Carmel in Britain: Studies in the Early History of the Carmelite Order, iii, The Hermits from Mount Carmel (review)

Of the orders active in Scotland from the thirteenth century until the Reformation, the Carmelites had, until the publication of this volume, been the most poorly represented in modern scholarly studies. In The Hermits from Mount Carmel, Richard Copsey has assembled thirteen of his essays which trace the history of the order in Britain down to the Reformation, three of them focussed exclusively on the Scottish Carmelite houses. Although those three essays can be read in isolation, they stand alongside discussions which explore the eremitical origins of the Carmelites in Palestine, their organisation into a regular order and its spread from the Holy Land into Western Europe in the early 1200s, and the establishment of an English province of which Scotland was originally part, all of which provide the broader context into which the Scottish convents should be placed to secure clearer understanding of their wider relevance and significance in pre-Reformation Scottish society.

The specifically Scottish components of the collection originated as previously published articles and essays, which does produce some quite jarring disjunctions in the text as well as some unnecessary overlap and repetition that could perhaps have been edited out to produce a more fluent narrative. Nevertheless, where overlap occurs, as for example in the discussion of the spread of the order into Scotland in 'The Scottish Carmelite Province and its Provincials' and 'The Foundation Dates of the Scottish Carmelite Houses', the same data is given a different emphasis, which reduces its redundancy. That, however, is a minor issue, as is the overall weakness of editorial consistency (evident especially in the varying forms of the same personal names given in different essays) and proof-reading, which although profoundly irritating do not detract significantly from what is otherwise a work of great scholarship.

It has to be emphasised that the significance of these essays transcends their basic subject matter. In 'The Scottish Carmelite Province' for example, Father Copsey reveals the tensions within the order created by the post-1296 Anglo-Scottish relationship. His discussion reveals not only the highly politicised attitudes of the English towards the Scottish houses, but also the serial shifts in Scottish attitudes during periods of greater or lesser English military control in Scotland and the progressive hardening of a strongly nationalistic stance in both provinces. It reveals, moreover, the significance of papal, and more particularly French, influence in securing general recognition within the order and within the Church generally of the separation of the provinces, reflecting in one order's deliberations the diplomatic efforts of the Scots post-1296. Therein, perhaps, we may be witnessing a dim echo of the part played by the mendicant orders alongside the secular clergy in securing the wider popular appeal of the Bruce regime.

Of the three Scottish essays, 'The Carmelites in Aberdeen 1273-1560' is, despite its close focus on the one convent, perhaps the most useful in that it provides a detailed analysis of not only the history of the community from foundation to destruction but also of its economic development, its spiritual function, and integration into the wider burgess and intellectual community in Aberdeen and beyond. If this essay is read alongside the excavation reports for the friary site, they together provide the most detailed inter-disciplinary analysis currently available of one of the lesser urban religious houses, for the quality of surviving historical data far exceeds that available for other published friary excavations, such as , Linlithgow or Dunbar. What is most valuable in this essay, however, is what Copsey does with the historical evidence, which demonstrated the richness of social, cultural and economic data which can be extracted from the seemingly prosaic and laconic parchment record. For the historian fixated on the highly material evidence of the portfolio of property and income assembled for the support...