Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:38:24.582Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gerard of Nazareth, John Bale and the Origins of the Carmelite Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Andrew Jotischky
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Describing the general condition of the Latin Church in Outremer in the 1220s, Jacques de Vitry enumerated, as examples of those who had chosen the religious life, the hermits of Mt Carmel:

Others, following the example and imitation of the holy solitary Elijah the Prophet, live on Mt Carmel, especially on the part which overlooks the city of Porphyria, which today is called Cayphas [Haifa], near the spring which is called the spring of Elijah, and not far from the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Margaret. They lead a solitary life in small cells as in a hive; like the bees of the Lord they gather the honey of spiritual sweetness.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 214 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 de Vitry, Jacques, ‘Historia Hierosolymitana’, LII, in Bongars, J. (ed.), Gesta Dei per Francos, Hanau 1611, i. 1075Google Scholar.

2 See for example Leclercq, Jean, ‘La crise du monachisme aux xie et xiie siècles’, Bullettino dell'Institute storico Italiano per il media evo lxx (1958), 19–41Google Scholar, Derek Baker, ‘Crossroads and crises in the religious life of the later eleventh century’, in idem (ed.), The Church in the town and countryside (Studies in Church History xvi, 1979), 137–48, and especially Leyser, Henrietta, Hermits and the new monasticism, New York 1984CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Kedar, B. Z., ‘Gerard of Nazareth, a neglected twelfth-century writer of the Latin East: a contribution to the intellectual history of the Crusader States’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers xxxvii (1983), 55–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Illyricus, Matthias Flacius and others, Duodecimo centuria (vol. vi of Ecclesiasticae historiae, integram Ecclesiae Christi ideam…secundam singulas centurias perspicuo ordine complectens, 7 vols, Basle 1562–1574)Google Scholar.

4 Ibid. 923, 1230–3, 1380, 1603; edited by Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 75–7Google Scholar.

5 For example Le cartulaire du Saint-Sépulchre, ed. Bresc-Bautier, G., Paris 1984Google Scholar; Chartes de Terre-Sainte provenant de l'abbaye de Notre-Dame de Josaphat, ed. Delaborde, H.-F., Paris 1880Google Scholar; Chartes de l'abbaye de Mont-Sion, ed. Rey, E.-G. (Mémoires de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France 5th ser. viii, 1899)Google Scholar.

6 See Jotischky, A. T., ‘The breath of the dove: hermits and eremitical monasticism in the Holy Land 1095–1291’, unpubl. PhD diss. Yale 1991, 16–63Google Scholar.

7 These works are most accessible in the editions of Daniel a Virgine Maria, in his collection Speculum Carmelitanum, 4 pts, Antwerp 1680, pt 1, 1–128, pt 11, 145–56, 166–71. The treatise Contra Salam presbyterum is corroborated by a mention in an independent source, the Defensorium of the Carmelite John Hornby against the Dominican John Stokes: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Musaeo 86, fo. 202r.

8 No scholarly study has yet been written on the transformation of the hermits of Mt Carmel into an international order of friars. For an introduction to the topic, see Jotischky, , ‘Breath of the dove’, 214–97Google Scholar. The origins of the foundation on Mt Carmel have been studied by Friedman, Elias, The Latin hermits of Mount Carmel, Rome 1979Google Scholar. For the Carmelite settlement in England, see Egan, K. J., ‘An essay toward the historiography of the origin of the Carmelite Province in England’, Carmelus xix (1972), 67–100Google Scholar.

9 Les registres d'Innocent IV, ed. Berger, E., Paris 1884–1921, i, nos 3287–8Google Scholar.

10 Ribot, De institulione, passim.

11 Cambridge UL, MS Ff 6, n, fo. 27v–r, summarised in Bostius's, ArnoldDe illustribus viris ordinis fratrum beatissime virginis Marie de monte Carmelo, ed. Jackson-Holzberg, C., Zwei Literaturgeschichten des Karmelitenordens, Erlangen 1981, 154–5Google Scholar. The defence of the Carmelite, Hornby, John, was later copied into the collection known as Fasciculi Zizianorum, Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS e Musaeo 86, fos 176V–21 irGoogle Scholar.

