{"id":26572,"date":"2026-07-30T11:01:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carmelites.net\/?p=26572"},"modified":"2026-07-30T11:11:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:11:51","slug":"rediscovering-the-institution-of-the-first-monks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carmelites.net\/de\/carmelite-review\/rediscovering-the-institution-of-the-first-monks\/","title":{"rendered":"Die Institution der ersten M\u00f6nche neu entdecken"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Rediscovering The Institution of the First Monks<\/em><\/strong><\/h1>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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RE-Introducing the Four-Part Lecture Series by Paul Chandler, O.Carm. (1996)<\/strong><\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Among the treasures preserved in the Carmelite Institute of North America Archives<\/strong><\/a> is a remarkable four-part lecture series recorded in 1996 by Paul Chandler, O.Carm.<\/strong> Few Carmelites have studied The Institution of the First Monks<\/em> as deeply as Fr. Chandler, whose doctoral research produced the first modern critical edition of the text and remains one of the most significant scholarly works on the subject.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Why These Lectures Still Matter<\/strong><\/p>

Nearly three decades after they were recorded, Fr. Chandler’s lectures remain remarkably relevant.<\/p>

They invite viewers to move beyond the sometimes-false choice between history and faith. Instead, they show how historical scholarship can deepen rather than diminish appreciation for the Carmelite tradition. Understanding when and why The Institution of the First Monks<\/em> was written allows us to recognize its enduring contribution: not as a modern history textbook, but as one of the great spiritual documents of the Carmelite family.<\/p>

For anyone interested in the origins of Carmel, the development of Carmelite spirituality, or the enduring influence of Elijah on the Order’s identity, this four-part series offers a rare opportunity to learn from one of the foremost scholars of the text.<\/p>

As you watch these archival lectures, you are not simply studying a medieval manuscript. You are joining a centuries-long conversation about what it means to live the Carmelite vocation: to seek God with an undivided heart, to listen in silence, and to carry the prophetic spirit of Elijah into every generation.<\/p>

Paul Chandler’s scholarship is uniquely significant because he is not merely lecturing about the text. His 1991 doctoral dissertation was the landmark critical edition of The Institution of the First Monks<\/em>, making him one of the world’s foremost authorities on the work.<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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For many Carmelites, The Institution of the First Monks<\/em> is a familiar title, but far fewer have had the opportunity to explore why it has occupied such an important place in the Order’s history and spirituality. Fr. Chandler’s lectures provide an engaging introduction to one of the most influential, and at times misunderstood, works in the Carmelite tradition.<\/p>

Although commonly known as The Institution of the First Monks<\/em>, the text is actually the opening section of a much larger fourteenth-century work, The Ten Books on the Way of Life and Great Deeds of the Carmelites<\/em>, compiled by the Catalan Carmelite Felip Ribot around 1370. Far more than a simple history, it presents a profound reflection on the identity and vocation of Carmel.<\/p>

As Fr. Chandler himself has written, the work is best understood as a “symbolic-legendary history” that expresses the spiritual aspirations of a medieval Carmelite community rather than an attempt to write history in the modern sense.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The comments above were taken from various comments and observations by Carmelites and other scholars over the years.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Below is a full transcript of the video – all four parts. It is a computer\/AI generated transcript so please excuse typos and errors.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n

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AUTO GENERATED TRANSCRIPT BEGINS HERE:<\/strong><\/p>

Part One<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

Hello, my name is Jack Welch. I’m president of the Carmelite Institute. The Institute and the Washington Theological Union sponsored a study week in September of 1996 on the institution of the first monks, a 14th century document which is considered a spirituality. We were led during the week by Father Paul Chandler, a Carmelite from the Australian province of Carmelites. And then subsequent to Paul’s talks each day, we had speakers address various topics raised in the institution of the first monks. These first talks are the overview of that document given by Paul Chandler.<\/p>

And it was a beautiful clear day and I had a window seat and it was really the most spectacular sight. I’d love to go back there sometime and visit the Grand Canyon. And I was thinking how this work that we’re going to spend a few days thinking about is something of a Grand Canyon in Carmelite spirituality. It’s very impressive, very striking and also in many ways very forbidding work. And I think my task in these couple of days is just to be a bit of a guide. I think when you visit somewhere like the Grand Canyon, you can hire a guide and you think that he hasn’t seen all of the Grand Canyon himself.<\/p>

But he knows a way in or two, a few trails. He can point out a few interesting sights. And you can also, I suppose, get a geologist to talk to you about the rocks and a biologist about the animal and plant life and an anthropologist to talk about Indian peoples and so on. And we have too in this program some people who are going to share their special expertise on particularly focused aspects of Carmelite spirituality associated with this work, the Book of the First Monks, that we’re going to be looking at. But even with a guide, when you visit somewhere like the Grand Canyon, he can’t see for you. You have to do the exploring for yourself.<\/p>

And I hope that during these few days, we can all begin exploring together and also at the end of this little guided tour, we’ll be able to come back again and again to what’s really a very large and fascinating and challenging work in our spirituality. So our aim, I think, in these days is a modest one to begin an exploration that we can each continue on our own. Well, this work, the Book of the Institution of the First Monks, is a very rich and complex work, very influential in Carmelite spirituality and also very neglected. Rich and complex, I think we’ve all seen already and we’ll see more in these days to come.<\/p>

But also influential and neglected. And in a moment, I’d just like to say a few words about the ways in which it’s influential and the ways in which it’s neglected. I’ve been working, I’m almost embarrassed to say, having produced so little, for almost 10 years now on this work. And one of the most stimulating moments for me in these 10 years was quite early on when the Carmelite nuns in Hudson, Wisconsin, asked would I come and spend a few days there and to them about the Book of the First Monks. And it was challenging and very rewarding for me to have to try to put the work I’d been doing on an edition of the Latin text into some kind of communicating language to be able to talk with the sisters there about it. And then also their questions and comments and response to this text was really remarkably stimulating for me and my approach to it. And I’m hoping that this group now in these days, which I think is the biggest and most significant group ever to gather to look at this document, will be stimulating for all of us. And perhaps even not to exaggerate too much, a sort of historic moment in our rediscovery of this great text of the Carmelite spiritual and mystical tradition. So that’s a work which I think we’re all going to do together. And I hope in the structure of these days there’ll be plenty of opportunity for us to work together and to enrich each other on this work.<\/p>

I think if you want, when you visit the Grand Canyon, you can get a helicopter ride just to whiz around and see the landscape before you go down and see any of the details. And this morning in just the short time we have, that’s pretty much what we’re going to do, just to have a flyover of this work, just to get an idea of the shape of the whole and what kind of landscape it is. I think for some of you that might be new and for others it might be a little old hat. So if you’re in the second group, patsienza, we’ll move on to more detailed things this afternoon and in the days to come.<\/p>

Well, what is this work that we’re going to deal with? It’s called the Liebherr Dei Institutsione Primorum Monochorum, the book of the institution of the first monks. It’s also called the book of John the 44th because it’s attributed to John the 44th, really he was the 42nd or maybe the 43rd Bishop of Jerusalem, who was a real person. He was Bishop of Jerusalem from 387 to 417, though he didn’t write this work. It was published for the first time by the Carmelite Provincial of Catalonia, Philip Ribott, R-I-B-O-T, who died in 1391 as part of a larger collection of Carmelite texts called Decem Liebherr Dei Institutsione et Peculiaribus Gestis Religiosorum Carmelitarum, ten books about the institution and the notable deeds of the Carmelite religious.<\/p>

And that large collection contains altogether five works attributed to different authors, the fifth by Ribott himself, of which the first part, the book of the first monks, is the first seven books, so almost three quarters of this collection by far the largest and most important work. And together the Ribott collection makes up a sort of account of the history and spirituality and development of the order from the time of Elijah the prophet up until the 13th century. Modern scholars have generally tended to say that this whole work is a fabrication of Philip Ribott himself, that he was the author of the whole. But I think this opinion really needs to be reconsidered, though it is an extremely difficult issue.<\/p>

In his preface Ribott says that he has written very little in this collection of works, that he’s just edited older works that have come down to him. And he says, “I have added a few elements here and there, some comments of my own, some quotations from the fathers that I think add to these works, and also some bits and pieces, today they would be footnotes from the modern authors of his own time, from medieval encyclopedias and so on.” And he says, “In each case I clearly indicate for you where each element of this collection comes from, and where for example I have introduced a quotation from Gregory the Great, I tell you so, and where I’ve written something in my own name, I tell you that as well.”<\/p>

I think more and more this is for the most part what he did, though it’s very difficult to explain where these earlier works, if in fact there were earlier works, where they came from to Philip Ribott, and why they were known to him and to no one else. Anyway, that’s a complex issue which I think perhaps is not the place to go into now, but whatever about that, Philip Ribott himself is certainly responsible for editing this work and for giving it not only its present form, but also a quite remarkable artistic unity, and also a very profound spiritual coherence, which means that this collection of works really speaks to us now of one deeply felt and long experienced spirituality, which is the mystical spirituality of the order over the first 150 years or so of its existence.<\/p>

It’s an extremely carefully constructed work, and an extremely profound one. Hein Blomestine commented to me once that it’s like the works of John of the Cross in the sense that each of the parts contains the whole, and that we keep finding over and over again, even in small and sometimes seemingly insignificant elements of this work, such as, for example, the part about the symbolism of the habit, small summaries of the spiritual dynamism of the whole work. And I hope that in these days we can explore together some of the ways in which this apparently obscure and inaccessible work keeps recapitulating in quite a profound way fundamental elements of the medieval Carmelite spiritual tradition.<\/p>

And I hope to this afternoon we might just take an example of the way in which Rebot has taken what I think is probably an element that came to him from somewhere else, and just by adding a couple of patristic texts cast this historical material in an entirely new spiritual and mystical light. And I hope we might see just how brilliant his editing of this work is artistically and spiritually. Earlier I called this work rich and complex and influential and neglected. Its richness and profundity I think we’ll come to see more. I hope that its complexity will become easier for us to deal with as we work together on it. I’d just like to say a quick word now about its influence in the Carmelite tradition.<\/p>

The book of the first monks has exercised quite a large but difficult to identify influence on Carmelite tradition. It’s influential first of all because it was really the first synthesis of Carmelite spirituality. As you know the Carmelites look to no one as their founder except to Elijah, and they also look to the Virgin Mary as standing together with Elijah in the place that’s normally occupied for religious orders by their charismatic founder. In Elijah and in Mary Carmelite saw an image of what they wanted to be and what they wanted their community to become, and they thought of no one else as their founder. Originally they thought of Elijah’s role in their order on the level of biblical typology of typological thought. Elijah was a paradigmatic figure, a figure of spiritual power and inspiration, and they were not very concerned for the historical links between themselves and Elijah.<\/p>

In that they were perfectly in tune with a very long tradition that went back at least to the fifth century. I don’t want to dwell on that because Jane Ackerman is going to talk this afternoon or later this morning about the development of the Carmelite tradition about Elijah over 150 years or so. But when we come to the book of the first monks we find the traditions about Elijah as the typological model of the order, which over 150 years or so of its life had also been transposed into a historical mode so that Elijah became the actual historical founder of an institute with a continuous history into medieval times. We find this long developed and rather complicated and not entirely coherent tradition brought to its definitive expression and also transposed onto a new level of profundity I think.<\/p>

