A Seventeenth Century Carmelite Legend Based on TacitusAuthor(s): T. S. R. BoaseReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 3, No. 1/2 (Oct., 1939 - Jan.,1940), pp. 107-118Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750195 .Accessed: 04/11/2011 00:39

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A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CARMELITE LEGEND BASED ON TACITUS

By T. S. R. Boase

A steady characteristic of mediaeval historiography is its lack of period sense. The past was studied in terms of the present, and precedents had

none of their force diminished on the plea that other times had other customs. The unrelenting standards of Dante's judgments are based on a fine confusion of examples, where an incident of early Rome or of contemporary Florence might equally well point the moral. The utmost weight was given to any appeal to antiquity. When Edward I of England drew up a statement of his claims on Scotland he based them on the empire of Brut, the Trojan, while the Scots parried with Scota, Pharaoh's daughter. It is not therefore surprising to find Old Testament narratives employed as proving the validity of existing institutions. Protestant historians have often decried the biblical knowledge of the middle ages, and have especially regarded the Old Testament as a monopoly of the Reformation, but this biased view no longer obscures the exact learning in Holy Writ which was possessed by many mediaeval schoolmen, nor was this learning used only for allegorical interpretation. Events and precepts were directly quoted without any secondary meaning, and the popularity of the crusading pilgrim- age, with its many Itinerationes Terrae Sanctae, brought circumstantial detail to increase the force and reality of Hebrew history. The Carmelite Order, which began as a hermit settlement on Mount Carmel and received its first rule in 12Io, was naturally imbued with the traditions of Palestine. In the mid twelfth century, Berthold, a Limousin and brother of Aymeri, Patriarch of Antioch, had organised a small community there. The Greek monk John Phocas visited the hermits in II1185 and gives their number as ten, and there are references to them in other travellers' reports.' Jacques de Vitry, who left Palestine in 1227, writes that

Others, in imitation of that holy anchorite Elijah, led solitary lives on Mount Carmel,... where, in little comb-like cells, these bees of the Lord laid up sweet spiritual honey.2

In I21o they were given a rule by Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, which was later confirmed by Pope Honorius III. Crusading losses however rendered expansion of the Order difficult, and many of the brothers with- drew to Western Europe, where in I147 the first chapter general was held in England under the presidency of Simon Stock, who became one of the great saints of the Order. Some, however, remained in Palestine, and Burchard in 1280 refers to Elijah's cave on Mount Carmel "where the sons of the prophets dwelt, and the Carmelite friars now dwell",3 and indeed almost continuously there were a few devoted brothers to be found inhabiting their mount of origin.4

1 B. Zimmermann, Monumenta Historica Carmelitana, 1905, pp. 269-70.

"Jacques de Vitry, History of Jerusalem. Palestine Pilgrim's Text Society, x896, p. 33- 3 Burchard of M. Sion, A description of the

Holy Land. Palestine Pilgrim's Text Society, 1896, p. 94-

4 There is no modern critical history of the Carmelite Order. Only the first volume of Zimmermann's Monumenta had appeared

Io7

Io8 T. S. R. BOASE

These are the sure and verifiable facts, but as the Order grew they were not sufficient, and a far more elaborate history was set forth. In it the founder of the Order is the Prophet Elijah, the first anchorite, whose sojourn on Mount Carmel was the pattern of the hermit life. From him this tradition was passed down through Elisha, the Rechabites, the Essenes, to John the Baptist. The Virgin herself approved the Order by visiting the brothers, and it was on Carmel that the first church was built in her honour. This was the legend, which was embodied in the Liber de Institutione Primorum Monachorum, which claims to be written by John of Jerusalem in 412, but which from internal evidence must be, wholly or in part, of a later date, after the Order had come to Europe. It was edited with comments by a Catalan Carmelite, Riboti, in 1370,1 a time at which there were already attacks being made on the Order's account of its origins, as for instance at Cambridge, where in 1374 John Donewych the Chancellor gave a decision that

Fratres dicte Ordinis, prout nobis apparent per Chronicas, et alias scripturas antiquas, Imitatores, et successores esse Sanctorum Prophe- tarum Eliae ac Elisaei.2

As a reply to any doubts that were being raised, an effort was made to purchase the presumed relics of Elisha from Ravenna, and in 1399 he was formally admitted to the Carmelite calendar as ordinis nostri. Elijah, already recognised as their founder, was, somewhat surprisingly, not formally admitted as such to their calendar till the second half of the following century.3

