From Mount Carmel to the Comune: The Eremitical Life in Carmelite Legislation

Alexandra Dodson • Notre Dame of Maryland University

 

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Recommended citation: Alexandra Dodson, “From Mount Carmel to the Comune: The Eremitical Life in Carmelite Legislation,” Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art 12 (2025). https://doi.org/…

 

The Carmelite order was born of the desert.[1] The central panel of the predella of Pietro Lorenzetti’s 1329 Pala del Carmine richly illustrates the order’s eremitical origins in the arid landscape of Mount Carmel (Fig. 1). The panel depicts Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, presenting the order with its first rule, sometime between 1206-1214. The Carmelites kneel before him, clad in the striped habits they wore until 1287, with a fountain and a small church behind them. The craggy background takes the form of a Thebaid scene as the hermits of Mount Carmel go about their lives in the manner of the desert fathers. Some sit in solitude in caves, others walk the hills, surrounded by lions. The rural, eremitical life is depicted as an integral part of the order’s beginnings.

 

 

Yet the altarpiece was created for the high altar of the urban, mendicant church of San Niccolò del Carmine in Siena, where the Carmelites had been established at least since 1256 (Fig. 2). The Carmelites had remained in their hermitage on Mount Carmel until the late 1230s, when they began to migrate westward, first to Cyprus, then to Sicily, France, England, the Italian peninsula, and elsewhere, where they began to operate as mendicant friars.[2] The order maintained the hermitage until the fall of Acre in 1291, after which they no longer had a presence in the Holy Land. Thus, by the time Lorenzetti completed the altarpiece in 1329, the Carmelites had been in western Europe for nearly a century, and mendicant friars for almost as long.

 

Mount Carmel looms large in the remainder of the altarpiece, a public statement about the history and traditions of the order (Fig. 3). Most notably, the central figure of the Virgin Mary is flanked to her left by the Prophet Elijah, whom the Carmelites claimed as their founder. Elijah is depicted as a Carmelite, wearing the white and black habit that the order adopted in 1287, as is his disciple Elisha, on the left side of the polyptych (Fig. 4).[3] By linking themselves to Elijah, who had lived on Mount Carmel and been upheld for centuries as a model of religious life, the Carmelites were creating a narrative of a storied and prestigious past.[4] The latter years of the 13th and early years of the 14th centuries were a time of reckoning for the order. The Carmelites had narrowly survived the fraternal purge of the Second Council of Lyon in 1272, but were now competing for space and patrons with other, more established orders, who had been in the west decades before the Carmelites, and had canonized founders to boot.[5] Connections to the Old Testament and the Holy Land could set the Carmelites apart.

 

Lorenzetti doubtlessly received detailed instructions for the depiction of Mount Carmel from the Carmelites, demonstrating that, though urban locations and pastoral responsibilities created new realities for the friars, their origins in desert cells figured strongly in their imaginations.[6] But to what extent did the order’s eremitical past influence its day-to-day operations? Would the Sienese Carmelites have seen themselves in the hermits of Lorenzetti’s Thebaid? And to what extent did they intend their urban convent to emulate their first hermitage?

Carmelite architecture has received less attention that that of the other mendicant orders, namely the Franciscans and Dominicans. While some individual churches and their decoration have been amply studied, there has been no systematic study of the order’s approach to building and conventual living in its earliest years.[7] Through an analysis of extant Carmelite texts and legislation, primarily rules and constitutions written between the early 1200s and mid-1300s, I seek to determine how the Carmelites might have intended to maintain their eremitical structure, and how they succeeded in their mendicant reality. The texts provide glimpses of the order’s aims for the built environments in which they would eat, sleep, pray, and minister. In rare cases, the texts are supplemented by architectural evidence; the convents themselves have been the subject of substantial modification over the centuries and analysis of their 13th-century configurations is challenging and tenuous at best. My reading of these texts allows us to glean important insight into the order’s official identity and the way in which it was caught between the eremitic ideal and the mendicant practicality.

