History
A combination of political and social conditions that prevailed in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth century -the Hundred Years War, the Black Plague and the rise of the Renaissance and Humanist revival- adversely affected the Order. Although Carmel itself contributed a number of gifted and respected Humanists, yet the trend which started out as a good thing occasioned a general decline in religious fervor. This factor, coupled with the decimation of the population and severe economic hardships had a demoralizing effect. Many individual Carmelites and even whole communities succumbed to contemporary attitudes and conditions diametrically opposed to their original purpose. To meet this situation the Rule was mitigated several times. Consequently the Carmelites bore less and less resemblance to the first hermits of Mount Carmel.
Teresa considered the surest way to prayer was to return to the Primitive Rule embodying Carmel's first ideals. A group of nuns assembled in her cell one September evening in 1560, taking their inspiration from the primitive tradition of Carmel and the discalced reform of St. Peter of Alcantara (a controversial movement within Spanish Franciscanism), proposed the foundation of a monastery of an eremitical type.
With little resources and often bitter opposition, she succeeded in 1562 in establishing a small monastery with the austere air of desert solitude within the heart of the city of Avila combining eremitical with community life. On August 24, 1562, the new monastery dedicated to St. Joseph was founded. Her rule, which retained a distinctively Marian character, contained exacting prescriptions for a life of continual prayer, safeguarded by strict enclosure and sustained by the asceticism of solitude, manual labor, perpetual abstinence, fasting, and fraternal charity. In addition to all this, Teresa envisioned an Order fully dedicated to poverty.
Working in close collaboration with St Teresa was Saint John of the Cross, who with Anthony of Jesus, founded the first convent of Discalced Brethren in Duruelo in November 1568.
Read more about this topic: Discalced Carmelites
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