Scope and Contents The beginnings of the Carmelite Order can be traced to the first decades of the thirteenth century when a group of hermits who were already living a life of contemplative prayer on Mt. Carmel received a written rule from Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Within thirty years, these hermits had returned to the west where they continued their Carmelite way of life. By 1462 pious women were admitted in groups into the order by Blessed John Soreth. Some one hundred years later, at the time of the...

Scope and Contents The continental Discalced Carmelite tradition began with Mother Anne of Jesus (Lobera) and five other Spanish nuns who were the first Carmelites (or Teresians) to cross the Pyrenees to France. They arrived in Paris in October 1604 and immediately founded a Carmel there. A second monastery was begun shortly thereafter; Anne of St. Bartholomew (Garcia) became its first superior. The Low Countries became the next destination for the spread of Carmel. In 1607, Anne of Jesus established a Carmel...

Scope and Contents If it had been in the minds and hearts of several American clergy as well as a few American women who were members of two Carmels in the Low Countries to establish Carmel in America, the dream would not be realized until key lay persons in both Europe and the United States jointly pursued the idea in the years immediately following the American revolution. Their moral support and financial encouragement (especially that of the Brussels benefactor, Balthassar De Villegas D'Estainbourg) would...

Scope and Contents This record group consists of the specific documents and collections gathered and designated as of historical interest or importance by the nuns of both Port Tobacco and Baltimore over the span of their two-hundred-year history. The very first of these documents is the original land grant charter for Charles Neale's patrimonial inheritance called Chandler's Hope, signed by Cecil Calvert, with the seal of Lord Baltimore, dating back to 1674. It was this land that Neale would use in order to...

Scope and Contents From the time of their arrival in 1790, the Carmelite nuns of Baltimore maintained formal ties with both church and civic administrative personnel, in both Baltimore and Rome by means of correspondence or more formal petitions; they also kept historical materials indicative of their close association with the see of Baltimore and the church of Rome. The care with which the Sisters kept the various offices of church and state informed of their activities or asked permission to alter those...

Scope and Contents From the time that the nuns began their monastery life in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland, they scrupulously kept both personal and legal records. In a vows book which they subsequently recopied after their move to Aisquith Street, they recorded each profession according to prescribed, yet changing, formula, thereby providing statistical information relative to family and geographical background, age at time of profession, and dowry contributed. Each entry, moreover, was signed by the...

Scope and Contents There were several books that governed the life of the Carmelite Sisters of Baltimore: the rule; the constitutions; the ceremonial book; the grace book; the manual for ceremonies; and the breviary. With the passage of time and also because aspects of each of these, with the exception of the rule, changed over the years in some detail, the Sisters collected new editions of each of these. This archives collection contains these various editions; some, even, in French or Spanish. The...

Scope and Contents The devotional life of Carmel developed along three parallel lines: one followed the path of the liturgical cycle of the church year; the second reflected the particular charism of the order and revolved around the feasts of the great saints, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross; and the third gave witness to the centrality of the person of Jesus Christ in the daily lives of the Carmelite nuns. In each case the sisters sought, either through communal or private exercises, to pray for...

Scope and Contents The move to Aisquith Street on September 13, 1831 and the subsequent incorporation, in 1832, in the State of Maryland, as "The Carmelite Sisters of Baltimore" marked a new phase of American Carmelite history. At Aisquith Street the Carmelite nuns would take up the apostolate previously offered by the first head of the Church in Baltimore, John Carroll. Driven by financial necessity and aware that the fourth bishop of Baltimore, James Whitfield, was correct in assuming that they could not...

Scope and Contents On March 27, 1873, the Carmelite Sisters of Baltimore relocated to their third monastery, located at 1429 E. Biddle Street, Baltimore, Maryland. For the first time built to suit the specific requirements of a monastic environment, this residence would be their home for the next eighty-eight years. There, many aspects of the customs and ceremonial of the ancient order to which they belonged were reviewed meticulously and made to conform as closely as possible to the European Carmelite...

Scope and Contents This collection is comprised of papers belonging to The Restorers of Mount Carmel in Southern Maryland, a lay organization founded in 1933 for the express purpose of restoring the two historic buildings remaining on the property which had belonged to the Carmelite Nuns from 1790 to 1831 when the community removed from that place to Aisquith Street in Baltimore City.The person most responsible for inaugurating the restoration was Isabelle Talbott Hagerty. Following a June retreat...

Scope and Contents The Carmelite Guild for The Building Fund was formed at a meeting which was held at the Baltimore Basilica Rectory, 408 N. Charles Street, on October 11, 1957, "for the purpose of helping the Carmelite Nuns materially on a large scale." It was to be a sustaining organization whose primary purpose was "to raise funds for the erection of a new monastery." (Minutes of Meeting, 10/11/1957). When this goal was reached in September 1965, the executive committee recommended that the...