While the order maintained the Mt. Carmel hermitage until the end of the 13th century, it did not serve as an administrative “mother house” for the order in the manner of San Francesco in Assisi for the Franciscans or San Nicolò in Bologna (now San Domenico) for the Dominicans, which contributed to a decentralized structure of record-keeping and the loss of much information outside of the texts considered here. Though these texts pertain to the entirety of the order, my study focuses primarily on the Tuscan province, where surviving documentary, artistic, and architectural evidence is greater than elsewhere, though still incomplete.[8] The region also contains rich mendicant and monastic sites, including major houses for the Franciscans, Dominicans, Vallombrosans, and Camoldolese, and is home to the origins of the unified Augustinian order. Critically, it is in Tuscany where the strongest examples of the Carmelites’ call to the desert are found. The province was home not only to Lorenzetti’s altarpiece, but also to the earliest Carmelite reform movement, in which some friars sought a return to the eremitic life.

The Formula Vitae of Albert of Vercelli

The Carmelites received their first formula vitae from Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, sometime between 1206-1214.[9] It is likely that most members of the community were lay brothers, not ordained to celebrate mass or perform other pastoral duties.[10] The brief rule primarily outlines the proper comportment, employment, and daily schedule of the brothers. They were to renounce personal property, fast, engage in manual work, read the psalms, and gather daily for mass. The few strictures related to the physical space of the hermits’ base are concerned with the brothers’ cells.

First, the rule states that each brother was to have a separate cell, allotted by the Prior, whose cell was to be situated near the entrance to the property so that he would be the first to meet visitors. The rule further states that the brothers were not to exchange cells with each other, or to be in a cell other than their own, without the permission of the Prior. They were to stay in or close to their cells in contemplation and prayer, unless attending to another duty.[11] The primitive rule made only one requirement for a communal space: “An oratory, as commodious as possible, built in the middle of the cells.”[12] The brothers were to gather daily in this oratory for mass, if it could be done without difficulty. The use of the word “commodious” stands in sharp contrast to the architectural legislation that would be developed in the coming decades by other religious orders, and to those that already existed for orders like the Cistercians. The Carmelites were bound by Albert’s formula vitae to poverty, yet, unlike the earliest Franciscans, they were attached to a fixed settlement, the hallmark of which was the insistence upon individual cells for spiritual contemplation.[13]

 

The precise configuration of the Carmelites’ first settlement on Mount Carmel is not known, though the community was mentioned by crusaders and travelers, including Jacques de Vitry, who described the site: “After the example of that holy man and solitary the prophet Elijah, (they) led the hermit life on Mount Carmel…near the spring called Elijah’s Spring…in little cells like so many hives where, as bees of the Lord, they produced the honey of spiritual sweetness.”[14] Archaeological excavations have provided some evidence for the structure of the early settlement. Three separate components of the early complex have been discovered – the oratory, a cell, and a staircase, which are aligned with the provisos set forth in Albert’s rule (Fig. 5).[15] The cell, positioned at the entrance to the hermitage, has been identified as that of the prior. The cell consisted of two rooms, one of which contained a small niche in which an object, such as an image of the Virgin, might be placed.[16] Additional cells for individual hermits were demolished for construction of a monastery later in the 13th century, which has not been excavated.[17]

The 1247 Mitigation of the Carmelite Rule

When the Carmelites began to leave Mount Carmel in the 1230s, it appears they intended to remain hermits. Their earliest western foundations in Cyprus, Sicily, Provence, and England were relatively rural, not conducive to active ministry.[18] Gregory IX’s 1229 Religionis vestra had placed the Carmelites in a state of mendicant-type poverty, prohibiting the brothers from any possession of property and offering them papal protection.[19] Without the ability to own land the Carmelites could not develop along the lines of a traditional monastic order, earning income from tenants and agricultural production. As a result, they were dependent on donations, which, in their isolated settlements, far away from most potential patrons, were few.[20] As a matter of survival, the Carmelites must have observed the Franciscan and Dominican orders as a functional “business model” to emulate. Those orders, deeply engaged in urban ministry, were immensely popular with the laity.  Their friars were constructing spacious churches and piazzas to accommodate those who wished not only to hear their preaching, but also to be buried within their complexes.[21]

At the Carmelites’ general chapter meeting in 1247, it was decided to petition Innocent IV to allow a modification of the rule.[22] Innocent IV assigned two Dominican friars to assist them, Cardinal Hugh of St. Cher and William of Reading, Bishop of Tortosa, and confirmed the modifications in the bull Quae honorem conditoris omnium of October 1, 1247. The changes were minimal. Prescriptions for separate cells for the brothers, as well as the location of the prior’s cell remained the same. Only two additions referring to the location and design of the settlements were made. The first stated that, “If the prior and brothers see fit, you may have foundations in solitary places, or where you are given a site that is suitable and convenient for the observance proper to your Order.”[23] This statement was key in the Carmelites’ transformation from hermits to mendicants as it presented the brothers with options for their settlements, allowing them to locate where they “see fit.” They could continue to establish themselves in isolated locations, as on Mount Carmel, or they could take advantage of other sites that they might be granted – even if they were urban.[24]