12 Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 41, fos 107r–96r.

13 Fairfield, L. P., John Bale: mythmaker for the English Reformation, West Lafayette 1976, 28Google Scholar.

14 Ibid. 160–1. The full discussion on the dating of Bale's manuscripts is on pp. 157–64. See also the chronological list of Bale's works compiled by Davies, W. T.: ‘A bibliography of John Bale’ (Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings and Papers v, 1936–1939), 203–79 at pp. 240–3Google Scholar.

15 Fairfield, , John Bale, 1–15Google Scholar.

16 Ibid. 8, for Bale as the instructor of younger students. Selden Supra 72 includes a list of Carmelite priors-general and extracts copied from the works of two earlier Norfolk Carmelites, John Baconthorpe and Robert Bale.

17 Fairfield, , John Bale, 158–9Google Scholar.

18 Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 71–5Google Scholar, gives the full entry for each hermit, which will not be reproduced here. The groupings of hermits are as arranged in the Duodecimo centuria and Bale's Cronica, but the capital letters are mine.

19 I am grateful to Giles Constable for suggesting ways of studying the groups (in private correspondence).

20 Robertus Hiersolos. does not appear o n his own in the Duodecimo centuria, but must be the same ‘Robertus de Ierosolymis’ given by Gerard as a companion of Bernard of Blois, : Duodecima centuria, 1605Google Scholar.

21 Matthias, , Duodecima centuria, 1605–1906, 979, 1230Google Scholar; Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 72–3Google Scholar.

22 Matthias, , Duodecima centuria, 1603Google Scholar.

23 Ibid. 1607–8.

24 Ibid. 1604.

25 Ibid. 1606.

26 Ibid. 1607.

27 Ibid. 1605.

28 Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon xiv. 10, ed. Huygens, R. B. C., Corpus Christianum Continuatio Medievalis lxiiiA, 641Google Scholar.

29 Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 62–3Google Scholar; Röhricht, R., Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani 1097–1291, Innsbruck 1893–1904, nos 338, 359, 366Google Scholar; Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon xv. 16, and xviii. 23, pp. 696, 845.

30 Simler's, Josiah edition of Gesner's, C.Bibliotheca universalis, Zürich 1574, 237Google Scholar, has a similar entry for Gerard: ‘Gerardus a Nazareth, patria Galilaeus, apud Nazareth primum, deinde in Montana Nigra prope Antiocham eremita, episcopus tandem Laodicensis, Graece et Latine doctus, scripsit ad Guilhelmum presbyterum, De conversatione servorum Dei, lib 1. Vitam abbatis Heliae, lib 1. De una Magdalena contra Graecos lib 1. Ad ancillas Dei in Bethania lib 1. Contra Salam templarium lib 1. Atque alia. Claruit anno Domini 1140’. Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 60Google Scholar, suggests that Simler may have had access to another manuscript of Gerard, or may have read the Duodecima centuria and chosen not to copy the Centuriators' mistake in calling him a Carmelite. It is unlikely that his knowledge of Gerard came only from Bale, since he knew that ‘De una Magdalena’ was written ‘contra Graecos’, while Bale apparently did not know.

31 Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 56–7Google Scholar.

32 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 192, fo. 44V, contains a list of Carmelite bishops in Bale's hand. James, M. R., A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the Lambeth Palace Library, Cambridge 1930, 300Google Scholar, suggests that Bale owned the manuscript.

33 BL, MS Cotton Titus D x, fo. 18 iv. The correspondence between Bale and the Centuriators is printed in McCusker, H., John Bale: dramatist and antiquary, Bryn Mawr 1942, 67–70Google Scholar.