These doings however seem to have led to no very lively or lasting debate. The official Carmelite account was on the whole accepted, and it was found necessary to add little to it. John Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, whose De ortu et progressu Carmelitanae Religionis was printed in 1492, based himself mainly on John of Jerusalem, and when a hundred years later in 1593 Petrus Lucius republished his work with a commentary there is still little new material.4 It was however quite otherwise with the writings of the Catalan, Diego de Coria, who in 1598 published at Cordova his Dilucidario y Demostracion de las Chronicas y Anteguedad del Sacro Orden de la Siempre Virgen Madre de Dios Sancta Maria del Monte Carmelo. Here new sources are explored and an imposing body of new evidence produced, and before his death. The fullest account is still Helyot, Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, I714, I, p. 282 ff. There are important articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and in the Dictionnaire de Thdologie Catholique, both by Zimmermann.

1 Speculum Ordinis Fratrum Gloriosissimae Dei Genetricis semperque Virginis Mariae de Monte Carmelo.

2 Quoted by P. de St. Joseph in J9tudes Carmilitaines, I, 1911, p. 30. The controversy as to Carmelite origins is by no means dead, and the J9tudes are largely a reply to the researches of Zimmermann who, brought up

as a Protestant, "s'applique, d~s sa conversion et son entr6e dans le Carmel d'Angleterre, a scruter l'histoire de l'ordre, avec cette difficulte, qu'ont les hommes 6l6ves dans la religion pretendue reform6e, pour accepter la tradition." (J9tudes, I, p. 5)-

3 The Carmelite liturgy, which was closely based on that of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is known to us in an ordinal of 1312. Cf. Zimmermann, "Liturgie de l'ordre des Carmes" in Dictionnaire d'Archeologie Chritienne et de Liturgie.

4 Pietro Luca, Compendio Historico Carme- litano, Florence, I594-

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CARMELITE LEGEND og09

the book seems to have made a considerable impression. The output of Carmelite literature became extremely large, and volume after volume appeared throughout the seventeenth century recounting its venerable past.

This sudden expansion of the tradition seems to have no very immediate explanation. The sixteenth century had seen the great reforms in the Carmelite Order associated in particular with St. Theresa, reforms which had divided but had undoubtedly revivified the Order. Both St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross were fond of recalling the history of their order, but the mystical experience for which they stand is far removed from the antiquarianism of apologists such as de Coria and his successors, who treat the tradition as historical precedent in an almost legal manner. The visionary, ecstatic element of counter-reformation Catholicism is in fact strangely absent from the greater part of this Carmelite propaganda. On the one hand curiously mediaeval in its transference of the customs of one age to that of another, on the other it is reminiscent of contemporary Pro- testant writings in its eager study of Old Testament example. It lies outside the main paths of seventeenth century religious culture, and, despite an attempt in 16o9 to obtain the authority of Cardinal Bellarmine for the Carmelite traditions, it was not to pass without attack and criticism from within the Church. In 1668 the Bollandists brought out the March volume of the Acta Sanctorum, in which Papebroch dealt with Berthold, the twelfth century crusader, as the true founder of the Carmelite Order. At once there were indignant protests, but unperturbed the Bollandists went back to the attack in the April volumes (1675) with their life of Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem. It seemed almost gratuitous after this for them to abolish in i68o the Vita of St. Angelo, a thirteenth century Carmelite martyr, whose posthumous miracles were admitted, but whose accepted life story was considerably questioned.' In 1698 Pope Innocent XII had to intervene, and in the bull Redemptoris attempt to silence the controversy.

These literary theories and debates were accompanied by similar pro- paganda through painting and sculpture. The Carmelites had always been exponents of this visual appeal, and the Madonna del Carmine, sheltering her particular order under her spreading cloak, was a popular and frequent representation. Now in the seventeenth century the whole cycle of the legends was drawn upon and illustrated. There are numerous examples of which perhaps the most remarkable is the series of paintings (1658) by Valdes Leal in the Carmelite church in Cordova. There was even a quarrel of considerable dimensions as to the correct garments in which Elijah should be depicted, and in Sicily in 1670 the Carmelites forced the Basilian Monks to alter a painting of him to suit Carmelite conventions.2 The most original series of paintings however is that in the church of S. Silvestro e S. Martino ai Monti at Rome. The redecoration

1 Cf. Daniel a Virgine Maria, Vita S. Angeli, Brussels, 1665.

2 Helyot, op. cit., p. 307. The Ceremoniale Divini Officii secundum Ordinem Fratrum B. V. Mariae de M. Carmelo of 1616 has a typical piece of Carmelite iconography as its title

page : the Virgin appears in a cloud of cherubs presenting the Scapulary to St. Simon Stock, below on her right hand stands St. Albert, on her left St. Angelo, beneath are half length figures of Elijah and Elisha.

