The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle Ages

The Carmelites and Antiquity

The Carmelites and Antiquity Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle Ages

A N D R E W J OT I S C H K Y

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto with an associated company in Berlin Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Andrew Jotischky  The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN –––           Typeset in Baskerville by Alliance Phototypesetters, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., Guildford & King’s Lynn

For C  , C , and G 

Preface T    the historical tradition of the foundation of the Carmelite Order by Elijah, the specific context in which that tradition developed, and its function both within the Carmelite profession and in the wider framework of medieval historical writing, form the subject-matter of this book. My interest in the Carmelites emerged from studying the religious life of the crusader states, in which they occupy a unique place as the only contemplative order founded in the Latin East. It quickly became apparent that an examination of the origins and early history of the order was inseparable from the study of its historiography. The Carmelites emerged as a group of regulated hermits on Mt Carmel in the early years of the thirteenth century. When, a generation later, they began to transplant themselves throughout Europe, they found that a detailed statement of their origins and function was necessary in order to make headway in the competition for patronage from the laity and to attain acceptance from the Church’s hierarchy. The evolution of the historical tradition thus coincided with the new settlements in the West. This tradition offered a complex and detailed narrative of the origins of the order, the identity and history of its principal founding figures, and the place of the order within Christian history. For the historian of crusading and of the religious life in the later Middle Ages in general, the Carmelite tradition is compelling: it fills gaps in the sources, makes connections between historical figures and with other traditions, and supplies a narrative of the contemplative life reaching back into antiquity. But it is at the same time deeply flawed in its chronology, and bears the unmistakable stamp of later authors looking back at historical events and at places that are only half-remembered. The further one follows the Carmelite historical tradition, the more the narrative and its inherent ecclesiology stimulate one’s general thinking about medieval religious and historical sensibilities. If it is impossible to study the Carmelite Order without first grappling with its legendary tradition, that tradition is none the less worthy of study in its own right.

viii Preface The title of this book will probably remind many readers of Beryl Smalley’s English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century. My debt to Miss Smalley’s work—both to her studies of individual friars and to the general conception of her book—will be apparent throughout. But whereas she was interested in ‘antiquity’ largely in its specific sense of the classical past and its heritage, I have used the term more generically to signify ‘the past’, particularly the biblical and early Christian past. Although this book is not intended to be a history of the Carmelite Order in the Middle Ages, the opening chapter attempts to provide an outline narrative of the origins and early history of the order as a general background to readers who are not familiar with it. Chapter  considers the political and cultural context from which the Carmelite historical tradition emerged in the late thirteenth century. I have chosen the episode of the change of habit in  as emblematic of problems experienced within mendicant culture in general, and the broad coverage of the issue in the second half of this chapter reflects a desire to understand the Carmelite case within a wider context. The earliest strictly datable Carmelite text (other than the rule itself ) is the subject of Chapter . Although the Ignea Sagitta is not part of the mainstream of the Carmelite historical tradition, the text itself and the context in which it was written raise important questions about the different ways in which Carmelites understood their profession and the order’s traditions c.. Part of my argument, moreover, is that the Ignea Sagitta should be seen as a distillation of twelfth-century reforming monastic ideology, and in this sense it has a proper place in a study of Carmelite historiography. In the following two chapters the outlines of Carmelite historical narrative as it developed from the end of the thirteenth century to the end of the fourteenth are reconstructed and then examined as affirmations of an emerging ecclesiology. The narrative is expanded in Chapters  and  through an examination of the additions to the corpus of Carmelite historical writing in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Chapter  departs from the narrow focus on Carmelite historiography to examine patterns in historical writing and thinking expressed in the work of the three other mendicant orders in the fourteenth century. I do not attempt here a comprehensive survey of the development of historical traditions—Franciscan and Dominican understandings of the past have already been the subject of many important studies, and the Augustinian Hermits’ tradition certainly deserves such detailed consideration—but rather try to isolate certain preoccupations that bear comparison with the Carmelite examples