Here we find expressed in terms of the Elijah legend of the order, the great themes of Carmelite spirituality, transformation in Christ, purity of heart, openness to the word of God, silence and solitude, the desert, a liturgical prayer in community, the building up of a community which lives in peace and justice. These things and many more are expressed and re-expressed in the context of the legendary history of the order and also in this same context many of the great symbols that come to be so potent in always in Carmelite history and spirituality are present. Elijah and Mary once again, Mount Carmel as the utopia of the Carmelites, the book “Carrot,” where Elijah lived in solitude and drank from the torrent, the spiritual journey, the habit and so on, many more things that are symbolic.<\/p>

These find their more or less classic expression in this work. And then also because of the place that Philip Rebot gives to the book of the first monks itself in the legendary history of the order, its influence is increased even more because one of the other works and the large collection of 10 books that Philip Rebot put together and one which I suspect he probably did write himself is a letter of Cyril which tells the story of how the book of the first monks came to be written. And this legendary hermit of Mount Carmel, Cyril, tells that the book of the first monks was written by John, Bishop of Jerusalem, a former hermit on Mount Carmel for his disciples there after he became Bishop in Jerusalem and was taken from them on Mount Carmel.<\/p>

And that for all the centuries between the 400s and the time of St Albert, this book of the first monks was the rule of the order. So medieval Carmelites and Carmelites even into the 20th century believed that this book of the first monks was the order’s pre-Albatine rule. And so that also gave it considerable authority and prestige within the order. Also in terms of its influence, it seems very likely that St Teresa was able to read this in a Castilian transient which was only rediscovered by by Otka Stejink in 1954 in a manuscript which belonged to the monastery of the Incarnation in Avila in the time of St Teresa which we still have.<\/p>

And also it’s very likely that John of the Cross read this work in its first printed edition, the Speculum Carmelitarum of 1507. But in fact to trace the history of the influence of this work in Carmelite spirituality, though it would be a very important study, it’s yet to be done. And I suspect that it would show that the book of the first monks exercised a very large influence on Carmelite spirituality, but in the same way that it influences us today, and that is at second hand. Most Carmelites have heard of it. Many have read extracts, but very few are really familiar with the work. But I think that it influences even those who have never heard of it, because it’s become embedded in so many other Carmelite works, such as for example the novice directories and so on.<\/p>

I also call this work a very neglected one, and that’s also true. The Latin text was last published in 1680. And amazingly there has never been a translation of the entire work into any modern language. The most substantial translations are into Spanish and into English, both of them difficult to find, and neither of them based on a very good text. The work as a whole is divided into seven books of eight chapters each, so for a total of 56 chapters. And the existing translations, even the most complete ones, are based on mutilated Latin texts from the 17th century, which give only 41 chapters. So really we can’t know this work very well, and we really stand at nowadays at the threshold of the rediscovery of this work.<\/p>

I won’t try to trace in detail, because we don’t have time, how the work came to be neglected, but I’ll just tell one or two little stories about it, which are interesting to know too for the background in general to this work. I already mentioned that there was, not only among the Carmelites, but in medieval culture in general, a move away from the traditional patristic, typological way of thinking about the biblical antecedents of religious life, and biblical inspirational figures for Christian life, into a more historical mode of thought, so that among the Carmelites, more and more, Carmelites wanted to see Elijah, not only as their inspiration, but actually as the founder of their order. It wasn’t only Carmelites who thought this way, there are Benedictine treatises which try to do a similar sort of thing for monasticism in general.<\/p>

Even in the Middle Ages, this approach had its detractors, not everyone, even in the 14th century, bought all the stories that Carmelites told about themselves, but it wasn’t really until the 16th century that skepticism really raised its ugly head, and the most significant of the early skeptics who started to deal what would be very hard blows against the legendary spiritual traditions of the Carmelites was a great church historian, Cardinal Baroneus, who talking about John the 44th and his connection with the Carmelites, said sardonically, “The hunger for ancient nobility causes men to rave.” Far from making the Carmelites embarrassed, this set them to raving even more.<\/p>

(Laughter)<\/p>

And Carmelites responded to a tax on their tradition with an outpouring of indignant scholarship in defense of it all, a scholarship that was, to a very large extent, misguided. My favorite example is a Spanish Carmelite allegoradic, Hazenate, who in 1639 wrote a book that was so extreme and that caused so much fuss that it was put on the index by the Spanish Inquisition. He wanted not only to trace Carmelite institutions back to Elijah and Elisha and the sons of the prophets, but he traced just about all church institutions back to them. So he said, for example, that when Elijah and Elisha went to visit the sons of the prophets in Bethel and Gilgal and taught them there, as we read in the Books of Kings, they were really the first masters in the first universities.<\/p>

And that when Elijah killed the prophets of Baal, he was really founding the holy Inquisition.<\/p>

(Laughter)<\/p>

Well, later on, as you probably know, the Bolandists, the great researchers on the lives of the saints entered this controversy and it became extremely heated and extremely bitter. And the results of the absurdities that Carmelite scholars proposed was really very negative for the Book of the First Monks. Outside the order, it came to be seen as ridiculous, and inside the order, it was defended even up until this century for the wrong reasons as a historical work. And now we’re able to recapture its significance, not as a work about the pre-medieval history of the order, but rather as an expression of its spiritual and mystical vocation cast in a mythical form.<\/p>

As we all know, sometimes the best way to express the deepest truths is in poetry and in myth, and that’s the way that this work expresses truths about the meaning of Carmelite life.<\/p>

(Pause)<\/p>

I’d like now just very quickly to take a sort of flyover, as you will, of this whole work, the seven books that make up the Book of the First Monks, just so that we get a general overview of the landscape and the territory in which we’re going to be exploring. Because it’s a long work, we won’t be able to explore very much. This is just one visit in the Grand Canyon, but I think it’s very helpful if we can have a look at the overall landscape. But before we do that, are there any quick questions? Is anything I’ve said very obscure and need explanation? Yes.<\/p>

Is there any hope for the landers who are still working to take a cleaner look at this in modern life?<\/p>

Well, I think that’s the task now that is ahead of us. And now I’ve been working on a critical edition of the whole Rebot Collection, which I hope will be finished next year. It should have been finished a few years ago, but it’s been a rather large task. And that’s a sort of fundamental step for scholarship on the work to make the text available. I hope that a complete translation will soon be available. And I really think this meeting in these days is also really quite a historic moment in our appreciation of this work. And also, I must say that in recent years, scholars of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and of the Carmelite tradition in general have more and more been recognizing the place that this work had in the Carmelite inheritance of the Carmelite mystical tradition of the 16th century.<\/p>

Up until fairly recent decades, there was a tendency not to account very well for the medieval inheritance of great 16th century Carmelites like Teresa and John of the Cross. And that’s something which I think has more and more into the literature now. So we’re at the beginning of a new era in the study of this work, I think. Let’s just quickly fly over this landscape. It is complicated, and I’ll run through it rather quickly. I hope this is not too obscure, but it’ll just give us an overview of what we’re going to be looking at. There are seven books which fall more or less into four parts. The first part in book one deals with the spiritual journey of Elijah, and it begins with a key biblical text which really is the key text for this whole work.<\/p>

In the journey to this goal, there are four steps which are expressed in the words of this command. The first step is<\/p>

( Silence )<\/p>

Which is called perfection. And whatever this perfection is, it’s not an ending point. Because after we reach perfection, there is still more. There is another step. And that is a life of continual conversion, an evangelical life, of repentance, of perseverance, and of longing for the things that are ahead, for the promises of God. That’s the first book. The spiritual journey of Elijah, which is also because Elijah is the paradigm of the monk, the religious of the Carmelite, is the journey on which each of us are on. So here in reading the story of Elijah, we read our own spiritual journey. The next section of this book–<\/p>

( Silence )<\/p>

It tells the history of the order developing from an order of hermits to an order of friars. And finding within its tradition seeds which will bear fruit in the mission of preaching Christ.<\/p>

( Silence )<\/p>

Dyer and others. And also expresses in detail how Elijah is the perfect model of this dishiplina prophetica, the prophetic way of life. Book three speaks about life on Mount Carmel, which it presents as the utopia of the Carmelites, a sort of model of what Carmelite life should be like. First of all, the Carmelites lose their home in Carath, these proto-Carmelites, when the brook dries up and they have to wander homeless for a while. But then when Elijah has his vision on Horeb, he takes them to their new home, their permanent home on Mount Carmel, which is made holy by Elijah’s life as a hermit there, which he lived for 18 years, according to tradition on Mount Carmel.<\/p>

And also it tells us how from their base on Mount Carmel, these sons of the prophets preached and healed and established other foundations in the Holy Land. Book four tells us how these Carmelites who were Jewish came to be Christian, and tells their story down to New Testament times. It speaks about Elijah’s ascent to heaven, about how he will come again to herald the Second Coming of the Messiah in a role as the Reconciler, the one who will reconcile fathers and sons. It speaks about Elijah’s leadership of the community, about the Recobites, and about other Old Testament figures who help in this legendary history that is developed of the Carmelites, to fill in the great gaps that exist.<\/p>

And also there’s a problem in this legendary history that as we know, the people of Israel were taken into exile by the Assyrians. So if there’s a continuous history of the Carmelites as an institution on Mount Carmel, in this legendary history somehow we have to account for the exile. And there’s a strange and amusing but also very profound story about how the Assyrians, as they came to take Israel into exile, came to Mount Carmel to make them captive, and found that Mount Carmel was a place of such peace that they were disarmed, and so the Carmelites were the only ones in Israel who remained there all through the exile. It’s a typical story in the Book of the First Monks. On one level it’s very silly, and we can see how it had to be invented just to fill in a gap in this legendary history. But on another level it’s transformed into a very profound account of what a Carmelite community should be like, what’s the inner dynamic of community life, how silence, openness to the Word of God, a desire to express in Carmelite life the justice of God, leads to perfect peace and harmony.<\/p>

Such a peace, in fact, that as the Scriptures themselves say, there can be no enemies who can overcome it. So, in a way typical of this work, a silly little legend is turned into a very profound description of the dynamics of Carmelite life. I hope we might have time also to revisit this little story in more detail. How did these Jewish prophets become Christian is the problem that’s addressed in Book 5. Well, they’re people who long as good Jews for the coming of the Messiah, and plenty of scriptural texts are introduced to relate them to this biblical longing. John the Baptist, we know, comes in the spirit and power of Elijah, so they must be associated with John the Baptist, no problem.<\/p>

They heard his preaching and they were baptized by him. As good Jews each year they went up to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover, and as it happened, their monastery in Jerusalem is just near the upper room where the apostles hide out after the crucifixion. And when the spirit descends at Pentecost, they are able to hear the sound of the great wind, and they go out into the street and they hear Peter preaching and are converted to Christianity by his sermon. Although not all of them, some of them waver, and they hear Peter preaching again in the temple in the following days, and the rest of them are converted then, and we know that they were there because in the Book of Acts we read that St Peter in his sermon says, “You are the children of Abraham. You are the sons of the prophets.” And that’s how we know that they were there.<\/p>

