[5] Tradition indicates the presence on Mount Carmel of a series of Jewish and then Christian hermits who lived, prayed and taught in the caves used by Elijah and Elisha.

Around 1150, a Greek monk from Calabria established a community of about ten members among the ruins of the ancient Byzantine monastery which he rebuilt and renamed Saint Elijah.

Tradition has established that it was Brocard, second prior general of the order, who asked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Albert of Vercelli, to provide the group of hermits with a written rule of life.

Gradually, during the 13th century, Carmelite hermits returning from Mount Carmel resettled throughout Europe, e.g. in Cyprus, Sicily, Italy, England, and southern France.

In the bull Paganorum incursus of 27 July 1247, Pope Innocent IV officially denominated the order the "Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel" and asked bishops to kindly accept them in their dioceses.

Pope Innocent IV clarified and corrected some ambiguities and mitigated some severities of the original Rule, and on 1 October 1247 he established the text in the bull Quae honorem conditoris omnium.

During the sanota vacillationis session of 17 July 1274, the Second Council of Lyon, presided by Pope Gregory X, suppressed all the mendicant orders that lacked regular legal status (incert mendicita).

The mitigation of the Rule came after the great epidemic of the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century, which brought about a collapse of the European population accompanied by a decrease of members of monastic orders.

The letter, dated 15 February 1432, indicated that Many professed members of the Order can no longer observe the rule because of its severity and rigor, both because of the fragility human than by weakness of the body.Two Carmelites were sent to convey this request to the Pope.

Pope Pius II completed this permission on 5 December 1469 by granting the Prior General the faculty of dispensing from fasting on days when abstinence was lifted.

Pope Sixtus IV granted greater freedom, commonly known as Mare magnum, in the bull Dum attendant meditatatione of 28 November 1476, which conceded many advantages to the mendicant orders.

John Soreth, a friar from the Carmelite Convent of Caen, who served as Prior General in the years 1451–1471, tried to convince his subjects to lead a more rigorous religious life by developing seeds already sown and promoting movements that already existed.

They insisted on The divine office, the vow of poverty, silence and solitude, the custody of the convent and the cell, studies, work and the visits of the superiors.

On 20 June 1604, at the provincial chapter of Nantes, Henri Sylvius published the statutes of the reform, which intended to promote the interior life and return to the ancient tradition of the order, under the patronage of the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph.

In 1645, during the general chapter held in Rome, the provincial of Touraine, Léon de Saint-Jean, was appointed a member of a committee to further revise these constitutions with a view to having them adopted by all the reformed convents of the order.

In the late 16th century, Pierre Behourt began an effort to restore the state of the Province of Touraine, which was continued by the practical reforms of Philip Thibault.

[8] One of the most renowned figures of the Reform was John of St. Samson, a blind lay brother, highly regarded for his humility and exalted spiritual life.

[10] Daniel Papebroch was a member of the Bollandists, a group of Jesuit hagiographers who produced the Acta Sanctorum, which took an analytical approach to the "Lives of the Saints".

The series culminated in the large quarto volume signed by Sebastian of St. Paul, provincial of the Flemish-Belgian province of the Carmelite Order, which made serious charges against Papebroch's orthodoxy.

Whether it was judged prudent in Rome not to enter into conflict with the Spanish tribunal, or whether the latter prolonged the affair by passive resistance, the decree of condemnation made in 1695 was not revoked until 1715, the year following the death of Papebroch.

In a photograph of the period Titus Brandsma is shown in the habit of Tourraine as a novice; in all subsequent images he wears that of the newly styled ancient observance.

Provinces exist in Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Hungary, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Portugal and the United States.

Carmelite Missions exist in Bolivia, Burkino Faso, Cameroon, Colombia, India, Kenya, Lithuania, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, Romania, Tanzania, Trinidad, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The site is held sacred by Christians, Druze, Jews and Muslims;[15][16][17] the name of the area is el-Muhraqa, an Arabic construction meaning "place of burning", and is a direct reference to the biblical account.

[18] In 1997, Thérèse of Lisieux[19] became one of only four female Doctors of the Church,[20] so named because of her famous teaching on the "way of confidence and love" set forth in her best-selling memoir, Story of a Soul.

Notable 20th century Carmelites include Titus Brandsma, a Dutch scholar and writer who was killed in Dachau concentration camp because of his stance against Nazism; Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (née Edith Stein), a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was imprisoned and murdered at Auschwitz; and three nuns of Guadalajara who were martyred on 24 July 1936 by Spanish Republicans.

The writings and teachings of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a Carmelite friar of the 17th century, continue as a spiritual classic under the title The Practice of the Presence of God.

Tradition holds that this was given to Simon Stock by the Blessed Virgin Mary, who appeared to him and promised that all who wore it with faith and piety and who died clothed in it would be saved.

In the Carmelite convent of Beja, in Portugal, two Carmelite nuns of the Ancient Observance reported several apparitions and mystical revelations throughout their life: Mariana of the Purification received numerous apparitions of the Child Jesus and her body was found incorrupt after her death;[27] Maria Perpétua da Luz wrote 60 books with messages from heaven;[28] both religious died with the odor of sanctity.

Eventually Pope Pius XII approved the devotion in 1958 and declared the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus as Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday) for all Catholics.