July 23 is one of the days when the memorial of John Cassian is observed, officially in Marseille, although he is not included in the Catholic universal Church calendar. His Eastern feast day is February 29. In keeping with the memorial of one of the Desert Fathers who influenced Carmelite spirituality, this post is about the history of monasticism near Mount Carmel and its influence on Carmelite spirituality.
This is the second post in a series of posts about the stories of Carmel and the history that lies within them. The first such post was Elijah the Father of Carmel.
Palestinian Monastic History in the Stories of Carmel
The Carmelite Order traces its roots, spiritually, from hermits who lived on Mount Carmel at the time of the Church Fathers, and traces the origin of its order to western hermits who lived on Mount Carmel during the Crusades. The primitive Carmelite rule known to St. Teresa of Avila was the rule for Carmelite mendicants approved in 1247 by Pope Innocent IV. There was an earlier Carmelite rule approved for hermits in 1226 by Pope Honorius III (Kieran Kavanaugh, Introduction to "The Way of Perfection, Study Edition). The 1226 Rule of St. Albert for Carmelite hermits was written for the thirteenth century hermits who lived on Mount Carmel, and the 1247 rule was adapted for monasteries.
Through the stories of Carmel passed down through the centuries, Carmelites in the era of St. Teresa of Avila traced their history not only back to hermits of the Crusades, but all the way back to hermits thought to have lived on Mount Carmel even before the New Testament. In a French sermon from 1342 quoted by Father Kavanaugh in his introduction to the Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. III (the same sermon quoted in part in my earlier posting on Elijah and Carmel), the 14th to 16th century understanding of that history was told like this:
"You are wondering why I refer to the Carmelites as the special and ancient order of our Lady but if you were to know the reasons, you would wonder no more. Trustworthy histories of Elijah and Elisha tell us how these two often dwelt on Mount Carmel, three leagues distant from Nazareth, the city of our Lady. And saintly men continued to live there in solitude, until the time of our Saviour. At that time, the hermits were converted by the preaching of the apostles. On one side of the mountain, they built a Church or oratory in honor of the Holy Virgin, in a spot which, they had been told, she often frequented in her life, with her maiden companions. For this reason, they were the first among all religious orders to be called children of the Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel. From the early days of the Church, they worked with alacrity to preach the Gospel and in later times they were given a rule of life by John, Patriarch of Jerusalem, based on that of St. Paulinus and St. Basil. Thus, quite justly this Order enjoys the honor of being the oldest of them all."
Father Kavanaugh, commenting on that fourteenth century view of Carmelite history, recounted the later critical study of the actual history of the order and concluded that "what can be affirmed historically is that there was a school of prophets on Carmel, that the prophet Elijah undoubtedly had an impressive impact on the hermits and monks of the early Church, and that Christian hermits resided on Mt. Carmel from a very early date."
Accordingly, there is not strong evidence for a direct chain of historical development from the Old Testament prophets to the western hermits of the twelfth century. Father Kavanaugh references specific studies on the Latin hermits of Mount Carmel, published in 1979 and 1982, which no doubt address that history more directly than I can do here. However, what this post will offer is some references to this history in the writings of St. Teresa of Avila together with some insights into the actual history from historians writing more recently than 1982.
Palestinian Monasticism in the Writings of St. Teresa of Avila
St. Teresa often mentions St. Jerome and the Desert Fathers, and occasional mentions John Cassian, to whose writings she was much devoted. St. Jerome and John Cassian lived in monasteries in fourth century Bethlehem, giving St. Teresa's Carmelite thinking a connection with fourth century Palestinian monasticism, whether or not it reached her from the medieval Carmelites of Mt. Carmel. In the process of beatification, Petronila Bautista told that St. Teresa was very devoted to the Conferences of John Cassian and the Fathers of the Desert, and asked Petronila to read 2 or 3 accounts of those saints each day and at night to tell her about them, when Teresa did not have time to do so herself. She also made repeated references to St. Jerome and the Desert Fathers in her writings, and told in the Book of her Life how she had read the letters of St. Jerome to her uncle when she was a young woman.