II O T. S. R. BOASE

of this ancient building took place between 1639 and 1652 and was under- taken by Giovanni Antonio Filippini, the prior of the church and from 1648 General of the Order. Filippini, it is said, raised a large part of the funds for the work from his own family :1 certainly he was devoted to San Martino and had written an account of it, Ristretto di tutto quello che appartiene all'antichith e veneratione della Chiesa de' Santi Silvestro e Martino de' Monti di Roma which was published at Rome in 1639. His interest, however, in the antiquities did not prevent him from decorating it in the newest fashion, and Gaspar Dughet was employed to cover the walls with his famous landscapes, in which the subjects are those of the Carmelite history, but are enacted by small figures, mere incidents in the views of hills and plains. It was a new fashion, but it may have seemed appropriate to an Order in which hills and deserts played so great a part, and in which a new cult of 'deserta' or anchorite settlements in remote places was being keenly urged. In all there are eighteen of these landscapes,2 of which twelve deal with the lives of Elijah and Elisha as narrated in the First Book of Kings. The subjects of the remaining six can be roughly identified from the series of engravings made from them by Pietro Parboni and published in I8Io, with quotations from and references to the sources of the scenes represented.3 They are as follows : the miraculous birth of Elijah as related by Epiphanius in his De Vita Prophetarum;4 the sacrifice of Elijah on Mt. Carmel as told by Balbinus in his Epistola ad Michaelem Imperatorem;5 the daily mass celebrated on Mt. Carmel as related by Willibrandus Bishop of Utrecht in suo itinera- tione;6 the Virgin appearing to St. Simon Stock "diu in arboris trunco residens" and ordering 'him

to assume the Carmelite habit;7 a vision to three Carmelites, in which in the branches of a tree appear Christ with his cross, St. John the Baptist and five women, one at the division of the trunk, two

1 Nibby, Itinerario di Roma, 1848, p. 547. Cf. Ren6 Vielland, "Les Origines du Titre de St. Martin aux Monts," Studi di Antichita Cristiana, IV, I931, p. I15-

2 Two of the frescoes are by G. F. Grimaldi, the remainder by Dughet.

3 I celebri freschi di Gasparo Possino nella Chiesa di S. Martino a'Monti in Roma rappre- sentanti i miracolosi fatti de SSti Elia ed Eliseo ora per la prima volta incisa. Parboni does not say on what authority he has chosen his quotations : certainly they are based on some Carmelite seventeenth century apologist and many of them are of frequent occurrence. Lezana dedicated the second volume of his Annales Sacri Prophetica et Eliani Ordinis B. V. Mariae de M. Carmelo (i65o) to Gio. Antonio Filippini, and the subjects of the frescoes may well have been chosen under his advice. The greater part of the quotations appear in the Annales.

4 S. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia and Metropolitan of Cyprus, d. 403. The passage in question relates that men in snow white

garments appeared to worship the child. The De vita prophetarum was printed in Paris in 1544 and at Basel in 1622.

5 Elijah is sacrificing an ox, as in the sacrifice described in I Kings, XVIII, 23. The letter of Balbinus to the Emperor Michael (more generally Antonius) is a mysterious document, much quoted by Carmelite authors, but of most uncertain origin. Cf. Acta Sanctorum, January V, Vita S. Telesphori C. II n.a.

6 Wilibrand of Oldenburg, Canon of Hildesheim, visited the Holy Land in 1211. The quotation is from his Itinerarium Terrae Sanctae (Printed in Leo Allatius, Symmikton, Cologne, 1653, p. 144). There seems to be a confusion, typical of many Carmelite references, between him and Willibald of Utrecht, who visited Palestine c. 720.

'This is quoted by Parboni from the Ceremoniale Carmelitanum, Lib. I Rubr. XXXIII. It was one of the most popular subjects of Carmelite iconography.

