Pilgrimage and the Roots of Carmelite Spirituality the Carmelite

Mary Frohlich

PILGRIMAGE AND THE ROOTS OF CARMELITE SPIRITUALITY

Summary – The earliest Carmelites were devoted to solitary contemplation in the wilderness of Mount Carmel, but within only a few decades the Order transitioned to a mendicant way of life that combined contemplation with apostolic involvement in urban settings. A perennial debate is whether or not this was a movement away from an original, strictly contemplative charism. This essay proposes pilgrimage spirituality as a framework for understanding the Carmelites’ early choices as an organic evolution rather than as a betrayal of origins. The first Carmel- ites were located on a pilgrimage route and lived on pilgrims’ alms. Both eremitical and pilgrimage spirituality – each of which included a dynamic integration of solitary contemplation with freedom for apostolate – profoundly shaped this original context. Some recent commentators have interpreted the Carmelite Rule as transposing this original, geo- graphic pilgrimage context to that of an ongoing pilgrimage to a ‘mystical space’. In this view, Carmelites have always understood themselves not only as pilgrims, but as ministers to other pilgrims on their way to the ‘everywhere and nowhere’ mystical space of Carmel. Thus, attention to pilgrimage spirituality has potential to assist the project of reappropri- ating Carmelite spirituality in a postmodern context.

Introduction

The Carmelite Order is unusual among major religious congregations in that it has no identifiable founder, and even the exact date of foundation is unknown. Briefly, the known facts are that sometime between 1206 and 1214 a group of Latin hermits living on Mount Carmel (near present-day Haifa in Israel) asked Albert of Vercelli, then Patriarch of Jerusalem but resident in Acre, to give them a formula vitae (Formula of Life). Very little is heard of these hermits again until about 1238, when they began to make foundations in Europe. By 1291 they had been driven out of the Holy Land and had become mendicants with numerous houses in cities and near universities. One of the great debates in Carmelite history and spirituality is whether this transition from an eremitical life in the wilderness to a mendicant life in the

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cities was a distortion of an original charism of radical contemplative solitude. An early Carmelite document entitled The Fiery Arrow, purported to have been penned by one of the Order’s first Prior Generals, is a ferocious critique of these changes.1 Even today, more than 800 years later, many Carmelite authors tend to describe the shift to the mendicant life more as a matter of practical necessity than as an integral development from the eremitical origins. The present essay aims to make a small contribution to a more irenic resolution of these debates by proposing that the context of pilgrimage spirituality can help to reveal an intrinsic bridge between the eremitical and apostolic elements that shaped Carmelite origins. My method in this essay is both hermeneutical and historical. My hermeneutical interest, ultimately, is in what Carmelite spirituality has to contribute to the urgent crises that face our world today. For this purpose, it is important to study Carmelite origins in order to discern the deep structure of the charism – the living gift of God’s Spirit that was breathed into a small group of men in the wilderness of Mount Carmel in the early thirteenth century. A charism, like any living thing, grows and changes throughout the course of its life; yet a deep underlying stream of continuity is also necessary if it is to flourish and give life. My proposal is that the lens of pilgrimage spirituality (1) discovers an integrity in diverse aspects of the original context and the early changes, thus making more sense of this period than have some other interpretations; and (2) reveals a vibrant link between Carmelite spirituality and some key aspects of the postmodern world, thus opening a channel of fresh life for the charism.

The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel – ‘Apostolic Hermits’?

The first concrete evidence of Christian hermits on Mount Carmel in the twelfth century is in a Jewish pilgrim’s account of the late 1160s.2 Fifteen years later the Greek pilgrim John Phocas wrote of a priest ‘grey-haired and who came from Calabria’, living there with ten brothers ‘after having a vision of the Prophet’ (that is, Elijah, who both Jews and Christians had long associated with

1 nicholas of Narbonne, The flaming arrow (Ignea sagitta; trans. & ed. Michael Edwards), Durham: Teresian, 1985. For recent studies of the context and impact of this text, see: Andrew Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their pasts in the Middle Ages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, ch. 3; and Kevin Alban, ‘The Ignea Sagitta and the Second Council of Lyons’, in: Evaldo Xavier Gomes et al., The Carmelite Rule 1207- 2007. Proceedings of the Lisieux Conference 4-7 July 2005, Rome: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2008, 90-112. 2 Marcus N. Adler (Ed.), The itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, London: Joseph Simon, 1907, 19.