Preface

ix

already discussed. Finally, Chapter  attempts the impossible—an examination of some of the principles that can be demonstrated to have governed the way in which friars thought about the past, both their own corporate past and its place within Christian history in general. The huge literature on medieval historiography has been both a guide and a burden, and I fear that many readers may find my discussion in this chapter either too generalized or too specific or insufficiently informed by theoretical argument. I have tried throughout the book to approach the subject from the texts themselves, to elucidate them to a readership that is probably unfamiliar with many of them, and to suggest how they, and the whole enterprise that underlay their composition, can be understood as part of medieval religious culture. Sins of omission there will always be; but I trust that other scholars will complete the journey on which I have embarked. In the course of this book I have benefited from the kindness of many scholars. I would like to thank Professors Christopher Brooke, Joanna Cannon, Giles Constable, Julian Gardner, and Bernard Hamilton and Dr Patrick Zutshi for help on various points. My colleagues Dr Alexander Grant and Dr Keith Stringer, and Fr Paul Chandler, O.Carm., have read all or parts of this book in manuscript and made valuable suggestions. I am particularly grateful to Fr Richard Copsey, O.Carm., for his careful reading of the manuscript and for the many suggestions he made that have saved me from serious errors or omissions. Earlier versions of Chapters  and  were read to the Cultural History Seminar series at the University of Lancaster in  and , and parts of Chapter  to the ‘Byzantium in the North’ symposium at York in October . I am grateful to the audiences of colleagues and postgraduates whose comments helped me to see the Carmelites through different eyes. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the staff at various libraries: the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the British Library, and Lambeth Palace Library for help with the Bale manuscripts and various rare editions; the John Rylands University Library of Manchester (and in particular the staff at Deansgate), and my own university library at Lancaster. Thomas Townsend of the Norfolk and Norwich Record Office also provided invaluable assistance. The final stages of research and writing were made possible by the generous award of research leave from the Arts and Humanities Research Board in /, which I acknowledge with thanks. Finally, my colleagues in the Department of History at Lancaster deserve my sincere thanks

x

Preface

for support in a variety of ways, not least in presenting me on arrival in  with a lighter burden of teaching than I had any right to expect. I have been fortunate in working with two able and supportive editors at OUP: first Tony Morris, whose enthusiasm for the as yet unformed book was inspirational, and latterly Ruth Parr, who saw it through the Press, and Jean van Altena for her copy-editing. More personal debts must not go unacknowledged. My parents have continued to offer unsolicited support and encouragement. I am grateful to Gerald and Susan Hull for making their home a place where I could work in tranquillity. The greatest thanks, however, are due to my wife Caroline, who has shared in this project in many ways—not least by tramping across muddy fields to inspect Carmelite ruins and by lending her considerable palaeographical skills, but more importantly by offering companionship and unquestioning support. The dedication is to three who showed up during the long gestation of this book, and who helped to make the work lighter, if longer in duration, than it might otherwise have been.

Contents ABBREVIATIONS

xii

INTRODUCTION



1 THE CARMELITES, c.–



2 IDENTITY AND ANTIQUITY: THE CARMELITE HABIT



3 THE IGNEA SAGITTA (): THE FIRST DEFENCE OF CARMELITE TRADITION



4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CARMELITE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, c.–



5 CARMELITE ECCLESIOLOGY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY



6 HAGIOGRAPHY AND THE GREEK ORTHODOX PAST: TWO CARMELITE SAINTS



7 THE CARMELITE HISTORICAL TRADITION, c.–



8 PATTERNS OF HISTORICAL THINKING IN THE MENDICANT ORDERS



9 ANTIQUITY, TRUTH, AND HISTORICAL METHOD: CARMELITES AND OTHERS



CONCLUSION











Abbreviations AASS AFH AFP ALKG AOC AOCD BEFAR CCCM CCR CCSL CPR CSEL CSHB IS JEH MCH MGH (SS) MHC MOPH NNRO PG PIMS PL PRO RHC RS SC TRHS

