How to build a Carmelite Monastery reflecting Ancient Carmelite Architecture?
Ancient Carmelite Architecture was based on the Carmelite Rule. Two aspects of the Carmelite Rule become the most important for designing a Carmelite Monastery. The first is the individual, separate cells. These cells need to be separated by a distance, each housing a single Carmelite who watches in prayer alone with God. The second is the beautiful Chapel where daily the community is to gather together for a solemnly chanted mass.
Other auxiliary buildings such as the refectory where the Carmelites eat and the Porter’s Lodge where the religious meet guests are also important. The other aspects of the life that need to be supported by the architecture are the solitary mountain property and the giant wall that was built around the premises to insure the solitude of the Carmelites.
Each of these aspects play a part in every Carmelite monastery built for solitary monks.
The Original Monastery on Mt. Carmel
The original monastery on Mount Carmel was built by the first hermits under the guidance of St. Berthold around 1150. Mt. Carmel is in the Holy Land near Haifa, Israel. The solitary mountain rises 1800 ft. from the ocean to its highest peak. St. Berthold and the first monks dwelt near the spring of Elias high on the summit of Carmel.
The first part of the monastery that Berthold built was a great wall to keep visitors from disturbing the solitude of the religious and second wall farther in to doubly insure solitude. The Carmelites also built a vaulted room that was either the Chapter House or the refectory for the monks. Berthold most importantly guided the building of an early Gothic Church from limestone they cut from the hillside. The ancient Carmelite architecture in the Church included trilobe columns that held vaults, a foliated freeze, a bell tower and a Gothic archivolt entrance.
The hermits themselves dwelt in caves that were naturally carved into the mountain walls. These caves were scattered naturally all across the area that encircled their chapel. The caves were the cells where the hermits dwelt in solitary prayer.
The First European Foundations of Ancient Carmelite Architecture
The Carmelite hermits slowly migrated to Europe starting in the 1230’s. The first hermits tried to imitate everything they knew and loved about the monastery on Mt. Carmel. They wanted to keep the mountainous terrain, the caves for solitary cells, the central Church, a large wall around the property and monastic spaces for living their daily lives.
Grotte-ermitage des Aygalades
The first foundation in France occurred in about the year 1234. The hermits settled near Mersailles on the southernmost part of France. There was a cave that legend said was the dwelling place of St. Mary Magdalene. Here in the hills near a river and waterfall the hermits made their first dwelling. They lived in the caves and built a church in the largest cavern. This was the hermitage of the Aygalades.
The Monastery of St. Hilarion
The hermits continued to migrate North in France and found an even more solitary place in the mountains to found their next monastery. The area in this part of France resembles the look of Mt. Carmel. The mountains contain many caves where the hermits could have solitary cells. They also built a chapel in their in the midst of their caves, along with their other auxiliary buildings.
The Hulne Priory
Sometime around 1240, the first hermits reached England. They settled in solitary places that resembled the mountain of Carmel, near caverns and a river. The Hulne Priory was one of these foundations. The Carmelites built a great wall around the outside of the monastery and also another inner wall to protect their enclosure. The Church was built in Gothic in the center of the enclosure.
Transitioning from caves to a less Eremitical Life
Hulne Priory is a good example where there are certainly caves that the Carmelites used for cells, but not many. Is it possible that the individual separate cell requirement of ancient Carmelite architecture caused a difficulty for these newly established monasteries in Europe? Being as only these first monasteries had caves, it stands to reason that caves and separate cells were originally synonymous. This was a difficulty later Carmelite solitaries needed to surmount. The Discalced Desert Houses later fixed this problem through having hermitages that imitated the solitude provided by natural caves.
The Discalced Desert Houses Ancient Carmelite Architecture
The Bolarque Desert in Spain
The first of the Discalced Desert houses was founded at Bolarque on August 17, 1592. The monastery was along a river that protected their enclosure. But they also had a gatehouse with an outer wall and a second inner wall that kept visitors from disturbing their solitary life of prayer. They built a central Church and monastery where the Carmelites would gather every day for mass. The caves this time were replaced with hermitages that were scattered like caves randomly throughout the hillside. They would do silent manual labor together each day and serve the community as needed.
Las Batuecas Ancient Carmelite Architecture
Founded just a few years after Bolarque, the Discalced Fathers built another desert in Las Batuecas that was dedicated to St. Joseph. For this monastery, rather than scatter the hermitages throughout the hills like other ancient Carmelite architecture, they lined the hermitages along a cloister similar to a Carthusian monastery layout. This made the communal life that they still lived in solitude much easier to accomplish. They could maintain their solitude and yet still gather for office and mass in the central church each day. The hermitages were still individual and separate, obtaining what the caves offered in solitude, but in a more orderly way. The Church was latterly built in the middle of the cells to be the focal point of their prayer lives.
Las Batuecas is still used today in the Discalced Order. You can find their website here.
The New Mt. Carmel Monastery
For our monastery, we imitated the Las Batuecas layout since it provides an orderly way to have solitary hermitages that are nearby to a central church where we can attend mass and divine office each day. We eat in a common refectory and have a Porter’s Lodge for visitors to meet us in our speak rooms. Our stone enclosure wall around our monastery is 12 feet tall to ensure the solitude that the mountains afford us. There is a second “wall” that connects into the Porter’s Lodge as a secondary protection. Our Monastery is also near a Creek and there is at least one giant cave on our property.
Similar to the first monasteries, we are building in the Gothic style. The Gothic architecture makes the hearts of our monks soar to God in imitation of the soaring pinnacles and spires. The vaults will make our chanting in Latin echo in imitation of the chants of heaven.