The Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel is a religious family consisting of consecrated men and women which develops its life in the heart of the Church, and with other members of the People of God participates in the history of salvation.  From the Spirit of the Lord it has received a particular mission in the Church which it fulfills by fidelity to its own unique charism, intimately bound, from its origin, to the mystery of Christ, and lives it following the example of Mary and Elijah.

 

            After the Holy Land had been recovered by the Crusaders, hermits settled there in different spots.  Some of them, having moved “into the Holy Land out of live for the land of Jesus, consecrated themselves under the vesture of religious life and poverty, to Him Who acquired it through the shedding of His blood, remaining there in holy penitence”.

 

            “They lived in solitude after the example in imitation of the saintly and solitary prophet Elijah near the fountain on Mount Carmel, called the fountain of Elijah.”

 

            In the beginning their way of life was spontaneous, almost no structures at all when compared to other forms of religious life already existent in the Church.  Later, St. Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, at their own request, gave them “a plan of life” suited to the total commitment they had embraced, full of the spirit of the pilgrimage to the Holy land and inspired in its core by the life of the first community of Jerusalem. (Const. 10-11)

 

The Carmelite Nuns

 

            In May 1452, Blessed John Soreth welcomed into the Order the beguines of Ten Elsen in Gelders.  They wished to become Carmelites “so the Blessed Mother of God might be venerated by female religious as she was by male ones”.  Blessed John Soreth believed that the nuns’ way of life would help to renew the Order’s contemplative ideal and would be  a spur to better observance among the men.  Official approval of the nuns came with the Bull “Cum nulla” of Nicholas V, 7 October 1425, probably at the instigation of the Florentine Carmelites for the benefit of their “pinsochere”.

 

            This decree gave the Prior General and Carmelite Provincials the privilege of accepting, directing, admitting and protecting virgins, widows, beguines, and “mantellate” who lived singly or in groups and who wished to receive the habit and protection of the Order of Carmel.  It is clear from the Bull itself that even before the official founding of the nuns as such, there were already widows, beguines and “Mantellate” who were inspired by the Carmelite way of life and who lived in their own houses or in groups. (RIVCM 138)

 

            Blessed Francoise D’Amboise is generally recognized as the founder of the Carmelite nuns in France and one of the first cloistered Carmelites.  She ruled with her husband who became Duke of Brittany in 1450 for seven years, up until his death.  After various meetings with John Soreth, she decided to become a Carmelite nuns and obtained the necessary finances to found the first monastery in France in Bondon near Vannes in 1263, using nuns from Liege.  Blessed Francoise joined the community in 1468 and later, founded a second monastery in Nantes in 1477.  She insisted on a strict rule of enclosure, thereby anticipating the decrees of the Council of Trent by a century.  Her Exhortations survive in which she nourished the spirit of her sisters.

 

            Francoise had a tremendously positive and spiritual influence on Carmelite nuns in her advice and reading and beyond this she saw her response to God’s love as “do all things so that God may be ever more loved.” 

(RIVCM 139)