Acta Sanctorum Bollandiana Archivum Franciscanum Historicum Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum Discalceatorum Bibliothèque des écoles francaises d’Athènes et de Rome Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis Calendar of Close Rolls Corpus Christianorum Series Latina Calendar of Patent Rolls Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinum Corpus Scriptorum Historiarum Byzantinorum Ignea Sagitta Journal of Ecclesiastical History Staring, Medieval Carmelite Heritage Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Zimmermann, Monumenta Historica Carmelitana, i Monumenta Ordinis Praedicatorum Historica Norfolk and Norwich Record Office Patrologiae cursus completus. Series graeco-latina Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina Public Record Office Recueil des Historiens des Croisades Rolls Series Sources Chrétiennes Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Introduction Recalling the triumphal procession held in Milan in  for the entrance of Louis XII, the sixteenth-century humanist Matteo Bandallo tells the following story about a dispute that ensued over the order of precedence in which the representatives of religious houses in the city were to march: The excellent Master Gian Andrea Cagnuola, a Doctor of Law, turned to the Carmelite Prior and asked how long it had been since the order began. The Carmelite answered that it began on Mt Carmel, under Elijah. ‘Then you already existed in the time of the Apostles,’ observed Cagnuola. ‘Yes,’ observed the prior, ‘as you well know; at that time we were the only friars in existence, since Basil, Benedict, Dominic, Francis and all the other founders of orders had not yet existed.’ . . . The Duke had a jester, witty and brave, who—when he heard this fantasy which the Carmelite prior was uttering—leapt between the two and said to Cagnuola, ‘Master Doctor, the father speaks truly, for at the time of the Apostles there were no other friars beside these. It is of them that St Paul wrote when he said, periculum in falsis fratribus. They are some of these false brothers. And at this clever joke of the buffoon, everyone started to laugh . . . and the Carmelites left, amid the people’s jeers.’

The joke itself is perhaps less significant than what it tells us about the cultural milieu in which such pretensions to antiquity were common. The humour relies on general familiarity on the part of the Milanese public with the Carmelite historical tradition, and on the shared assumption of its inherent implausibility. The jester’s joke was in fact a variant of an earlier one, made in a more learned context. In the s a similar irony had been observed by the Dominican friar Robert Holcot, who argued that if the Carmelites had existed in Old Testament times, they must have been the Pharisees and Saducees, who were the only religious orders known from those days. In fact,  Creighton Gilbert, ‘Some Special Images for Carmelites, c.–’, in T. Verdon and J. Henderson (eds.), Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento (Syracuse, NY, ), , trans. by author from Matteo Bandallo, Le quatre Parti de la Novelle del Bandallo ().  Beryl Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, ), –, trans. from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS and Misc , fos. v–r.

 Introduction scepticism about the Carmelite claim to be the oldest religious order in existence can be found almost from the moment that Carmelite writers began to elaborate their historical tradition. Whereas Holcot’s jibe was made in the course of a lecture to theology students at Oxford, the one told by Bandallo exposed the Carmelites to public ridicule. The same kind of ridicule had provoked the order in  into the extreme step of changing its distinctive habit, which had made Carmelites the targets of general mirth, into one more generic. People who develop pretensions to distinguished ancestry have always been liable to find themselves figures of fun. Even in an era, such as the late Middle Ages, when claims to a long ancestry made important cultural and political assertions on behalf of institutions, families, or dynasties, and could thus be understood as political statements, fun could be had by the irreverent with the more exorbitant claims to antiquity. The Carmelite Order’s claim to have been founded by the prophet Elijah was one such claim. On the face of it, there is nothing more remarkable about the Carmelites’ claim than that of the Knights of St John to have been founded by Judas Maccabeus, or the University of Oxford’s claim to King Alfred as a founder, or, to cite the most celebrated case, the Brutus tradition prevalent in England from the mid-twelfth century onward. Seldom, however, has an institution based its raison d’être so firmly on a claim to an improbable antiquity as did the Carmelites in the Middle Ages, or indeed clung to it for so long in the face of rational scepticism. Following Petrarch’s revelation that the Donation of Constantine was a later invention, humanists thought themselves licensed to expose medieval inclinations to pretend a greater age for institutions, corporations, or families than was in fact the case. The legend of Trojan ancestry claimed by English, French, and Burgundians in the fifteenth century was a popular target. John Trithemius, abbot of Spanheim, wondered why the French were so proprietorial toward the Trojans— as though all Trojans had been models of virtue and rectitude! It is tempting to see such scepticism as typical of what we have come to assume was a ‘humanist’ respect for textual integrity, as opposed to medieval credulousness and disregard for the provenance of traditions. Yet Trithemius, a Benedictine humanist, believed, and wrote in defence of, the Carmelite historical tradition. It was the period between c. and c., indeed, supposedly a golden age of humanist scholarship,  Johann Trithemius, Opera historica, quotquot hactenus reperiri potuerunt, omnia . . ., ed. M. Freher,  vols, (Frankfurt, ), i. pp. xx, v.

