The Beginning of an Ideal: Background & Formation (Part 3)

Early Carmelites receiving their Formula of Life from St. Albert

THE EARLY CARMELITES

As was mentioned above, the 12th century was a time of great spiritual revival as a reaction to the settled monastic life of the time.  The changes that were unfolding in society, cultural, political, educational and religious spheres were creating a deep vacuum in the lives of the people.  Spiritual fervor has increased and was being manifested in the formation of different Christian lay movements.  The life of the Apostles (Vita Apostolica) as described in the Gospels [Book of Acts] became the ideal and the standard of true following of Jesus.  The ideals of poverty, identification with the poor in society, itinerant lifestyle, and fraternal life with the brothers and complete abandonment to Divine Providence, were the hallmarks of the mendicant movement.  This century also saw the rise of lay hermits. They lived lives of penitence and solitary prayer.  They did not always renounce their properties. They were not bound by any official Rule of Benedict, Augustine or Basil.  They placed themselves under the guidance of a priest or bishop.  They were sometimes known as “solitary wanderers” because some of them took vows of visiting holy places.  The Holy Land was foremost among these places.  This vow of undertaking pilgrimages had a canonical status of stability.  They made the pilgrimage with the intention of remaining in the place permanently.  The hermits on Mount Carmel were a group of lay hermits who had come from Western Europe on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, probably bound by a vow to stay there permanently. 5  [Perhaps they were also sons of settlers in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.] They gathered themselves around a certain “B” as a small community of penitents.  Jacques de Vitry, an eye witness, gives this description: “From various parts of the world, and, according to their various affections and wishes and their religious fervor, chose places to dwell in suitable to their object and devotion... Some in imitation of the holy anchorite the prophet Elijah, led solitary lives on Mount Carmel, especially on that part thereof which overhangs the city of Prophyria (the present day Accon) and Haifa, near the well called Elijah’s Well, not far from the convent of St. Margaret... They lived in solitude, where in little comb-like cells, these bees of the Lord laid up sweet spiritual honey.” 6

Between the years 1206 - 1214, these hermits approached Albert of Jerusalem, Patriarch of the Jerusalem Church, for a “formula of life” (formula vitae).  Different historians of the Order will say that the hermits' move to seek out Albert of Jerusalem was not a move to acquire a “Rule” in the tradition of Benedict or Augustine.  This move of the hermits is seen as an initiative on their part to obtain approbation to a lifestyle that they already were living. This was hinted in the statement: “It is to me, however, that you have come for a rule of life in keeping with your avowed purpose, a rule you may hold fast to henceforward.”7 St. Albert, in drafting this “rule” was emphatic in situating it in the eremitical tradition of the Desert Fathers, but also placed a heavy stress on community life.  The eremitical spirituality clearly shows in the language of the text:  emphasis on each brother having a separate cell (Chapter III), staying in one’s cell meditating on the law of the Lord day and night (Chapter VII), fasting (Chapter XII), life of man on earth being a time of trial and persecution, spiritual warfare with the devil, in which one is preserved by holy meditations, a life of faith and chastity (Chapter XIV), manual work (chapter XV) and the practice of silence and solitude (Chapter XVI).  The formula of life drafted by St. Albert curiously structured a community life contrasting the Desert Fathers in Chapters I - XIII.  Election of a Prior by a common consent or greater majority (I), community consultations with the brothers pertaining community matters (II , III & V),  meals in common (Chapter IV), common prayer (Chapter X), common ownership IX).  Here we can see that Albert was already infusing elements of the mendicant lifestyle.  This is easy to understand if we remember that St. Albert also was commissioned by Pope Innocent III to draft a rule for the Humiliati, another mendicant group,[semi-mendicant perhaps]  in Europe. It is also worth remembering that the rule of life he wrote for the Humiliati was heavily based on the Benedictine Rule.  Nevertheless, we can see how St. Albert retained the eremitical spirituality as the early hermits in Mount Carmel lived it but gave a new perspective and structure on community life.

