De Corpore Christi: A Mystical Sermon onthe Eucharist by Conrad of Saint George, O.Carm. (d. ca. 1310)

Abstract

One of the great frustrations for the historian of the early Carmelites is the almost total lack of surviving documents from the first  century of the Order’s existence. We have Constitutions from 1281 and 1294, edited in the 1950s by Ludovico Saggi. These early Constitutions include the Rubrica prima, the oldest written text produced by Carmelites about themselves, probably dating from the 1240s,  for centuries a core statement of Carmelite origin and identity and the ur-text of Carmelite attachment to the Prophet Elijah as  the founder of the Order. A brief letter of the prior general Pierre de Millau to King Edward I of England dates from 1282. The anony  mous chronicle Universis Christifidelibus is perhaps from 1289. Howe ver, the only substantial text by a named Carmelite author from  the 13th century which has been known to date is the circular letter Ignea sagitta of the prior general Nicholas of France in 1271, “the  only major Carmelite text which has survived from this period”.