The second addition referred to the design of the settlements themselves, noting that the brothers were to eat together in a common refectory while listening to a reading from the Holy Scripture. Even so, the directive remained that the brothers were to stay in their own cells or nearby, spending their time in prayer “unless attending to some other duty” – it seems that communal repast was now one of the “other duties” that might engage a brother.[25]

These duties expanded as the Carmelites were granted more pastoral privileges and responsibilities. Prior to confirming the adapted rule, Innocent IV had issued Quoniam ut ait in 1245, asking Christians to assist the Carmelites, and Cum dilecti filii, asking for assistance in finding the Carmelites places to live.[26] In 1252, with Ex parte dilectorum, Innocent asked bishops to protect the Carmelites, permitting them to build cells and churches, and to have cemeteries and bells. The text of this bull, it should be noted, uses the term cella, rather than conventus, which would have been more in line with construction of a full mendicant complex.[27] The following year, they were given permission to preach and hear confession, and in 1261, they were permitted to allow the laity to frequent their churches.[28]

Cells and Dormitories

The insistence on individual cells in the early Carmelite rules stands at odds with the order’s increasingly mendicant existence as the 13th century progressed. As they turned away from the central oratory surrounded by cells, the Carmelites needed new architectural models. The Franciscans and Dominicans seem the obvious choice, but there were a variety of approaches to communal living taken by other orders, cenobitic and eremitic. Chapter 22 of the Rule of St. Benedict specified in regard to sleeping arrangements that “…if possible, all are to sleep in one place.”[29] Dormitories in Cistercian monasteries were thus generally constructed as large open spaces, yet there is evidence that monks were partitioning this space in an effort to create a modicum of privacy.[30] To Cistercian leaders, though, privacy was dangerous. In an open dormitory, such as the one at Santes Creus in Catalonia, little could be hidden (Fig. 6). Smaller, less public spaces, however, could host and hide consumption of indulgent meals, as well as conspiracies, as outlined by the 1370 Cistercian general chapter, which called for the destruction of cells in dormitories.[31] The Cistercians, though, were not an order focused on solitude and individualism. The Carthusians, who were committed to solitude, might have been of interest to the Carmelites.[32] The Carthusian charter saw the monastery as a desert and made correlations between cells and tombs, in line with their practice of being “dead to the world” using prayer, work, and mortification in the cell to remove external connections and distractions from the self.[33] An early customary on solitude lauds, among others, Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist.[34] Such emphasis on solitude and cellular living draws a comparison to the early Carmelites, and indeed, Albert of Vercelli would almost certainly have been familiar with the Carthusians.[34]

 

Also of consideration should be the Camaldolese, who were to live individually in cells in proximity to a monastery, under the authority of an abbot.[35] The hermits could choose to remain in constant seclusion, or they could emerge for communal meals and manual labor.[36] While most Camoldolese monasteries were in rural settings, there were a number in cities by the end of the 13th century, including Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence.[37] There we have examples of how the order tackled the problem of establishing their eremitic lifestyle in an urban setting. They practiced severe claustrum, building high walls around their complex. They slept in dormitories partitioned into cells, maintaining their seclusion.[38] The Vallombrosans operated similar urban settlements.[39] The structure of this order was both cenobitic and eremitic – the brothers were strictly cloistered, but the community included many conversi who interacted with the outside world.[40]

Dominican and Franciscan documents and legislation address the architecture of both their churches and conventual dwellings. St. Francis was notably drawn to the eremitical life. The order’s early duality can be seen in Jacques de Vitry’s 1216 description of their daily activities: “During the day they go into the cities and villages giving themselves over to the active life in order to gain others; at night, however, they return to their hermitage or solitary places to devote themselves to contemplation.”[41] The Franciscans’ early settlement at the Porziuncola in Assisi might have contained individual cells with a church at the center – not dissimilar to the Camaldolese, or the arrangement at Mount Carmel.[42] The Franciscan rules of 1221 and 1223 make no specific provisions for the living arrangements of the brothers, aside from insistence on poverty, nor does Francis’s testament.[43] The 1260 Constitutions of Narbonne include limited mention of the sleeping arrangements of friars, devoting more attention to the observation of poverty within church architecture. They do state that “No brother, with the exception of the ministers and the lectors in the general study houses, may have a private room separate from the dormitory.”[44] The use of a hall-style dormitory at Greccio, however, suggests that there was variation in practice (Fig. 7).

