced to Teresa of Avila, who was busy beginning the second house of her reform in John’s hometown of Medina del Campo. Teresa was older than John by twenty-seven years, but she saw in this little friar the person she was seeking to begin her reform among the male Carmelites. John immediately resonated with Teresa’s vision and volunteered to join her movement after he had completed his last year of studies, but only if she moved quickly on the project.
One year later Teresa put John through a short, second novitiate with her, introducing him to the spirit of her reformed communities. He then began his own community with two other friars in an isolated place called Duruelo. Their seriousness could be seen in the skulls and crosses which decorated the house; their asceticism was evident, as the snow came through the cracks of the building and they walked barefoot about the house and the countryside. The blueprint of the first Carmelites on Mount Carmel guided a new expression in sixteenth-century Spain.
When Teresa was assigned back to her original convent of the Incarnation to bring about its reform, she requested John of the Cross as chaplain for the nuns. And so, for a period of two years, until Teresa completed her term as prioress, these two extraordinary people ministered in the same community.
But tensions were growing within the order as a result of the reform efforts. Differing visions and competing authorities led to deep divisions. John of the Cross suffered for his close identification with the reform movement. He was forcibly removed from the Incarnation and taken to a monastery prison cell in Toledo. There, in the dark of his nine month confinement, John began to compose the mystical poetry which was an expression of his experience of God’s love. Later, after he had escaped, John continued writing poetry and also prose commentaries on his poems.
John was a specialist in analyzing the desires of the human heart. He spoke of our desires as always being restless and our hearts endlessly searching. John likened our desires to little children who only momentarily quiet down, but soon erupt again; or like the situation of a lover who waits expectantly for a day with a loved one, only to have the day be a great disappointment. “Where have you hidden, beloved?” he wrote. “I went out calling you, but you were gone.” (24)
John’s conclusion was that human beings have a desire or yearning which nothing in this world can ultimately satisfy. In John’s experience, only that mysterious Presence dwelling at the center of each one’s life is sufficient food for the hungers of the heart. John imagined this mystery as a night, a flame, a lover. “The soul’s center is God,” he concluded. (25)
The Reform of Touraine
The reform inspired by Teresa and John eventually became an order itself, the Discalced Carmelites. In the next century, in France, three men would converge whose spirit provided the impetus which would eventually contribute to the reform of the entire Carmelite order. Peter Behourt had joined the order in 1582, the year Teresa of Avila died. His intent was clear: “From the time I entered the order, I have always chosen, desired, and hoped for the restoration to a better state of the whole province.” (26) He continually attempted to recruit others to become a core of reform. His efforts in a series of offices in several communities resulted in mixed outcomes, as his was not the personality to rally men for a sustained living of a more disciplined life.
But a similar movement in the house of studies in Paris, the Place Maubert, took on life. There, Philip Thibault stood out as a leader. He was acquainted with Pierre Berulle [eminent French clergyman, disciple of both St. Vincent de Paul and St. Francis de Sales] and was influenced by the spiritual movements associated with the salon of Madame Acarie. Thibault and several students made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1600 to ask Church and order leaders to allow them a separate existence within the order, or to join the Discalced. They were persuaded to remain in the order and work for its reform.
Thibault joined Behourt in a small community at Rennes. He was to be sub-prior and novice master. The friars renewed their profession, bound themselves to an effort at reform, and mandated a second novitiate for all who joined the reform. The Observance of Rennes had begun. Eventually Thibault became prior, and to the reform he contributed new forms of prayer then current in French spirituality.
Joining the community in Rennes in 1612 was a lay brother, John of St.-Samson. John was blind from the age of three, an orphan at ten, and a devout, prayerful searching soul who had been living in Paris with a grocer near the Carmelite house in Place Maubert. He spent long hours of prayer in the church. John was musically gifted and on one occasion asked one of the friars if he could play the church organ. (27) John eventually was given a room in the convent as recompense for playing the organ and giving lessons. He became part of a study group in the house and listened to spiritual texts read aloud.