Again, a funny story made very profound because it becomes an opportunity to talk about communal discernment, the way a community grows together at a different pace, and also about the ways in which a community discovers the depth of the Word of God, and the way in which the Old Testament unfolds its hidden meaning for those who meditate on it, and many other things besides, which I hope also we can revisit. And then finally, this part of the work which tells us about the historical journey of the Order, leaves these now baptized and Christian Carmelites as members of the Christian community depicted in the Book of Acts, sharing in its mission, understanding the hidden meaning of the Scriptures, and preaching Christ throughout Palestine and Phoenicia.<\/p>

And now at the end of this section, I think we’re left with a different key text, which is the famous text in the Book of Acts. Then finally, the third, or at least the third part of this work, the book speaks about Mary and the Carmelites. I know we have to break. Just very quickly, it says that, we’ll deal with this in a little more detail the day after tomorrow. One of the problems in the Carmelite tradition was that it had two exemplary figures, Elijah and Mary. It seems to me that in the early tradition of the Order, it was not yet clear just how these two paradigmatic figures were to be brought together in a sort of unity that was harmonious in inspiration. We can see in the documents of the first 150 years or so of the Order’s history, several attempts to draw together in a satisfying and harmonious unity of spiritual inspiration, these two figures of charismatic inspiration.<\/p>

In the book of the first monks, Philip Rebot I think succeeds in a very satisfying and profound way in drawing together Elijah and Mary. He does this first of all by presenting the tradition that in his vision of the little cloud, the shape of man’s foot rising from the sea, which Elijah saw in Mount Carmel, he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary who was to come. Four mysteries were revealed to him, the birth of a girl free from sin, the time of her birth. There’s a little bit about how the Carmelites over the centuries longed for the fulfilment of this prophecy and so at the time of Mary’s birth knew that something significant had happened and often saw her.<\/p>

Then also how Mary in fact in her virginity imitated Elijah because according to an ancient man, Elijah was the first man to consecrate his virginity to God just as Mary was the first woman. So Mary and Elijah then linked especially on the level of virginity and all that it represents, which in the book of the first monks is especially purity of heart, a total to God, the openness which makes it possible for God’s transforming grace to bring us to experience of himself. So on this level there’s a very unifying link made between Elijah and Mary at the most basic level of Carmelite spiritual dynamism. The final mystery is that she will bear the Son of God.<\/p>

That’s also very significant in this work because it means that these Old Testament Carmelites then spend the centuries praying for the fulfilment of this prophecy about the Messiah who is to come, born of the Virgin. So that this messianic longing, this receptivity to the promises of God, which is of course part of the dynamism of the Hebrew Scriptures, the longing for the promised one of God, is here revealed as also profoundly Marian. It’s also very interestingly cleverly done I think. And then there’s also a few chapters in this book six about the different names of the order, hermits, prophets, anchorites, sons of the prophets, prophets and so on, brothers of the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. And these chapters which on first reading seem rather uninteresting. One of these parts in which the whole of the work is contained, they summarise in a different sense many of the principle themes of the work.<\/p>

And the fourth large section of this book, book seven, is about the habit, its meaning, and its history. And this is also I think another section of the book which attempts underneath the historical elements to express in a different mode some of the main spiritual themes of the work. That’s more or less our landscape and I hope it might be helpful just to situate us in this journey we’re going to be making over these days. I think that’s probably, if you are not familiar with the work, that might seem rather obscure, or forbidding territory, but that was just a flyover. We’re a little over time. We hope you enjoyed these tapes on the institution of the first monks and found them helpful. I’d like to particularly thank Sister Anjel Sadler, the executive director of the Carmelite and Bruce Baker for the production and editing of the tapes.<\/p>

The Carmelite Institute is a joint effort by both the Carmelite Order and the Discales Carmelite Order in the United States. If you would like any more information about the Institute and its projects, please write to us.<\/p>

( Silence )<\/p>

Part Two<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

This morning we’re going to begin looking at the most famous part of the book of the institution of the first monks, the first book. But before we start on that, just a couple of preliminary things. One is I just wanted to tell you about this pack that you each received. As you may have noticed, this was originally prepared for a program for formation personnel from the Carmelite Order that was held in Rome in 1992. And I hoped that you would get an updated version of this during this week, but due to circumstances beyond my control, it didn’t happen. So I’m sorry that you have this packet that was really prepared for a different group. And you will have noticed, for example, some of the discussion questions are focused particularly on the interests of the people who met in that group. So you don’t have to answer those questions.<\/p>

What’s here is, as you will have seen, a sort of brief introduction. And then there’s an outline of the whole of the institution of the first monks, the seven books in eight chapters each. What I tried to do in that was to give an overview of the whole work, its structure, a brief summary of each chapter, and then I made a little bit of a commentary. And I tried, as far as possible, to distinguish what was summary and what was commentary and put the commentary after those little bullets. So you don’t have to believe the commentary. That’s things I thought of at the time, and I’ve thought of other things since. But insofar as it’s helpful, it’s there. And then there’s also a new translation, which I did from the first book.<\/p>

And also I’ve been working on that translation since. And so it’s sort of an early draft, and I apologize for some of the infelicities there. And then also in the last part, as it explains in the introduction, there’s Norman Wirling’s 1940 translation of most of the rest of the book of the first monks, which is the best thing we have at the moment, but as we saw yesterday, is not entirely perfect. So that’s just what’s there. If anyone has comments to make about this, I’d be very appreciative to hear them as well, because this is a project that’s still going on. We’re going to see when we begin this morning in chapter 2 of book 1, that our author says that in our key text from the book of Kings, we have commands which God gave to Elijah, but which are also commands which are given to each of us who follow in the footsteps of the great prophet. And it says these words in the scripture should be meditated on by us, word for word, not only in their historical sense, but also in their mystical sense, because in them is contained our way of life. So these words are addressed not only to Elijah, as they were in a particular concrete historical circumstance, but also to us today in our own circumstances.<\/p>

We read to later on in book 5 of the Institutes in chapter 8 in the picture of the transformed Institute of the Sons of the Prophets after it’s become Christian, that these now Christian followers of Elijah are members of their first Christian community in Jerusalem. And it says that, quoting the book of Acts, they were faithful to the teaching of the apostles and the breaking of the bread and so on. They met daily in prayer in the temple. And it says they spent their days in study and reflection on the gospel. They also had the holy books and the laws of their fathers, which they studied according to allegorical interpretation.<\/p>

And it goes on to say that in their new condition of life inspired by the spirit, the old law under which they’d lived and the old scriptures on which they’d meditated, seemed to them like an animal in that exteriorly there was the letter, which was like the body. But interiorly beneath the letter, there lay like the soul a hidden meaning, which gave them a more profound entry into the divine mysteries. And that because they received the teaching of the apostles, they were able to draw a deeper meaning than ever before from the sacred books with which they’d long been familiar and to be filled as from a great banquet with a divine and more profound knowledge of the sacred books.<\/p>

So right at the beginning and right at the end of this account of the Carmelite way of life, we’re brought in contact with the medieval hermeneutic with medieval approach to scriptures. And I thought just quickly as we begin, I might try to outline for you this medieval system of interpreting the scriptures, because it’s important not only for our understanding of this work, but I think it’s really useful to have an acquaintance with this system of interpretation for any reading that you do in any medieval or early modern spiritual text. So just quickly, I’ll run through this system. It’s a very ancient system in which the scripture is seen as having four senses, the famous four senses of sacred scripture.<\/p>

Can you all see that? What’s written on the board? Oh, all right. The first sense of each text is its literal or historical sense. And I think the best way to explain this is to use an example which is itself very ancient, given by John Cassian in the fourth century, where he shows how this system of interpretation works on the verse from Psalm 147. Praise the Lord Jerusalem. And he wants to illustrate the different levels of meaning, the different layers of meaning and the different possibilities of interpretation, just of the word Jerusalem. So the first level of meaning is the literal or historical sense. And on that level, Jerusalem is, of course, a city, the city of Mount Zion that’s built on Mount Zion, but also, of course, the people that live there. Okay?<\/p>

Simple enough. So this verse calls on the people of Jerusalem. Praise the Lord. Basic meaning. But also, every text then can have deeper meanings beyond the literal meaning. This is an attempt, of course, to make every text even the ones most tied up with particular historical situations from long ago speak to us in our own situation today. So on these deeper levels, we find first of all an allegorical meaning, which is related to Christ and his church. So it’s a Christological and ecclesiological level of meaning. So, Cassian explains then that in this verse, “Praise the Lord Jerusalem.” Well, what do you imagine that Jerusalem would stand for on this level of meaning that’s to do with the church?<\/p>

And then there’s also a moral or tropological meaning it’s called, which is to do with Christian life and with spiritual life. So on this level, Jerusalem stands for the soul. So it’s really the soul of each person that’s called to participate then in the praise of the Lord. And there’s also finally an eschatological level of meaning in which Jerusalem now stands for the heavenly city. So that means then that if someone is writing a Biblical commentary, from this one verse, there’s the possibility of entering in to really the whole world of Christian meaning. You can talk about so many different things. Firstly, to situate this verse of the Psalm in its historical context, in its Biblical sitzim laban, as we do all the time today in Biblical scholarship. But also, for example, to relate it to the life of the church. So you can talk about liturgy, about worship, about all kinds of things.<\/p>

Also to speak about a moral life, about the virtues, about the vices, the opposite about how one comes to an attitude of praise of God and so on. Also to speak about heaven and hell, its opposite. This creates, of course, an extremely rich and complex possibility of interpretation of the Scriptures. I don’t want to take too long over this, but it’s worth giving just another example perhaps to see how this works, because it’s really quite important to understand how this culture of interpretation works. In order to enter into these kinds of texts. Psalm 67, I think, it says, “Lord save me, I am sinking in the mud.” Sinking in the mire.<\/p>

So if you apply this same principle of interpretation to this mud, how would it work? What does it mean? Well, on the literal level, this is of course a metaphor. That metaphorical language also works, according to this theory, on the literal or historical level. And this is a medieval authors believe that David wrote the Psalms. So the Psalm which says, “Lord, I am sinking in the mud,” applies to the troubles of David. David is surrounded by his enemies. On the allegorical level, or the Christological level, this can be applied to the Passion of Christ, who is the new David and also has his own troubles and his own enemies. And who in fact uses the Psalms of David to express his own anguish in the face of his enemies.<\/p>

So you see already the possibility of connections, biblical connections being made to all kinds of things. On a moral level, I’m sinking in the mud. What would that be? Sin and death. So you can speak about vice and what it does, how it makes you sink into the mud. You can talk about the virtues. You can talk about how they’re related to each other, what kind of vices are remedied by what kind of virtues or what kind of ascetical practices and so on. And then on the eschatological level, I’m sinking in the mud, applies to hell. So you can talk about hell and how you get there and how you stay out of it, what it’s like down there, how horrible it is, how beautiful it is in heaven, its opposite and so on.<\/p>