 

The situation for the Dominicans differed by virtue of the nature of the order, clerical from the outset. As early as 1216, Dominic and his brothers began to build a cloister and cells for study and sleeping at the church of St. Romain in Toulouse.[45] Just a few years later, conventual structures including a dormitory, called the domus, were built at San Nicolò in Bologna. The long, rectangular dormitory, the chapter house, and the sacristy were perpendicular to the nave of the church and connected directly to the friars’ choir, a model that was often imitated in later foundations.[46] The Primitive Constitutions note that silence should be observed in the dormitory, but there is no mention of individual spaces. The 1241 redaction of the Dominican constitutions under Raymond of Penyafort, however, includes specific provisions that the walls of the dormitory building not exceed 12 feet in height, and that each friar was to have a single cell, though in certain cases (such as for the prior) a double cell could be allowed.[47] Like their churches, all Dominican buildings were to be “humble and moderate.”[48]

Nicholas of Narbonne and the Ignea Sagitta

While almost no precise information survives about the living arrangements of the first Carmelites in the west, a 1270 text by prior general Nicholas of Narbonne indicates that many of the brothers were eschewing the prescriptions of the rule.[49] Nicholas reveals that at least a substantial number of Carmelites in 1270 were not living in individual cells. In their new urban settings, it seems that they may have been living in communal dormitories, perhaps partitioned. Though knowledge of the 13th century is scarce, reconstructed plans of early Carmelite convents, such as Florence, reveal the dormitory to be a long, rectangular space (Fig. 8).[50]

 

In this document, known as the Ignea Sagitta (the “flaming arrow”) Nicholas lambasts his order for deviating from its hermetic way of life. The Ignea Sagitta is a desperate plea for the order to return to its pure, original state.[51] Nicholas casts the Carmelite order as a mother to the brethren. He casts as her legitimate sons the brothers who sought to uphold their eremitical origins, and as her stepsons those who supported urbanization and movement away from solitary contemplation.[52] He writes that the legitimate sons will welcome his letter, called the Flaming Arrow “for its bright, sharp truthfulness,” while it “will seem hateful to the stepsons, whose ill deeds it will show to be the deeds of those who hate the light.”[53] The Ignea Sagitta is comprised of fourteen chapters, several of which deal with specific repercussions of mendicancy. In the fourth, Nicholas criticizes the Carmelites for their new attempts at preaching – or “tale-telling” – a task undertaken by those afflicted with vainglory.[54] Nicholas believed that the brothers who preached had neither the education nor the experience to preach sagely: “I who have made the round of the Provinces and become acquainted with their members must sadly admit how very few there are who have knowledge enough or aptitude for these offices.”[55] Indeed, in the following chapter Nicholas criticizes pursuits of Carmelites who have abandoned solitary lives for those in the world. Those no longer living lives of desert contemplation are living in “an abyss of occasions of sin and unseemly rovings.”[56] He continues: “The main reason for your wanderings is to visit not orphans but young women, not widows in their adversity but silly girls in dalliances, beguines, nuns and highborn ladies. Once in their company you gaze into each other’s eyes and utter words fit for lovers, the downfall of right conducts and a snare to the heart.”[57] The brothers were subject to these temptations because they were away from the desert, dwelling in the wicked city and wandering outside of their cells. Solitude, he writes, was held in the highest regard by God. Abraham had ascended a mountain to sacrifice Isaac, as directed by God. Later, Lot would flee to a mountain from Sodom. Moses was alone on Mount Sinai when he received the Ten Commandments, as was Mary in her chamber at the moment of the Annunciation. Christ prayed alone on a mountain, and he spent 40 days and nights in solitude in the desert, becoming a model for the Carmelites’ predecessors.[58]

