Soon after the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was established in Europe in the thirteenth century, lay persons, not bound by religious vows, seem to have attached themselves to it more or less closely.

There is evidence of the existence of a "Confrairie Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel" at Toulouse in 1273, and of a "Compagnia di Santa Maria del Carmino" at Bologna in 1280, but the exact nature of these bodies is uncertain owing to a lack of documents.

[1] The rule observed by the tertiaries, whether living in the world or gathered into communities, was originally that of the friars with modifications as required by their status.

two communities of tertiary brothers in Ireland (Drumcondra and Clondalkin near Dublin) in charge of an asylum for the blind and of a high-school for boys; eighteen communities of native priests in British India[clarification needed] belonging partly to the Latin Church and partly to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church; four houses of Brothers of Christian Education in Spain.

In Spain there are also tertiary nuns called "Carmelitas de la caridad" engaged in works of charity with 150 establishments.

The Austrian congregation of nuns numbers twenty-seven houses, while the most recent branch, the Carmelite Tertiaries of the Sacred Heart, founded at Berlin towards the end of the last century for the care and education of orphans and neglected children, have spread rapidly through Germany, Holland, England, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Hungary, and have twenty houses.

[3] As of 2012[update], the Ontario and Northwestern New York Region of the Carmelite Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary (PCM) had eleven communities with 194 active members.