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The Carmelite Order and Greek Orthodox Monasticism: a Study in Retrospective Unity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Andrew Jotischky
Andrew Jotischky*
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster
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Extract

On his embassy from Constantinople to the papal curia in 1339, the Greek Orthodox envoy Barlaam confided to Benedict XII his pessimistic belief that genuine union between the Churches was rendered impossible less by theological difference than by the shared history of relations between eastern and western Christendom:

It is not so much the difference in doctrine that alienates the hearts of the Greeks from you as the hatred against the Latins that has entered their souls because of the great number of evils they have suffered at the hands of the Latins at different times, and which they still suffer every day. Unless this hatred is dispelled, union can never be achieved.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 32: Unity and Diversity in the Church , 1996 , pp. 117 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1996

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References

1 Acta Benedicti XII (1334-1342), ed. A. L. Tautu (Vatican City, 1958), no. 43.

2 Gill, J., Byzantium and the Papacy 1198-1400 (New Brunswick, 1979)Google Scholar; Halecki, O., Un empereur de Byzance à Rome, new edn (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Nicol, D. M., ‘Byzantine requests for an oecumenical council in the fourteenth century’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 1 (1969), pp. 69–95 Google Scholar; Meyen-dorff, J., ‘Projets de concile occuménique en 1367; un dialogue inédit entre Jean Cantacuzéne et le légat Paul’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 14 (1960), pp. 147–77 Google Scholar. On Barlaam’s embassy, see Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy, pp. 196–9, and Nicol, ‘Byzantine requests’, p. 76.

3 Pantin, W. A., ‘Some medieval English treatises on the origins of monasticism’, in Ruffer, V. and Taylor, A. J., eds, Medieval Studies Presented to Rose Graham (Oxford, 1950), pp. 189–215 Google Scholar. For mendicant interests in monastic origins, see Elm, K., ‘Elias, Paulus von Theben und Augustinus als Ordensgründer’, in Patze, H., ed., Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstein im spä;dter Mitlelaller, Vortrage und Forschungen, 31 (Sigmaringen, 1987), pp. 371–97 Google Scholar; for pagan antiquity, Beryl Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960).

4 E.g., The letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 1, p. 29 and De prima institutione monachorum in Pantin, ‘Some medieval English treatises’, p. 199.

5 The Life and Journey of Daniel, Abbot of the Russian Land, trans. W. F. Ryan, in Wilkinson, J., Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099-1185 (London, 1988), p. 152.Google Scholar

6 The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. and trans. M. N. Adler (London, 1907), p. 19.

7 John Phocas, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, PC, 133, cols 961-2. The translation by Aubrey Stewart reproduced in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, pp. 335-6, is inexact. For the topography of early foundations on Mt Carmel, see Friedman, Elias, The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel (Rome, 1979).Google Scholar

8 La règie de l’Ordre de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie du Mont Carmel, ed. and trans. M. Battman (Paris, 1982), p. 16.

9 Bullarium carmelitanum, ed. E. Monsignani and J. A. Ximinez, 4 vols (Rome, 1715-68), 1, p. 1; A. Staring, ‘Four bulls of Innocent IV. A critical edition’, Carmelus, 27 (1980), pp. 273-85. For general discussion of Carmelite legislation, see C. Cicconetti, La Regola del Carmelo: origine, natura, significato (Rome, 1973).

10 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, ed. B. Beller (repr. Graz, 1965), XXX, 123, pp. 1274-5.

11 Such mixed communities had, however, been known in tenth-century Rome; Bernard Hamilton, ‘The monastery of S. Alessio and the religious and intellectual renaissance in tenth-century Rome’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 2 (1965), pp. 265-310.

12 Rubrica prima of 1281 in A. Staring, Medieval Carmelite Heritage. Early Reflections on the Nature of the Order, Textus et studia Carmelitana, 16 (Rome, 1989) [hereafter MCH], pp. 40-1. This welcome edition of texts produced within the order from the 1280s to the 1370s now makes a detailed study of medieval Carmelite historiography possible.

13 Mansi, 24, cols 96-7. As Staring, MCH, p. 34 and Cicconetti, La regola, pp. 89-90, argue, the rubric was probably composed as early as 1238-47.

14 MCH, pp. 83–4. The Universis christifidelibus is an extended form of the rubrica prima.

15 G. Graf, Geschichte dcr christlichen arabischen Literatur, 1, Studi e Testi, 118 (Vatican, 1944), p. 337.

16 MCH, p. 75.

17 MCH, pp. 91-106; Staring dates the text to c. 1324.

18 Stephen of Salagnac and Bernard Gui, De quatuor in quibus Deus praedkatorum ordinem insignavit, ed. Kaeppeli, T., Monumetua ordinis praedicatorum historica, 12 (Rome, 1949), pp. 179–81 Google Scholar. Bernard Gui edited Stephen’s work. Two other works of Bernard’s are cited in the De inceptione ordinis.

19 Hamilton, , The Latin Church in the Crusader States (London, 1980), p. 38 Google Scholar. Stephen, De quatuor, p. 181, makes a point of saying that Aimery was a native of his own town, Salagnac.