Carmelite settlement in urban locations was in direct contradiction to these examples. Nicholas takes issue with the provision of the 1247 mitigation of the rule that allowed the Carmelites to establish themselves in cities. He points out that the provision reads as: “You may make foundations in solitary places, or where land is given to you which is suitable and convenient for the observance proper to your Order.” Though cities are not suitable or convenient for proper Carmelite observance, contemporary friars, he writes, have ignored that they still might settle in solitary places.[59] In the eighth chapter Nicholas focuses on the most solitary of places – the hermit’s cell. The Carmelite rule dictated that each brother “is to have a separate cell.”[60] These cells should not be contiguous, but separate “in order that the heavenly Bridegroom and his Bride, the contemplative soul, might converse the more secretly as they repose therein.” Within the cells, the brothers were supposed to stave off idleness through engagement in spiritual tasks, namely prayer and contemplation. Without referring to specific urban convents by name, Nicholas criticizes them:

But you city dwellers, who have exchanged your separate cells for a common house, what spiritual task do you perform, there in full view of one another, what are your holy occupations? When do you ponder God’s Law and watch at your prayers? Does not all the vanity you see or hear, say or do, as you wander hither and thither all day long, come back to your memories at night?[61]

Communal living, it would seem, would lead to distractions, disagreements, and even fights between brothers.

A clue to the realities of Carmelite living situations might be found in this: “Perhaps some of you will say: ‘Although we live in the city, we have separate cells, or mean to have them by and by.’”[62] Nicholas felt that, for those living in the city, separate cells did not serve their intended purpose, as the brothers were in them only to sleep, as their days were occupied by roaming the city, and much of the night by revelry within the convent. A professed member of the order, Nicholas wrote, should rarely leave his cell.[63]

We do not know the extent to which Nicholas’ laments were based on firsthand knowledge of the origins of the order. As Andrew Jotischky noted, Nicholas was an elderly man in 1270 and thus could have joined the order on Mount Carmel prior to its first wave of migration in the 1230s.[64] A further point of interest is the closing statement of the Ignea Sagitta: “Given and executed in the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and seventy, in the month of February, on Mount Enatrof, terrible to enemies; there is the house of God and the gate of Paradise.”[65] Though Mount “Enatrof” does not exist, Adrian Staring and Jotischky both believe it references “Fortane” (spelled backwards) which is believed to have been an early Carmelite settlement in Cyprus.[66] It is thus within the realm of possibility that Nicholas spent his early years in the order on Mount Carmel and/or Cyprus, and then retired there to write the Ignea Sagitta. Of additional note is that at the 1269 general chapter meeting at Messina, at which Nicholas may have resigned, many brothers from the Holy Land, particularly from Acre and Mount Carmel, were in attendance.[67] Their presence might have been a reminder of the early, eremitic way of life.

The haziness of Nicholas’ biography complicates the process of determining to what extent the views he articulates in the Ignea Sagitta were shared by other members of the order, and to what extent the document was circulated.[68] Even if Nicholas’ opinions were not widely shared by others, one could reasonably assume that a treatise written by the prior general would have been shared throughout the order. Yet not only are there few early copies of the Ignea Sagitta, none from the 13th century, but Nicholas himself is largely absent from the early Carmelite historical record. The first known mention of the Ignea Sagitta comes from Giovanni Grossi’s Vividarium, written between 1411-1417, of which only one 15th-century copy survives.[69] It is odd that it went unmentioned by 14th-century Carmelite authors, such as Sibert de Beka, John Baconthorpe, or Felip Ribot, leading Richard Copsey to conclude that the text was not widely circulated and had no bearing on the direction of Carmelite operations.[70] Nicholas himself seems to have been a largely unknown entity in the 14th century. He does not appear in an early register of prior generals.[71] He does, however, appear in the Florentine Carmelite necrology, entered under April 29.[72]

In some ways, Nicholas’ lament of the discrepancy between the order’s original intentions and its practical reality is similar to the protests of the Spiritual Franciscans. Indeed, even before St. Francis’ death in 1226, there were divisions in the order as friars debated the merits of retaining Francis’ vision of itinerant brothers with no property or permanent settlements. Poverty, however, was not the hill on which Nicholas (nor the Carmelites more broadly) wanted to die. In the Ignea Sagitta he mentions it only once, in the context of the monastic vows of chastity, obedience, and “renunciation of ownership.”[73] For Nicholas, it is communal living, rather than sumptuousness, that poses the greatest risk to the Carmelite tradition.[74] For all his concern about the Carmelites’ cells, in which they would engage in private devotion and contemplation, he does not mention any specifics related to the oratories used for communal worship.