John entered the Carmelite novitiate at Dol, just as the community fled because of a plague. John remained to nurse the other novice who had become ill. Eventually John contracted the disease and had to recover at a sanatorium. At age forty-one he entered the reformed community of Rennes, joining Behourt and Thibault, made the prescribed second novitiate, and remained at Rennes for the rest of his life. He became unofficial spiritual director for generations of novices and professed students. He was also esteemed and visited by many well-known people of the day who came to talk to the blind mystic of Carmel. (28)
The Observance of Rennes spread to other houses and became the Reform of Touraine. It was a reform which took inspiration, in part, from Teresa and the Discalced Carmelites. The Italian Discalced Congregation’s Constitutions of 1611 were available to members of the reform as a model of legislation which was also a spiritual document. The contemplative nature of Carmel was emphasized by the statutes of the Touraine reform as they encouraged “the practice of divine contemplation and the love of holy solitude, formerly the only part of our sacred Order, now its principal part.” Again, “for our Carmelite forefathers dwelling in deserts and solitude one thing was necessary: to attend upon (vacare) God by the continual exercise of contemplation.” But since they were now also called by the church to active ministry, “the nature of our institute requires that to mystical theology, which is the best part for Carmelites, we should add the assiduous study of letters in the sciences.” (29) The Reform of Touraine was part of an order- wide movement of the Stricter Observance. Eventually Touraine’s statutes were the basis for reform throughout the Carmelite order, influencing legislation into the 20th century.
The Carmelite Witness
The renewal of life begins deep down in the heart. Individuals are often alone in pulling their lives together and beginning again. Often, the reform of a community depends, similarly, on just one person’s desire for change. Their spark is joined quickly by similar embers in the heart of others.
Most efforts at reform die. Some are misguided, some lack the soil to take root, some are concretized in structures which, humanly, are unsustainable. Given the history of Carmel, it is remarkable that the fragile life woven in a wadi on Mount Carmel has not been completely unraveled by the vicissitudes of history and human fickleness. That Carmel exists today could be interpreted as a result of the Spirit moving over chaotic waters; human inconsistency and sinfulness answered by divine faithfulness.
Carmel learned to tell the story of the human heart as a love story. Thinking they were searching for something missing in their lives, Carmelites discovered they were being pursued by a loving Presence whose desire for them gave them increased life, greater freedom, and a trustworthy relationship for their guidance.
The core value at all times in Carmelite history has been that mysterious Presence met deep within searching lives. Carmelites have left a trail of structures and literature borne out of engagement with that Presence. The ways of organizing Carmel’s life have been multiple: and orderly, eremitical life in a canyon on a mountainous ridge of Carmel; later, a community of men living in the midst of people and serving their needs; still later, communities of women, cloistered and active, in the service of the Church; and always, individuals who go even farther apart in the solitude of hermitages.
The external structures are meant to assist an internal journey which Carmel’s literature has imaged in various ways: among them, a journey through a castle, travelling a “little way,” a passage through a dark night, a search for the beloved in mountain pastures—the last image especially recalling where it all began.
(This article was originally written by John Welch, O.Carm., and apprared in Carmel Clarion, Spring 2020Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, pp. 6-18, reprinted with the gracious permission)
(1) Teresa of Avila, The Foundations, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, 3, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, E.C.: ICS Publications, 1985), Chap. 4, par. 7
(2) Joachim Smet, O. Carm., The Carmelites, 1 (Darien: IL: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1988) 5
(3) Carlo Cicconetti, O. Carm., The Rule of Carmel, trans. Gabriel Pausback, O. Carm., ed. Paul Hoban, O. Carm. (Darien, IL: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1984), 62
(4) Smet, 15, 16. The original Latin text may be found in Adrianus Staring, O. Carm., Medieval Carmelite Heritage (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1989), 40-41
(5) See Elias Friedman, The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel (Roma: Institutum Historicum Teresianum, 1979), 189-193. Of the first generation of Carmelites who actually lived on Mount Carmel, only three names are known for certain: Dominic and James, witnesses to a will in Acre in 1273, and William of Sanvico who was definitor from the Holy Land at the general chapter of 1287.