So this system of interpretation means that from almost any starting point in the scripture, from the smallest entry point, one can enter into the whole world of biblical meaning and make connections to all kinds of places. And so we see a kind of logic whereby sparks go off in the mind, a mind too that’s filled with scripture because many medieval religious had a very good great part of the scripture off by heart, the Psalms, the Gospels, all the New Testament, often the principal prophets and so on. So they can very easily make verbal connections between different parts of scripture and then connect them through this complex and powerful system of interpretation, which also sometimes leads them very far from the literal meaning and sometimes into all kinds of trouble of interpretation as well.<\/p>

Okay. So that’s just by way of background and I think it’s useful not only for understanding this work but also in general. What I’d like to do now is to turn to the first book of the book of the first monks, which is the most famous and the most influential. Most of the modern acquaintance with the book of the first monks we owe to the great work of Gabriel Wessels who back in 1916 published most of the first book in the Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum. And many of the translations in through which we’re familiar with this work come ultimately from Wessels publication of this text. And so Gabriel Wessels is something of a hero in the modern understanding of the book of the first monks, but he’s also I think something of a villain because I don’t think he understood the structure of this work. What he did was to leave out the first chapter of book one and tack on to the end of book one, the first chapter of book two. And he called this the Pars ascetica, the ascetical part of the book of the first monks. And presumably he thought of the rest as the Pars historica, the historical part in which he was not very interested.<\/p>

This really obscures the structure of this work, which is structured according to this medieval hermeneutical theory. And what we’re going to see in the first book is that the key text, which we met yesterday from the first book of Kings chapter 17, is first interpreted according to its spiritual or mystical sense, which is not quite as systematic as those three deeper senses that I outlined to you there, which are often conflated in actual practice into a sort of spiritual or mystical or deeper sense. Then with book two, the institution turns to interpreting the same key text according to its literal or historical sense, and continues then with introducing other texts of scripture to tell us then the story of the history of the Carmelite Order.<\/p>

There are a number of things that we have to be acutely aware of, I think, for interpreting this work about the way it’s structured. One is that the spiritual interpretation in the first book is not only to do with asceticism, as Wessels seemed to think. It’s not just an ascetical work at all, but it’s a mystical work, and I think we’ll see that now. And also, Heinblomenstein will speak about that in detail this evening. The other thing that I think it’s really important to remember, and we’ll come back to this tomorrow, is that even though the second and later books deal with the literal or historical meaning, they’re also concerned with spirituality, because no medieval person ever thought that the literal or historical meaning of these texts was not also full of spiritual and mystical significance. So, unfortunately, the way that the Institutio has been presented to us in this century particularly, and particularly in those translations which depend on Wessels’ construct of this so-called Pars ascetica is quite misleading. And I hope by knowing the way that it’s structured according to this medieval hermeneutic, we get a better idea of the way the whole work functions.<\/p>

Let’s turn then to just looking quickly through this first book and what it has to say about Elijah as a model of the spiritual life, and about the way the story of the spiritual journey of each of us is to be found in the spiritual or mystical or hidden meaning of these words which God addresses to Elijah. This is fairly complex work, so we’ll go through it reasonably, speedily, and if anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask as we go. Like all the books in this work, the seven books, there are eight chapters. We begin with Chapter One, which is the introductory chapter. There are a few main points made.<\/p>

If you look, as I hope we’ll have time to do later, at the biblical texts that are brought into this work, you’ll see that already the fundamental, dynamic, spiritual and mystical dynamic of this work is introduced in its first page. And it’s introduced also in a way that’s very significant through a gospel text. Even though we’re talking about the life of an Old Testament prophet, from the very beginning it’s revealed as an evangelical life. And in very simple terms as well, it’s the life of which the Lord speaks when He says, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door to Me, I will come in and dine with him and he with Me.” So in a very simple way, at the very beginning, we’re introduced to this dynamic of purity of heart, opening the door to the Lord, and to the mystical experience which comes in the grace of His presence.<\/p>

Also, there’s a very strong emphasis at the beginning of this work on experience. Our author says that… …both intensely personal and also comes through contact with the larger tradition of the community, some of the things that Jane spoke about in her paper yesterday. And also, as I already mentioned, it announces the great theme of this work, of making ready a way for the Lord, purity of heart.<\/p>

Okay.<\/p>

Chapter 2 is really the most influential and most famous part of this entire work. It speaks about the twofold aim of the Carmelite way of life or the religious way of life. Even though it’s so important, I won’t spend very long on it this morning because Hein is going to speak about it at length this evening. But what the work does is, using the tools of medieval biblical interpretation… …is it pains to say, our address not only to Elijah but to each one of us. And in these words, we read not only Elijah’s story in their literal sense, but in their spiritual sense, we read the story of each one of us.<\/p>

And we find their Elijah’s way of life and our way of life. And we have to hear in these words God speaking not only to him but also to me now. These words reveal the twofold aim of our life and the path with certain steps by which God wants us to go on the way to perfection. He spoke about perfection yesterday and what it means. The first aim is purity of heart. The second aim is to be in charity. And also here at the very beginning of this work, we’re introduced to another absolutely fundamental point of Carmelite spirituality, that it’s all about love. And in this work, there is nothing which is not to do with love as both the means of our way of life and the end of our way of life.<\/p>

As both the center of asceticism and as the mystical love which transforms us in the encounter with the grace of God and the presence of God and with God himself. So as an ascetical and mystical work, there’s just one dynamic at work here which is the dynamic of love which is the way in which we and God meet from two directions coming together in love. The second aim… And they are the subjects then of the next four chapters of this work. Eli Zayas of the Nativity described this part of this work as standing at the head of all Carmelite spirituality. And perhaps later on we may have a chance to hear from some of the great Terezion and San Juana scholars who are here, what they think about that. I’d be very interested to hear a reaction to that whether they feel that’s true or not. But certainly that’s been said that this small text here is really a key to the whole of Carmelite spirituality.<\/p>

Also some years ago Father Ernie Larkin wrote an article in a sense about the Paschal dynamic in this text which I think has been certainly very significant for me. That what we should see here too is an expression of Pauline Paschal spirituality. That by entering into the death of Christ, purity of heart, we come to share in his resurrection to experience the transforming grace of God. And I think that as we read through this first book of the institution we can see at work particularly through the kind of biblical texts that are used to illustrate Elijah’s journey. The way in which this Pauline Paschal spirituality and Paschal mysticism underlies very strongly this spiritual journey which is the journey of Elijah and each one of us.<\/p>

I won’t say any more about this chapter even though it’s very important because Hein I think is going to speak about it in detail. But are there any comments or questions at this stage? The journey of the follower of Elijah then is elaborated in four steps which lead…<\/p>

( Silence )<\/p>

Similar structure. First of all, it gives a sort of phenomenological analysis, if you like, of our spiritual condition. And then it speaks about conversion, which is requires that we create a freedom in ourselves from certain things, which are obstacles on the path to perfection, so that we may have a freedom for the grace of God that work in us. Our situation in this first step is that we have so many things which own us. It says quite explicitly, which is interesting, that wealth itself does not close the way to the Kingdom. The attitude throughout this whole work is a very positive one, I think, to the world in general, to human life, to human love. It says, “What we own is not the problem, but it’s rather our preoccupation with what we own that creates an obstacle in us.”<\/p>

The things we think we own really own us, and they create all kinds of incoherent desires in us, which choke the Word of God in us. We need to be converted in such a way that a freedom is created in us from these disordered desires, which scatter us and our spiritual energies, and create a freedom in us for hearing the Word of God. I’m not sure if you can read the left-hand column there. Is that too small for you to read? It doesn’t matter greatly, but I’ve just tried to list each time at least some of the principal biblical texts that are used in these chapters. You will have seen that they’re extremely dense with biblical quotations, and sometimes are constructed just as a string or chain of biblical texts.<\/p>

I think a key to interpreting the real spiritual dynamism of this work is to attend very carefully to the biblical texts that are used in each chapter. Here we notice particularly the use of, or in every chapter, we’ll see the use of gospel texts and then also of Pauline texts. That may strike us as rather strange in a text about the life of an Old Testament prophet, but of course in the medieval approach to biblical interpretation, it’s no problem, because the Bible is one book, and the Old Testament and the New cannot be understood without reference from one to the other. So that’s not a problem. And also the life of Elijah in its mystical dimension is being revealed to us as, in every way, a Christian and evangelical life.<\/p>

Also, it’s Christ himself, you will have noticed, I hope, in reading this work, who is speaking in this first book, calling his disciple on the road to Christian perfection. So here Christ speaks to us in the words of the gospel about the problem of our relation to material things, and it’s cast particularly in terms of openness to the word of God, hearing the word of God. So also extremely consonant with the life of Elijah as a prophet. And for us, Carmelite life is meant to lead us to prophetic perfection, which is a perfect openness to the word of God, which is addressed to us, but also comes to us in the incarnate word in Christ himself.<\/p>

That’s the simplest chapter in this work. It’s brief, it’s simple, it’s profound, and I think we can see in this work the kind of dynamic by which the Institute’s yo advances. Is that any comments there, questions? It’s clear enough. To what extent is this chapter influenced by the Franciscan and Dominican movements, which give poverty a sort of pride of place in religious life? And all the renewal movements of the 12th and 13th centuries gave great importance to poverty as the sort of first step in the following of Christ. It was renunciation of material things, which created the possibility of being a disciple of Christ. And poverty was the sort of point of entry into identification with the poor Christ, who made himself one with the humble and who came to ultimate poverty on the cross.<\/p>

I think this is in the background to this work because Carmelite’s part of the same movement. But I think the preoccupation is quite different. It’s not with material poverty in the sense that it was so important for the Franciscans. I think in this work, and it says so really, it’s not what you have that’s so important. It’s the way you’re related to those things in your heart. And what’s significant is not poverty itself, but the sort of mystical dimension of renunciation, which requires purification of our relationships to things that are outsiders. So I think it’s really transposed the practical aspect of poverty to, it’s presumed that and transposed it to a more inner level.<\/p>

…obedience seen at its most profound level, not just doing what you’re told, but finding on the deepest level of your being a conformity to the will of God through identification with Christ, who was obedient even to death. First, an analysis of our situation, which is all in terms of the anthropology of St Paul, where the text talks about the struggle that is in us between the law of sin and the law of the Spirit. And the Kingdom of God is entered only through the narrow gates, through trial and struggle. It speaks then about the conversion that we need, which makes us free from our enthrallment to our own passions and our own desires, and makes us free for conformity to the will of God.<\/p>

And that comes through conformity to Christ. He is the way. He came to do the will of the Father, and the way to achieve this second step is to take up the cross with Christ and share his death so that we can share his resurrection. And the biblical texts… The disciple must be like his master. Each is called to take up the cross and follow the Lord. Those who die in Christ share his glory. So, on this second level of purification, what’s meant to be going on is that having purified our relationships to things that are outside us, we now purify our inner self and our motives. The next words that God addressed to Elijah are “Hide in the brook, carroth.”<\/p>