Introduction  that witnessed the flowering of the Carmelite legendary tradition. Although the tradition was a product of the medieval religious imagination, it enjoyed a life far beyond the medieval period. Moreover, the robust criticism of friars in other orders, such as Holcot, and the public ridicule to which Carmelites and other friars were sometimes subjected because of their claims to antiquity, suggest that what might at first sight appear credulousness on the part of medieval people signifies a more complex historical sensibility. Because the history of the Carmelite Order is so entwined with its legendary tradition, it has attracted less attention from historians than most medieval religious orders. Like the Augustinian Hermits, the Carmelites languish in the shadow of the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The historian seeking to write a comparative history of the mendicant orders will search in vain for the breadth of source material for the Carmelites that renders the Franciscans and the Dominicans so central to the religious and social life of the later Middle Ages. There is little homiletic material, no apparent interest in Christian missions, and scarcely any involvement in preaching the crusades. Although there are hints of an internal crisis in the order’s government in the late thirteenth century, no dissenting branch comparable to the Spiritual Franciscans, with its extraordinary literary tradition, emerged, and the order remained in good standing with the papacy. Despite the active involvement of English Carmelites in combating Lollardy, there is no source for this activity comparable to the continental Inquisition records for the Dominicans. Carmelites offered much the same ministry as the Franciscans and the Dominicans—preaching, hearing confessions, dispensing the sacraments, studying, and writing—but the impression conveyed by the sources is that they did so more quietly and obscurely. Some types of source material, however, are plentiful for study of the Carmelites. It is now clear, thanks to the work of the pioneers of the early part of the twentieth century—notably Benedict Zimmermann and Bartolomé Xiberta—and their more recent successors, that Carmelite theologians were an important part of the university theology faculties. The careers of individual Carmelite theologians so exactingly reconstructed by Xiberta have been placed in a wider context by Lickteig’s The German Carmelites at the Medieval Universities. The  Benedict Zimmermann, Monumenta Historica Carmelitana, i (Lérins, ); Bartolomé Xiberta, De scriptoribus scholasticis saeculi XIV ex ordine Carmelitarum (Louvain, ).  Franz-Bernard Lickteig, The German Carmelites at the Medieval Universities, Textus et studia Carmelitana,  (Rome, ).

 Introduction institutional history of the order and its relationship to the larger Church have been reconstructed by Ciconetti, building on the labours of Saggi and others in editing the constitutions of the general chapters. At the same time, regional archival sources, particularly in Britain and Spain, have, in the last forty years, enabled historians to reconstruct the chronology and history of individual Carmelite houses. The pioneer here has been Keith J. Egan, whose work for the English province has been followed by Balbino Velasco and Jill Webster in Spain. Carmelite scholarship has also enabled us to clarify the different strands of the order’s own historical tradition. A book such as this is only possible because of the work of the Carmelite scholars Zimmermann, Xiberta, Rudolf Hendriks, Ludovico Saggi, and, more recently, Joachim Smet and Adrian Staring. The first significant examination of the historical legend was the extended article published in  by Rudolf Hendriks, ‘La Succession héréditaire’, in which editions and translations of selected fourteenth-century texts were presented. The seeds planted by Hendriks were brought to fruition in Adrian Staring’s authoritative critical edition of the early historical sources, Medieval Carmelite Heritage. The present study would have been, if not impossible, incomparably more difficult without the work of Staring in presenting reliable editions of the works that form the bulk of the discussion in Chapters  and . A first step in examining  Carlo Ciconetti, La Regola del Carmelo: Origine, natura, significato, Textus et studia Carmelitana,  (Rome, ); L. Saggi (ed.), ‘Constitutiones capituli Londonensis anni ’, AOC,  (), –; idem, ‘Constitutiones capituli Burdigalensis anni ’, AOC,  (), –.  Keith J. Egan, ‘Medieval Carmelite Houses, England and Wales’, Carmelus,  (), –; idem, ‘An Essay Towards a Historiography of the Origin of the Carmelite Province in England’, Carmelus,  (), –; idem, ‘Dating English Carmelite Foundations’, Carmelus,  (), –; Balbino Velasco, Historia del Carmelo Espanol, i (Rome, ); Jill Webster, Carmel in Medieval Catalonia (Leiden, ); idem, ‘La trista història del convent de Nostra Senyora del Carme del Vallparadis de Terrassa’, Annuario d’Estudis Medievalis, , no.  (), –.  Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Fratrum Beatae Virgine Mariae de Monte Carmelo, I (– ), ed. Gabriel Wessels (Rome, ); Rudolf Hendriks, ‘La Succession héréditaire (– )’, in Elie le prophète, i: Etudes Carmélitaines,  (Bruges, ), –, L. Saggi, Sant’Angelo di Sicilia: Studio sulla vita, devozione, folklore, Textus et studia Carmelitana,  (Rome, ); Joachim Smet, The Carmelites: A History of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, i: Ca  until the Council of Trent (Barrington, Ill., ); Ciconetti, La regola del Carmelo; Adrian Staring (ed.), Medieval Carmelite Heritage: Early Reflections on the Nature of the Order, Textus et studia Carmelitana,  (Rome, ).  Hendriks, ‘La Succession héréditaire (–)’.  Staring (ed.), Medieval Carmelite Heritage.

