By the year 1600, Carmel began its own reformation in response to the decisions of the Council of Trent. Henry Silvio, prior general from 1598 until his death, was a primary mover through formal visitations to each of the provinces. The so-called Reform of Touraine continues to have tremendous influence the Order today. The Province of Touraine, spurred by the Carmelites in the house in Rennes, was completed associated with the reform by 1633. Focused on the Carmelite spiritual values, Touraine’s statutes dealt with the interior life of the individual friar and the community. John of St. Samson, blind from age 3, had significant impact on scores of novices in Rennes.
The Stricter Observance
The Stricter Observance, beginning in 1645, is often assumed into the Touraine Reform; however, it should be considered separate since its reforms tended to be on a province by province basis. While it was intended that all reformed houses of the Order would conform to the constitutions of the Stricter Observance, the legislation found less favor south of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Italy and Spain tended to possess a more traditional spirituality. The urge for renewal was not so strongly felt. The Reform also felt victim to political differences and Italian and Spanish members of the Order were not about to be told by the northern Europeans, especially the French, how to live their lives. However, through the Stricter Observance especially, the Carmelites participated in the fervor of the Catholic Reformation at every level. The Order was led back to the source of its being and made consciously aware of its vocation to prayer. It produced significant spiritual literature, a record of the Order which continued to evolve toward its present form. The Marian element of Carmelite spirituality was stressed, especially through the scapular confraternity. The apostolate became interiorized and charged with new zeal. The Order also prospered materially— its houses and churches were embellished or rebuilt in the new style of the time.
Expansion into Eastern Europe
The Province of Poland, following the Reformation, split the reformed houses off into their own province in 1728. The houses of Lithuania then split from the provinces of Russia and Lesser Poland (the unreformed houses). The growth was such that the General Chapter of 1750 elected a special assistant general for the area.
Regrouping of the Order in Europe
At the beginning of the 17th century, Italy counted eleven provinces. Five houses in Italy were under the immediate jurisdiction of the prior general. Blessed Angelo Paoli (1642-1720), recognized by the Church for his prayer and care for the poor, was from the Tuscan Province but spent his life in San Martino ai Monte, one of these houses in Rome. The Carmine Maggiore in Naples, founded prior to 1268, developed a system of grancie (farms), each with its own prior and community, to provide the prior general with bread, grain, and wine. Pope Clement VIII, in 1599, restricted novitiates and professed houses to reformed communities. This dramatically reduced the number of Carmelites in Italy. Subsequently, Innocent X in 1652, suppressed all small houses. The Congregation for the Religious State declared non-existent 212 Carmelite houses, almost half of the houses of the Order in Italy. Twenty suppressed houses were restored after protests were made.
The prior general Henry Silvio began a visitation of Mantuan Congregation in 1599 and found the reform had significantly lost its fervor. He became busy about planting the seed of what would become the Reform of Monte Santo.
Theological Studies and Ecclesial Sciences
After the Reformation, the task of rationalizing the faith fell to scholastic theology. Positive theology sought the sources of doctrine in the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. Various other aspects of theology assumed autonomous existence and methodologies: exegesis, patrology, spiritual theology, homiletics, liturgy, and church history. This period became the richest in philosophers and theologians of the Order since the Middle Ages. When moral theology became a separate discipline, the Order opened special studia (houses of studies) to teach this discipline for those preparing for pastoral work. Several Carmelites worked in canon law, producing written works. One, John Baptist Lezana, produced Summa quaestionum regularium, the fruit of many year as a teacher and a consultor for the Roman Congregations, which remained an honored work of consultation down to recent times. The Carmelites were not known for their studies in scripture or patristics. In 1610, Pope Paul V prescribed Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in all studia of religious orders. In more important houses of student, Aramaic was to be taught. After 1622, Chaldaic and Ilyric were added to the list for the principal studia. Following the rise of Protestantism the defense of orthodoxy (apologetics) was made into a separate theological science.