In quite a different way. Our situation, first of all, is that in the city, we find ourselves in the place of unfaithfulness to the covenant, in the place of injustice. The text that is used to develop this idea is from Psalm 54, that there’s iniquity in the city, prowling on the city walls. The city is full of injustice and usury and deceit. It’s full of disordered relations between people and between God. And the monk, the hermit, who Elijah, has defined his conversion by fleeing from this injustice and disorder into the desert. Each of the elements of this conversion is developed then in two stages, a sort of negative stage and a positive stage.<\/p>

The first element is solitude. And that’s firstly a negative thing. The traditional “fuga mundi,” the flight from the world, that you simply have to get away from all those evil and unjust things and set yourself free from those things. But positively, it’s also a freedom for something. And biblical texts here are brought in to show the way in which life in the desert is a life of freedom. The great symbol of the hermit was the wild ass, who has no master, who’s not a beast of burden, but who in the desert is completely free. And so is the hermit. In the desert, he’s free from the oppression and the iniquity of the city.<\/p>

But in the desert too, he’s free precisely to hunger and to thirst, to experience in the desert those apparently negative things that are really positive openings to God and to his grace. I said yesterday that, well, this was an idea that came to me from Hein, that even in its smallest parts, this work keeps showing us the whole. And here is one of those places where we see again and again, in smallest parts, the whole dynamic. And it’s once again, purity of heart, the experience of God entering into the death of Christ, so as to share his glory, opening the door to the God who comes. This text then turns to silence, which in its negative sense is simply not to talk, but in its positive sense is attentiveness to grace and receptivity.<\/p>

And again, the same thing. An asceticism, the control of the tongue, which gives a place to the mystical dimension of life, to the God who speaks, to the grace which comes, to the one who is at the door. And then it moves to celibacy, which is also simply the absence of marriage, an absence of relationship to a wife or to a husband, but also a reorientation of one’s whole self to God and to God’s church and a concern for the affairs of the Lord. And if you read meditatively this chapter, I think the biblical texts begin to speak very powerfully. For example, the text from Matthew about being eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom and from Isaiah about the eunuchs who have a home and a name which is better than that of sons and daughters.<\/p>

So here there’s another level of purification, and that is the purification, having purified our relationship to things outside us, material things, to our inner selves. Now there’s a level of purification of relationship to God and also to others. Fourth step, Elijah is told to hide in carat, which the scripture says is over against the Jordan, contra yordanim. The word against features prominently in this interpretation, contra in Latin. It’s not in most of our biblical translations now, but you have to get it in somehow to the English translation. This chapter is about growth in love, and it’s really, having made these three steps, the next phase is really one of integration, of drawing all this together in love, in charity.<\/p>

The text begins again with an analysis of our situation. It’s rather complex the way it proceeds, because it starts with the etymology of the word Jordan, which Saint Jerome says means going down into sin. And since carat is against the Jordan, that means being against going down into sin, in other words, coming up out of sin. And how do you come up out of sin? Well, the biblical texts which are strung together tell us there’s only one way, and that is the way of love. Sin can only be put behind us through a conversion which draws us into love. And as we know from everything we know about the scriptures, that God loves us first. So this is an ascetical effort, which is to love, but also it’s an openness to the love by which God loves us first.<\/p>

And in taking up a theme very traditional in the Fathers, this is revealed as the grace by which the image of God in which we are created is restored in us. Also, there’s an extremely interesting passage there which perhaps we may have time to return to in the open session, where there’s a little analysis of what love is about. Love of God, love of self, and love of neighbor. And most of this is not very unusual except, I suspect, for the part about love of self. And I don’t know anything else in medieval writing which is quite so positive in the way it approaches what we now call positive self-esteem and so on. It’s not that idea, exactly, of course, but it’s related to that, I think, and it does show the positiveness of this work.<\/p>

Perhaps we could talk about that later and I’d be interested to hear your comments. It mentions Psalm 10 verse 6 in the Vulgate translation, which says, “It is the sinner who hates his own soul.” So you can’t hate yourself and be on this journey away from sin, but it requires loving the image of God, which you are. So this is a phase of drawing together this spiritual progress into love and total surrender in love. I think Hein will come back to these things as well. And that brings us then finally to the goal of this journey, which is to drink of the torrent, that is to experience the perfect love of God.<\/p>

Which is…<\/p>

(Silence)<\/p>

…against everything that is an obstacle to God, to go against all those things which stop God’s grace working in you. And the one who is able, who has come to the point of letting those obstacles drop away, is able to drink from the torrent. That is to experience perfect union with God. And there’s a beautiful description there, brief but lyrical, of the mystical experience. The unutterable, gentle, sweet delights, which sweep over the mind with a rush like a torrent and with great abundance of bliss. Also here, there’s a mention of a text famous to us from the rule from 1 Timothy, that the end of the law is the love that springs from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.<\/p>

(Silence)<\/p>

I just…we should finish in one minute, just to get a little flavor of this chapter, a brief quotation. This love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Romans, whose flashes are flashes of fire, the song of songs, comes as a mighty flood of love, so fervent, so violent. Yet with such peace, binding your heart into a single harmonious whole, that it may not feel the least resistance or the least hindrance in itself to my love, but may rest with utter peace in its love for me. This is God Himself, or Christ, speaking to the Elijah person on this journey. But when we’ve reached this perfection, it’s not the end.<\/p>

(Silence)<\/p>

In something which is only a glimpse and only transitory, because God lives in unapproachable light and no one can see Him in this life. And to stop in that spiritual experience would be absolutely fatal for the monk. What we have to do is to persevere, to go on in the evangelical conversion to which we’re called, to be faithful, to be open to grace. And also to live in a state of longing. And there are numerous texts in this chapter about longing. “My soul thirsts for you, O God.” And the text from Philippians, we’re also in the rule, inviting us to forget the things that are behind and to press on to the things that are before, to the promises of God and to God.<\/p>

That’s it, simply. An overview of that spiritual journey, which is the journey of Elijah and of each Carmelite. I think we need to stop there and take a break.<\/p>

(Silence) (Applause)<\/p>

Part Three<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

( Silence )<\/p>

Hello, my name is Jack Welch. I’m president of the Carmelite Institute. The Institute and the Washington Theological Union sponsored a study week in September 1996 on the institution of the first monks, a 14th century document which is considered the first synthesis of Carmelite spirituality. We were led during the week by Father Paul Chandler, a Carmelite from the Australian province of Carmelites. And then subsequent to Paul’s talks each day, we had speakers address various topics raised in the institution of the first monks. These first talks are the overview of that document given by Paul Chandler.<\/p>

We begin by turning our attention now to the second book of the institutio which begins the historical section of this work. As we saw yesterday, book one begins with the interpretation of the spiritual or mystical of the key text from the book of Kings chapter 17, God’s command to Elijah, depart from here, go eastward and so on. And in the spiritual interpretation of that text, we saw that these words describe the spiritual journey of Elijah which is a journey of transformation, mystical transformation in love. And we saw too as the institutio says quite explicitly that these words from the first book of Kings are addressed not only to Elijah but also to us hermit monks, says this passage, because in them is contained our way of life of which Elijah is the exemplar and also more than that. But now with book two of the institutio, there’s a transition and I believe that it’s important to understand this transition in order to understand the structure of this work because it moves according to medieval biblical hermeneutic about which we saw just a little from considering the text in its historical or literal sense to a reflection on the hidden or spiritual or mystical meaning of the text.<\/p>

So book two begins by saying Elijah went and did according to the word of the Lord, fulfilling God’s command not only in its mystical sense, which we’ve already seen in book one, which transcends a particular time and place, but also in the literal sense of those words, that is in the concrete historical circumstances of his own life. And the institutio is also quite clear that these two senses in which Elijah fulfilled this command of God are not to be considered as separated, but rather they’re fulfilled mystically and historically in one life, in the life of Elijah himself. But from our point of view, we continue to live the mystical meaning of these words, which is our way of life. But we also continue in an inheritance which comes from Elijah’s literal fulfillment of this command because by doing what God commanded him, he became not only the exemplar of Carmelites, but also that is the model and example of Carmelites and of hermits, of monks, of religious, but also the princeps Carmelitarum, that is the first, the founder of an institution, which as we’ve seen, as we’ve heard about the Rubri Caprima and the tradition which it begins, has a continuous succession from the time of Elijah down to the time of the writing of the institutio.<\/p>

That means then that now Book 2 takes us into a slightly different mode, where we begin from this concrete historical point of what Elijah did, according to the word we begin the history of the order as an institution. Whereby in continuous succession, a holy way of life is established. That’s just what the Rubri Caprima speaks about, that from the time of those devout inhabitants of Mount Carmel, as it says, the prophets Elijah and Elisha, holy fathers of both Old Testament and the new, for the sake of contemplation of heavenly things, have loved the solitude of that mountain and have lived a praiseworthy life of holy penitence there next to the spring of Elijah, and that by a holy inheritance, that is by a sort of train of succession, this life has been continuously maintained. So says the Rubri Caprima. This part of the work, as I mentioned the other day, I think really comprehends Books 2 to 5 of the Institutio, which tells the story of the order from the time of Elijah down to the conversion of the hermits to Christianity.<\/p>

And this is the part of the work which one modern translator says does not merit the labor of translation. And I hope we all think that he’s wrong.<\/p>

(Laughter)<\/p>

This shift from spiritual to historical exegesis of the same text, I think hasn’t generally been recognized. Gabriel Wessels and all those who followed him, that is most of the modern translators of the first part of the Institutio, have included the first bit of Book 2, which we’re talking about now, in this so-called “parse ascetica” of the Institutio and then abandoned all the rest. And that makes it difficult to read this work in a couple of ways. One of them is that Book 1 is not ascetical anyway, as we’ve already seen. It’s not just an ascetical work, but a work in which asceticism and mysticism form one spiritual dynamic in which love meets love, and in which the grace of conversion and the grace of transformation are co-inhere. We saw that, I think especially in Hein’s presentation of the two-fold goal last night. And then in another way, this modern construct of the “parse ascetica” makes it hard to read the Institutio, because it suggests that the so-called historical books are not about spirituality, not about ascetical life or spiritual life, but about some kind of bogus history.<\/p>

But I think what is important for us to recognize is that these books are also about the spirituality of the order, but expressed in a different mode in which the spiritual values of 13th and 14th century Carmelites are expressed in a concrete mythic or narrative or story form, and projected back into the past, into the biblical past. So I want to suggest this morning that these chapters of this work, Books 2 to 5, need to be read on a number of different levels. And I’d like first just to say what I think they are, and then we can come back, perhaps, to look then at some illustrations of the way these levels work. The first level is simply the level of history, the history of the “Eligian Institute,” as it’s called in the work, or the prophetic history, which is a bogus history, a sort of fabricated history, which most or maybe all medieval Carmelites believed and defended as such, and which Carmelites for a long time continued to defend as a real history of a continuous institution descended from Elijah, even the last work I know of in this line was written by Beningus Distle as recently as the 1950s, but that was the sort of swan song, I think, of this tradition.<\/p>