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CARMELITE LEGEND III

on either branch, explained by a quotation from Petrus Dorlandus' de Vita S. Annae; and finally a subject which Parboni described simply as Visio and for which he gave no reference. In this scene an elderly man kneels at an altar; behind him is a general at the head of his troops; by the altar stands a crowned female figure carrying a sword and pointing to where in a cloud God the Father appears with angels and below Him the figure of the dead Christ supported by a cherub. It is clear that this fits into no known account of Elijah's career, and its meaning might well remain lost were it not for an engraving of the subject by G. C. Testa after a drawing by his brother Pietro (P1. 2Ib).2 The latter is generally held to have been responsible for many of the figures in the Dughet frescoes and, although there are considerable variations of detail between the engraving and the painting in S. Martino (P1. 21a), the inscription on the engraving explicitly states that it is from a drawing by Pietro Testa for the picture in S. Martino. A drawing, moreover, actually exists, in the Bloxam collection at Rugby school, and corresponds completely with the engraving, save that it has been cut down at either side.3 In the fresco, however, the engraving has not been closely followed; the painted version is much the weaker of the two and treats the subject much less pointedly. The title on the engraving describes what that subject is :

Tito Imperatore andando all'impresa di Gerusalemme consulto Basilide figlio de Profeti, e Priore del Monte Carmelo per sapere l'euento della Guerra, quale le predisse la vittoria contro li hebrei, esprimendosi, che Iddio sdegnato contro di quelli, per la morte che haueuano dato a Christo si doueua sodisfar la giustitia diuina con fulminar dardi contro Gerusalemme. Franc. Petrarcha de Vespasiano ex Suetio, et Tacito. Disegno di Pietro Testa, la cui pittura originale si conserua in S. Martino di Monti in Roma. Rmo P're G'nle de Carmelitani Gio. Anto Filippini Romano. D. D. D. Francus Collignon.4 Pietro Testa delineauit. Gio. Cesare Testa sculpsit.

The central theme is therefore the claims of divine justice, the destruction of Jerusalem as vengeance for the death of Christ; and in the engraving Justice with her sword is the central figure and links by her glance and gesture the two parts of the design, while a straight diagonal leads from the advancing foot of Titus, through the clasped hands of Basilides and the pointing hand of Justitia, to the hand of God leaning upon the brands of vengeance which are presented to him by a flying angel. In the painting the group of figures,

1 A German Carthusian, fl. c. I490o. The Vita was written in German, but translated into Latin and appended to the Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony. Cf. Lezana, op. cit., p. 59. The story dealt with Emerentiana, grandmother of the Virgin, who in 77 B.C. consulted the anchorites of Mt. Carmel as to her marriage : the vision predicts her descendants, on the one branch St. Anne, the Virgin and Christ, on the other Esmeria, Elizabeth and John the Baptist.

2 The engraving is in the Print Room of the British Museum; also in the Pio Collec- tion, Rome. 73-5 X 36.5 cm.

3 59-5 x 36.5 cm. Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, squared in red chalk. Collections of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Lawrence.

4 Francois Collignon, the publisher of the engraving, is the French engraver (1621-71) who was working in Rome in the mid- seventeenth century.

12 T. S. R. BOASE

set as it is in Dughet's large landscape, has lost these subtleties; Justitia stands firmly on the ground instead of emerging from a cloud of flying draperies, and holds her sword stiffly upright on the altar, looking benignly at Basilides, who is now in a conventional attitude of calm prayer: God the Father with an open gesture of welcome places His hand on the dardi, which in the drawing and engraving are torches bursting into flame at His touch, but which are so obscurely treated in the painting that Parboni mistook their nature and represented them apparently as a roll of the law. For the heroic outstretched figure of Christ,' the painting substitutes a heavier type, half enveloped in drapery, and clumsily held in a sitting posture by the efforts of a somewhat insufficient angel.2 In the background of the engraving, the soldiers, with blast of trumpet, march to Jerusalem : in the fresco they stand in vague conversation, and in Parboni's rendering appear to march directly into the hillside. The horse and several angels have disappeared altogether, while the leg of the angel with the brands, seen below the arm of Justice, has been joined to a cherub's head and converted into a new figure, unrepresented in the engraving.3 The painted group can in fact hardly be Testa's work, or if it is he carried it out with none of that concentration on the subject which distinguishes the engraved version; and the subject required concentration, for it was one that was unfamiliar and only vaguely understood. By Parboni's time as we have seen nothing was known of it, and it was to him simply 'a vision.'4 In

1 There is a red chalk drawing for this figure in the British Museum : the pose is identical except that the right hand is visible, lying across the right thigh : there is an engraving (reversed) based on it by G. C. Testa, also in the British Museum. The pose is strongly reminiscent of that of the body of Christ in Poussin's "Lamentation over Christ" in Munich, painted 1628-31.

