Religious
Life
Carmelites rooted in ancient hermit tradition
When Anthony of Egypt took to the desert in the late third
century, he initiated a major movement of men and women fleeing to the desert
to live in ascetic isolation and contemplation. Although Christian hermits
certainly existed before Anthony, his story is one of the church’s
earliest written records of those Christians who rejected urban life to seek
God.
The Carmelite order is one of many to inherit Anthony’s
legacy. The Carmelites began some time between 1206 and 1214 when a group of
Crusaders put down their swords to devote themselves to prayer and solitude.
They used a Rule written by St. Albert of Jerusalem and modeled themselves
after Elijah the hermit and prophet. Living in caves on Israel’s Mount
Carmel, they spent most of their time in solitary contemplation.
Warfare caused the hermits to leave Israel, and by 1238 the
Carmelites founded houses in Sicily, England, Cyprus and France. As they moved
to more populated areas, they developed a more communal lifestyle and also
undertook apostolic works, such as teaching and preaching. Most modern
Carmelites now follow a communal, or cenobitic, lifestyle. Some groups, like
the Spiritual Life Institute, seek an eremitic, or hermit-like life.
Groups of women followed the Carmelite tradition as early as the
13th century. John Soreth founded the first official female branch of the order
in 1452.
The strict Carmelite rule was difficult, and Pope Eugene IV
approved an easing or “mitigation” of it in 1432. In the 16th
century, St. Teresa of Avila sought a return to the older model. She was
supported by St. John of the Cross. Dissension sprang up between those
following the mitigated and unmitigated rules, and in [1580] Pope
Gregory XIII separated them into two orders, the Calced, or Ancient observance
(O.Carm.), and the Discalced (O.C.D.). St. Teresa’s followers called
themselves “discalced,” meaning “without shoes” since they
wore only homemade sandals.
Another seminal Carmelite figure was St. Thérèse of
Lisieux, “The Little Flower” who Pope John Paul II named a doctor of
the church for her “little way’ of spirituality.
-- Melissa Jones
National Catholic Reporter, February 21, 2003
[corrected 03/14/2003]
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