Caroline Bruzelius, Preaching, Building, and Burying. Friars and the Medieval City

Abstract

Although there are very few references to Carmelites in this book, nevertheless B. makes some valuable suggestions that Carmelite  historians would do well to consider. The author is Professor of History of Art at Duke University, NC, and a former Director of the  American Academy in Rome. The specific points where Carmelites are mentioned cast the order in the role of a latecomer to the  medieval city, compared with the Dominicans and Franciscans. More than that, B. claims that the Carmelites, Augustinians and Friars  of the Sack represented competition and precipitated an economic crisis among the mendicants who had been present in an urban  environment for longer. The arrival of the “newer” mendicants opened up different streams of income, or perhaps expanded existing  ones, in the form of bequests from well-off families to all mendicant orders.