2 The pose, unsatisfactory as it is, is not unlike that used by Testa in his Deposition in S. Paolino at Lucca (reproduced L'Arte, XXIV, I92I, p. 77), and also in his altar piece in S. Martino itself, the Vision of S. An- gelo Carmelitano. (Photograph, L.U.C.E. 586). The altar pieces in S. Martino carried on the Carmelite story. Titi, Studio di Pittura nelle chiese di Roma, 1674, p. 270, mentions a Baptism of St. Cyril and a portrait of St.Albert on the altars next to Testa's St. Angelo. The Carmelite St. Cyril lived in the first half of the thirteenth century, and a work, De Processu Ordinis, is attributed to him. He is, however, frequently confused in Carmelite references with St. Cyril of Jerusalem, d. 386, and St. Cyril of Alexandria, d. 444-

3 The drawing, though, allowing for the fact that it is cut, of the same size as the engraving, is squared, and has some notes written on it apparently in Testa's hand,

which are only partly decipherable, but which appear to be instructions as to scale for enlarging. There are however too many divergencies for it to have been the actual working drawing for the painting as it now stands. Either the figures in the fresco are poor work by some assistant of Dughet, based roughly on Testa's design, or, which the condition of the painting renders poss- ible, they are the result of restoration carried out, with little understanding of the subject, at some period before Parboni's engraving of I8Io. If the first hypothesis is the right one, it is possible that Testa's death in I650 necessitated the intervention of another hand.

4 Emile MAle, L'Art Religieux apres le concile de Trente, 1932, p. 447, in an excellent analysis of Carmelite iconography, correctly identifies the subject by means of the engraving. Karl Woermann writing in I89O describes it as representing "wie sich ihm (Elias) die Herr- lichkeit des Himmels offenbart." (Article on "Kirchenlandschaften" in Repertorium fir Kunstwissenschaft, XIII, I890, p. 355). An- derson's photograph (No. 17989) entitles it 'Storia di Elia profeta' and it is reproduced under that title in the Studio, 1931, p. 115- E. K. Waterhouse, Baroque Painting in Rome, 1937, P- 95, refers to the engraving for the

21

a-Dughet, Prophecy of Basilides. Fresco. Rome, S. Martino ai Monti (p. I I I)

b--Pietro Testa, Prophecy of Basilides. Engraving (p. II I)

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CARMELITE LEGEND II3

the I640's, when Testa drew it, it was a tale that had been given some prominence, but even then it was a debatable matter, whose use and development cast some interesting lights on the propaganda methods of the time.

The reference on the engraving to Petrarch is not easily traced. There is no mention of the incident in any of the lives of Vespasian and Titus appended by Lombardo della Seta to Petrarch's De Viris Illustribus, all of which, in various versions, went by Petrarch's name. It occurs in fact in his De rebus memorandis, which was printed at Basel in 1625 in a collected volume of Vitae Virorum illustrium by various hands. Here Petrarch states that Vespasian (Titus as will be seen is a later elaboration of the story) while in Palestine consulted the oracle at Mt. Carmel, and was told that he would succeed in all that he attempted. The section is headed Carmeli Deus, and is followed by one on Apollo. It is clear that Petrarch gives the incident no Christian connotation. His phraseology shows that it is based on Suetonius De Vita Caesarum VIII. 5-

Apud Iudaeam Carmeli dei oraculum consulentem ita confirmavere sortes, ut quidquid cogitaret volveretque animo, quamlibet magnum, id esse proventurum pollicerentur.

Tacitus (Historiae II, 78) is much more detailed Est Iudaeam inter Syriamque Carmelus : ita vocant montem deum-

que. Nec simulacrum deo aut templum -sic tradidere maiores-: ara tantum et reverentia. Illic sacrificanti Vespasiano, cum spes occultas versaret animo, Basilides sacerdos inspectis identidem extis "Quicquid est" inquit, "Vespasiane, quod paras, seu domum extruere seu prolatare agros sive ampliare servitia, datur tibi magna sedes, ingentes termini, multum hominum." Has ambages et statim exceperat fama et tunc aperiebat; nec quicquam magis in ore vulgi.

It is from him therefore that the name Basilides enters the story, though the same name occurs in Suetonius (VIII, 7) in another story of Vespasian, where, consulting the auspices in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, he sees his freedman Basilides in a vision offering him garlands, and immediately news arrives that Vitellius has been slain in Rome. Tacitus has this tale too, only with him it is an unnamed Egyptian magnate, who miraculously appears though several days journey distant. Suetonius's final comment:

Tunc divinam speciem et vim responsi ex nomine Basilidis inter- pretatus est,

gives the probable explanation of the association of the name with this group of prophetic anecdotes.