Carmelites in Europe

Around 1238 groups of Carmelites started leaving Mount Carmel to return to Europe.  The political life in the Holy Land gradually became hostile with the invasion by the Saracens.  Most of the hermits in Mount Carmel gradually returned to their country of origin in Western Europe.  But the Europe they left behind did not stand still.  There was now the new spiritual climate of the “Vita Apostolica” which gave rise to the mendicant movements.  The Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians were in the center stage of this spiritual movement.  The Carmelites, with their “desert ways” and different traditions, were out of place in this new world of evangelization and ministerial life.  Although St. Albert gave them a formula of life somewhat comparable to the mendicants, the early Carmelites only had this in principle and not in practice.  The urban culture and change in the social-religious needs made the mendicant groups very popular with the people.  The Carmelites fell into the prevailing mendicant movement.  This unavoidable confrontation with the Europe of that time created internal conflicts among the brothers.  The heavy stress on fraternal brotherhood and itinerant lifestyle of the mendicants threatened the individuality and solitude of the hermit. 

Changes in the Rule of St. Albert

 A General Chapter held at Aylesford, England, sent two representatives to the Holy See to seek revisions in their formula of life.  The work of revision was entrusted to two former Dominicans, Cardinal Hugh of St. Cher and William of Reading, bishop of Tortosa. 8 The selection of these two former Dominicans and other unknown factors determined that the Carmelites would develop constitutions very similar to those of the Dominicans.  On 1 October 1247, Innocent IV approved the revised formula of life, which, with his approval became a formal rule (regula). 9 

The changes in the text of the formula of life set the Carmelites full sail into the mendicant identity.  Some of the changes made were: permission to have foundations in solitary places or where they are given a site that is suitable and convenient for the purpose of the Order, permission to eat meat, the recitation of the canonical hours, property in common, common ownership and adding the vows of chastity and poverty.   These changes in lifestyle of the Carmelites created internal conflicts among the brothers.  With a very strong eremitical orientation, the move to the city and full participation in the evangelical exercise of ministry of the Church among the masses, created tensions within the Order.  The original identity of solitary search for God in silence and solitude would constantly assert itself amidst the apostolic demands of ministry.  These seemingly polarizing orientations would occasion many internal debates and reforms in the Order in the succeeding years.

Conclusion

The Carmelite Order is a product of socio-political-religious changes originating from the early Middle Ages. (And a product of God’s grace!) It began as an ideal of holiness among simple individuals.  They followed the Lord in the simplicity of the Gospel teachings and ended up with a total commitment to follow him in the land made holy by his earthly presence.  In allegiance to Jesus Christ, in holy meditations, silence and solitude of Mount Carmel, they sought him.  But because “we do not have here below a permanent dwelling place (St. Peter) these holy hermits had to finish their journey in the land they first started in- Europe. [See comments above]  As part of the Church still on a “journey towards the new Jerusalem” these hermits participated in full in the life of the Church in the 13th century, with all its upheavals and spiritual renewals.  Theirs was a call to respond to the signs of the times as they were played out in Medieval Europe.  Theirs was a call to adaptability, a seeming giving up of an established collective identity for something different and new.  Theirs is a Rule that has the power to create something new out of the old.  Theirs is the blend of the active life and contemplative life that creates a perpetual tension capable of giving birth to something mystical.

1 Monastic Background of Carmel, Audio Cassette ,Pentecost 1999, Fr. Patrick McMahon, O.Carm.

            2 Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 2, Hugh Edmund Ford, “Saint Benedict of Nursia”

            3 Dialogues,  Saint Gregory, II

4 Classic Encyclopedia, 11th Edition Encyclopedia Britannica, “Mendicant Movement and Orders”

5 Carmelite Rule, trans. Theodulf Vrakking and Joachim Smet, Almelo (Netherlands): 1979

6 Historia Orientalis, F 85, cc.51/The History of Jerusalem; fr. Aubrey Stewart, London, 1896, p. 26 -27)

            7 The Rule of Saint Albert, Prologue,  Fr. Bede Edwards, 1973

            8 “An Essay” 91, Keith Egan

9  “The Spirituality of Carmelites” Keith Egan , page 52, Jill Raitt, Christian Spirituality, Volume 2. New           York: Crossroad, 1988

The Beginning of an Ideal: Background & Formation (Part 2)

