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The Discalced Carmelites are friars and nuns who dedicate themselves to a life of prayer. The Carmelite nuns live in cloistered (enclosed) monasteries and follow a completely contemplative life. The Carmelite friars, while following a contemplative life, also engage in the promotion of spirituality through their retreat centres, parishes and ...
The Discalced Carmelite Fathers (Order of Discalced Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel; O.C.D.) is active in parishes and in foreign missions, having become primarily a pastoral and devotional order. Both branches have been important promoters of Marian devotion.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Discalced Carmelites, whose mode of life was a return to the observance of the primitive Carmelite rule, had their origin in Spain, but soon spread to Italy, the rest of Europe, and across the world.
Soon they were known as the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, or simply as Carmelites. When the Carmelites came to Europe later in the thirteenth century, they adapted their style of life to the mendicant movement, so that they could live in cities and minister to the needs of the people.
History of Discalced Carmelites. The Discalced Carmel acknowledges Saint Teresa as its mother and foundress. It is the only Order which has a woman as its foundress and, distinct from the other Orders which have male and female branches, the nuns were established before the friars.
Carmelites (Discalced), a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church with separate branches for men and women. The order was founded in the Holy Land during the Crusades of the twelfth century when Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote a rule for the purpose of organizing the hermits living on the slopes of Mount Carmel into one community.
The Carmelite Order, a Roman Catholic institution, dates from the thirteenth century, taking its name from the monks and hermits who had long dwelled on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. The term discalced, meaning shoeless, refers to the fact that this branch of the order customarily went barefoot or wore sandals.