Between these statements of Petrarch, Tacitus and Suetonius and the title on the engraving there is a considerable gap, which is bridged by the use made of the Basilides incident by various Carmelite authors in their

subject of the fresco, but in transcribing it an unwonted slip of the pen has converted

this elusive incident into 'Basilides pro- phecying to Hadrian.'

114 T. S. R. BOASE

enlargement of Carmelite claims during the seventeenth century. They were ever ready to weld any mention of Carmel into a new link for their chain of evidence, and, despite grave difficulties, there were some encouraging points, particularly in the Tacitean version.

Nec simulacrum deo aut templum: ara tantum et reverentia

in particular suggested that here was no pagan sacrifice, but the continuing Jewish tradition of no graven image, coming down from Elijah and christianised by the Carmelites of the time. Laevinius Torrentius, the learned Bishop of Antwerp, in his commentary on Suetonius,' when dealing with this passage, had written in 1578

Carmelum vocant Tacitus et Suetonius Deum qui sine nomine est, et regnat in aeternum.

Casaubon somewhat earlier had also commented on the passage, and with a rare flight of ingenuity supported it by emending a passage in the fifteenth century poem of the Novarese, Petrus Apollonius Collatinus. In the latter's De excidio Ierosolymitano occurred the verse

Matathiademque locutum Vera tibi vatem, et Corneli oracula disces.

Casaubon read for Corneli Carmeli, and claimed that this was the same oracle as mentioned by Suetonius. This curious emendation was very well received : Thomas Dempster quoted it in his edition of a popular work, the De Bello a Christianis contra Barbaros Gesto of Benedict Accolti, and from there, as well as directly from Casaubon, it became a common reference in Carmelite writings, though it is clear that Casaubon himself makes no implication as to the Christian nature of the prophecy.2

The next scholar to deal with the question, Gilbert Genebrard, Archbishop of Aix, went a step further in his Chronographia and identified the oracle of Suetonius with the cell of Elijah, though without basing any arguments upon it. This work appeared in 1584, and enjoyed sufficient success to be reissued in I6o9.3

These were the hints on which the legend was based. Diego de Coria in his Dilucidario quotes the passages from Tacitus and Suetonius as specific witnesses to the case for the Carmelite origins. The Petrarcan passage is also quoted, and may have been the clue from which he worked. The Roman historians, he argued, were not contemporary authorities, and moreover were uninformed and prejudiced. They mistook the nature of the sacrifice, and failed to realise that it was a Christian not a pagan ceremony. Vespasian's conquest of Judea fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel, and it was therefore fitting that God should confirm his forthcoming election

1 First printed Liege, 1578. Reprinted in a collected volume of commentaries on Suetonius de XII Caesaribus, Paris, 161o. The passage will be found on p. 1562 of the latter edition.

2 Casaubon's commentary is also printed in the 16Io edition of Suetonius, p. 210,

The De excidio was first printed in 1481, the De Bello contra Barbaros in I532 : Dempster's edition appeared in 1622.

3 Genebrard died in 1597 : his Chrono- graphia appeared in 1584, and in an enlarged and revised edition published at Lyons in I609.

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CARMELITE LEGEND I15

to the Empire. Basilides and Vespasian, the Christian and the pagan, are prefigured by Elisha and Naaman, and the simple altar described is that of Elijah, where he saw the cloud 'no bigger than a man's hand,' that mystic cloud which in its turn prefigured, so the Carmelites held, the mystery of the Incarnation.

Eighteen years later Petrus Saracenus definitely names Basilides as the third general of the Order, though he admits that little is known of him. (De Basilide pauca, sed magnifica suppetunt). He modifies the story however by substituting Titus for Vespasian, places it in 71 A. D., and states that he wished to consult the oracle by pagan methods, but "Virgine operante," is dissuaded and Basilides instead offers a mass for his success in the war. The fact that Tacitus and Suetonius write of Vespasian and explicitly mention 'inspectis extis' and 'sortes' is dismissed as the ignorance of authors writing some time after the event.' In 1639 Marco Antonio Alkgre goes back to Vespasian :

Deo precibus a Basilide et caeteris Carmelitis exorato lacrymis et ieiunio devicto, perceptum est, Vespasianum Romam ire coronandum.