Carmelite Cave

 

Western Monasticism

Life in Europe by the 3rd century was marked by both growth and destruction.  The Roman Empire was overrun by barbarians.  The face of civilization was being threatened by murderous rampages and looting.  The face of monasticism as lived by the Desert Fathers changed with the advent of St. Benedict 

(c. 480-543).  The simplicity of life lived in silence and solitude in the desert of the East was replaced by a different monastic culture.  St. Benedict himself did not seek to be a hermit2 living in a desert , but only to live a life of silence away from city life, so that he can better dedicate himself to God.  He came from a Roman noble family of Nursia and was highly educated.  Our knowledge of St. Benedict comes mostly from his biographer, Saint Gregory the Great3.  The changes discernable from Benedictine monasticism are:  the rise of monasteries, study as a path to God, high structured liturgical rituals and worship, the installation of abbots as head of monasteries.  Monasteries became places of learning and higher studies.  Many of its members came from rich and influential families that brought with them endowments and wealth.  Even if individual monks lived his life of poverty according to what was expected of him, the wealth of these monasteries which came from noble ties and endowments gave rise to bigger, structurally elegant churches and abbeys. {Not all were wealthy.]

The fall of the Roman Empire created a vacuum in the western civilization.  There was no other superpower around to balance, if not ward off the advances of a pagan culture.  Monks in monasteries were busy preserving the culture by hiding and copying books of western literature, Holy Scriptures, and the like.  Learning was used as an antidote to this cultural chaos.  The structure of monasticism changed from the study of mysticism to humanism.  This created a dichotomy.  The foundational interests of learning were the Scriptures, Patristic writings and Classical Studies.  By the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th centuries, monasticism became a life of pure worship acts and rituals.  It gave rise to frustrations in the monks.  The former emphasis given to solitary encounter with God in prayer was replaced by the highly structured liturgical celebrations. [that is in Cluniac  monasteries.] Monastic life became rigid and dry. Some abuses were rampant in the Church among its members, including the Papacy. This moral decadence in the members of the Church will produce anger, discontent, disillusionment and spiritual restlessness among the masses.  It will eventually result in several Church Reforms and create an empowerment of the laity which in turn will give birth to the apostolic movements of the Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites.  

The Rise of the Apostolic Life

When Emperor Charlemagne (742-814) became king of Franks and first sovereign of the Christian empire of the West, he brought back order, learning and culture in the western world.  By his mighty ability as a soldier, Emperor and protector of the Holy See, he initiated and made room for church reforms. These reforms addressed the pervasive abuses of the day among church clerics and hierarchy.  There were reforms focusing on the education of the clergy, clerical celibacy, and freedom of the Church from royal appointments of parochial priests and bishops and revival of trade to improve city life.  The laity was more and more scrutinizing of authentic witness of the Gospel teachings in their church leaders.  As city population increased in number and diversity, a spiritual hunger for the Word of God and an alienation from the existing life of the Church developed.  With learned clergies and high sounding theological sermons, simple people from outside the cities who left home and farms to find works in the burgeoning trade industry, no longer found a home in this urbanized church life.  This deeply felt need to go back to the simplicity of the Gospels as lived by the Apostles gave way to several Christian movements among the laity.  Examples of these lay movements were the Waldensians (12th century, France) founded by Peter Waldo and the Albigensians .[The Albigensians were hardly a reform!]  The Waldensians focused on lay preaching (which was not sanctioned by the Church.  Only the ordained priest can publicly preach), voluntary poverty and good works.  The Albigensians were gnostics adopting a dualist and Manichean belief of two realities- the physical and the spiritual worlds.  Anything belonging to the physical is bad and only the things pertaining to the spiritual are considered good.   Both of these groups were branded by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical.  The Humiliati is another controversial group of pious lay people who came together as a community in the 12th century.  They practiced penitential disciplines, voluntary poverty, common funds, organized humanitarian works and common prayers.  They also practiced lay preaching which caused them to be excommunicated.   Several men of notable character in the Church (St. Bernard, St. John of Meda, Pope Innocent III, St. Charles Borromeo (16th century.) intervened one way or another to bring this movement into orthodoxy, but failed.  Saint Albert of Jerusalem was commissioned by Pope Innocent III to draft a rule for their lay branch.  The rule resembled the Regula Penitentiae of the Franciscan Order.  This same Albert  drafted another formula of life- this time it will be for the Carmelites.

