CARMELITES, one of the four mendi cant orders of the Roman Catholic Church ; its full title is Friars of Our Lady of Mount Car mel. The order has, traditionally, a very an cient origin, but as a religious order approved by the Roman Catholic Church is contemporary with the Dominican and Franciscan orders. According to the legends the Carmelites trace the origin of their order back to the early days of the kingdom of Israel, the time of the prophets Elijah (Elias) and Elisha (Elisanis). Elias, in his early manhood, says the legend, retired for religious contemplation to Mount Carmel, and there, taught by an angel, gathered to himself a number of men of like disposition, and instituted a society of contemplatives for worship of the true God and the attainment of spiritual perfection. Among the disciples attracted to the school of religion were the youths who afterward were the minor prophets Jonah, Micah and Obadiah; and at a later period the renowned philosopher of Magna Grxcia, Pythagoras, was numbered among the inquirers after the true religion and the sci ence of divine things in this great school of the prophets: Pythagoras' instructor was the prophet Daniel. Elijah's wife instituted an order of female recluses. As pointing to the existence on Mount Cannel of some such insti tution as the legend postulates, reference is made to 1 Kings xviii, 19 and following; 2 Kings ii, 25; and 2 Kings iv, 25.
The world outside the precincts of those re ligious communities appears to have been en tirelyignorant of this ancient institution till early in the 13th century, when Phocas, a Greek monk of Patmos, brought to the Latin Patri arch of Constantinople intelligence of the exist ence in olden time of a great monastic or eremitic establishment on Mount Carmel, of which traces still remained. The learned ed itors of the Acta Sanctorum were able to dem onstrate that the present order owes its origin to the Crusader Berthold who, having become a monk in Calabria, took up his abode on Mount Carmel in 1156, with 10 companions. For these Phocas petitioned the patriarch to formulate or to approve a rule of monastic or eremitical life. This was done, and afterward the rule was approved by Pope Honorius III in 1224. The connection of this order with the ancient school of the prophets, even if the tra ditional story be accepted, seems to lack proof.
All that we are told which could give color to the claim that the new eremites are in the line of succession from the eminent school of prophets is, that in a vision Elias gave orders to the monk from Calabria to found a religious establishment on the ancient site. The com munity was expelled by the Saracens from its seat on Mount Cannel and took refuge in the West. One of the earliest houses of the Car melite order in the West was founded at Aln wick in England; and about the same time, near the middle of the 13th century, Saint Louis the King, founded at Paris the first Carmelite house in France — the Carmes, of terrible celebrity in the great Revolution. Pope Innocent IV modified the rule of the order and assimilated it to the Dominican and Franciscan rule. One of the traditions represents Jesus and his mother as initiates of the ancient order; and Saint Simon Stock, sixth general of the order, an Englishman; received from the hands of the Virgin the scapulary of Mount Cannel with the assurance that whoso should die wearing that scapulary would surely not be damned. A relaxation of the primitive severity of the rule was permitted by Eugenius IV in 1431, and this led to a scission of the order into two sub orders, the Conventuals or Calced (wearing shoes) and the Observants or Discalced (shoe less or barefooted). Pope Benedict XIII in 1725 permitted the order to add to the statues in Saint Peter's Church of founders of religious orders one to their founder, which was erected with the inscription: eUniversus Ordo Carme litarum Fundatori suo Sancto Eliae prophet erexit" whole order of the Carmelites erected this statue to their founder, Saint Elias the prophetp). The order of Carmelite nuns dates from the middle of the 15th century. In 1562 the great mystic Saint Teresa, who was a Carmelite nun, in virtue of a papal brief estab lished a separate branch of the sisterhood, under a very severe rule: these are the Barefoot Car melite Nuns. She then undertook to restore in the original order of Carmelite Friars the ancient severity of discipline, and succeeded; the result is the order or suborder of the Bare foot or Discalced Carmelites. The Carmelite order, in its several forms, has establishments all over the world. The headquarters of the order in America are at Niagara Falls.