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Mount Carmel).3 However, most historians think it is unlikely that this group was actually the same as that which became the Carmelites, since it was located on a different part of the mountain. Another pilgrim account from 1204 describes three different monasteries on the Mount, while a pilgrim’s guide from 1230 names four. Both of these accounts include a group at the Spring of Elijah, which has been identified as the site of the first Carmelites. The fact is that after the Muslim triumph at Hat- tin in 1187 Christians in the Holy Land were on the move, and many fled to the regions of Tyre, Acre, and Haifa because these cities were among the few that remained in Latin hands. Thus, on the factual level the most that can be said is that most likely the hermits who would eventually become the Carmelites arrived as refugees from other parts of the Holy Land during this tumultuous period near the end of the 12th century.4 As noted, sometime between 1206 and 1214 these men asked Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, for a formula vitae. Although Albert himself seems to have written the Formula of Life, it is presumed that he did so on the basis of what the Brothers of Carmel told him about their life and spirituality. Thus, it provides the only direct information that we have about the Brothers’ self- understanding early in the thirteenth century. At a General Chapter in 1247 the Brothers requested that the original Formula of Life be modified to better support their evolving way of life, which by this time was often lived in Euro- pean cities and near universities. Pope Innocent IV modified the text to affirm having foundations in cities, eating in a common refectory, praying the canonical hours, owning livestock, and eating food cooked with meat while traveling. At this point the Formula of Life definitively became a ‘Rule’.5 For the next several centuries, this was the rule by which all Carmelites shaped their way of life and spirituality. It is well established that the Rule of Saint Albert is thoroughly Christocentric, and that it enjoins the Carmelites to a life that is both centered in solitude and significantly communal. Debates continue about which of these two, solitude or community, should be considered predominant.6 As for ministry, the mainstream

3 J. Wilkinson (Ed.), Jerusalem pilgrimage, 1099-1185, London: Hakluyt Society, 1988, 335- 336. 4 Elias Friedman, The Latin hermits of Mount Carmel: A study of Carmelite origins, Rome: Teresianum, 1979, 172. 5 Kees Waaijman, The mystical space of Carmel: A commentary on the Carmelite Rule (trans. John Vriend), Leuven: Peeters, 1999, 11. 6 Bruno Secondin, ‘What is the heart of the Rule?’, in: Michael Mulhall (Ed.), Albert’s way, Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1989, 93-132. Also Keith J. Egan, ‘The solitude of Carmelite prayer’, in: Keith J. Egan (Ed.), Carmelite prayer: A tradition for the 21st century, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003, 38-62.

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Carmelite interpretation has been that the Rule depicts the Carmelites as origi- nally intended to be strictly contemplative, so that the subsequent evolution into the mixed mendicant life was a movement away from the purity of these origins. A typical perspective is that of Rudolph Hendriks, who asserted that the first Carmelites did not wish to preach like the Franciscans and Dominicans, to fight the infidel like the Knights Templar, or to serve the sick or pilgrims like the Hospitalers. Rather, ‘they wish simply to serve Christ by living a solitary life near the spring of Mount Carmel, fasting and keeping vigil, meditating on the law of the Lord, instant in prayer’.7 On the other hand Thomas Merton, a Trappist, published an essay in 1960 on ‘The Primitive Carmelite Ideal’ in which he argued that the original Carmelites were apostolic hermits, and that ‘the apostolate, when kept in its right place, remains the true guarantee of the original purity of the [Carmelite] ideal’.8 Merton also referred to The Fiery Arrow, the early document that was highly critical of the Carmelites’ move to the cities and to intensified apostolate, because despite this critique one of its paragraphs appears to affirm that both Jesus and the first Carmelites practiced a rhythm of alternating prayer and preaching.9 The influential Carmelite historian Joachim Smet, however, countered that the latter quotation probably refers to early Christian hermits rather than to the first Carmelites, and that too little is known about their activities to make any sweeping assertions about how they combined contemplation and action.10 Nonetheless, Smet himself wrote that the Carmelites are not a strictly contemplative Order but rather one that ‘dedicated as it is to prayer, yet moves about among the people. The Carmelites have brought the desert into the market-place’.11 In short, unless some startling new evidence comes to light, the historical question of whether and/or how the first Carmelites were open to apostolic involvement can never be definitively resolved. The only evidence we have is Albert’s Rule, plus the witness of the ongoing Carmelite tradition. It may be noteworthy that the chapter on ‘work’ in the Rule, while enjoining manual labor and silence, also includes a strong affirmation of ‘the teaching and example of

7 rudolph Hendriks, ‘The original inspiration of the Carmelite Order as expressed in the Rule of Saint Albert’, in: The Rule of Saint Albert, London: Carmelite Book Service, 1973, 69. 8 thomas Merton, ‘The primitive Carmelite ideal’, in: Idem, Disputed questions, New York: Farrar Straus & Cudahy, 1960, 218-263: citation on 236. Italics are in the original. 9 ‘Sometimes, however, though rarely, they came down from their desert, anxious so as not to fail in what they regarded as their duty, to be of service to their neighbors, and sowed broad- cast of the grain, threshed out in preaching, that they had so sweetly reaped in solitude with the sickle of contemplation’. Nicholas of Narbonne, The flaming arrow, 30. 10 Joachim Smet, ‘Disputed questions’, in: Carmelus 8 (1961), 269-271. 11 Joachim Smet, ‘Aux sources de la tradition du Carmel’, in: Carmelus 1 (1954), 185.

