Carmel in Medieval Catalonia (review)

Carmel in Medieval Catalonia. By Jill R. Webster. [The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1453, Volume 23.] (Leiden: Brill. 1999. Pp. xvii, 200. $76.00.)

The author, until her recent retirement, of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at Toronto, has concentrated her scholarly interests especially on the Franciscan and Carmelite Orders in medieval Catalonia. This book is the fruit of frequent visits to Catalonia and a thorough familiarity with a rather inaccessible Western language.

The expansion of the Carmelite Order in Spain took place relatively late; it was only in 1254 that a general chapter decreed the establishment of houses in that country. In the constitutions of 1281 (the earliest to come down to us), the province of Spain appears in the last place. The earliest foundations were in the Crown of Aragon, probably emanating from Perpignan in Provence.

After briefly treating the origins of the Order in the Near East, and describing the Carmelite rule (1206-1214), Dr. Webster recounts the early development of the province and its eleven medieval foundations. Extensive consideration is given to the likelihood of the date, 1206, for the foundation of the convent in Perelada. This date, the earliest possible for the granting of the rule, has been rejected by Carmelite historians, Otger Steggink and Balbino Velasco, and the author presents her support of it as a "hypothesis." Another hypothesis is the likelihood of a movement of return to the Order's eremitical origins in fourteenth-century Catalonia, evidenced by the publication of Felip Ribot's Institutio primorum monachorum and the foundation of houses in remote sites in Salgar and Terrassa.

Other themes treat architecture, preaching, and intellectual activity. The young province played an important role in the Order during the Western Schism, producing three priors general, Guiu Terrena, Joan Ballester, and Bernat Oller, as well as significant theologians in the Order's general studium in Barcelona.

A series of appendices greatly enhances the importance of the volume. These include an edition of significant documents and lists of provincials, priors, lectors, doctors, and royal chaplains. Most welcome is the extensive "Alphabetical List of Catalan Friars." All this information is gleaned from documents, deeds, and wills found in the thirteen archives listed in the bibliography of the volume.

A couple of lapsus might be noted. On page 19, the author confuses the Augustinian friars with the Augustinian canons of the Holy Sepulchre. Also, there is no particular reason for positing a close relationship between the latter Order and the Carmelites in the Holy Land (pp. 22, 24).

Dr. Webster had some misgivings about proceeding with her work after the appearance of Balbino Velasco's monumental three-volume Historia del Carmelo Español (Rome, 1990-1993), but such scruples were precisely that. This succinct, eminently readable account, by no means lacking in originality, of Carmel in medieval Catalonia, will be welcomed by English-language readers and by students of Carmelite history and of the religious history of Spain.

Joachim Smet, O.Carm.
Institutum Carmelitanum, Rome

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