Alkgre's version of the history of Carmelite origins was the most romantic that had as yet appeared, and actually was condemned by the Sorbonne in I642 and placed on the Index in 1649. Some play of imagination therefore is to be expected, but he takes a modest line with regard to Basilides, admitting that little is known of him, and quoting de Coria as his sole authority.2

After the debacle of Alkgre's book, reinforcement came with the publication in 1643 of the first volume of the Acta Sanctorum. The Vita S. Telesphori was entrusted to a Carmelite author, Segherus Paulus, who took the opportunity to review the early stages of the Order. He quotes both Tacitus and Suetonius in full, and accepts Basilides as a prior of the Order. He is also interested in the reference of Tacitus to the altar without image or temple, as this might seem to throw doubt on the church built in honour of the Virgin in, as Segherus asserts, 38 A. D. : he promises a later discussion of this in the July volume, under the festival of Our Lady of Carmel on July I6th : but it was to be long after his day that the July volume appeared.3

These researches were summarised in the four volume work by J. B. Lezana which appeared from 1645-56 and which aims at a thorough and com- prehensive statement. With regard to Basilides, Lezana admits that little is known of him, and that Saracenus had insufficient evidence for calling him the third general of the Order. He accepts, however, the Vespasian incident as proving the existence of a Christian community at Carmel. The mentions of 'sortes' and of 'inspectis extis' are dismissed as the prejudiced terms of pagan authors, writing after the event, and he quotes both Casaubon and Torrentius as witnesses to the real meaning of the passage.4

Lezana's volumes were intended as a definitive work. As such it is

1 Menologium Carmelitarum, Bologna, 1627, pp. 77-80. 2 M.A. Algre, Paradisius Carmelitici, Lyons, 1639, p. 141. For Alkgre cf. Zimmermann,

Article "Carmelites," in Catholic Encyclopaedia. 3 Acta Sanctorum: Jan. V. Vita Telesphori,

II, notes a, b. 4 Op. cit., II, pp. 184 f.

1 6 T. S. R. BOASE

already clear that they were much needed. The story of Basilides may be an extreme instance, but there were others almost as vexed and as rich in variants. In 1651 Jean Doubdan, a canon of St. Pauls at St. Denis, visited the Holy Land. At Mount Carmel he found four Carmelites, who were facing the constant dangers of the time under the leadership of a certain Father Prosper, a man who, despite persecutions, had been living for some twenty years on the mountain, often as the solitary representative of his Order. They showed the canon all the various sacred places, amongst them the ruins of a great monastery, built for them when their rule was first given them, and which must have been crusaders' work. Down below, at the foot of the hill was a grotto said to have been the usual habitation of Elijah, and also the spot frequently visited by the Virgin : it was here, the brothers told him, that their prior Agabus in 83 A. D. had built a chapel in her honour, the first so dedicated.'

Suetone, the learned canon continues, rapporte que du temps que Vespasian y estoit, il y auoit quelque Oratoire celebre, & que ce Prince y alla consulter l'Oracle du Dieu qui y estoit adore, qui l'asseura que tous ses desseins, pour grands qu'ils pfissent estre, reiissiroient tousiours a son contentement. Sqauoir, si c'estoit quelque reste de l'idolatrie de Beelzebut, ou Baal, qui estoit autrefois adore a Tyr & & sainct Iean d'Acre, oh on void encore un vieux Temple qui luy estoit dedid, ou plustost le vray Dieu qui y estoit seruy & adore par les successeurs & Disciples des Prophetes qui y demeuroient en ce mesme temps-lk, sous la conduite de ce Prophete Agabus, duquel i'ay parlk cydessus : ou peut-estre encore qu'il alla consulter ce mesme Prophete, qui luy donna de la part de Dieu ces agreables reponces.2

This Agabus, Doubdan says, was the same mentioned in the Acts3 who "came down from Judaea" to Caesaria and

took Paul's girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle.

This prophetic figure had already been claimed by the Carmelites, and appears in most of the Carmelite histories, though, as they considered that he had been converted by John the Baptist and had been one of the suitors of the Virgin (this from the fifteenth century Vita Sanctae Annae of Peter Dorlandus), they placed his death at a date before the fall of Jerusalem. Brother Prosper and his brave companions were clearly not in close touch with recent developments in the historiography of their order, and were a little confused as to the various points in the case. It shows at least that Basilides had no strong local tradition, and it shows also that locally the real interest of the passages from Tacitus and Suetonius was related to the question of the shrine built in honour of the Virgin, a theme which figures prominently in Daniel a Virgine Maria, whose Vinea Carmeli appeared in 1662 and whose