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the apostle Paul (…) who was appointed and given by God as preacher and teacher of the nations’, and adds, ‘if you follow him you cannot go astray’.12 The literal sense of the text refers to Paul’s insistence that he would work night and day so as not to be a burden to others, but the fact that Paul, far better known as a preacher than as a tentmaker, is offered to the Carmelites as a model is surely significant. Carlo Cicconetti notes that the Pauline model was a common ideal among hermits.13 In any case, it is clear that at a very early stage the Order opted for something like Merton’s notion of the ‘apostolic hermit’. The ‘disputed question’ is how deeply that was in continuity with the original charism. Despite these limitations on our knowledge of the specific men who became the Brothers of Mount Carmel, there is a great deal we can learn from examin- ing the larger historical context of their life choices. We know: (1) that their origins were in the Latin Church (and thus European); (2) that they were identified as hermits; (3) that they (or their immediate ancestors) had chosen to migrate to the Holy Land; and (4) that they had chosen to settle at a site that had long been connected with a major biblical person and event. Each of these facts places them within spiritual movements about which we actually know a good deal, namely, the Crusades and the ‘new eremiticism’. Both of these movements, in turn, are deeply connected to pilgrimage spirituality.

Crusade Spirituality

The fact that the original Carmelites were Latin places them in the context of what are now called the Crusades. As is well known, beginning in 1095 a series of European military expeditions fought the Muslim rulers of the Holy Land for its control. Large portions of the region were actually under Latin control from 1099 to 1187. While today we call participants in these expeditions ‘crusaders’, in the twelfth century their own self-identification was first as milites Christi and then as peregrini – ‘soldiers of Christ’ and ‘pilgrims’.14 Each of these

12 Albert of Jerusalem, The Rule of Saint Albert, London: Carmelite Book Service, 1973, Ch. XV. Cf. also Kees Waaijman, ‘The wisdom of “work” in the Carmel Rule’, in: Mary Frohlich (Ed.), Wisdom, contemplation and prophecy at the turn of the ages: The Carmelite contribution, Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies (forthcoming). 13 carlo Cicconetti, The Rule of Carmel (ed. Paul Hoban; trans. Gabriel Pausback), Darien, IL: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1984, 206. 14 Alphonse Dupront, ‘La spiritualité des croisés et des pélerins d’après les sources de la première croisade’, in: Pellegrinaggi e culto dei Santi in Europa fino alla 1a crociata. 8-11 Ottobre 1961, Todi: Presso l’Accademi Tudertina, 1963, 449-483.

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terms has a long history in Christian usage, and in particular in relation to Christian monasticism. The term miles (or militis) Christi derives from its one-time use in 2 Timothy 2:3, ‘Work like a good soldier of Jesus Christ’. As early as Origen in the second century, this was interpreted in terms of ‘spiritual battle’ against the forces of evil, with the battle sometimes described in very bloody imagery. It also became associated with the spirituality of martyrdom. The biblical text continues on, ‘No one doing battle for God is to involve himself in the affairs of this world’, which fed into the developing spirituality of monastic withdrawal as the best way to live as miles Christi.15 Thus when the crusaders selected milites Christi as their most prominent self-identification, they could draw on both the military traditions of knighthood and the religious traditions of monasticism to forge the emerging spirituality of chivalry.16 The deep wellspring of crusade spirituality, however, remained the Jerusalem pilgrimage.17 During the early medieval period prayerful travel to holy places, whether for the purpose of intercession, penance, or devotion, became an increasingly popular lay practice. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem was the summit of such practices, involving both the most hazards and the greatest contact with the most sacred shrines and relics. Underneath the notion of pilgrimage as physical travel to holy places, however, lay another, more ancient one. The classical usage of the term peregrinus referred to a stranger or an exile, living far from one’s home and thus deprived of citizenship rights. Early Christians took this up to refer to a spiritual state of alienation – that is, being a ‘stranger on earth’ because one’s true home is with God. Monks, then, were exhorted to be peregrini or ‘travelers’ who permanently departed from their rootedness in natural ties to family, place, and material goods.18 In the Celtic tradition actual physical wandering was a recognized lifestyle for monks, but most Western monks were expected to understand their ‘pilgrimage’ spiritually while remaining physically stable in the monastery. The preaching of the crusades drew on both lay and monastic traditions of pilgrimage spirituality. Potential crusaders were fired with enthusiasm about visiting the holy places of Christ’s life and liberating them from the Muslims so that other Westerners could follow. They were told that the physical Jerusalem was the likeness of the heavenly New Jerusalem, and that ‘possession of the

15 horst Richter, ‘Militia Dei: A central concept for the religious ideas of the early crusades and the German Rolandslied’, in: Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Ed.), Journeys toward God: Pilgrimage and crusade, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1992, 107-126. 16 Maurice Keen, Chivalry, New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1984. 17 Dupront, ‘La spiritualité des croisés’, 455-457. 18 Baudoin de Gaiffier, ‘Pellegrinagi e culto dei santi: Reflexions sur le thème du congrès’, in: Pellegrinaggi e culto dei Santi in Europa fino alla 1a crociata, 10-35, esp. 12-13.