Introduction  the development of the historical tradition from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, using Staring’s work, was taken by Emanuele Boaga in , This book attempts to take this approach further by expanding the chronological range and by considering the Carmelite tradition within the broader context of mendicant and monastic perspectives of corporate histories. It is impossible to overestimate the contribution of the Carmelite scholars who represent the first generation of critical historical scholarship within the order. Scholars such as Zimmermann and Xiberta inherited a tradition based largely on assumptions about the order’s past that had remained unchallenged within the order for centuries. These assumptions derived ultimately from the texts examined in this book, which were composed between the s and the s. By the latter date the shape of the tradition had already been formed. In place of the creativity displayed by the Carmelite authors of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their successors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used their energies to edit and collate. The earliest printed Carmelite collection, the Speculum antiquum published in Venice in , is a slim volume of only a few texts, presented without commentary. During the s/s John Bale transcribed scores of Carmelite texts, some of which would otherwise have been lost; but his printed works, however, all represent the new direction of his interests after his conversion to Protestantism. It was not until the seventeenth century that Carmelites published works relating to their history and traditions in great numbers. Among them was Marco Antonio Alègre’s Paradisius Carmeliticae (), in which a passage from Tacitus’s Historiae was interpreted so as to provide evidence of Carmelite occupation of Mt Carmel in the first century . In  the Bollandist Fathers, embarking on the first volume of the Acta Sanctorum, entrusted the entry for Telesphorus to a Carmelite, Segherus Paulus. The Acta Sanctorum provided an opportunity for Carmelites to incorporate their version of Christian history, according to which the Carmelite Order was the ‘original’ monastic order, into the mainstream of Catholic scholarship. Telesphorus was the name to which a fourteenth-century apocalyptic work, probably emanating from a Spiritual Franciscan circle, had been attributed. In the fifteenth century, however, Telesphorus featured in Carmelite writing as a  Emanuele Boaga, ‘La storiografia carmelitana nei secoli XIII e XIV’, in Paul Chandler and Keith J. Egan (eds.), The Land of Carmel: Essays in Honor of Joachim Smet, O.Carm. (Rome, ), –.



Introduction

companion of the Carmelite saint Angelo, and Paulus used his commission to assert his order’s claim to an Elianic origin. Lezana’s Annales sacri prophetice et Eliani ordinis beatae virginis Mariae de monte Carmelo, published in , amplified these claims. The profusion of Carmelite apologetics provoked the indignation of some Bollandists. Like the Dominicans in the fourteenth century, the hostile Bollandists attacked the very fabric of the Carmelite tradition, using their vehicle of the Acta Sanctorum to do so. The existence of Berthold, the putative first prior-general of the order, was denied by Daniel Papebroch in , in the last Acta Sanctorum volume for March. In  the entry for St Albert of Vercelli, the order’s legislator, dismissed all claims for the existence of the Carmelites before the thirteenth century. In  an allegedly thirteenth-century Vita, that of St Angelo, which not only asserted the earlier existence of the order but also laid claim to a prophetic ministry, was rejected. The same year saw the publication of the most comprehensive collection of Carmelite historical texts yet amassed, the Speculum Carmelitanum of Daniel a Virgine Maria. Daniel presented editions of the most important medieval historical texts, particularly Philip Ribot’s De institutione et peculiaribus gestis religiosorum Carmelitarum (c./). He also compiled an armoury of apologetic arguments ( propugnacula) to be used in defence against the order’s critics. Historical scholarship within the order was itself a defensive imperative; in such a context, the critical examination of texts and manuscript traditions was unlikely to be received with favour. The publication of papal bulls relating to the Carmelites, a project spanning most of the eighteenth century, provided a body of external critical source material against which the bull collections contained within many of the medieval Carmelite chronicles could be judged. Yet Carmelite scholarship retained, throughout the nineteenth century, an overwhelmingly pietistic flavour. The Elianic foundation may no longer have been accepted as literal fact, but the historical tradition in which figures like Berthold, Brocard, and Cyril of Constantinople played a central role, remained unchallenged. Well into the twentieth century Carmelite authors accepted these fourteenth-century inventions as historical figures, because the basis for the critical examination  

