[1] Brocard (or Burchard, as he is sometimes called), was of French ancestry and a hermit monk at Mount Carmel.

[2] Around 1207 Brocard approached Albert Avogadro, the papal legate and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for assistance in developing a rule of common life for the monks on Carmel.

Albert was a canon regular and composed a brief, 16 chapter rule, for the community.

[2] The document is addressed to a community member known only as 'B' (traditionally associated with Brocard, although no historical records exist that clearly identify this individual's full name).

It was removed from the reformed breviary of 1585, but taken up again in 1609; and the proper lessons were approved by the S. Congregation of Rites in 1672.