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earthly city would make inevitable admission into the heavenly city’.19 They were also told that participation in this expedition would remit all their sins, just as had been traditionally the case for certain penitential pilgrimages. Thus, by ‘taking the Cross’ (that is, vowing to support the retaking of the Holy Land) they could receive spiritual benefits similar to those that others received by the ‘departure’ of becoming monks – and do so while retaining their lay lifestyle. This peregrinatio was ‘a devotional exercise which the fighting man could carry out without entirely changing his way of life’.20 According to some scholars, the definitive shift in meaning of the word peregrinus from ‘traveler’ or ‘stranger’ to ‘pilgrim’ actually took place during the twelfth century in the context of crusade spirituality. The armed men who arrived in the Holy Land bearing the sign of the Cross were indeed travelers, but this was a unique kind of travel that needed a new designation. By the latter decades of the twelfth century, peregrinatio clearly means ‘pilgrimage’.21 Again, we don’t know exactly who the first Carmelites were, but we do know that they came to the Holy Land during the period when these currents of spirituality flowed strongly among the European immigrants. They may have come as lay crusaders who turned to the eremitical life after the disillusionment of the defeat at Hattin. Or, they may have come as monks or hermits on pilgrimage who chose to stay. Yet a third possibility is that they were the descendants of the earliest crusader families who had settled in the Holy Land, and so were second or even third generation Latin settlers. In any of these cases, their religious worldview and practices were profoundly shaped by the crusades with their stories of milites Christi and of holy pilgrimage.

Eremitical Spirituality

Eremiticism was the other major stream of spirituality that clearly shaped the earliest Carmelites.22 Beginning in the early eleventh century in Italy and then spreading throughout Europe, thousands of the most intensely devout Christians rejected traditional forms of monasticism in favor of the hermit life.

19 Andrew Jotischky, The perfection of solitude: Hermits and monks in the crusader states, Univer- sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995, 157. 20 Diana Webb, Pilgrims and pilgrimage in the medieval west, London: Tauris, 1999, 20. 21 Wilkinson, Jerusalem pilgrimage, 1099-1185, 81. 22 See Patrick McMahon, ‘The lay eremitical movements in the high Middle Ages’, in: Evaldo Xavier Gomes et al., The Carmelite Rule 1207-2007. Proceedings of the Lisieux Conference 4-7 July 2005, Rome: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2008, 67-89; also essays by Mertens and Violante in André Cirino & Josef Raischl (Eds.), Franciscan solitude, St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1995.

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This ‘new eremiticism’ was not necessarily characterized by physical solitude, but rather by a passion for simplicity, unencumberment, and the wilderness. Jean Leclerq affirms that medieval hermits were rarely alone and rarely remained in one place, as may be assumed by people hearing the word ‘hermit’ today.23 Hermits sought to imitate as literally as possible the evangelical and apostolic lifestyle of Jesus and the apostles; ‘following naked the naked Christ’ was one of their watchwords. Part of this ideal was to have an unstructured availability to preach and to respond pastorally to needs in the freedom of the moment.24 Carmelite historian Joachim Smet notes that ‘Paradoxically, the hermits often were more in contact with people than the monks, whose structures isolated them from society (…) When they believed the people needed them, the hermits had no scruples about leaving their solitude. They went on the road as wandering preachers, if the salvation of the people required it’.25 As is evident, peregrinatio in the form of being a wandering stranger and living on the margins of society while focusing radically on the gospel fitted very well with this ‘new eremiticism’. Many hermits set off on pilgrimage, especially at the beginning of their life as a hermit. The peregrinus went to a place where he ‘was devoid of civil rights, lacked influence, possessed no social role, was completely marginal’.26 Leyser comments that for these hermit-pilgrims the goal was not so much arrival at a holy place or shrine, but the very act of renun- ciation itself. They ‘had to say farewell to their kin and their homeland and to make themselves exiles in foreign regions; this self-imposed banishment was intended to mirror the fate of humanity in exile from the kingdom of heaven’.27 The crusades and the establishment of the Latin Kingdom offered new scope to the hermits’ urge to tear up roots and to be as close as possible to the life of Jesus. The Holy Land was regarded as the patrimony or kingdom of Jesus Christ, and ‘One who dwelt there was by a special title his liege-man, a vassal in the following of Christ to whom he owed fidelity and faithful service’.28 One of the early charismatic preachers of the crusades was Peter the Hermit (c. 1050-1115), who was able to rouse a fervent crowd of knights, pilgrims, and poor people to march out in 1096 as part of the First Crusade.