34 A full account of Bale's movements can be found ibid.

35 The red circles have been left empty on fos 1 10V–I lr, and the blank pages are fos 121v, 122r, 124r, 125V, 138r–40v, 141r, 142V, 144v–r and 146r.

36 Cyril appeared in Bale's Cronica in a red circle as the third prior-general of the Carmelite Order: Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 41, fo. 150r.

37 Matthias, , Duodecima centuria, 1610Google Scholar: ‘de quo Baleus hosce scribit versiculos ex Mantuano lib 5 Fastorum’.

38 Ibid. 1370. The information is ascribed to Bale's Catalogus, the appendix to ch. xli of Centuria 133.

39 Matthias, , Duodecima centuria, 944–5Google Scholar. The Centuriators' acceptance of Carmelite chronology is indicated by the entry for Gerard himself, which includes the phrase ‘apud Antiochiam Carmelitanae sectae eremita’, 1379.

40 Bale explained in a letter to Archbishop Parker in 1560 that the bulk of his considerable library had been left behind in Ireland and impounded by his enemies; he was thus hardly in a position to send manuscripts or books to the Centuriators in 1554, after his flight. For the Parker–Bale correspondence see McCusker, , John Bale, 67–8Google Scholar.

41 In private correspondence with the author.

42 Ribot, Philip, De institutione et peculiaribus gestis religiosorum Carmelitarum iii. 8Google Scholar, from the edition of Daniel a Maria, Virgine, Speculum Carmelitarum, i. 36Google Scholar. Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 56Google Scholar, edits this extract from three manuscripts (Rome, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, Collegio Sant' Alberto MS II CO. II 35; Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 155(80)/1237; and Munich, Staatsbibliothek MS Clm 471).

43 Ribot, , De institutione viii. 2, p. 75Google Scholar.

44 Matthias, , Duodecimo centuria, 1373Google Scholar. Aimery's treatment of the hermits of the Black Mountain is further complicated by a passage in Otto of Freising's Chronicon. In 1143 Hugh, bishop of Jabala, while organising the defence of the city of Antioch had, according to Otto, depopulated the countryside around the city of its hermits. ‘Ille [Hugh] autem, eo quod a principe delusus esset, civitati quidem pepercit, sed totam ferro flammaque depascens provinciam heremitas quoque, quorum grandis ibi copia est, de cellulis suis eductos, non kalo, id est boni, Iohannis [Comnenus] officium agens, crudelissime tractavit’: Chronicon, sive de duabus civitatibus vii, 28, ed. Schmidt, A. and Lammers, W., Darmstadt 1961, 548Google Scholar. It is possible that Aimery's legislation against solitary anchoresis was also inspired by concern for the hermits' safety.

45 For the same reason Ribot quotes from Gerard not, as did Bale, the names of hermits themselves, but rather a more general definition of the practices of hermits. The passage, cited alongside similar ones from John Cassian and Isidore of Seville, implies that the hermits who followed the example of Elijah in the twelfth century were following early Christian practice.

46 Michael, the Syrian, , Chronique, ed. and trans. Chabot, J.-B., new edn Brussels 1963, 377–8Google Scholar. Aimery also secured the union of the Maronite Church with Rome in 1182.

47 PL ccii. 229–32. For Hugo's career see Dondaine, A., ‘Hugues Éthérien et Léon Toscan’, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age xxvii (1952), 67–134Google Scholar.

48 The carrier of the letters was Reynaud de Chatillon, who had just been released from prison in Aleppo: Hamilton, B. ‘Manuel I Comnenus and Baldwin IV’, in Chysostomides, J. (ed.) Kathegetria, Camberley 1988, 360Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor Hamilton for pointing this out to me.

49 PL ccii. 232–3.

50 Ribot, , De institutione ix. i, p. 96Google Scholar.

51 See especially Wessels, G., ‘Epistola S. Cyrilli Generalis et historia antiqua Ordinis nostrae’, Analecta Ordinis Carmelitana iii (1914), 267–86Google Scholar.