So on that level, these books are not of a very lively interest to us, though it’s easy to understand the impulses that gave rise to the legend, but nevertheless, they still, I think, repay careful and sympathetic reading. On this historical level, the institution, of course, has a polemical purpose to defend the antiquity of the order and to define its identity as an institution in the church. So it can tell us about how medieval Carmelites saw themselves and their community and how they defined themselves and their distinctive values in relation to other groups, and also how in embarrassing moments, embarrassing perhaps to us, they sought to see themselves as more ancient, more distinguished, more noble, and better than everybody else. This work shows us a lot about the way the Carmelites thought about themselves, because it’s not the production of one person, Philip Ribot, but really a common enterprise, as Jane has shown us too, in which the materials for this legend were built up quite slowly over a century or more by the contributions of quite a large number of Carmelite writers, whom we still know, and doubtless other writers and thinkers and talkers and preachers, of whom we no longer have any trace.<\/p>

Ribot says himself, and correctly so, that he has introduced very little that was entirely new into this tradition. But I think what he has done is that he’s given a new form to this, by his time, traditional form of the Elijah legend, and he’s given it a form which artistically I think is very brilliantly executed. And he’s also related the tradition much more profoundly to the fundamental dynamic of the spirituality of the Bible. But because it’s used for polemical purposes, the most famous example is in the debate between John Stokes and John Hornaby, between Carmelites and Dominicans at the University of Cambridge in 1374, so about the same time that the Institutio was being composed. Because this is quite a vigorous polemic between Carmelites and others, this work has to be authoritative. If it’s going to work in argument, and especially in argument in the Great Hall at the local university, it has to be constructed from the most impeccable authorities, and therefore from Scripture and the Fathers. And in this work, there’s hardly an assertion which doesn’t have a footnote in medieval form, a reference therefore to the Fathers like Jerome Cassian, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, or to modern writers of the 14th century, people like Hugh of St Victor, Rupert of Deutz, Jacques de Vitry, and so on, those who in the 14th century would call them moderny, the modern writers of recent centuries.<\/p>

But it’s an interesting feature of the Institutio, a slightly puzzling one, I find, that this is done with a certain reserve. Medieval Carmelites didn’t make every claim about the antiquity of the order that they could have made. They didn’t use every patristic text that they knew. There are certain limits within which they construct this tradition, and the reason for those limits is not entirely clear, certainly not clear to me. I’d be interested if anyone has suggestions about that. I think perhaps Sister Elian might say something about this later. It’s not until, as far as I know, until 1497 when John Outerwater, Flemish Carmelite, also known as Palaeonidoris, publishes his book called the Antiquitatis et Sanctimoniee Erremitarum Montiscarmelie The book about the antiquity and holiness of the hermits of Mount Carmel, that these limits that were observed throughout the medieval period are broken. And from then on, any sense of reserve or delicacy or even good taste is abandoned slowly, so that from then on any text or any argument or any fantasy which has the least foundation in the Fathers and the Scriptures and theological writers are all dragged in to help revive the order with its missing history. And so this history becomes more and more pretentious and more and more absurd, so that by the 17th century the deserts of Egypt and Syria and Palestine are filled with thousands and tens of thousands of Carmelites, men and women, desert fathers, desert mothers, bishops, pope, all kinds of people. A great flood of ancient saints is dragged into the order.<\/p>

So on that first level there’s a sort of fantastic history, but one which nevertheless I think needs a sympathetic reading in terms of a symbolic narrative which it represents. I’d like to return to that later. I think there’s then a second level on which we need to read this part of the institutional. That is that this so-called Pars Historica of the work is also about the spirituality of the order. It’s a story about the values, the spiritual values of 13th and 14th century Carmelites, or at least of what they wanted their values to be as Carmelites and as a community, given narrative form and projected back into the biblical past. I think Philip Ribot in particular, through his editing of the legendary and polemical material that he inherited, lifts it to a new plane. We already saw briefly one illustration of the way Philip Ribot works, just in his treatment of that story the relationship between prophecy and worship, the way in which the ecstatic prayer of the singing prophets, whom we read about in the first and second books of Kings, is related to the liturgical worship of medieval Carmelites.<\/p>

The situation there is I think not so difficult to understand. He has biblical material about the sons of the prophets, the bands of ecstatic prophets, which he needs to use in constructing this story of the continuous history of the disciples of Elijah. And he also has a common enough understanding in the 14th century of prophecy as worship, which is in the biblical commentaries of his time. But then he introduces this quotation which we saw from Gregory the Great about the prayer of Psalmody, about the Christological and mystical meaning of praying the Psalms. I think, by the way, he’s introduced that patristic text into his work. He gives this legendary history, not new to him, an added mystical dimension. The prayer of the Psalms, he says, using the words of Gregory, opens the heart to the risen one. It creates a path of revelation in Jesus by which the Lord come to our hearts and set us on fire with the grace of his love. We saw this the other day.<\/p>

And so he relates this little bit of the story of the legend back to the very heart of what he’s spoken about in book one, the journey of mystical transformation and its inner spiritual dynamic of opening the heart to the one who comes. I hope that if it’s time later, we might be able to just pick out a few other illustrations of similar ways in which he does that kind of thing to lift the legendary story of Carmel to a new, really new level. Does anyone want to make any comments or suggestions of questions, contradictions so far? John.<\/p>

You talked about your whole artistic meeting, this traditional material into work. What Jay mentioned on the ban on the way over, do you think any of this was in the form of an oral condition? Could you ask<\/p>

that question again in about a year’s time?<\/p>

(Laughter)<\/p>

That’s a very difficult question and it’s the one that’s really perplexing me at the moment. I think it’s one of the great puzzles about this work. What is there in between Philip Ribot and the earlier works of this Carmelite tradition? It’s… up until now, most of the modern scholars on this work in recent decades have suggested that Philip Ribot is the author of most of this material. He’s certainly the editor. He probably wrote some of it. I have the feeling that what he says in the introduction is probably true, that he didn’t write very much of it. I have the sense that he was working with some kind of earlier documents or perhaps oral tradition, though I’m inclined to doubt that, but it’s very hard to explain how he could have come by documents which would have been so fascinating to every, you know, half the other people in the order who are writing about and he is the only person who seems to have had access to them and that’s very difficult to explain.<\/p>

It’s a puzzle. I’d like to suggest a third level on which we need to read this work, which is a particular interpretation which you can take it or leave it. I’ll be interested to know whether you find it convincing or not. I think perhaps it may even address some issues that were raised yesterday by Jack, for example, about the place of ministry in this tradition. This morning I woke up with thoughts in my head about some of the things Kieran had raised and also something Patrick McMahon said about the way we O’Karms apply our own hermeneutic to some of these texts and then also a conversation I had with Connie about the way in which the Carmelites, even though they’re active friars, still preserve in their ideology and their spirituality a very aramitical self-definition and when I woke up these seemed like very brilliant ideas but when I tried to write them down they didn’t seem so good anymore so maybe you’ll help me work them out. I want to suggest that on this third level of interpretation, these books, books two to five, tell a story and like all stories it has a beginning, a middle and an end.<\/p>

And so we have to interpret not only the single elements of the work but we have to interpret in terms of its own narrative structure and where it goes as a story. I think that there are two possible ways, or perhaps there are more, but I can think of two ways, any way of interpreting this material here in books two to five. One that’s been suggested to me is that the Institutio is really a conservative work, more or less in the line of the friar that presents the order with its aramitical history and its glorious forefathers, the sons of the prophets and so on, as kind of coded call to return to the desert and the aramitical way of life. If this is so then the context of this work is perhaps to be found in the aramitical life of 14th century Catalonia about which, I don’t know a great deal, but there are some indications that in Philip Ribott’s time there was a revival of aramitism in his own area in Catalonia, for example the hermits of Montserrat.<\/p>

And also there’s some suggestion, I asked Joachim about this and he’s not really convinced, but some people at any rate suggest Carmelites at this time were founding houses in more remote places. Maybe the context is a foretaste already in the 1370s or the 1390s whenever this work was composed of the reforms in the order of some decades later like the reform of Le Selv\u00e9 from 1413 the reform of Mantua in 1423. I’m not sure myself about this but this is an interpretation that has been proposed and certainly if we take a sort of quantitative approach to what these books are saying about the life of the order, well we might be led in this direction because they certainly say a lot about hermits, about the desert and so on, and very little about apostles. But if we take a qualitative approach then we might be led to a different conclusion because I’d like to suggest that it’s not only how much that’s said about the apostles but where it’s said in the structure of the narrative structure of this work that seems to be really important.<\/p>

And I’m suggesting that this sort of little history now of the Elijah Institute is really the story of the journey of the order. And just as book one tells us the story of the spiritual journey of the individual which is a journey of transformation, I think this historical part of the book is also a story of transformation of the institution of the order told in terms of this symbolic narrative. It’s an institution which starts in the Old Testament with Elijah but ends up in the New Testament. And I think the last chapter of this section, that’s book five chapter eight, is really important for the interpretation of what’s going on here. After there, you can see that if you want to have a look in your outline, book five chapter eight, after their conversion to Christianity the sons of the prophets find themselves now members of the Christian community of Jerusalem which of course is the model of Christian life which was so attractive, such an attractive image for the religious reformers of the 12th and 13th centuries who wanted to model themselves on the ecclesiae primitivae forma, the model or the example of the primitive church as described in the book of Acts.<\/p>

And I think that these famous texts about the Jerusalem community from Acts two and four that are quoted in this chapter are a sort of inclusion and balance the key text with which the word begins from one king’s 17. We begin with God’s command to Elijah to go into the desert and we end with the first Christian community of Jerusalem. They remain faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to fellowship, to the breaking of the bread. Every day they went together to the temple praising God with gladness and simplicity of heart. So this community has become something new and they find themselves in a new context because what they longed for all through their history has come about and the prophetic promises are now fulfilled. So book five chapter eight end of this history of the Elijah institution ends many of them pouring out to others what they had drawn from the apostles, preached the faith of Christ in Phoenicia and Palestine, explaining the doctrines of faith and by the practices of the monastic life demonstrating the marvelous way of life, the church of God.<\/p>

So now they end up preachers.<\/p>

Maybe<\/p>

I never explained to you very well the way that packet works. That is a bit confusing perhaps. The first part is a summary of the outline of the whole work and what I really suggest you do is use that summary which follows the original structure of the work in seven books of eight chapters each to refer you to that fragmentary translation that we have and you’ll find in that work you know it says for example book five chapter eight and then you have in brackets then out in the right margin in square brackets a number 31b and that refers you to the part of the incomplete translation of Norman Wurland. So I don’t know I’m interested to hear later what what do you think. So this is not this is certainly a work of a community that feels very strongly that the source of its life is the desert, the experience of silence and solitude, the prophetic experience of Elijah and the sons of the prophets, the desert dwellers and of all who came after them, John the Baptist who lived in the desert.<\/p>

But I think it’s also the story of a community which of the fact that in its own history it underwent a transformation and like Elijah himself, like the sons of prophets, like John the Baptist, people who from the desert come to preach and who have as a part of their life and also a sort of historical discovery in the story of their institution a dimension of apostleship and of preaching which is a plant that grows from a seed that’s planted in the desert. After yesterday’s discussion I was wondering about this again and I was wondering what in the structure of this work is the motivation for this change, for this transformation and this was what I was trying to work out this morning before I had a cup of coffee maybe that was the problem. I’m not sure that I’ve got this quite clear but I think it’s interesting what immediately before in this last chapter of book five. The earliest, these now Christian Carmelites are baptized because they come to see that it’s Christ who baptizes in fire and the Holy Spirit according to the prophecy of one of their own, John the Baptist, and the text says that they believe perfectly in Jesus and were baptized.<\/p>

