The years of the Order’s early expansion in Europe also witnessed the growth and shaping of its devotion to Our Lady. Everywhere they dedicated their churches to the Blessed Virgin. Not surprisingly, their churches featured Marian confraternities (not to be confused with later scapular confraternities). The confraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel of Toulouse in 1267 numbered 5,000 men and women. Laudesi, Marian hymn-singers, occur in Florence (1280), Siena (1289), and Cambridge (ca. 1300). At this ...

The prior general, Nicholas of France, has left an account (1270) of his visitation of the Order. Named by its author The Fiery Arrow, it is indeed a burning indictment of the Order. The move away from the desert, he finds, has brought disastrous consequences. Nicholas does not so much object to preaching, hearing confessions, and counseling as to the inept manner this ministry is carried out by the “stepsons” of the Order. Two by ...

Not long thereafter, we find the Carmelites requesting the papal privileges. In 1252, Innocent IV gave them permission to have churches with a belfry and one bell – the sign of a public church – and a cemetery for their own use. Innocent IV granted the prior general the right of bestowing faculties on his subjects for preaching and hearing confessions. In 1262, Urban IV allowed them to bury laymen in their cemeteries provided the ...

Only a decade after a portion of the Carmelites had fled to Europe, we find them considering a modification of their formula vitae. This document, drawn up for a single hermitage, no longer suited their worldwide circumstances. The first foundations had indeed been made in remote places, but we soon see the hermits settling in more populated areas. This involved, too, a more cenobitical lifestyle. In 1247, accordingly, the Carmelites sent envoys to Pope Innocent IV, ...