Earlier posts here specifically addressed St. Teresa of Avila and St. Jerome and John Cassian and the Carmelite Tradition. Those posts look at specific examples of writings that mention St. Jerome and John Cassian and their writings.
Some of St. Teresa of Avila's references to hermits could refer either to those early Palestinian monks and hermits or to the medieval Carmelite hermits, offered as role models for her nuns. Here are a few examples of such references:
"Let us remember our holy fathers of the past, those hermits whose lives we aim to imitate. What sufferings they endured. What solitude, cold, and hunger, and what sun and heat, without anyone to complain to but God! Do you think they were made of steel? Well, they were as delicate as we." [The Way of Perfection 11:4]
"If it is necessary because of the extremely secluded life you live to have a stretch of land (and this even helps prayer and devotion) with some hermitages where you can withdraw to pray, well and good. But no buildings, or large and ornate house." (The Way of Perfection 2:9)
"The wall should be high, and there should be a field where hermitages can be constructed so that the Sisters may be able to withdraw for prayer as our holy Fathers did." (Constitution 32).
Insights on Palestinian Monasticism in Mount Carmel from Scripture and Recent Historical Writings
Mount Carmel from the New Testament to the Middle Ages
Mount Carmel is near the area where Christ lived in the Gospels, but
it is not specifically mentioned in the New Testament. In the Gospels,
the childhood was in the town of Nazareth, which is about halfway
between the Sea of Galilee and Mount Carmel. His early ministry
involved the towns of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Gennesaret, also in
Galilee, and just north of the Sea of Galilee. He was also in the
towns of Tyre and Sidon, near the Mediterranean Sea in Phoenicia (now
in Lebanon). At one point, he returned to his childhood home town of
Nazareth, to find that the people there refused to believe he was the
Christ (Matthew 13:53-58 and Mark 6:1-6).
Part of the area along the Palestinian coast was Christianized in New Testament times, such that we know that there were Christians in cities on the coast both north and south of Mount Carmel, mentioned in Acts 9:32-10:48 and Acts 21:7. Mount Carmel itself is not mentioned, but Jesus's retreats to the wilderness would make it all but certain that first century Christians spent time on Mount Carmel. The Acts of the Apostles mentions Caesaria, which is south of Mount Carmel, as the home of Cornelius, where St. Peter was led by a vision to take the Gospel to a Gentile named Cornelius. South of Caesarea along the coast is the city of Joppa, where Peter raised a woman from the dead. Inland from Joppa were the cities of Lydda and Sharon, where all of the residents became Christians after St. Peter healed a paralyzed man.
Closest to Mount Carmel was the city of Ptolemais, mentioned in Acts 21:7, the city later called Acre by the Crusaders. Ptolemais lies at the north end of a bay on the Mediterranean, and Mount Carmel lies at the south end of the same bay, about 9 miles away. There, Paul stopped and stayed with "the Brethren" for a day after his return from Tyre.
Hebrews 11:37-38 speaks of the Old Testament saints who were
persecuted, including the prophets and some of the women, describing
them in ways that would have reminded readers of first century
Christian persecutions, and in ways that sound like the lives of later
fourth and fifth century hermits:
"They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated -- of whom the world was not worthy -- wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth."
N.T. Wright describes the geographic area of the spread of Christianity in The New Testament and the People of God (1992) at 356-357:
"Turning from history to geography, we have already said enough to show what sort of geographical spread took place within the first century of Christian activity. Jerusalem and surrounding Judaea; Samaria; Antioch, Damascus and surrounding Syria; Asia Minor (Smyrna and Bithynia); the cities of Greece; Rome; all these are clearly indicated in the texts we have examined, and in the New Testament, as major centres of Christianity. This much is uncontroversial. Beyond this, however, it is very difficult to go with any certainty. . . . Of Syria (Antioch excepted) and Egypt it is impossible to say anything for sure; but something must be said, because of the evident presence and power of Christianity in both places by the later second century. . . . Clearly Syria and Egypt were among the important early centres of Christianity, but it is extremely difficult to say about them, any more than about most other places, exactly what their brand of Christianity was like."