And so the text then goes on to say in chapter eight of book five that after their baptism, I’ll just read this text to you, after their members of this first Christian community at Jerusalem faithful to the teaching of the apostles going down to the temple and so on, they spent their days in study and reflection on the holy gospel. They also had the sacred books and the laws of their fathers, that’s also a puzzling phrase does that mean the biblical law or the law of their hermit fathers I’m not sure, which they studied in allegorical interpretation. Every old law seemed to them like an animal in that exteriorly had had the letter like a body and all those things which the literal meaning signifies but interiorly beneath the letter they lay hidden like a soul the spiritual and invisible meaning of the profound and divine mystery taught this meaning by the apostles and examining its more profound and sublime aspects from these very words they drew admirable meanings filled as from a great banquet with divine and profound knowledge of the sacred books and it’s this point that it says finally many of them pouring out the doctrine they’d received from the apostles went to preach Christ and so on.<\/p>

So it just seems to me there’s maybe an indication here that their preaching is drawn specifically from a sort of prophetic contemplation. It’s an encounter with the word of God that is the source of this ministry and which springs from their experience of the depths of the profound and invisible meaning of the divine mystery and perhaps that is an element too which draws us right back in to the point where we began in book one.<\/p>

Part Four<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

Welcome, once again, to our last session this morning. So far in this little tour through the Instatutio we’ve seen the spiritual journey in Book One, and we’ve seen the historical journey of the Order in Books Two to Five, and that leaves us with two parts of this work left. Book Six, which is about Mary and the Carmelites, and Book Seven, which is about the symbolism and history of the habit. And this morning I’d like to talk mainly about Book Six, about Mary and the Carmelites, and perhaps if, I’m hoping also to leave some time for questions and discussion at the end, so that there’s an opportunity to raise any sort of final questions that anyone has, and perhaps also to hear any insights, new synthesis, new theories about this work that perhaps might have come to people in these days, and also an opportunity to quickly raise any issues about that last chapter on the habit. Well, as we’ve seen, Elijah and his disciples really dominate this book of the institution of the first monks, and that fits in also with what we’ve already seen about the kernel of the Order’s tradition about itself, as it’s expressed in what’s probably our earliest document produced by Carmelites about themselves, the Rubrikar Prima, which traces the origin of the Order, as we’ve seen back to Elijah.<\/p>

But in the history of the redaction of the Rubrikar Prima, our first version is 1281, but within some decades, in 1324, Mary is introduced into this story about the Order, which of course from early times we know bore the name of Mary, the brothers of Saint Mary of Mount Carmel, named so after the chapel that they built there on Mount Carmel in the midst of the cells and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. When we look at the early writings of the Order about itself, we see that different authors take up these two models of Carmelite life, Elijah and Mary, in different ways and to different extents. And some of the Carmelite writers of the 14th century stressed the Elijah character of the Order and its descent from Elijah and his disciples. For example, John Baconthorpe in his Compendium and John De Cheminot in his Speculum. But other authors, and sometimes the same authors in different works, stressed the author’s Marian title and its devotion to Mary as the key to its identity. So John Baconthorpe again in his Speculum and in his commentary on the rule especially, in which he goes systematically through the rule of Saint Albert, trying to show how each of the sections of the rule is really turning into a prescription that we should follow the values of Mary’s life.<\/p>

And both these authors that I’ve mentioned, John Cheminot and John Baconthorpe, sought some way to integrate these two approaches, but not, I think, very successfully. And it seems to have been one of the difficulties that the Order faced in the 14th century in developing its image of itself and a sense of its own spiritual identity. Just how these two charismatic figures, these two archetypal biblical figures to which the Order wanted to look to gain a sense of its own vocation and its own identity, how these two figures could be brought together in a unity. And we see something of the struggle that’s going on to bring these two figures and all that they represent into a unity in these early writings. John Baconthorpe, for example, writing in the 1320s, 1330s, says in his Speculum that Carmel, from the very beginning, was really Mary’s mountain. Even before Mary was born, Carmel belonged in that biblical sense of the telescoping of time to her. And he mentions texts like the famous one from the Book of Canticles, Chapter 7, “How beautiful you are, my beloved, your head is like Carmel,” a text which is applied to Mary to show that Carmel was always Mary’s place.<\/p>

And then he says, “When Elijah and Elisha and their disciples live on Mount Carmel, they’re already living in Mary’s place.” But in his other works, in general, he doesn’t mention Elijah very much. John Mary, I think, perhaps was not even very convinced himself by this attempt to relate Elijah and Mary in the Speculum, which was probably his first work. And then John Desheminot, writing in probably around 1337, also attempts to find a link between Elijah and Mary, which will bring their inspiration into a sort of fruitful unity for the order’s sense of itself. And he’s the first person, as far as I know, in this development of the Carmelite tradition, to hit on what becomes a very important theme, as we’re going to see this morning, that the common bond between Elijah and Mary is that they both chose to live a life of dedicated virginity as their response to God. And he also associates Mary with Carmel through the use of the traditional Biblical text, “Your head is like Carmel,” and so on.<\/p>

And also says that Mary and other virgins who were associated with her, who lived in Nazareth, not far from Mount Carmel, often used to visit that place and so made an actual historical contact with the Carmelite hermits, the sons of the prophets, who were living there, and says that it’s fitting that such a holy person as Mary should honor with her presence such holy people as lived on Mount Carmel. So there’s attempts among Carmelite writers to relate Mary and Elijah. But our friend and my hero, Philip Ribot, in the institutio, takes these seeds that have already been planted in the order and I think takes them onto a new level, both a new level of coherence in this mythical story about the order or this symbolic history of the order, and also a new level of expression of its spiritual and mystical vocation. And it’s what Ribot does in this line that we can explore here in Book Six of the Book of the First Monks. His basic idea is that through the centuries, Elijah’s disciples had been living with a mystery which they only came to understand completely when they were converted to Christ at Pentecost, as we’ve seen.<\/p>

And this was a mystery that had been revealed to Elijah in his vision of the little cloud which he saw from Mount Carmel after he prayed there for an end to the drought and saw a cloud rising from the sea which brought a great rain to Israel. This story is told in the Book of Kings Chapter 18. Elijah went up the Mount of Carmel and casting himself down upon the earth put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, who’s supposed to be in a very ancient tradition, the prophet Jonah, who features in the history of the order as we saw, he said to his servant, “Go up and look out towards the sea.” And he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” And he had to return seven times, and at the seventh time behold a little cloud like a man’s foot arose out of the sea. Just in passing, our modern translations of the Scriptures, which are based on better texts than what were available in the Middle Ages, say this cloud was the shape of a man’s hand, and that’s good, that’s a better translation than what Carmelites in the 14th century had to work with. But we have to know that their texts said “foot” because otherwise we can’t understand what they talk about because “foot” suggests for them footsteps and following in the footsteps and example and so on. And that becomes central to the explanation of this text. So when we’re working with these medieval texts, we have to work with the Bible they had, even though it’s not as good as ours.<\/p>

That’s simple enough, but sometimes there’s great confusion created by trying to read these texts with our Bible and it doesn’t match. And then Elijah tells his servant, “Go and say to Ahab, prepare your chariot and go down lest the rain prevent you, and behold the heavens grew dark with clouds and wind and their fellow great rain.” The Institutio says that in this vision on Mount Carmel, four mysteries were revealed to Elijah. In the cloud itself was revealed the first mystery, that a baby girl would be born in the future and that she would be free from sin. The second mystery was that in the seven times Elijah had to go back and forth, is revealed the time when this girl would be born. The third mystery, that the cloud was in the shape of a man’s foot, reveals that the girl would imitate the prophet Elijah by becoming the first woman to practice a life of virginity, just as he was the first man to do so. The fourth mystery, revealed in the great rain that came from the cloud, would reveal that the incarnate Son of God and Savior would be born of that girl who was to come.<\/p>

And our source tells us that Elijah then passed on these mysteries that had been revealed to him, to his disciples, and they passed them down from generation to generation. So let’s look at these mysteries in turn. The first mystery, that in the future a girl would be born who was free from sin. Each time now our text turns to an allegorical interpretation of this biblical text from one of Kings 18. And it says that as a cloud rises distilled from the dark and heavy and salty sea as a sort of pure vapor, so Mary rises as one who’s free from sin from the dark and sinful sea of humanity. And just as a cloud is of one nature with the sea, but made different by its distillation, so Mary is of one nature with us, and yet by the work of grace in her made sinless and raised above humanity so that she might bear the Son of God. I think we don’t need to dwell perhaps long on this chapter. This is Book 6, Chapter 1.<\/p>

But just in the background here is of course the medieval debate about the Immaculate Conception. And as you know not all medieval theologians accepted the theology of the Immaculate Conception, including Thomas Aquinas and the Dominicans. But the Carmelites were among the champions of the Immaculate Conception. So that’s in the background here. Mary is then revealed as the sinless one in this cloud. And there are a number of biblical texts quoted relating her to the cloud, including a text that’s much used in the Fathers about Mary, about the cloud that Moses saw in Exodus, Chapter 16, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud and so on. You can see some of these texts indicated in the summary there that you have. The second mystery is about the time of the Virgin’s birth. The Book of Kings says that Elijah’s servant had to go seven times up Mount Carmel before he saw this cloud. And just to make things a little more convenient for his interpretation, our author adds a little detail that there were ten terraces on Mount Carmel so that the servant had to go seven times up ten terraces, seventy times.<\/p>

And that little trick makes this text then correspond with the genealogy of Christ, which is in the Gospel of Luke, where there are seventy generations between Adam and Christ. So this brings a story then into a chronological framework and into the sort of historical framework with which we’re now familiar from this work. Elijah’s servant is now said to represent the community of the disciples of Elijah who examine all the generations that pass between Adam and Christ, and particularly the generations in which they themselves are alive in the 800 years of their existence, always searching for the girl who would be born, and they come to understand the time of her birth and to wait for it. Well, this is a very odd little story, but it’s a very interesting one because on one level we can see that it’s attempting to solve a big chronological difficulty that there is in this legend in relating Elijah in 800 BC with Mary. How are you going to get these two people, who are your founding paradigms, how are you going to bring them together when chronologically they’re so far apart?<\/p>

How do you make a connection? So they can make this now on the level of providential history, on the level of the history of salvation, and also in terms of the genealogy of Christ, in terms of the Messianic element that we’ve already seen just a little bit in passing in the history of the calm lights, and which is going to come back again very strongly in this work, as the whole of history moves towards the Savior who’s to be born of the Virgin. But it’s also a very interesting story on the level of spirituality, I think, and this is, as we’ve seen again and again, really Philip Ribot’s special contribution to this tradition, to recast the earlier attempts of Carmelite writers to construct a symbolic history of their order on a level that speaks to the mystical vocation of the Carmelite, and that relates it to the fundamental spiritual dynamism of the Carmelite vocation. And on this level, what he’s really suggesting to us, I think, is that what’s characteristic of the life of the sons of the prophets, the disciples of Elijah, is their longing for the fulfilment of the promises.<\/p>

