THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
an "Elijah-grotto"; that is, a cave in which Elijah is said to have lived.
The Old Testament does not determine to which of the tribes Carmel belonged, whether to Asher, Zebulun, or Manasseh. At various times it was counted to Galilee and to Phenicia. Tacitus, asserts that " Carmel " was the name of a mountain and a deity, and Vespasian had the oracle there consulted.
The coast at the foot of the mountain is about 100 yards wide, broadening north and south. At the foot of the bay of Akko there was an old city called Sycaminum by Greeks and Romans and Haifa in the Talmud, coins of which are known. The place was destroyed and the material used to build the present Haifa at the mouth of the Kishon, 1760, the growth of which in recent years has been quite rapid. (H. Gtjthe.)
Bibliography: C. R. Conder and H. H. Kitchener, Survey of Western Palestine, Memoirs, i. 264 sqq., London, 1881; G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 337- 340, 7th ed., London, 1897; E. Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, iii. 189, Boston, 1841; A. Reland, Palcestina, 2 vols., Utrecht, 1714; J. de S. Thdrese, Le Sanctuaire du Mont Carmel depuis son origine jusqu'a nos jours, Marseilles, 1876; T. Saunders, Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine, London, 1881; PEF, Quarterly Statements, particularly for the years 1882-86; G. Ebers and H. Guthe, Paldstina in Bild und Wort, ii. 106 sqq., 1S84; C. R. Conder, Tent-work in Palestine, new ed., London, 1889.
CARMELITES.
Origin and Early History (§ 1). Habit and Scapular (§ 2). Reforms Within the Order (§3). Controversies with Other Orders (§ 4). Present Status (§ 5).
Carmelites (Ordo fratrum Beatce Virginis Maria de monte Carmelo) is the name of a Roman Catholic order founded in the twelfth century by a certain Berthold (d. after 1185) on Mount Carmel, whence the order receives its name. Carmelite tradition traces the origin of the order to a community of hermits on Mount Carmel that succeeded the schools of the prophets in ancient Israel, although there are no certain records of monks on this mountain before the ninth decade of the twelfth century. Berthold, who had gone to Palestine from Calabria either as a pilgrim or as a crusader, chose Mount Carmel as the seat of his community because it was the traditional home of Elijah. It was but natural that this community of Eastern hermits in the Holy Land should gain constant accessions from pilgrims, and in 1209 they received a rule from the patriarch Albert of Jerusalem. This
i. Origin consisted of sixteen articles, which and Early enjoined strict obedience to their
History, prior, residence in individual cells, constancy in prayer, the hearing of mass every morning in the oratory of the community, poverty and toil, daily silence from vespers until terce the next morning, abstinence from all forms of meat except in cases of severe illness, and fasting from Holy Cross Day (Sept. 14) to Easter of the following year. This rule received the approval of Honorius III. in 1220. With the increasing cleavage between the West and the East, however, the Carmelites found it advisable to leave their original home, and in 1238 they settled
in Cyprus and Sicily. In 1240 they were in England, and four years later in southern France, while by 1245 they were so numerous that they were able to hold their first general chapter at Aylesford, England, where Simon Stock, then eighty years of age, was chosen general. During his rule of twenty years the order prospered, especially by the establishment of a monastery at Paris by St. Louis in 1259.
The original rule of the order was now changed to conform to that of the mendicant orders on the initiative of Simon Stock and at the command of Innocent IV. Their former habit of a mantle with black and white or brown and white stripes was discarded, and they wore the same habit as the Dominicans, except that the cloak was white. They also borrowed much from the Dominican and Franciscan rules. Their distinctive garment was a scapular of two strips of gray
2. Habit cloth, worn on the breast and back, and and fastened at the shoulders. This,
Scapular, according to the traditions of the order, was given to Simon Stock by the Virgin herself, who descended from heaven and promised that all who wear it in this world, or at least in the hour of death, should be saved, she herself going each Saturday to purgatory to rescue those to whom this might apply. Thus arose a sodality of the scapular, which affiliated a large number of laymen with the Carmelites. The order speedily became infected with arrogance, however, contesting the invention of the rosary with tha Dominicans, terming themselves the brothers of the Virgin, and asserting, on the basis of their traditional association with Elijah, that all the prophets of the Old Testament, as well as the Virgin and the Apostles, had been Carmelites. Their second general, Nicholas of Narbonne (1265-70), protested in vain, only to be deposed from his office.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Carmelites, like other monastic orders, declined, and reform became imperative. Shortly before 1433 three monasteries in Valais, Tuscany, and Mantua were reformed by the preaching of Thomas Conecte of Rennes and formed the congregation of Mantua, which was declared independent of the order by Eugenius IV. In 1431 or 1432 the same pope sanctioned certain modifications of the Carmelite rule, and in 1459 Pius II. left the regulation of fasts to the discretion of the general. Soreth, who was then general, and had already established the order of Carmelite nuns in 1452, accordingly sought to restore tlu 3. Reforms primitive asceticism, but died of Within poison at Nantes in 1471- In 1476 the Order, a bull of Sixtus. IV. founded the Carmelites of the Third Order, who received a special rule in 1635, which was amended in 1678. The sixteenth century saw a number of shortdived reforms, but it was not until the second half of the same century that a thorough reformation of the Carmelites was carried out by St. Theresa, who, together with St. John of the Cross, established the Discalced Carmelites. In conscious opposition to Protestantism the order was now