23 Jean Leclerq, ‘L’érémitisme en Occident jusqu’à l’an mil’, in: Eremitismo in Occidente nei secoli XI e XII, Milan: Societa Editrice Vita e Pensiero, 1965, 36. 24 henrietta Leyser, Hermits and the new monasticism: A study of religious communities in Western Europe, 1000-1150, New York: St. Martin’s, 1984. 25 Joachim Smet, Los Carmelitas: Historia de la Orden del Carmen (trans. Antonio Ruiz Molina), Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1987, 4. I did not have a copy of the original English edition available, so this quotation is my own translation. 26 Cicconetti, Rule of Carmel, 39. 27 Leyser, Hermits and the new monasticism, 23. 28 Cicconetti, Rule of Carmel, 42.

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His followers got as far as Constantinople in fairly good order before being crushed and scattered. Gathering the remnants, Peter joined another group and continued on to Jerusalem. Whether travelling with Peter or with other groups, it appears that a good number of European hermits arrived not long after the establishment of the Latin Kingdom. In the mid-twelfth century the Latin bishop of Syria, Gerard of Nazareth, made a compilation of the lives of Frankish hermits in the Latin Kingdom,29 chronicling how each one had felt an irresistible attraction to the Holy Land and its ‘places charged with the presence of Christ’.30 The early arrivals settled ‘in the Jordan Valley, at the Quarentena, in the valley of Jehos- phaphat near Jerusalem and on Mount Thabor’.31 In doing so, they made pilgrimage to the biblical holy places a permanent state of life.32 Both in Europe and in the Holy Land, the eremitical movement was under- going maturation and development throughout the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Many hermits formed communities, took on a rule, and gradually developed other elements of a more structured life. Among the congregations that were influenced by the eremitical movement are the Carthusians, the Camaldolese, and the Vallambrosians, all of which were monastic reforms that strongly emphasized solitude, communal living, and distance from inhabited areas. The mendicant orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans also have deep roots in this movement, developing more strongly its ideals of evangelical poverty and pastoral availability.33 The decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which forbade new communities and required existing ones to con- form to established precedents, were an effort to damp down this fruitful but unruly period of enthusiasm and experimentation. At the end of that century the Carmelites barely escaped suppression when the Second Council of Lyons (1274) took action against ‘new’ congregations. Ultimately they were able to offer sufficient evidence of an origin prior to the decrees of 1215, but for a number of years their fate hung in the balance. Thus, by the time the Latin hermits who were to become the Carmelites settled on Mount Carmel around 1200, the exuberant energy of the eremitical movement was already beginning to wane. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that

29 Benjamin Z. Kedar, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, a neglected twelfth-century writer of the Latin East: A contribution to the intellectual history of the crusader states’, in: Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983), 55-77. 30 Jotischky, The perfection of solitude, 168. 31 Friedman, The Latin hermits of Mount Carmel, 171. 32 Jotischky, The perfection of solitude, 4. 33 Bert Roest, ‘The Franciscan hermit: Seeker, prisoner, refugee’, in: Church History and Reli- gious Culture 86 (2006), 163-189. This article describes the rhythm of eremiticism and apostolate lived by Francis and his earliest companions.

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its ideals were what motivated and formed the men who chose to form a community in the wilderness near the Spring of Elijah. Starting out as a loose asso- ciation of hermits, the future Carmelites followed the trend toward structure when they asked Albert for a Formula of Life. Their particular location in place and time, however, branded them with an inbuilt tension between the two directions in which the eremitical movement was developing: that toward a more monastically structured, strictly contemplative life on the margins of civi- lization (like the Carthusians and Camaldolese) and that toward the freedom and pastoral availability of the mendicants. In the next section, I will examine how pilgrimage spirituality bridges these two dimensions.