The Constitutions of 1281

The Constitutions of 1281, made during the General Chapter meeting in London that year, came a decade after both the Ignea Sagitta, and the Second Council of Lyon, when the order had nearly been disbanded.[75] The order was increasingly interested in emphasizing its existence prior to the Fourth Lateran Council, evidenced by the Rubrica Prima of the 1281 Constitutions, which asserted the order’s connection to Elijah and its origins on Mount Carmel. The Rubrica also indicates that the eremitical nature of the order still remained. While the Constitutions discuss the order’s pastoral activities, such as preaching, they also proclaim that the brothers’ cells (not dormitories) adhere to the rule as much as possible. Brothers were still forbidden to leave their cells without good reason.[76] These constitutions note that silence is to be observed “in claustro, in cellis praeterquam in cella prioris, in choro, in refectorio,” revealing that (officially, if not in practice) the order still held itself to the eremitical ideals of the individual cell.[77]

The Later Constitutions

The Constitutions of 1294 were composed shortly following the order’s abandonment of Mount Carmel in 1291. Like the Constitutions of 1281, this document mandates silence in the cloister, choir, and refectory, but makes a subtle difference in language in noting that silence is to be observed “in dormitorio et in cellis, praeterquam in cella prioris.”[78] Mentioning both a dormitory and cells may be an indication of the variety of practices used by the order. The Sienese Carmelites, for example, received 1000 fiorini from the commune of Siena in 1301 for the construction of a dormitory in their convent.[79] Descriptions of the convent of Newnham, outside of Cambridge, however, reveal that the Carmelites had built both cells and a dormitory.[80] The Constitutions of 1324 give greater insight into the arrangement of cells within a common dormitory: an opening is made in each looking out into the common dormitory, so that it might be easily inspected.[81] Similar provisions existed in the 1327 constitutions.[82] Throughout the 14th century and into the 15th, changes to the constitutions and notes from the General Chapter reveal that there were often lapses in observance of the rule and behaviors that warranted censure. The General Chapter noted in 1354 that silence after Compline was rarely observed – a sign that brothers were not uniformly engaging in solitary contemplation in their cells.[83]

Also of interest are statements addressing lay access to the brothers’ cells – inciting questions about just what might have transpired in Carmelite convents at the time. In 1362 it was forbidden to eat and drink with laypersons in dormitories and bedrooms.[84] In 1419 this statement was altered to exclude only a “large company of lay persons.” Women were able to access the cloister and cells – though the door had to remain open.[85]

The Carmelites had been given permission to preach and hear confession in 1252, and to allow the laity to frequent their churches in 1261. Building relationships with the laity was inextricably tied to the cura animarum and the laity visiting the cloister (including spaces like the sacristy) were often being courted for donations, and even signing wills within the conventual complexes. For example, on May 29, 1383, Paolo di Nanni di maestro Beltrame, “pizziaolo senese del popolo di San Giovanni” signed his will in the sacristy of San Niccolò in the presence of friars Guido di Tura, Giovanni di Angelo, and Bindo di Neri da Roccastrada.[86] In 1470, Cierchi Casini, widow of Bernardini Dominici confessed to Carmelite Tommaso Lottini, and made a gift of a quantity of grain, an act that took place in Tommaso’s cell in the Siena Carmine.[87]

The Constitutions of 1294 had instructed that the door of the oratory and the choir were to be kept closed, and opened only when necessary for visitors.[88] The practice of lay access to the convent was not universally accepted. In the 15th century prior-general John Soreth set about a reform of the order, which he believed to have lapsed following the second mitigation of the rule in 1432. He complained about the accessibility of the cloister, saying: “But what is to be said of cloisters in name only, open to persons of both sexes…Who can observe even the bare essentials of the rule in such public and noisy dwellings?”[89] He also emphasized the importance of the oratory being located in the center of the cells, a practice from which the order had strayed[90].

