Saint Albert of Castro di Gualtieri

The opinion that the public held of his prudence, his penetration, his uprightness, and his skill in affairs led Pope Clement III and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to choose him as the arbiter of their disputes. It is even added that he was honored with the title of Prince of the Empire by Henry VI, successor to Frederick, who, out of consideration for him, also granted various favors to the church of Vercelli. Pope Clement III also showered him with benefits, and Innocent III employed him in several important negotiations, notably to arrange a reconciliation between the people of Parma and those of Piacenza, who had taken up arms to destroy one another. Such were the knowledge, virtues, and reputation of the holy bishop of Vercelli when he was elected Patriarch of Jerusal em, whether he was know patriarche de Jérusalem Holy city where the Cross was lost and subsequently recovered. n there solely by fame or whether he had previously been there on a pilgrimage.

Patriarch Monaco, a Florentine by birth, a learned and virtuous man, formerly Archbishop of Caesarea, having died at the beginning of the year 1203, Cardinal Soffred, who had just arrived in Palestine as legate of the Holy See, was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem by the clergy and the people, with the consent of the king and the approval of the suffragan bishops. Deputies were sent to Rome to obtain the Pope's confirmation and the pallium. The Pope, having deliberated, ordered that the cardinal be persuaded to accept, if possible, but that he should not be compelled. He himself urged him through his letters not to refuse the government of a Church where the Lord himself suffered so much. The cardinal, who had refused at first, accepted upon the Pope's insistence, and we have a charter from him dated May 7, 1203, where he styles himself humble Patriarch of Jerusalem and unworthy legate of the Apostolic See; but he abdicated soon after and obtained that a new election be held. All then agreed to elect the blessed Albert, Bishop of Vercelli.

To bring him from Europe, deputies were sent, the leader of whom was Rainier, a Florentine by birth, who had been prior of the Holy Sepulchre and was then prior of Jaffa. He obtained the Pope's consent, with a letter for Albert, dated February 18, 1204, in which he says: "The prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre came before us and represented to us that our beloved brother Soffred not having been able to be persuaded to consent to his election, they assembled and unanimously elected you as patriarch. To which the King of Jerusalem and the archbishops consented and begged us by their letters, not only to induce you, but to compel you to consent to this election. The two cardinal-legates, Soffred and Peter, wrote the same thing to us. Finally, the suffragan bishops of Jerusalem, who claim to have a voice in the election, which is contested by the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre, agreed, as did the Patriarch of Antioch and the bishops of his province, for their part, to remit their rights to two persons, who also named you pastor of the same Church."

Blessed Albert humbly acquiesced to the Pope's requests. He came to Rome, was transferred to the patriarchal see of Jerusalem, and received not only the pallium, but also the authority of apostolic legate in Palestine for four years, as the Pope testified to the Prelates and all the faithful of the country by a letter dated June 16 of the following year, 1205. Albert returned to settle the affairs of the Church of Vercelli and provide for a successor, then embarked on a Genoese ship for the Holy Land, where he arrived in the year 1206.

While political revolutions were overturning empires, earthquakes were toppling cities, and plague and famine were decimating nations and kingdoms, poor hermits lived in tranquility on Mount Carmel. This mountain range, which joins Phoenicia to Palestine, naturally offers solitudes favorable to contemplation. Raised above the earth and the sea, in the midst of empires, kingdoms, nations, and peoples that are no more, inaccessible to the storms of human wars, the solitary, from the height of his rocks and the depths of his caves, contemplates in safety the frequent storms that churn the sea in the distance. It is there that the prophet Elijah, before being taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, loved to withdraw to escape the persecution of Ahab and Jezebel, and to commune with God alone. It is there that his disciple, the prophet Elisha, usually dwelt with the children or disciples of the Prophets, true cenobites of the Old Covenant.

We do not doubt that, in other times, such as under the persecution of Antiochus, when the faithful Israelites fled into the deserts and mountains in such great numbers, Carmel, already consecrated by the memory of Elijah and Elisha, was populated by pious anchorites. The Hasideans, the Essenes, the Therapeutae, and other religious and cenobites of the Old Testament must have been fond of a place so suited to the contemplative life. As these various Jewish congregations disappeared, at least in name, as soon as Christianity appeared, one concludes with reason that they generally embraced it entirely. They may have perpetuated themselves under the Christian names of ascetics, monks, solitaries, and others. Under the persecutions of the idolatrous emperors, which hardly ceased for three centuries, Carmel must have served as an asylum for faithful Christians, just as it had formerly for the faithful Israelites under the persecution of Jezebel and Ahab. It must have been the same at the invasion of Mahometanism, as we see on a large scale in the mountains of Lebanon, where the refugee Christians formed the Maronite nation. It is therefore quite likely that, since the prophet Elijah, Mount Carmel habitually served as a retreat for pious solitaries.