The First Carmelites and Holy Land Pilgrims

Even in the freedom of the eremitical movement, it was common for hermits eventually to recognize a need to settle down after spending some time in the wandering style of pilgrimage during the early years of their conversion. Diana Webb recounts the stories of several twelfth century pilgrims whose story even suggests that, if persisted in beyond a certain stage, pilgrimage constituted an abnegation of responsibility (…) The steps which carried the holy man towards perfection led to a life of either charity or contemplation and away from a type of pious exercise which, however meritorious, required bodily strength rather than mature wisdom.34 With maturation, the eremitical lifestyle tended to shift from strenuous peregrinatio to a life involving some form of service to others in the Church. The hermits of Mount Carmel followed the same pattern. In choosing Mount Carmel for their settlement, the hermits located themselves in a wilderness area that was also a place of pilgrimage. Mount Carmel had long been venerated by Jews as well as Christians as the place where Elijah confronted and triumphed over the prophets of Baal (1 Kgs 18). There had been a Jewish cultic site at what was identified as the Cave of Elijah, and in the Christian era many generations of Byzantine monks had made foundations at various locations on the Mount. In the late twelfth century most pilgrims to Jerusalem arrived at the port of Acre and then chose one of two routes: either overland to Lake Tiberias, then on to Samaria, Judaea, and Jerusalem, or due south along the coast, then inland to Jerusalem. On the latter route, after cross- ing the Kishon River and entering the Cape of Carmel, they could make stops

34 Diana Webb, Medieval European pilgrimage, European culture and society, New York: Palgrave, 2002, 83-84.

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at Palmarea and the Monks of Cluny, Francheville and the Church of St. Denis, Cayphas [Haifa], the Cave of Elijah, the Abbey of St. Margaret, Casale Anne, the Brothers of Carmel at the Spring of Elijah, Capharnaum by-the-sea, the Monastery of St. John of Tyre, Athlit, and Caesarea before turning inland toward Jerusalem.35 The men who would become the Brothers of Carmel most likely arrived on Mount Carmel as pilgrims themselves. Pilgrims who have undergone an arduous and exciting journey to their desired destination inevitably have to face the question of ‘what next’ once they have arrived. It is at this juncture that the shift to a more interior concept of pilgrimage must develop in order to sustain a lifelong spiritual commitment. As they faced this question, the Brothers saw that their location on a pilgrimage route meant that they could expect to be regularly visited by groups of pilgrims. This had at least two important implica- tions: one, the pilgrims’ alms could be a means of economic support for the Brothers; and two, these groups needed to be ministered to. Friedman affirms that the location at the Spring of Elijah was an ideal place for a hermitage both because it was beautiful and secluded, and because it ‘constituted the hermits guardians of a sanctuary, the pilgrims to which contributed by their alms to the upkeep of the hermitage’.36 He also suggests that it may have been the decrease in pilgrim alms resulting from the crusaders’ defeat at Gaza in 1239 and the fall of Jerusalem in 1244 that hastened the Carmelites’ movement to the West from 1238 onwards.37 Reception of alms, however, no doubt depended on the passing pilgrims having a good experience during their visit. There was, after all, a good deal of competition for the pilgrims’ money, since there seem to have been six or seven possible pilgrimage stops on Mount Carmel alone, as well as a number of others within a day’s journey. We have no direct information about what the Carmelites offered to their visitors, but we can speculate that minimally they would have had to provide a tour of spiritually significant locations at the site, an inspiring talk on its history and spiritual benefits, and some physical hospitality such as water, latrines, and a place to rest. They could have offered other services, such as food, opportunities for spiritual conversation, retreats, or (if the Brothers included priests, which is not certain) confession and mass. Sacramental ministry would have been especially appreciated, since many pilgrims may have had little or no access to sacraments other than confession

35 Friedman, The Latin hermits of Mount Carmel, 104. 36 Ibid., 41. 37 Ibid., 183.

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before departure on pilgrimage and upon arrival at their ultimate goal.38 In his commentary on the Rule, Carlo Cicconetti speculates on whether the Brothers’ need to own asses (as affirmed by Innocent’s modifications of 1247) is an indi- cation that they not only needed to travel for evangelical purposes, but also provided animals for pilgrim groups.39 It is important to reaffirm at this point that the original Formula of Life clearly places solitary prayer at the very center of Carmelite life.40 No suggestion is being made here that the first Carmelites typically spent their days in active service to the pilgrims. We know that their original prayer space was termed an ‘oratory’, not a ‘chapel’ or ‘church’ as would be expected if the space were intended for public prayer.41 Moreover, the Formula of Life requires the Prior’s cell to be placed at the entrance of the property, and most commentators pre- sume that a major reason for this was so that he could intercept visitors and protect the contemplative space of the other monks. Yet it is also important to recall that the eremitical spirituality of the time strove to balance a passionate devotion to solitude and wilderness with a certain inner freedom to respond to evangelical needs as they arose. If groups of pilgrims were visiting on a fairly regular basis during certain seasons, it seems more likely that the Prior would call upon at least some among the other brothers to assist him in serving them, than that he alone would carry out all the necessary services. It could be that the very reason the Brothers felt a need to request a formula vitae was that the frequency of these disruptive calls to respond apostolically led them to recognize a need for a more structured way to both protect their contemplation and organize the needed evangelical activities. The Carmelites’ ongoing relationship with pilgrims is confirmed by certain official documents from the thirteenth century. Friedman reports that a group of Holy Land bishops at some point wrote a letter of recommendation (he does not say when) in which they noted that ‘the Carmelites had been founded for the service of the Holy Land. In the silence of the wadi, they prayed for the success of crusader arms, distributed money received from abroad and rendered a humble but indispensable service to the pilgrims’.42 In 1261, Alexander IV issued the bull Vitae perennis gloria ‘to encourage pilgrims by granting an indul- gence to everyone who visited a Carmelite Church in Syria or Cyprus’.43 By

