Third Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
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| Abbreviation | Lay Carmelites |
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| Formation | 1476 |
| Type | Catholic religious order branch from O.Carm. |
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Prior General
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Fr. Fernando Millán Romeral |
| Website | http://www.ocarm.org |
The Third Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (also named Lay Carmelites) is a branch of the religious Carmelite Order of the Ancient Observance and was established in 1476 by a bull of Pope Sixtus IV. It is an association of lay people who choose to live the Gospel in the spirit of the Carmelite Order and under its guidance. The Carmelites known for devotion to Blessed Virgin Mary under her title as Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
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.
Somewhat later mention is frequently made of trade-guilds having their seat in churches of the order, members of which acted as their chaplains. Thus the master-bakers, innkeepers and pastry-cooks at Nîmes, the barbers and surgeons of the same town, who were also connected with the Dominicans, the goldsmiths at Avignon. Benefactors of the order received letters of fraternity with the right of participation in the privileges and good works of the friars. Others, under the name of bizzoche and mantellatoe, wore the habit and observed the rule, at Florence in 1308. Still others became recluses in the anchorages attached to Carmelite churches. Among the tertiaries not living in community were Blessed Louis Morbioli of Bologna (d. 1495).
The canonical institution of the third order dates from the middle of the fifteenth century, when a community of Beguines at Guelders sought affiliation to the order, and Blessed John Soreth, General of the Carmelites, obtained a Bull (7 October 1452) granting the superiors of his order the faculties enjoyed by the Hermits of Saint Augustine and the Dominicans of canonically establishing convents of "virgins, widows, beguines and mantellatae". Also Saint Nuno of Saint Mary had participated in the developing work of the carmelite third order. Further legislation took place in 1476 by the Bull Mare magnum privilegiorum, and under Pope Benedict XIII and his successors.
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