Of course, that’s the New Testament view of the Old Testament, anyway, in the Christian view of the Old Testament, that it’s entirely a forward movement into the time of the Savior. But in the structure of the Institutio itself, this brings us once again into the dynamic of mystical transformation that we saw in Book I, I think, where the steps to perfection bring us at the end, if you remember, in Book I, Chapter VIII, after the experience of mystical transformation, were left in a state of perseverance, of patience, of longing, of pressing on to the things that are ahead, as the text from the Book of Philippians said. So here, once again, a part really contains the whole, that these sons of the prophets on Mount Carmel, knowing and meditating on this mystery that’s revealed to Elijah and to them about the coming of the Virgin in the future, are given one more reason to enter into this mystery of openness to the grace of God, of longing for the God who comes and who transforms us, transforms history, transforms His people.<\/p>

And this chapter about this second mystery just ends up noting that the end of this story of longing for the coming of Mary is that when Mary was born, the Carmelites were sort of alert to the significance of her arrival on the scene, and so they were interested in her, and they often saw her in Nazareth, which is not far away, and in Jerusalem and in other places. The institution here is fairly reserved about this, just as they often saw Mary. Some of the other Carmelite legends were much less reserved about this. They say that Mary often visited Carmel. Some of them even say that Mary was a Carmelite nun there much later. But the point of all these stories is really the same, that it’s the spirituality of the presence of Mary with us, which is given a concrete form in a story. Then the third mystery revealed to Elijah and communicated to his disciples is that the mystery revealed in the shape of the cloud, like a man’s foot, that this virgin who is to come in the future would imitate Elijah’s virginity.<\/p>

We’ve already seen that there’s a very ancient tradition which has its roots in first century Judaism, and which was quite prominent in the patristic and monastic tradition about Elijah, that he was the first man to practice voluntary virginity or consecrated celibacy, and that he established this as a tradition for his followers. Now in this work there’s a couple of things brought into play. According to Saint Jerome, the etymology of Carmel, the name Carmel, is knowledge of circumcision. And that was a very well known idea that’s picked up by a lot of medieval authors, Rabbanis Morris and Alan of Lille and so on. So the very name of Carmel itself is to do with circumcision and therefore with the practice of virginity in this interpretation. Then Elijah’s disciple has to climb Carmel, so there’s a sense here of an asceticism of the practice of virginity, that the knowledge of circumcision is something that requires an ascetical discipline. And then also the cloud itself rises in front of Carmel, and it’s in the shape of a foot. So we get some sense here of a path of virginity, a way of celibacy and the suggestion of footsteps and following. So it’s argued then that this mystery is revealed that Mary is an imitator of Elijah, and that she would follow in his footsteps.<\/p>

And according to our author, that’s why the Song of Songs says about Mary, “Your head is like Carmel, because she was the first woman to have this chiancia, chicum chisionis, the knowledge of circumcision, the commitment to virginity as a spiritual way of life.” This is another thing which I think takes us back into Book One again of the Institutio, and back into the spiritual journey, considered as a whole, but also particularly in Chapter Five in the Third Step of Perfection, which is to do with silence, solitude and chastity. And here once again, Ribot is really bringing, I think, Elijah and Mary into relationship on the level of the fundamental spiritual dynamism of Carmelite life. And he’s doing that by placing them both within a whole complex of intimately related transforming values that are symbolized in virginity. And I think we’ve already seen how those things work together, purity of heart, readiness for the Word of God, total openness to God, complete disposal of oneself to God’s will, service in the Church, and so on.<\/p>

The fourth mystery is that the Son of God, the incarnate Son of God, would be born of this Virgin, and that’s seen in the fact that the great wind springs up and the cloud brings forth rain. And the wind is said to be the Holy Spirit which overshadows Mary, and the rain is the great rain of grace which comes into the world when the Word is made flesh. And then if you read this chapter you would have seen there quite a complicated allegorical explanation of the next bit in the Book of Kings about Elijah’s words to Ahab, “Prepare your chariot and go down.” And I don’t think there’s time to go into that now, but it’s interesting and it’s worth sort of puzzling over. It’s not quite as crazy as it seems at first. There’s another little detail too which is very interesting, and that’s also an etymological detail. For medieval people etymologies were very important because names for them were considered to express the very essence of a thing. So the etymology of a name was like a door into understanding the thing itself.<\/p>

And the etymology of the name of Ahab, according to Saint Jerome and Saint Isidore and others, is fraternity of paternity. I’m not sure if that’s got anything to do with the Hebrew or not. That’s the tradition about it. So according to this interpretation then Ahab belongs to the age of relationship with God the Father. But now after the Incarnation we’re in the age not only of the fraternity of paternity, but we’re also now that Mary is on the scene with the possibility of a fraternity of maternity. And that ties in with something we’re going to see again in a moment, that the Carmelite devotion to Mary is to Mary both as mother and sister. And so in Mary there’s this strange possibility of the fraternity of maternity, of a sisterly relationship with the mother of the Lord. I think the central spiritual point that’s being made in the way this chapter is constructed and interpreted is concerned with the prayer of Elijah for rain, which as Ribot says, was continued by his followers over the centuries on Mount Carmel, and that his followers never ceased to pray for the Incarnation of the Son of God and that their prayers were answered.<\/p>

So the characteristic prayer of the Carmelites even in the Old Testament is longing for the Savior and preparedness and preparation of one’s heart for the coming of the Savior and for his transforming grace. So once again we’re back in Book One, we’re back with the dynamism of the spiritual journey. And also we’re taken back to some other points in the history of the order which we didn’t quite get a chance to look at, such as in Book Five, Chapter Two, where the sons of the prophets are seen in their relationship with John the Baptist, who of course comes in the Spirit and power of Elijah. And so the Old Testament Carmelites at the very moment of preparedness for the Savior are shown involved with the precursor of the Messiah. So all these strange little stories and byways of this symbolic history of the order are always in this work being brought together, I think, in terms of its fundamental spirituality of openness to the God who comes, which as you remember is in the first page of this work, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock to anyone who opens the door to me, I will come in and dine with him and he with me.”<\/p>

But what’s happening now is that all this messianic expectation, all this longing, all this prayer of openness is revealed to have a profoundly Marian aspect. Even from the beginning in the Old Testament, this was Marian. And of course in the telescoping of time and in the transcendence of time, which is part of biblical thought, this is not a difficulty. Also, I think we find hidden away in this book a stress on the centrality of Christ in Carmelite spirituality, because the longing that’s characteristic of the Carmelite’s prayer, as well as being Marian, is also precisely incarnational and Christological. It’s a longing for the Word to be made flesh, and there’s a prominent place given to the Johannian texts about this in this chapter, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father,” and so on. And of His fullness we have all received grace in return for grace. And then I want to leave some time for us to raise some questions, so I’ll just finish quickly.<\/p>

Finally, at the end of this story, in chapter 5 of this book 6, the Carmelites devote themselves to Mary. Once the prophecies were fulfilled in the coming of Mary and the birth of the Savior, the Carmelites naturally devote themselves to her, and they choose her as their patroness. I think what’s very important here is what is given as their motivation, because they see that she resembles them, that their way of life is the same. And that’s a very important theme in medieval Carmelite devotion to Mary. We’re going to hear more about that from our greatest Mariologist, whose–Amon Carroll, who’s going to speak to us this morning. The Carmelites were very interested in the likeness of their life with Mary’s. John Baconthorpe, as we already heard, wrote a whole treatise on the rule in which he attempts to show that the rule is really drawn from the life of Mary or corresponds to the life of Mary. And that’s why the Carmelites are able to call themselves the brothers of the Virgin Mary. There was some controversy in the Middle Ages about this title of the Order, and a suggestion that it was okay to call yourself the brothers of the Order of Mary, but presumptuous to say you were the Order of the Brothers of Mary.<\/p>

But the Carmelites were quite firm that they were the brothers of Mary, and that she was their sister, because their way of life was alike. Well, a lot more could be said about that, and perhaps Amon may touch on some themes like that. I’m not sure. I want to ask you a question. I think one of the most puzzling things in this whole book is in this chapter–in Book 6, Chapter 5, the last chapter about Mary. And that is, it says that in 83 A.D.–and that year must have some symbolic significance, but I have no idea what it is–the Carmelites destroy the Semnion, the chapel on Mount Carmel that had been built by Elijah, and replace it with the chapel, which we know about from the rule, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. And I have no idea how to explain this part of this legendary story of the Carmelites. I think it’s very strange, because the destruction of the House of Prayer built by the founder of the Order seems–to replace it with something else–seems to represent a radical break.<\/p>

You know, and in Freudian terms, it’s probably rejecting the father for the mother or something, I don’t know. But you can imagine how this might be interpreted from different perspectives. And I think it’s impossible within this whole work that it can mean anything like that. That would be, I think, totally out of consonance with everything else. But I really don’t–I have no idea how to explain it. And if anyone has a theory, I’d be very interested to hear it. Well, I think what this Book Six really tries to achieve, and I think it–I think it achieves in a very satisfying and coherent way, is to take on the problem that had been felt for a century or so about how do we bring together, in a really unified way, the figures of Mary and Elijah as paradigms of the Carmelite inspiration and the Carmelite way of life. And here they are shown to be representing one and the same spiritual values–one and the same set of spiritual values that are symbolized particularly by virginity and all that’s clustered around it. So Mary’s virginity, her freedom from sin, her total openness to God’s Word, her putting of herself completely at God’s purpose, the Christo-centricity of her life–all these things are tied in with the great themes of the work that we’ve already seen expressed in the life of Elijah and his disciples.<\/p>

Especially that purity of heart that allows the Word of God to speak in us and the grace of God to bear its fruit in us and to transform our lives. And that’s also, I think, the basic meaning of the medieval Carmelite devotion to Mary as the Virgo Purissima, the most pure virgin, which was not just about virginity on a basic level, but about Mary as the one in whom there were no obstacles to the workings of God’s grace. So there are then no unreconciled tensions now between having Mary and Elijah as twin models of the Carmelite vocation and on the level of this symbolic history of the order. That tension, which I think is visible in the writings before this point, is resolved in a way that seems artistically and spiritually very satisfying and coherent. Book seven, I just want to mention, is about the history and symbolism of the habit. You can read that yourselves. I think we don’t have time to go through it now. But I think there’s a similar sort of process at work.<\/p>

It refers us back all the time to the fundamental themes that have been developed in this work. So it’s once again telling the same story in a different mode, starting from a different starting point, but coming to the same finishing point.<\/p>

We hope you enjoyed these tapes on the institution of the first monks and found them helpful. I’d like to particularly thank Sister Anjel Sadler, the executive director of the Carmelite Institute, and Bruce Baker for the production and editing of the tapes. The Carmelite Institute is a joint effort by both the Carmelite Order and the Discaled Carmelite Order in the United States. If you would like any more information about the Institute and its projects, please write to us. The Carmelite Institute, 1600 Webster Street, NE, Washington, DC, 20017.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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