He does not discuss the question of what Christians were then like on Mount Carmel, if indeed there were any Christian hermits there at that time. However, if they were there, it must be said, as for Syria and Egypt, that we cannot say much about their brand of Christianity. However, the description of the prophets and other Old Testament saints in Hebrews 11:37-38 provides an image of the prophets living as hermits in the mountains, which reflects how early Christians would have viewed their contemporaries who may have similarly lived as hermits on Mount Carmel.
Wright also offers a description of the difference between Jews in Galilee (where Mount Carmel is located) and those nearer to Jerusalem in the first century, including this at pages 167-168:
"There were considerable differences between the pressures upon, and consequent cultural, social and religious needs and viewpoints of, Jews in the Jerusalem area on the one hand and Jews in Galilee on the other. The former could focus attention most naturally on the Temple, on the problems of pagan overlordship and the threat to the sanctity of the capital, and on the maintenance of cult, liturgy and festival as symbols of a de jure national independence in the face of de facto subservience. The latter, Galilee, was three day's journey away from Jerusalem, with hostile territory (Samaria) in between. Surrounded and permeated as it was by paganism, Galilean Jewry naturally looked, more than its southern compatriots needed to, to the symbols of distinctiveness which mattered in the local setting. The Torah assumed new importance in border territory. . . . Those who live on the frontiers get into trouble if they do not keep the boundary fences in good repair."
That description of Galilee as a whole as being on the boundary with hostile territory and paganism would have applied to Mount Carmel in the first century. It was near the boundary with Samaria, and it was not far from Phoenicia (Lebanon). The memory of Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal there would have fit well with the concept of needing to protect those "boundary fences" of faith.
Archaeologist Joseph Patrich, in
Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in
Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Dumbarton Oaks Series) (1995), affirms that there were Latin centers in the Holy Land as
far back as the fourth century, erected and maintained by money from
wealthy Roman donors. Among these would have been the Bethlehem monasteries of St. Jerome and St. Paula in the late fourth century. Patrich
mentions that there was also an earlier monastery in Bethlehem, where John Cassian lived.
Although he does not mention monks or hermits on Mount Carmel during those early centuries, he does mention monks living in mountains, including anchorites on Mount Nitria. He also indicates that Christian monasticism began in Palestine, and that it spread throughout Palestine in the fourth century (page 3):
"Christian monasticism began in Palestine, the Holy Land . . . in the early fourth century, before Christianity became the official religion of the empire. . . . During the fourth century monasticism spread throughout Palestine, and monasteries were also established in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and in other holy places connected with Christ's life, as well as in the lowland (Shephela) and in Sinai. . . .
"The process by which monasteries came into being, whether in the desert or in rural regions, was similar. A hermit lived in a cave or hut near a source of water; in the course of time other monks joined him and a community was formed. With donations from wealthy admirers or a legacy bequeathed to the founder (an act sometimes considered a miraculous deed of divine intervention), dwelling cells, a prayerhouse, and water reservoirs were constructed. The founder, who was the leader of the group, determined whether it would be built as a monastery of anchorites, a laura . . . or as a communal monastery. . . ."
At the time of the Arab invasion of Jerusalem, in 614, Patrich describes some Palestinian Sabaite monks, and others, as fleeing to Jerusalem or to Arabia beyond the Jordan. Some fled to the west, founding Greek speaking monasteries in north Africa and later a Greek monastery in Rome. By the end of the tenth century, the once Greek-speaking monastery in Rome was Latinized. Other monks remained in their Palestinian monastic communities. Patrich, pg. 328. He does not deal with any hermits then on Mount Carmel in particular, but he does mention that the attack on Mar Saba was not unique.