Spiritual Literature of Carmel
By the 17th century, the focus of the Catholic renaissance had shifted from Spain to France, the locus for the most significant spiritual literature the Order produced. Brother John of St. Samson, one of the greatest mystics produced by the Order, created a rich treasure of writings. His spirituality was summarized as passionate attachment to Christ and his cross, burning expressions of love of the mystical spouse, overflowing joy in the profound deaths he experienced at sharing the beatitude and glory of the objects in which he is consumed. However, many others contributed in the various provinces, especially those of France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
Marian Doctrine and Devotion
By its nature, the Carmelite Order is not only contemplative but also Marian. During this period of renewal, the Marian tradition of the Order was reaffirmed and strengthened. Mariology became a separate discipline. The Carmelites produced no general works of Mariology, though many wrote treatises on the Immaculate Conception and incidentally treated other Marian themes in their theological writings: Mary’s predestination, virginity, marriage with St. Joseph, meriting of the Incarnation and divine maternity, divine maternity itself, and cult of hyperdulia. Devotional books and sermons often treated co-redemption and the spiritual maternity of Mary, but these mysteries were hardly treated in scientific works. On the Iberian Peninsula the practice of a fourth vow to espouse the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was common. The devotion of Carmel to Mary as Virgin refers to her relationship to God. In her relation to the human race, Carmelites continued to honor Mary as their patroness as they had from the earliest times. Confraternities developed both within Carmelite parochial ministries as well as outside, although these tended to be regarded with suspicion. These devotional groups spread to every corner of Christendom and continue to this day. The General Chapter in 1609 unanimously decreed that the Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin would be the Order’s principal feast. In the 18th century, Benedict XIII extended the feast of July 16th to the entire Church, acknowledging the diffusion the cult of Mary had already achieved. Marian shrines, with various representations of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, became common throughout the Order
The Brown Scapular
Carmelite Marian writings in this period are practically identical with writings about the scapular. Over 100 different titles can be found in the 17th and 18th century. A special genre was the confraternity handbook or manual, featuring a brief history of the Order, miracles of Our Lady, prayers, privileges, and indulgences of the confraternity and the Third Order. In 1642 John Launoy challenged the historicity of the scapular vision and the Sabbatine bull. His criticism of Carmelite traditions was only one of a series of attacks on the pretensions of religious orders. More general reservations about the scapular devotion, beyond Launoy, were doctrinal as well as historical. As a result, the controversaries forced the Carmelites to develop its theology of the scapular.
The Carmelite Nuns
In 1600 less than fifty cloistered Carmelite monasteries existed in the world. Some 150 years later, the Order numbered over a hundred “little Carmels.” The monasteries drews it members primarily from nobility and the rising wealthy bourgeois class. The fiat of the head of the household was often more the inspiration for young woman’s vocation than the call of God. Other times, parental opposition had to be overcome. New foundations often came about under the aegis of reform. St. Mary of the Angels in Florence became the Order’s most important Italian monastery and home to St. Mary Magdalen de’Pazzi. Other monasteries accepted its constitutions, revised in accordance with the saint’s suggestions, thereby continuing the influence of the Florentine monastery and its famous inmate. The Incarnation of Avila in Spain became well known because of Teresa of Jesus and continued to exist in her shadow. Unfortunately, the constant tensions between monastery and Order continued until 1631 when Pope Urban VIII exempted the monastery from the jurisdiction of the Order.
The Third Order
One of many privileges allowed by the papal bull Mare magnum of Sixtus IV (1476) was that of having a Third Order, a common practice in other mendicant orders. The Carmelites however developed a Third Order with non-traditional aspects. It is only in the modern period that the Carmelite Third Order took on a more traditional look and reality. A separate Rule, just for the Third Order has been periodically revised but this document is simply the Rule of St. Albert adapted to the lives of lay men and women. Third Orders experienced tremendous growth in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, France, and Belgium.
Carmel’s Contribution to the Fine Arts
The vigorous renewal of Catholic life found expression in the arts. The exuberance of the baroque period produced no figure of stature from the Order in the arts. In constructing and restoring buildings, the Carmelites relied on the services of contemporary artists. In the Counter-Reformation however, Carmelite churches became filled with the Order’s newfound sense of identity. Saints and depictions of miracles proper to the Order prominently appear. Mary bestowing the scapular, sometimes with a mix of religious figures (some biblical, some Carmelite of which some were real and some imaginary) appearing alongside, was a common work. In Rome the churches of the priors general—Santa Maria in Traspontina and San Martino ai Monte— were only a couple of the repositories of Carmelite art. The Corsini chapel in St. John Lateran is dedicated to St. Andrew Corsini, the Florentine Carmelite and it a precious jewel. Beyond the Eternal City of Rome, Venice was home to the Carmini of Venice, crowded during the 17th and 18th centuries with res carmelitana but structurally unaltered since the 14th century. Some of Spain’s great masters and architects worked to make Carmel represented. The earthquake of 1755 caused extensive damage throughout Portugal, including the destruction of the Carmo of Lisbon, a gift to the Order from St. Nuno Alvarez. In Brazil the Portuguese Carmelite tradition of constructing splendiferous buildings and furnishings continued. The ornate retables of many churches are instructional manuals in Carmelite spirituality. During the French Revolution, many of the Carmelite churches were either destroyed or converted into other uses. Antwerp’s Carmelite churches featured works by Rubens, Zeghers, Jacob Floris and Abraham van Diepenbecke. In Germany, many of the convents and churches no longer stand. The Carmelite church in Boppard, “Pearl of the Rhine,” no longer functions as a church but maintains its ornately carved oaken choir stalls. Six of its stained glass windows are in the Boppard Room of The Cloisters museum in New York. The church and monastery of Frankfurt, now a museum, are remarkable for the frescoes of Jerg Ratgeb picturing the life of Christ, each mystery matched by its prophetic antecedent in the Old Testament. The oldest of the houses in continuous Carmelite use was in Straubing, Germany, founded in 1367. The church proper contains many outstanding works by a variety of area masters. The recently uncovered ceiling of the house library is a feast for the eyes of paintings dedicated to the intellectual life in the Order.