Mendicant Architectural Legislation

There is little instruction to be found in Carmelite documents pertaining to their oratory, beyond the fact that it be built in the center of the cells and, as in the rule of Albert, be “as commodious as it is able to be made,” a prescription repeated unchanged in Innocent’s 1247 mitigation of the rule.[91] Like the Franciscans and Dominicans, the Carmelites often began their tenure in new cities in pre-existing structures before building new complexes. When the Carmelites built or remodeled churches they were predominantly single-nave structures subscribing to the barn-like style favored by the mendicants for preaching and burying. Nothing about the appearance of the churches is mentioned in the 1281 Constitutions, although by the 14th century austerity was encouraged.[92] The Carmelites were certainly looking to the Dominicans (who had assisted in the mitigation of their rule) and Franciscans for architectural guidance.[93] Franciscan and Dominican legislation on the sumptuousness of their church architecture and decoration is more widely studied and cannot be addressed in detail here.[94]

The mendicants were torn between their commitment to poverty and their popularity with the laity, who flocked to their churches to hear sermons and make donations in exchange for masses and prayers. Urban IV’s 1263 bull proclaiming that the Carmelites were building a “sumptuous” monastery on Mount Carmel is thus at odds with the Dominican insistence on “mediocres domos et humiles” (in writing, if not necessarily in practice.[95] This leads to the Carmelite mendicant paradox. Though Gregory IX had prohibited the order from owning land or possessions in 1229, poverty (though practiced) had never been the defining quality of the order, as had the eremitic life. Even so, Italian Carmelite churches were smaller and simpler than many of their Franciscan and Dominican counterparts, probably because of their later foundation.[96] Though their churches were smaller, the Carmelites still divided them into spaces for the friars and for the lay public through the use of tramezzi, richly decorated walls or screens which spanned the nave, separating the friars’ choir from the area accessible to the public.[97] The tramezzi, though, were permeable, a key component of the cura animarum, rather than strict dividers, as laity could go through them to visit family chapels or meet with friars in the choir. In these spaces, the hermits of Mount Carmel were full-fledged friars.[98]

Santa Maria della Selve and the Return to the Eremitical Life

 

However, by the mid-14th century, more than 50 years after Nicholas of Narbonne’s Ignea Sagitta, there were inklings of a movement towards the eremitical past.[99] The Provincia Toscana saw the establishment of a new Carmelite house, away from the urban bustle of daily mendicant life. (Figs. 9 and 10) Santa Maria delle Selve is located near the community of Lastra a Signa, a rural area also known as Gangalandi, about 12 kilometers west of the Florentine Carmine. “St. Mary of the Woods” was built on land donated by the di Pace family, which had property in the Borgo San Jacopo in Florence and were supporters of the Carmine.[100] The di Pace property in Gangalandi is said to have contained a house and a small oratory or chapel.[101] Legend dates the Carmelite connection to this site to the 1320s, when St. Andrea Corsini, a brother at the Florence Carmine, is said to have celebrated his first mass in this oratory, seeking refuge from the world for the monumental occasion.[102]

 

The connection between Le Selve and the Carmine was made official on March 22, 1343, when Francesco and Giovanni di Dardo di Pace donated a complex including a well, kitchen, cloister, possibly a chapter house, and a church (a building with a crypt). The Carmelites moved in immediately, and consecrated the space on April 18 the following year.[103]

Though isolated, Le Selve attracted numerous patrons, and was the frequent beneficiary of gifts in testaments throughout the 14th and 15th centuries.[104] The popularity among patrons can probably be understood in the context of the reform movements that gained widespread popularity in Florence and elsewhere in the 15th century. The church’s foundation in the 14th century may be seen as a precursor to this movement. I have mentioned the broad similarities between the Ignea Sagitta and the Spiritual Franciscans, who, under Angelo Clareno and others, advocated for strict observance of the Franciscan rule and a more hermetic lifestyle.[105] By the 1320s, when Andrea Corsini is said to have sought a rural, removed setting for the celebration of his first mass, the activities of the Spirituals, who had been condemned by the papacy, were widely known.[106]

The lure of isolation ties in nicely with the burgeoning Carmelite historiography of the 14th century, in which the order’s ties to Mount Carmel, Elijah, and the Virgin Mary were increasingly emphasized.[107] In the 1320s the Carmelites were deeply engaged in the process of building and expanding their urban churches, yet their engagement with their origins, first explicated in the Rubrica Prima of 1281, was growing. Since the fall of Acre in 1291 the order had had no physical presence in the Holy Land. As they could not actively return to their place of origin, they seem to have sought to channel their historical associations, exemplified in Pietro Lorenzetti’s predella depicteding Carmelite hermits engaged in the activities of their daily lives, glorifying the simple, contemplative nature of hermetic life. It thus seems logical that Andrea Corsini would seek a rural setting for his first mass, a setting that would allow him to connect deeply with the roots of his order, and that other Carmelite friars would be interested in following, having the opportunity to live in imitation of their predecessors.[108]