(6) See Albert’s Way, ed. Michael Mulhall, O. Carm. (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1989). The text of the Rule can be found in pages 2-21. Albert was chosen Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1205. Arriving in the Holy Land he settled his see at Acre during the first months of 1206. Before his election as Patriarch he was Bishop of Bobbio in 1184 and of Vercelli from 1185 until 1205. During that time he had been delegated by Pope Innocent III to develop a form of life for the Humiliati, a group of workers who had several conflicts with the hierarchy. It was a movement comprised of clerics and lay celibates as well as some married people. Albert became both Patriarch of Jerusalem and Papal Legate to the Holy Land. He was given the task of reintegrating the Holy Land.
(7) Smet, 10
(8) The Rule of 1247 shows a strengthening of community life and a movement to towns as Carmelites took on a mendicant status. It does not set up an opposition between contemplative life and ministry since these new mendicants would have understood themselves as contemplatives as well. Probably a predominantly lay group in the beginning, the Carmelites quickly became more clerical.
(9) Smet, 50
(10) Ibid., 73
(11) Ibid.
(12) Ibid., 67
(13) Ibid., 76
(14) Women and lay men had been associated with the order in one form or another from early times. Records show that in 1284 lay people affiliated with the order through vows of some type. In 1304 a woman nade a profession in Bologna. In 1343 a husband and wife made vows in Florence, vows which seem to be identical to the vows of the friars. Joan of Toulouse is an early fifteenth-century example of a woman associated with the order living as an anchoress. See Smet, 88
(15) Smet, 95
(16) Ibid., 110, 111
(17) Ibid., 155
(18) For further details see Smet, 155-158
(19) For a description of the problems of the Incarnation see Kieran Kavanaugh’s introduction to St. Teresa of Avila’s The Foundations in The Collected Works, 19, 20.
(20) Knowledge of the Rule would have been part of Teresa’s formation. But it is not known if she had access to a copy of the Rule. A manuscript rather recently discovered seems to have belonged to the Incarnation. It has three versions of the Rule, but in poor Spanish. Neither Albert’s formula of life nor the final 1247 text of Innocent IV forbids owning property in common and having a fixed income. But a papal decree of 1229 forbade the ownership of common property and possessions. When Teresa was informed of this understanding of the Rule she decided to found her communities, “in poverty,” without endowment. By the time of the first foundation of St. Joseph’s in Avila, Teresa had a copy of the Rule and it appears to have been, along with the customs, the only legislation for the new foundation. The text of the Rule of St. Joseph’s was identical to the text used at the Incarnation, since the mitigations after 1247 were not written into the text of the Rule. Insisting that the Rule and Constitutions be read together, Teresa was instrumental in having published the first printed edition of the Rule in Spanish. See Saint Teresa and the Carmelite Rule (Roma: Casa Generalizia Carmelitani Scalzi, 1994).
(21) The Way of Perfection, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, 2, chap. 4, no. 7
(22) Life, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa, Chap. 8, no. 12
(23) Autobiography of the Blessed Mother Anne of St. Bartholomew (St. Louis, MO: Translated from French by a religious of the Carmel of St. Louis, 1916), 17
(24) John of the Cross, “The Spiritual Canticle,” in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D . (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), stanza 1
(25) The Living Flame of Love, in The Collected Works of St. John, stanza 1, par. 12
(26) Smet, 3, 36
(27) John of St-Samson’s musical abilities were apparently highly developed. He is reported to have been able to play two types of keyed instruments, four stringed instruments, and three woodwinds. For further details of his life and a study of his poetry, see Robert Stefanotti, The Phoenix of Rennes (Peter Lang Publishers, 1994).
(28) John of St-Samson left more than four thousand pages of dictated notes. A critical edition of his collected works has been prepared by Hein Blommestijn, O. Carm., of the Titus Brandsma Institute in Mijmegen.
(29) Smet, 3, 57
John Welch, O. Carm., “The Vision of the Carmelites,” Unam Sanctam Catholicam, Sept. 20, 2025. Originally published in Carmel Clarion, Spring 2020Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, pp. 6-18. Available online at https://unamsanctamcatholicam.com/2025/09/history-of-the-carmelites-to-1612