38 Edmond-René Labande, ‘Éléments d’une enquête sur les conditions de déplacement du pèlerin aux X-XI siècles’, in: Pellegrinaggi e culto dei Santi in Europa fino alla 1a crociata, 111. 39 Cicconetti, Rule of Carmel, 294, 115. 40 Egan, ‘Solitude of Carmelite Prayer’. 41 I thank Keith J. Egan, TOCarm, for this insight. 42 Friedman, The Latin hermits of Mount Carmel, 178. 43 Jotischky, The perfection of solitude, 149.

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1264, a ‘sumptuous’ church – in reality, a fairly small and simple building44 – had been erected on Mount Carmel, apparently indicating both that the Broth- ers saw a need for a larger space in which to share prayer with pilgrims, and that they had the funds to build it. Thus it seems that from the beginning, in tandem with their devotion to contemplation and silence, the Carmelites had a very specific and ongoing ministry, namely, the sporadic pastoral care of Holy Land pilgrims. The secluded location that they chose was indeed a ‘wilderness’, complete with panthers, hyenas, and serpents, but it was also strategically chosen for the sake of presence to pilgrims. One could regard this as merely a concession to economic reality, since the brothers obviously needed some way of supporting themselves. A more organic perspective, however, is to see it as a natural and legitimate evolution of their insight into the spiritual practice of eremitical pilgrimage. The medieval practice of eremitical peregrinatio was the heir of the early Christian spirituality of anachoresis or ‘flight into the wilderness’, which, as Athanasios Papathanassiou has demonstrated, was never properly understood as separation from activity and care for the world. Rather, the zealous hermit went forth as a warrior to liberate God’s creation from anything that resists God’s dominion; and he (or she) affirmed that this anachoresis / peregrinaio must continue until all creation is liberated.45 Within the framework of earthly life, this means that eremitical pilgrimage is a permanent state of life. Yet, as noted, maturation in a hermit’s life typically led to less emphasis on outward peregrinatio and more emphasis on inner pilgrimage within a life of contemplation, structured community, and service to others. In the Carmelites’ case, this led first to their settling down on Mount Carmel and then to their request to Albert of Jerusalem for a Formula of Life. The pastoral mission of giving witness and support to both the inner and outer expressions of peregrinatio was a natural and integral dimension of this evolution.

The Carmelite Rule and Pilgrimage

A deeper probing of the Carmelite Rule can also provide evidence for this point of view, as well as make the link to the significance of this spirituality for today. A starting point is provided by a 1991 essay by Carmelites Kees Waaijman and

44 Silvano Giordano (Ed.), Carmel in the Holy Land, from its beginnings to the present day, Arenzano: Il Messaggero di Gesù Bambino, 1995, 60-68. 45 Athanasios N. Papathanassiou, ‘The flight as fight: The flight into the desert as a paradigm for the mission of the church in history and society’, in: Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43 (1998), 161-181.

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Hein Blommestijn that aims to tease out the ‘architectonics’ of the Rule.46 They see the Rule as enshrining a continual movement to and from its center, which is the double injunction (1) to have an oratory in the midst of the hermitages where Eucharist is celebrated daily; and (2) to meet for a weekly session of fraternal correction.47 They propose that the oratory is the ‘empty center’ that belongs to no one, but toward which each Carmelite is continually journeying for the divine encounter. Rather than establishing a strict structure of life, then, the Rule puts the Carmelite in a continual movement of discovery of what it means to be ‘clothed with Christ’. In his 1999 book The Mystical Space of Carmel, Waaijman deepens this perspective with a paragraph by paragraph examination of the Rule. He notes that Albert wrote the original Formula of Life in the genre of a letter, which at that time meant that it should have an introduction with a role like that of the major premise of a syllogism, an exposition that develops like the minor premise, and a concluding request that follows clearly but not mechanically from the premises. In Albert’s letter, the introduction identifies ‘living in allegiance to Jesus Christ’ as the major premise; the exposition builds up piece by piece how Carmelites are to do this; the request, finally, identifies this way of life as centered on living like Christ while awaiting his return. Within this structure, Waaijman identifies the ‘mystical space of Carmel’ as the infinite God-space that gives life to every ‘place’ and yet can be fully cap- tured by none. He observes, ‘The mystical place is one which moves away from what is fixed, definite, and restricted, from that which is evaluated, prejudged, and calculated; it is movement away into the uninhabited and solitary, deserted and uncultivated, with a view to being drawn away into God’s unfathomable goodness and boundless love’.48 This is what the original hermits sought by settling in the wilderness of Carmel. When they were cast out of that geo- graphical space by the geopolitical event of the fall of the Latin Kingdom, the Rule guided their ongoing realization that the urgent search for that ‘mystical space’ is never to be wholly concluded in this life. All the spiritual practices enjoined by the Rule, from ‘You shall have one of you as prior’ (I) to ‘Let each remain in his cell or near it, meditating day and night on the Word of the Lord’ (VII) to ‘In silence and hope shall be your strength’ (XVI), structure the Carmelite life as a daily pilgrimage towards the mystical space of which ‘Carmel’ is the symbol. The priority of the pilgrimage towards the mystical