1 The Church at Tortosa, said to have been founded by St. Peter, was another claimant to this honour.

2 M. I. Doubdan, Le Voyage de la Terre- Sainte, Paris, 1661, p. 477.

3 XXI, Io, I1.

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CARMELITE LEGEND 117

Speculum Carmelitanum in I68o is the last full treatment of the Basilides theme. Various as these versions may be, none corresponds exactly with Testa's

iconography. The Carmelite authors emphasise the continuity of worship upon the mountain; with Testa it is the prophecy that is the dominating and important event, and of this none of the writers speaks. De Coria, it is true, refers to Vespasian as fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel and Saracenus's substitution of Titus must have sprung from some feeling that the actual conqueror of Jerusalem was a more suitable figure for a Christian legend. But the visual image of the divine vengeance seems to come from Testa's own imagination, and, in its choice of emphasis within the framework of the story, is an invention which draws upon much popular tradition.? Vespasian and Titus were both favourite figures of mediaeval romance. The Vindicta Salvatoris, the account of the taking of Jerusalem and the attendant miracles, the cure of Vespasian from cancer of the nose, the end of Pilate, and the later lives of Veronica and Joseph of Arimathea, was known as early as the eight century, and many versions of it became current.2 In these sometimes Vespasian, sometimes Titus is the leader, and one version, influenced perhaps by the analogy of father and son, represents them as both present at the taking and destruction of the Holy City. Josephus, too, who is mentioned in Suetonius in close connection with the Carmel passage (while being bound at Vespasian's orders he prophecies that he will soon be released and by an emperor) figures largely in the mediaeval tales, and even in the seventeenth century Vespasian and Titus must have been recognisable as figures of semi-sacred association. Several Carmelite authors refer to a legend, based on a passage in Josephus, that Titus protected some monks of Mt. Carmel after the capture of the city.3 Possibly the use of Titus in the drawing is a piece of rationalisation : it is the vengeance on Jerusalem that justifies the fame of the two emperors, but as a historical fact it was Titus who took Jerusalem; therefore it is to him that the prophecy must have been made, and so the old popular idea of divine judgment overrides the Vespasian of Tacitus and Suetonius and also the Vespasian of Lezana and his fellow scholars, called in as witness to Carmelite antiquity.

It was in 1668 that the storm broke. The Bollandists had in their first volume accepted Basilides, but with the new standards of criticism established by Henschen and Papebroch that could not stand. The March volume claimed that there was no evidence of the Order's existence before the mid twelfth century, and in the April volume (1675) Papebroch followed up his attack in his Vita de Beato Alberto :

1 The probable period for Dughet's work in S. Martino is I647-50. L. Lopresti, "Pietro Testa," L'Arte, XXIV, 1921, p. 81. Mhle, op. cit., p. 446, n. 2. places them earlier but misdates Lezana's second volume. Testa always reveals himself in his treatment of themes as a man of individual and imaginative mind. This drawing, with its curiously intense quality, must have only shortly preceded his suicide. He drowned himself in the Tiber in I650.

2 Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, 1853, pp. 448-63. M. R. James, The Apocryphal Gospels, p. 159. J. A. Herbert, Titus and Vespasian, Roxburgh Club, 1905, and for a recent discussion of the question H. Lewy, "Josephus the Physician," Journal of the Warburg Institute, I, pp. 221-42.

3 Cf. Daniel a Virgine Maria, Vinea Carmeli, Antwerp, 1662, p. I86.

118 T. S. R. BOASE

Vide autem ad quam insulsas conjecturas ea solicitudo impulerit quosdam novissimos scriptores.

And the particular 'insulsae conjecturae' are the theories about Basilides. "They make the augurer of Suetonius," he complained, unfortunately quoting the passage from Tacitus, "into a follower of Elijah,"

Basilidem ex gentili aruspice Elianum facerent Coenobiarcham.' The Carmelites retaliated and a vast dispute began. Celebrated scholars such as Du Cange intervened unguardedly, comparing the Carmelite myths of origin to those of the Greeks and Romans. Finally the Pope stayed the quarrel. But Basilides was not an issue on which the Carmelites fought. They had always had some doubts of it themselves. The 'third prior' was allowed to lapse : his meeting with Vespasian, lost in its wide landscape, became a forgotten incident, its meaning unknown to later generations. As early as I714 when Hadrianus Relandus published his Palestina ex Monu- mentis Veteribus Illustrata2 he quotes the passage from Tacitus, but only to illustrate the use of the name Carmel, and to prove that there was no temple at that time on the mountain:

Verum Tacitus negat templum in Carmelo fuisse.

1 Acta Sanctorum: April VIII, Cap. VI, 50. 2 Utrecht, i714, I, p. 329.