52 On William of Sandwich, for example, see Egan, , ‘An essay’, 80–2Google Scholar.

53 Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 41, fo. 151V.

54 Ribot, , De institutione ix. 1, p. 96Google Scholar.

55 Matthias, , Duodecimo centuria, 1374Google Scholar; Bale, , Scriptorum illustrium maioris Britanniae…catalogus, Basel 1559, 182Google Scholar. Bale's Cronica mentions Aimery's regulation of the Carmelites under the entry for Berthold, Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 41, fo. 148r. The Centuriators, by including Bale's evidence as well as Gerard's, preserved two different, but not mutually exclusive, traditions about Aimery.

56 Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 41, fo. 147V, 148r. Gerard of Nazareth had written a sermon ‘ad ancillas Dei in Bethania’. The real abbess of Bethany was named Yveta. Sibylla, who became countess of Flanders, was the daughter of Fulk, but not of Melisende.

57 Ribot, , De institutione ix. 2, p. 97Google Scholar. The list of Carmelite foundations in the Latin East given by Bale also includes Acre, Bethel and ‘Calgala’: BL, MS Cotton Titus D x, fo. 125v.

58 Ribot, , De institutione viii. 2, p. 75Google Scholar. The dating gives Ribot away; Aimery did not become patriarch until 1140.

59 Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 41, fo. 147r. Bale adds to the legend by making Berthold a crusader who took part in the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and afterwards became a follower of Peter the Hermit.

60 Benjamin, of Tudela, , Itinerary, ed. Adler, M. N., London 1907, 19Google Scholar. For the Jewish cemetery near the cave of Elijah, see Prawer, J., The history of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Oxford 1988, 83Google Scholar. Earlier twelfth-century pilgrims who mention Elijah include the Russian abbot Daniel (1105–6), The pilgrimage of the Russian Abbot Daniel (Palestine Pilgrims Text Society iv, 1895), 55Google Scholar, and Rorgo Fretellus (1137), Rorgo Fretellus de Nazareth et sa description de la terre sainte, ed. Boeren, P. C., Amsterdam 1980, 19Google Scholar.

61 Friedman, , ‘The medieval Abbey of St Margaret of Mt Carmel’, Ephemerides Carmeliticae xxii (1971), 295–348Google Scholar.

62 Antonini Placentini itinerarium iii, ed. Geyer, P., CC clxxv. 130Google Scholar: ‘A Ptolemaida per mare incontra in civitatem Sucemina Iudeorum est miliario semis per directo, littore maris milia sex. Castra Samaritanorum a Sucemina miliario subtus monte Carmelo. Super ista castra miliario semis monasterium sancti Helisaei, ubi ei occurrit mulier, cuius filium suscitavit’.

63 Phocas, John, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, PG cxxxiii. 961–2Google Scholar.

64 Ribot, , De institutione viii. 2, p. 75Google Scholar. The Calabrian soon became indistinguishable from Berthold, the first prior-general, and even in modern Carmelite scholarship Phocas's account is taken as evidence for the settlement of Mt Carmel in the twelfth century: Monumenta historica Carmelitana, ed. Zimmermann, B., Lirinae 1907, i. 269Google Scholar.

65 Friedman, , ‘Abbey of St Margaret’, 314Google Scholar.

66 The Rule of St Albert, ed. and trans. Edwards, Bede, Aylesford 1973, 78Google Scholar.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid. 80–8.

69 Matthias, , Duodecimo centuria, 1605Google Scholar.

70 Ibid. 1603. For the abbey of Palmaria, see Kedar, , ‘Palmarée, abbaye clunisienne du Xlle siècle en Galilée’, Revue Bénédictine xciii (1983), 260–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Matthias, , Duodecimo centuria, 1230Google Scholar. Other monks of Machanath mentioned by Gerard were William and Hugo, both Frankish knights, Porphyry, Walter and another Hugo. The passages in the De conversatione dealing with Bernard are scattered across three chapters of the Duodecimo centuria; the part describing the schism is hostile in tone and quite unlike the rest of Gerard's work, and may therefore be the work of another author.