The Mendicant Movement

The mendicant movement was the result of societal changes and urbanization which created a spiritual, physical and moral destitution among the people in the Middle Ages. With the increasing wealth in the cities brought by trade and industry, more and more people were pushed in the margins of society.  The scale of balance was tipped in favor of the powerful. With the increase in city population, the center of gravity shifted from the countryside and rural areas to the city centers and towns.  The feudal system that supported this social fabric for centuries could no longer hold it and the parochial system collapsed.  This phenomenon created such destitution in the social, spiritual and physical realms.   With this reality before the people, the search for true Gospel values and the simplicity of the first Christian community in Jerusalem became the ideal.  The life of the apostles became the standard of true discipleship and the measure of authenticity.  Groups of men, spearheaded by Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic, came together as communities of Christians.  They embraced austere poverty, simplicity of life and identified themselves with the poorest of the poor.  They patterned their lives on the lives of the apostles.  They brought with them a life of mysticism, a mysticism that fixed its gaze on the humanity of Christ and gave expression to it in the imitation of His life.  They became identified with the people, ministered to their spiritual, intellectual and physical needs.  An intellectual wave was sweeping around Europe at this time of the second half of the 12th century and beginning of the 13th.  This was manifested in the rise of universities, scholastic movements and a new spirit of democratic [democratic seems an anachronism here.] freedom. The mendicant friars were answering all these needs. 

The Order of the Mendicant Friars grew to such proportion that within a generation of the death of the two founders, Dominic (1221) and Francis (1226), their institutes spread all over Europe and into Asia and their friars can be numbered in the thousands .  In all the great cities of Western Europe friaries were established, and in universities theological chairs were held by Dominicans and Franciscans. 

The Beginning of an Ideal: Background and Formation

Ruins of Early Carmelite Church in Mount Carmel

Introduction

The year 2007 marked the 800th anniversary of the Rule of Carmel given to the Carmelites by Saint Albert.  This “Rule” is a formula of life given between 1206 - 1214 to the early Latin lay hermits dwelling in the caves of Mount Carmel in Palestine.  At the request of these hermits, Saint Albert drafted for them a document which was to become the heart and soul of the Carmelite way of life. (The formula of life became an official Rule in 1247) Many generations later, the Rule of Saint Albert of Jerusalem inspired many future Saints and Blessed and set them out on a journey of faith, hope and love in their individual and collective pursuit of holiness.  In our day and age, the Rule of St. Albert still continues to speak to the hearts of many men and women who long to live a life of intimacy with God.  Its simplicity and brevity hides a spring bubbling with wisdom and practicality that a person intent on finding God can much appreciate. The spirituality of the Rule lies in its simple approach to God.  It speaks explicitly about the things of the spirit rather than impose [s] structure and rigidity.  Simplicity does not imply easy.  For in the final analysis, the Rule challenges a person to go deeper into one’s self, confront one’s demons and aspire to bring our lives in conformity with Jesus Christ.

The story of the Carmelites is a story that spans 800 years.  It is a story that began in the hearts and souls of medieval men of the early 13th century as they searched for ways to serve Jesus Christ and to follow Him in the land of his birth.  It is a life that began amidst the turmoil and spiritual restlessness of medieval Europe and took shape in the mountains of Carmel in the Holy Land. (Mount Carmel is a low range of a mountain that begins where modern Haifa is and runs south east.)  This life was given structure and approbation by the Church through its representatives at the time.  It is a story of adventure.  In a land beset with constant strife and political upheavals, the early Carmelites were forced to move from the cradle of their existence and sail back to Europe to save themselves from the attacks of the Saracens.  With this move back to their country and society of origin came changes in many ways.  (took place beginning in 1238.)