In 1399, Le Selve hosted the general chapter meeting of the order, and between 1375-1412 it was frequently used for provincial chapters.[109] Though talk of reform existed, until 1412 Le Selve functioned normally as a church of the Provincia Toscana, even though its rural setting differentiated it from the other Carmelite settlements.[110] It was first mentioned as an “observant” house in 1412.[111] In this year provincial Bartolomeo di Giovanni da Firenze named Jacopo di Alberti as prior of Le Selve, and confirmed special constitutions of the observance on the order. This did not mark a separation of Le Selve from the province or the Carmelite order; instead it simply gave Jacopo the authority to enforce a particularly spiritual and contemplative interpretation of the rule at the convent.[112] Jacopo was succeeded in 1419 by the Blessed Angelo Mazzinghi, who became known as a gifted preacher and a key figure in the observant Carmelite movement.[113]

Le Selve, the Tuscan province, and the Florence Carmine remained on good terms following the establishment of the observance in 1412. Thus within the Tuscan province there was a functional Carmelite dichotomy – the brothers at Le Selve embodied the order’s ancient eremitic lifestyle, while brothers elsewhere practiced mendicancy. Unfortunately, the surviving documentary and architectural evidence from Le Selve reveals little about the practicalities of daily life in the rural convent in the 14th and 15th centuries. Documentation of architectural modifications is extremely limited, and analysis of the convent today reveals little about its earliest form. We cannot discuss with any certainty the living quarters of the brothers – we do not know if they had truly individual cells, or whether they lived in a dormitory, subdivided or otherwise. Early works of art from Le Selve do, like works from the other Tuscan foundations, emphasize the order’s early history. The church contained an image of the Madonna, reportedly of eastern origin, a tie to Mount Carmel.[114] A 1455 tabernacle by Neri di Bicci, commissioned by Tommaso di Lorenzo Soderini, depicted Elijah and Elisha as Carmelites.[115]

Megan Holmes has suggested that the existence of Le Selve as a spiritual center for the order (replacing Mount Carmel) served as something of a justification for the urban convents and their engagement with laity.[116] A 1432 mitigation of the Carmelite rule by Eugene IV saw the relaxation of certain strictures (for example, officially permitting established practices such as brothers spending more time than permitted in the 13th-century rule time outside of their cells, and allowing the consumption of meat three times a week) for practicality’s sake.[117] As Le Selve became progressively stricter, the rest of the order became more relaxed.[118]

In 1442, Le Selve separated from the Tuscan province, becoming part of the Congregation of Mantua.[119] This observant movement was still tied to the order, but was autonomous. The goal of the reformers was to return to way of life of the ancient fathers. Lay people were not admitted to the convent, and brothers were encouraged to observe silence and remain within the convent.[120] Similar sentiments desiring a return to the primitive Carmelite rule would eventually guide the foundation of the Discalced Carmelite order later in the 16th century, under Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Yet even for the Carmelites not involved in the reform movements, though they had moved away from the life prescribed in Albert’s formula vitae, their eremitical origins on Mount Carmel were still at the center of their identity, reflected in the continued importance of the cell in their constitutions, if not in practice.

The Desert in the City

More work remains to better understand early Carmelite conventual life. Further archival and archaeological work are necessary, as are additional comparisons to orders not discussed in this study, such as the Augustinians, and to observant reform movements. In analyzing the discussion of architecture in early Carmelite texts, I have sought to track how the order’s approach to the built environment changed as it evolved from an eremitical to a mendicant order. Though the Carmelites did not evoke in practicality the architectural space of their first hermitage in their urban convents, the continued insistence on the importance of cells in Carmelite legislation was a reminder that the order was rooted in the solitude of the desert, seen in the idyllic hermitage on Mount Carmel depicted in Pietro Lorenzetti’s altarpiece for San Niccolò.[121] The desert and the eremitical life it fostered were critical to the order’s identity at its inception and remained so as it grew and evolved in mission.