72 BL, MS Harley 3838, fo. gv. In the summary edition of his Catalogus, Basel 1559, 461Google Scholar, Bale attributed the treatise De adventu Carmelitarum ad Angliam, which he had copied into his own notebook, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 73, between 1520 and 1527, to the Carmelite William of Coventry, also known as Claudius Conversus. Here he has William flourishing c. 1360, but in the Cronica, Selden Supra 41, fo. 167r, he had specified the 1340s. In a later notebook, BL, MS Cotton Titus D x, fo. 127r, he attributed the work to a more recent Carmelite author, Richard of Ely (d. 1486). Zimmermann opted for Richard, of Ely, as the author: Monumenta, i. 364Google Scholar. Another Carmelite author, Robert Bale, thought that Cyril of Constantinople fled to Mt Carmel as a result of Saladin's conquest in 1187: Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 72, fo. 9r.

73 Matthias, , Duodecimo centuria, 1607Google Scholar.

74 In particular three anonymous French accounts, ‘Les chemins et les pélerinages de la Terre Sainte’, ‘Les sains pélerinages que l'en doit requerre en la Terre Sainte’ and ‘Les pelérinages por aler en Iherusalem’, which are collected in Itinéraires a Jérusalem et descriptions de la Terre-Sainte rédigés en français aux Xle, XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. Michelant, H. and Raynaud, G., Geneva 1882Google Scholar.

75 ‘Informatio circa originem’: Speculum Carmelitanum, i. 168.

76 John, of Hildesheim, ‘Dyalogus’: Speculum Carmelitanum, i. 152Google Scholar.

77 Scrope, Thomas, ‘Chronicon’: Speculum Carmelitanum, i. 175Google Scholar; Kedar, , ‘Gerard of Nazareth’, 57–8Google Scholar.

78 Bodl. Lib., MS Selden Supra 41, fo. 150r. Bale also mentions a Greek follower of Cyril, Theolophorus, who was apparently sent by the order to Joachim of Fiore.

79 Speculum Carmelitanum, i. 4. Some explanation was obviously needed by the Carmelites for the presence of a Greek as prior-general. The procession of the Holy Spirit had, by the mid-twelfth century, become the major theological issue dividing Greeks and Latins, and the story of the dispute with the patriarch may be based on the historical figure of Hugo Etherianus, who participated in the Council of Constantinople in 1166. The Armenian interlude must refer to the attempts by Manuel Comnenus to reunite the Greek and Armenian Churches, and to the partial conversion of Armenia to papal obedience in the thirteenth century. Zimmermann accepted Cyril's existence as genuine but not his Byzantine origins: Monumenta, i. 295.

80 Matthias, , Duodecimo centuria, 1610Google Scholar.

81 For John, see Le synaxaire éthiopien, ed. and trans Basset, R. and others (Patrologia Orientalisi i. 1907), 603Google Scholar. He was bishop of Jerusalem 386–417: Graf, G., Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, i, Vatican 1944, 337Google Scholar. William, of Sandwich was priorprovincial for the Holy Land at the fall of Acre, and is mentioned by name in a bull of Honorius IV: Bullarium Carmelitarum, i, Rome 1715, 35–6Google Scholar.

82 Constitutions des Frères de Notre Dame du Mont Carmel faites l'année 1357, ed. de la, Antoine-Marie Présentation, Marche 1915, 12Google Scholar.

83 Phocas, , Descriptio, PG cxxxiii. 949–56Google Scholar. In general see Jotischky, , ‘Breath of the dove’, 165–80Google Scholar.