Carmelite

The Carmelites are one of the great mendicant religious orders of the Catholic Church, tracing their roots to a small band of hermits who settled on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land in the 12th century. Best known today for their brown habit, their devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and the reforming zeal of St Teresa of Avila, the order has spread from a single mountainside to communities across the world.

In 1156, the Carmelite order, the popular name for members of the Order of Our Lady, was founded as a community of hermits in Palestine by the French hermit, Berthold.

The Carmelite name comes from Mount Carmel itself, where the earliest hermits built a small chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary and became known as the "Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel."

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem wrote the rule for the Carmelites. The rule is severe, prescribing poverty, abstinence from meat, and solitude.

The order held its first general chapter in England in 1247, where Simon Stock was elected prior general as the Carmelites transformed from hermits into mendicant friars.

The 16th century mystic and Carmelite order reformer, St Teresa of Avila, taught that almonds are good for girls who do not eat meat.

Together with St John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila launched a reform in 1562 that produced the Discalced Carmelites, so named because they wore sandals rather than shoes.

The French Carmelite friar Père Sébastien Truchet (1657–1729) designed an early hearing aid, or “prosthetic tympanum,” based on the symmetrical curves of a parabola.

The Carmelites are known as White Friars because of the white overmantle they wear (over a brown habit).

Many Carmelites wear the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a devotional garment said to date from a vision granted to the English friar St Simon Stock in 1251.

Carmelite nuns by Eugenio Hansen,

The Carmelites suffered greatly during the French Revolution and under Napoleon, and in 2024 Pope Francis canonized sixteen Discalced Carmelite nuns executed in Paris during the Reign of Terror of 1794.

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2013. Helicon Publishing is a division of RM.