According to Andrew Louth, in St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (2002) at 236, Byzantine monastic liturgical practice originated in the Sabaite monasteries in Jerusalem and the Judaean desert, during the first century under Arab control.
Little is known about the western monks who settled several centuries later near the fountain of Elijah on Mount Carmel or about what brought them together. For that reason, it may never be known whether, or to what extent, they were connected with monks who had lived there before them. Around 1210, they organized themselves together and sought a rule of life from Albert, the Patriarch of Jerusalem who lived a few miles away in Acre. Albert wrote that original rule for hermits, which was approved by Pope Honorius III in 1226, for the monks called "the hermit brothers of St. Mary of Mount Carmel." Excavations have found their church and cells.
Was there a rule of monks on Mount Carmel before the Rule of St. Albert?
If there was a community of monks on Mount Carmel, who shared an oratory built in the fourth century (as was said in the fourteenth century sermon quoted above), it is reasonable to ask whether they were organized under an earlier monastic rule than the first Rule of St. Albert, and whether there is any recent evidence that the hermits might have been organized so as to pass down their traditions and way of life to the medieval Latin Carmelites.
Joseph Patrich (whose book is linked above) mentions that the rules of monasteries collected by Voobus include 23 collections of monastic regulations written in Syrian or Arabic, some of them dating back to the early fifth century. Thus, other groups of hermits in that era were governed by monastic rules. That so, it is likely that any group of hermits living on Mt. Carmel in that era and sharing an oratory would have lived under some sort of monastic rule, and that their rule may have differed in some respects from the rule followed by hermits and monks in other geographic areas.
St. Teresa of Avila had a particular interest in St. Jerome, who had a monastery in Bethlehem, in Palestine, in the late fourth century, as his student and friend St. Paula had a monastery there for women. If there were rules particular to fourth century Palestinian monasticism, perhaps including Mount Carmel, the writings of St. Jerome and of John Cassian might provide glimpses of what life was like under that rule, as could the rule followed by the nearby Sabaite monks and the Rule of St. Basil.
Hermits on Mount Carmel and Devotion to Elijah
Historian John Chryssavgis, in his book John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain (2004) mentions Elijah in connection with monks who lived in the Sinaite desert (Egypt -- See I Kings 19:1-18, which tells that after killing Baal's prophets by Mount Carmel, Elijah fled from Queen Jezebel to Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, where he talked with God). Chryssavgis wrote that those monks "enjoyed a high reputation, with an atmosphere and tradition of their own, distinct from that of Palestine or of Egypt yet at the same time blending both in an austere but balanced ethos. It is in these mountains that Moses encountered God; it is here that Elijah heard God; and it is here that John Climacus, or John of the Ladder, recorded his experiences of God."
If the association with Elijah gave the monks of the Sinaite desert a "high reputation" and a "tradition of their own", it is reasonable to surmise that the same was true for early hermits on Mount Carmel, with or without specific documentation to support it.
If the hermits were there through the centuries, why can't we document it?
St. John Climacus lived in the seventh century, by which time Christian monks in the area were encountering some persecution from the growing Arab Empire. St. John of Damascus lived in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. It is already difficult to document the events of the lives of monks living in the Arab Empire by their time. However, some Christian monks remained in the Middle East under Arab control. From the time of Arab conquests in Palestine, beginning in the seventh century, until the Crusades, surviving documentation would be scarce.
Beyond that, however, is the fact the more scholarship needs to be directed at the era, and especially at those ties between the Latin west and the Church in Palestine during those centuries. Some enlightening documents may be out there, whose significance for this issue is not yet known. It is entirely possible that more detail will be widely known in the future about the medieval western hermits who lived on Mount Carmel in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and about the extent of their connection to those who lived there before them.