20 MCH, p. 99.

21 Stephen of Salagnac’s use of Aimery was not implausible. Aimery’s own suffragan Bishop of Laodicea, Gerard of Nazareth (1140-61), reported Aimery’s regulation for supervised eremitical communities on the Black Mountain, outside Antioch, B. Z. Kedar, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, a neglected twelfth-century writer of the Latin east’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 37 (1983), p. 74. As Patriarch of Antioch, however, Aimery had no ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Mt Carmel, which was in the diocese of Acre.

22 MCH, p. 99. The passage following a reference to hermits building a church on Mt Carmel after the incarnation of Christ begins ‘Quos … Aymericus Malafayda … ipsorum laudabilem conversationem attendens…’.

23 MCH, p. 99.

24 For a description of a twelfth-century laura in Palestine see Work on Geography in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, p. 35: ‘[The monks and hermits] live alone in individual cells, not together, yet sharing a communal life.’

25 John de Cheminot, Speculum fratrum ordinis beatae Mariae de Monte Carmeli, in MCH, pp. 130-1. Jean was active in Paris 1336–9.

26 The most accessible edition is in Daniel a Virgine Maria, Speculum Carmelitanum, 2 vols in 4 (Antwerp, 1680), 1, pp. 1-128 (separate pagination). A critical edition by Paul Chandler is currently in preparation. Ribot wrote after 1374 (and probably after 1379), and died in 1391. L. Saggi, S. Angelo di Sicilia, Textus et studia historica Carmelitana, 6 (Rome, 1962), p. 31, argues that his work was not widely known even within the order until c. 1413.

27 Ribot, De institutione, VIII, 2, p. 75. Ribot’s wording, although his own, ultimately derives from John de Cheminot, the De inceptione and Stephen de Salagnac.

28 Ribot, De institutione, VIII, 2, p. 75. Ribot, who seems to be the first to mention Berthold, says that he began his rule as prior in 1121, and started on the construction of a monastery, but that is 19 years before Aimery began his pontificate in Antioch.

29 But for the continued independence of Greek Orthodox monastic life in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in this period, see Andrew Jotischky, The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States, (University Park, Penn., 1995), ch. 3.

30 Clark, J. P. H., ‘A defence of the Carmelite Order by John Hornby, O. Carm., A.D. 1374’, Cannelus, 32 (1985), pp. 73–106 Google Scholar. See also the treatises of Bernard Oiler and Robert of Ormeskirk in MCH, pp. 395-421.

31 A. Papadopoulos-Kerameos, new edn, 5 vols (Brussels, 1963), 1, pp. 115-20, 186-92; 2, p. 485.

32 Galatariotou, Catia, The Making of a Saint. The Life, Times and Sanctification of Neophytus the Recluse (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 230–43.Google Scholar

33 William of Coventry, De duplici fuga fratrum de Carmelo, in MCH, p. 279. John Bale gave the date of William’s work as 1340 in a notebook of transcriptions compiled c. 1527-33, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 41, fol. 107r, but in his Scriptorum illustrium Maioris Britanniae … Catalogus, 2 vols (Basel, 1557-59), 1, 461-2, he changed this to 1360.

34 MCH, p. 280.

35 MCH, p. 281. Limassol and Fortamia appear in a list of Carmelite houses in the East; MCH, pp. 265-6.

36 MCH, p. 273. This detail first appeared in the De inceptione ordinis, MCH, p. 42.

37 Peter’s contemporary biographer Philippe de Mézières treated John V’s conversion in 1357 as definitive: The Life of Saint Peter Thomas by Philippe de Mézières, ed. J. Smet, Textus et studia historica Carmelitana, 2 (Rome, 1954), pp. 75-9; Philippe is followed uncritically by F.J. Boehlke, Pierre de Thomas. Scholar, Diplomat and Crusader (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 147-70. Halecki, Un Empereur de Byzance, p. 62, and Nicol, ‘Byzantine requests’, p. 87, are more sceptical about the success of his mission.

38 The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, pp. 92-3; Macheras, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus, ed. and trans. R. M. Dawkins, 2 vols (Oxford, 1932), 1, pp. 90-1.

39 Mansi, 22, cols 1037-46; G. Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1940-52), 3, pp. 1042-84. Boehlke, Pierre de Thomas, pp. 168-9, defends Peter against Halecki’s assertion, Un Empereur de Byzance, pp. 60, 70-1, that the legate resorted after 1357 to a general policy of forceful repression against the Orthodox after persuasion had failed. But as Boehlke, Pierre de Thomas, p. 193, admits, Peter became a ‘target for hatred’ among Orthodox intellectuals.

40 The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, p. 92; Hill, History of Cyprus, 3, pp. 1082-3.

41 The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, p. 53. Peter was born c.1305 in the county of Perigord. William was dependent on John de Cheminot, but introduced a variant tradition of the Carmelite settlement in the West, making England rather than France the site of the first western foundations: De adventu Carmelitarum ad Angliam, in MCH, pp. 282-6.