Blessed Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, having arrived in Palestine, the hermits of Mount Carmel asked him for a written rule adapted to the purpose of their institution. He gave it to them around the year 1209. It consists of sixteen articles, which we shall speak of shortly. A good number of hagiographers and historians date the proper origin of the Carmelite Order from this 1209 legislation, which from then on spread throughout the Latin Church, produced Saint Teres a and Saint John Ordre des Carmes Religious order for which Albert wrote the primitive rule. of the Cross, and sent virgin martyrs to heaven during the French Revolution.

The blessed Albert, whose feast the Carmelites celebrate on February 8, died on September 14, 1214. He was preparing to attend the Council of Rome, but he had found himself obliged to rebuke a resident of Ivrea, in Lombardy, for his disorderly conduct. Instead of benefiting from his fatherly remonstrance, the wretch killed him with a knife, on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in th e middle of a pro Saint-Jean d'Acre Site of the assassination of Saint Albert. cession, in Saint-Jean d'Acre (a city in Syria, at the foot of Mount Carmel).

Saint Albert of Castro-di-Gualteri is represented: 1° assisted at his death by the Mother of God and a numerous procession of angels; 2° in the habit of a Carmelite, as the definitive founder of this Order; 3° holding a book and a quill in his hand, to express the statutes he drafted with the aim of grouping the hermits of Carmel under a single form of life; 4° with a knife at his side, to symbolize his tragic end.

[APPENDIX: NOTICE ON THE CARMELITE ORDER]

The Carmelite Order (Ordo Beata Maria de Monte Carmelo) long maintained that it had been created by the prophet Elijah (800 BC) on Mount Carmel (Syria), and had perpetuated itself without interruption. But it is proven today that this claim was most ill-founded, that this Order only began in the second half of the 12th century (around 1156), and that it owed its primitive legislation to Saint Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

This rule, as we have said, contains sixteen articles. The first deals with the election of a prior and the obedience that must be rendered to him. The second speaks of the cells of the brothers, which must be separated from one another. The third forbids them to change cells without permission. The fourth prescribes the place where the prior's cell must be located. The fifth orders them to remain in their cells, and to occupy themselves there day and night with prayer and orison, if they are not legitimately occupied. In the sixth, it is treated of the canonical hours that those destined for the choir must recite; it is also marked there what those who do not know the canonical hours must do. By the seventh, it is forbidden for the brothers to have anything of their own. The eighth orders the building of an oratory in the midst of the cells where they must all assemble in the morning to hear Mass. The ninth speaks of the holding of local chapters and the correction of the brothers. The tenth recommends the observance of fasting, from the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross until Easter, except on Sundays. Abstinence from meat at all times is ordered in the eleventh. The twelfth exhorts the brothers to clothe themselves in the spiritual armor that is proposed to them. The thirteenth obliges them to manual labor. The fourteenth imposes on them a strict silence, from Vespers until Terce of the following day. The fifteenth exhorts the prior to be humble, and the sixteenth recommends that the religious respect the prior.

The organization of the Carmelite Order is an aristocratic monarchy, the power of the general being limited by the necessity of asking, in certain determined cases, for the advice of the definitors, who are his counselors. Under the name of *Mitigated Carmelites* are understood religious instituted in 1432, who followed the Rule of the Carmelites, softened by Eugene IV; and under that of *Discalced Carmelites*, a religious Congregation established in the 17th century, which was only a reform of the Carmelites. This reform was first applied to women's convents by Saint Teresa, in 1562; then this Saint, aided by Saint John of the Cross, introduced it into men's convents. These Carmelites walked barefoot, from which their name came.

We have used, to compose this biography, the *Vie des Saints*, by Abbé Rohrbacher; the *Dictionnaire des Ordres religieux*, by Hélyot; and the *Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la Théologie catholique*, by Goechter.