CARMELITES

or WHITE FRIARS. Monks of the order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel . They pretend to derive their original from the prophets Elijah and Elisha; and this occasioned a very warm controversy between this order and the Jesuits, about the end of the seventeenth century; both parties publishing several works, and petitioning the popes Innocent XI. and Innocent XII.; the latter of whom silenced them both, by a brief of the 20th November, 1698. What we know of their original is, that, in the twelfth century, Aimerie, legate of the holy see in the east, and patriarch of Antioch, collected together several hermits in Syria, who were exposed to the violence and incursions of the barbarians, and placed them on Mount Carmel, formerly the residence of the prophets Elijah and Elisha; from which mountain they took the name of Carmelites. Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, gave them rules in 1205, which Pope Honor i us III. confirmed in 1224. The peace concluded by the emperor Frederic II. with the Saracens, in the year 1229, so disadvantageous to Christen dom, and so beneficial to the infidels, occasioned the Carmelites to quit the Holy Land under Alan, the fifth general of the order. He first sent some of the monks to Cyprus, who landed there in the year 1238, and founded a monastery in the forest of For tan i a. Some Sicilians, at the same time, leaving Mount Carmel, returned to their own country, where they founded a monastery in the suburbs of Me ina. Some English departed out of Syria, in the year 1440, to found others in England. Others of Provence, in the year 1244, founded a monastery in the desert of Aigualates, a league from Marseilles; and thus, the number of their monasteries increasing, they held their first European general chapter in the year 1245, at their monastery of Aylesford, in England. After the establishment of the Carmelites in Europe, their rule was in some respects altered: the first time, by Pope Innocent IV., who added to the first article a precept of chastity, and relaxed the eleventh, which enjoins abstinence at all times from flesh, permitting them, when they travelled, to eat boiled flesh. This pope likewise gave them leave to eat in a common refectory, and to keep a es or mules for their use. Their rule was again mitigated by the popes Eugenius IV. and Pius II. Hence the order is divided into two branches, viz. the Carmelites of the ancient observance , called the moderate or mitigated , and those of the strict observance , who are the barefooted Carmelites ; a reform set on foot, in 1540, by S. The res a, a nun of the convent of Avila, in Castile: these last are divided into two congregations, that of Spain and that of Italy. The habit of the Carmelites was at first white, and the cloak laced at the bottom with several lists; but Pope Honor i us IV. commanded them to change it for that of the Minims. Their scapulary is a small woollen habit, of a brown colour, thrown over their shoulders. They wear no linen shirts, but instead of them linsey-woolsey.— Brought on.