Church of San Niccolò al Carmine

The Reform of the Discalced Carmelites

During the fifteenth century, at the request of the friars, the Pope granted the Order a less rigorous Rule of Life and many concessions, and as a result the original deprivation of the first communities was progressively loSaint The decline in morals in many Carmelite communities reached the point that Saint Teresa of Avila in Spain, aided by Saint John of the Cross and Fr. Gerolamo Gracián, established the reform of the Carmelite Order in 1592 , in order to curb the proliferation of the excesses.
Thus a new branch, parallel to the first order, came into being: the “Discalced Carmelites” - or “Teresians” - friars and nuns who, from that moment on, would follow a Rule of Life which was much more rigid and closer to that of the first Carmelite friars.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Order continued to prosper all over the world, even on account of to the intense activity of new religious and lay groups, such as the Third Order and the Confraternity of the Scapular, whose members helped the Carmelites in their charitable support of the people.
The suppression of religious orders following the French Revolution led to a drastic reduction in the number of Carmelite friars and nuns, but during the twentieth century they were able to return to the old convents, and also found new ones.
The Carmelite Order currently counts includes a total of about 2000 ecclesiastics all over the world at the service of the Christian communities.