 AASS, Apr., i. –. AASS, Mar., iii. . Daniel a Virgine Maria (ed.), Speculum Carmelitanum sive historia Eliani ordinis fratrum beatissime virginis Mariae de Moute Carmelo,  vols. (Antwerp, ).  Bullarium Carmelitanum, ed. E. Monsignanus and G. Ximinez,  vols. (Rome, –).

Introduction  of the sources had not yet been established. Even Xiberta maintained that Ribot’s De institutione presented a plausible chronology of Carmelite history. Moreover, the refusal by some Carmelites to accept the findings of historical scholarship provoked attacks on scholars, like Zimmermann, a Protestant convert, who was seen as responsible for criticizing the order’s traditions. The past fifty years have seen a more rigorous examination of Carmelite historical sources, as well as the use of external archival records. Carmelite scholarship has been advanced immeasurably by the journal Carmelus and the Textus et studia Carmelitana series of the Institutum Carmelitanum, which themselves build on the tradition established by the earlier journals Analecta Ordinis Carmelitanum, Etudes Carmélitaines, and Ephemerides Carmeliticae. With a few exceptions, however, it is only recently that scholars from outside the order have begun to tap the enormous potential of Carmelite sources, and to restore the order to the greater prominence it deserves in the history of medieval religious, social, and cultural history. This book is offered both as a contribution to what is now a vigorous historiography, and as a tribute to the work of an earlier generation of Carmelite scholars.  

B. Xiberta, ‘Elias et religio christiana in Monte Carmelo’, AOC  (–), –. See the debate between Zimmermann and Patrick de Saint-Joseph in Patrick de SaintJoseph, ‘La Nouvelle Encyclopédie Britannique et la tradition monastique des Carmes’, Etudes Carmélitaines,  (), –.

CHAPTER ONE

The Carmelites, c.–     , C.‒ The history of the order begins with Mt Carmel itself. Not so much a mountain as a sloping ridge gathering to a cliff top with breath-taking views over the bay of Haifa, Carmel covers an area of several square miles. Its heavily wooded escarpments are pierced by wadis riddled with caves. For hermits it is ideal country, being abundant in water, woods, vegetation, height, and, not least, spectacular scenery. It also enjoys, of course, the presence of the holy. The narrative accounts of Elijah in the Hebrew Scriptures cover a wide territory, from Sidon to the Jordan; but for Christian pilgrims and exegetes the geography of the prophet’s career came increasingly to rest on Mt Carmel. This was the site of his most spectacular triumphs, against the priests of Baal and against the armies sent by King Ahaziah to arrest him. The ‘summit of the mountain’, which overlooks the settlement of Haifa and the bay, was from the fourth century  a place of local cult importance. A cave below the summit was associated with Elijah in Jewish devotion, and came to be venerated by Christians and Muslims as well. As early as the fifth century, monks had taken advantage of the natural grace of the location and the memory of Elijah. There was little institutional monastic settlement on Carmel, however, and the tone of Palestinian monasticism was set in the wildernesses of the Judaean desert rather than on the verdant slopes of the  In preparing this chapter I have relied extensively on the following: Ciconetti, La Regola del Carmelo; Egan, ‘Medieval Carmelite Houses’; idem, ‘An Essay’; Elias Friedman, The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel: A Study in Carmelite Origins (Rome, ); Smet, Carmelites.   Kgs. : –,  Kgs. : –. All biblical references are to the Vulgate.  K. Müller, Geographi graeci minores, Biblioteca Scriptorum Graecorum (Paris, ), .  Andrew Jotischky, The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States (University Park, Pa., ), –.  Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vi. –, for James of Porphyria, and viii.  for Martinian. A sixth-century pilgrimage account, Antonini Placentini itinerarium, iii, CCSL  (Turnhout, ), , mentions a monastery dedicated to St Elisha about four miles to the south, in the wadi