The following pages will devote themselves to tracing the journey of the Carmelites from the early periods in history to the present.  They will attempt to follow the movements of these our holy forefathers as they began their search for God.  Their journey from a life that was purely eremitical, to a life of communion with the brothers, was also a journey of participation in the full life of the Church as it plays itself out in the midst of the historical- socio-political life of medieval Europe.  It is both this eremitical and apostolic zeal that will characterize a creative tension in the Carmelite way of life.

II. The Foundation History

The Carmelite Spirituality is very much influenced by the Desert Spirituality.  We call our tradition monastic, but this word “monastic” needs to be placed in a context.  Monastic life involves monks, but the Carmelites were never monks.  The early Carmelites of Mount Carmel in the early 13th century were lay hermits.  They were men of the world who were seriously searching for God in their lives.  They were Crusaders of noble, knightly and common backgrounds, penitents, pilgrims and pious people, who left the increasingly evolving complex religious climate of medieval Europe to find the simplicity and poverty of life that the Gospels teach.  It might be beneficial to take a look at the developments of the monastic culture to better understand the forces involved in the events that landed the early hermits in the Holy Land. (They could well have been the sons of Europeans who had settled for various reasons in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.)

Saint Anthony the Abbot

In Father Patrick McMahon’s conference on the “Monastic Background of Carmel”1, he indicated two distinct phases of monastic culture.  The first is what he calls “The Pre- Benedict” phase and the other the “Benedictine” phase.  Before Saint Benedict (c. 480-543) was known to be Founder of Western Monasticism, there was a man named Anthony.  He was born in Heracleus, Egypt in 251 and died in 356.  At the age of 20, he heard a sermon in Church quoting the words of the Gospel: “If you want to be perfect, go and sell what you have, give it to the poor, then come and follow me.”  Anthony was deeply moved by these words for he was a man of possessions.  He began thinking about the life of the apostles and the early Christian community in Jerusalem after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  How they loved each other and shared everything, and read the Scriptures.  He made arrangements for his sister’s care and went off in the desert to live a life of a hermit.  He lived in silence and solitude, meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, and lived a life of poverty.  It wasn’t long after before his life drew the attention of the common people and they began to seek his spiritual counsels.  Among them were future followers who were drawn to this life of naked and radical witness to the Gospels.  This spiritual relationship of an “Abba” (Father) to his spiritual son characterizes this rapidly growing movement in the East.  The spirituality of the Desert Fathers was a spirituality immersed in the Word of God.  For a hermit, the purpose of his life is to acquire a pure heart open to the touches of God.  (Saint Athanasius wrote a Life of Anthony that spread enthusiasm for monasticism.) It is a spirituality of physical and spiritual disciplines intended to prepare him for an experience of God, not just in the life to come, but an experience of God in the here and now.  All the fasts and vigils, toils and physical sufferings, are tools to be used to subject the power of the flesh and give way to the reign of the spirit.  One thing worth mentioning is the fact that the study of Scriptures to a Desert Father means reading the Word of  God in the light of his life events.  In other words, a Desert Father is not concerned with the historical-critical approach that we employ in our modern study of Scriptures.  They were not engaged in text criticism approach and hermeneutics of our time.  The methodology of their prayers had the following components: lectio (reading) ,  Meditatio (meditation), Oratio (prayer). –(then contemplation.) The hermits read a word or passage of Scriptures, dwelt on this passage, chewed and masticated it, and engaged in a prayerful and spontaneous conversation with God.  Their day was spent in individual caves or huts, engaged in manual tasks, in silence and solitude.  One hermit might engage in a spiritual consultation with the Abba on certain days.  They ate in solitude, prayed the psalms individually.  The radical following of Christ meant not having a stable place to be but to live as Jesus said “Foxes have dens and birds their nests, but the Son of God has no place to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58).

Cenobites

It wasn’t long before these hermits spread out into distant areas and formed other hermit communities.  They began to live in communion with their fellow hermits in a coenobitical lifestyle. They came together for meals in silence, praying the psalms at different times of the day, met together for community meetings to discuss observance and their spiritual welfare, but always went back to the solitude of their individual cells or huts. The life and spirituality of the Desert Fathers in the East will serve as an inspiration to the early lay hermits in Mount Carmel and will color their original vision of the Carmelite way of life.

To be Continued.....