>Today, 16 May, is the feast of ...
>
>Simon Stock, Carmelite (1265) - Richard Copsey, please tell
>us more!
>
Who could resist such an invitation from a fair lady?
Leaving aside the pro and contra polemics through the centuries, a local
cult of Simon Stock appears to have originated in Bordeaux around his tomb.
Independent documentary evidence from necrologies tells us that Simon was
an English Carmelite prior general (some time between 1254-65) and died
whilst visiting the Carmelite province of Gascony.
Around 1400, a catalogue of Carmelite saints was written which introduced
the story of a "holy Simon" who had a vision of the Virgin Mary and she
gave him a scapular promising that whoever wore it would never go to hell.
(Almost certainly part of a Carmelite response to similar claims from the
other mendicant orders). This story got attached to the Simon Stock cult
and was propagated by the Carmelites. The wearing of the scapular achieved
enormous popularity among lay people from around 1500 onwards and spread
rapidly throughout Europe and overseas - up to today.
If you want to hear the full story, then come and hear my paper in the
Carmelite session at Leeds in July! (There will also be a paper by Joachim
Smet on the early history of the Order in Palestine - well worth hearing in
view of differing opinions on this nowadays: and another on current
researches into the Carmelites by Kevin Alban)
Richard Copsey, O.Carm.
Richard Copsey, O.Carm.
Institutum Carmelitanum,
Via Sforza Pallavicini 10
00193 Roma
Italy
e-mail [log in to unmask]
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