46 Kees Waaijman & Hein Blommestijn, ‘The Carmelite Rule as a model of mystical transformation’, in: P. Chandler & K. Egan (Eds.), The land of Carmel, Rome: Institutum Carmeli- tanum, 1991, 61-90. 47 Albert of Jerusalem, The Rule of Saint Albert, #11-12, pp. 85-86. 48 Waaijman, The mystical space of Carmel, 65.

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space means that authentic Carmelite spirituality never places emphasis on rigid adherence to a specific place, practice, or form of life, but rather on movement into the mystical space that is within and beyond them all. In their 1991 essay, Waaijman and Blommestijn conclude: Although no longer pilgrims in the Holy Land, the Carmelites never cease to live on Mount Carmel as long as the spiritual architecture of their life remains respected and their inner journey goes on (…) According to the spirituality of the Rule, the construction of Carmel goes on insofar as there are human beings who plunge themselves into the depths of the Love of God, as pilgrims travelling in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, praying day and night, living before the Face of the Living One, and in a totally disinterested way at the service of their brothers.49 The key to Carmelite spirituality, in short, has always been the arduous journey towards the mystical space – a journey that is both deeply solitary and profoundly communal. A pilgrimage is solitary because no one can make the journey for another; but it is equally communal because the pilgrims walk together toward a common destination, and they genuinely need each other for both spiritual and physical support.50 This is why Carmelite eremiticism integrally demands an availability for the movement of the Spirit in love and service to one’s fellow pilgrim, even when that takes one away for a time from physical solitude and contemplative practice. St. Teresa of Avila strongly felt the need to emphasize this as she sought renewal of the Order three hundred years after its foundation, writing: ‘God desires that if you see a Sister who is sick to whom you can bring some relief, you have compassion on her and not worry about losing [your] devotion’.51 Yet Carmelite awareness of the call to aid and support other mystical pilgrims has never been limited only to other professed Carmelites. From the very beginning, Carmelites recognized that many who are not officially members of their order are on the same journey to the mystical space. The Carmelite memory of the Brothers in the wadi on Mount Carmel providing physical and spiritual support to those who were literally on pilgrimage to Jerusalem has been trans- literated in different times and places into a wide range of forms of ministry to those on pilgrimage to the mystical space.

49 Waaijman & Blommestijn, ‘The Carmelite Rule as a model of mystical transformation’, 90. 50 In recent years this theme has often emerged in reflections by those who have participated in the Camino de Santiago (the pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela). 51 teresa of Avila, ‘The interior castle’, in: The collected works of St. Teresa of Avila (trans. Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez). Vol.2, Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1980, 352.

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This interpretation, then, recognizes the significance of pilgrim spirituality as a key originating context of Carmelite life, and also as a key to the reinvig- oration of that life in the seemingly fragmented and action-permeated world of post-modernity. The urge to set out on the road that will place one most radically in touch with the life of Jesus Christ is foundational. For the first Carmelites this road began with physical pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but as they matured the interior dimension of participation in Christ’s life and mission became predominant. Travelling on this inner road, one quickly learns that there is no arrival; as in Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of epektasis, to make progress is repeatedly to rediscover the infinite scope of the road that lies ahead.52 Radical fidelity to this path requires that the solitary contemplative search must always remain at its center. The maturing spiritual pilgrim also learns, however, that the more deeply one enters into the solitude of the journey, the more intensely one also participates in the community of servant- journeyers. One cannot travel this road without companionship – and without companioning others, as well. The first Carmelites recognized this when they formed community and placed their settlement by the Spring of Elijah, where caravans of pilgrims eager to be spiritually refreshed and nourished would regularly pass by. Both by their witness to the primacy of the inner pilgrimage to conformity with Christ, and by their participation in his mission through pastoral support for others on the road, Carmelites live the core meanings of Christian pilgrimage.

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