The Spirituality of the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance
A summary of the lectures given by Blessed Titus Brandsma in the US in 1936*

• Antiquity of the Carmelite school.
• Primitive and fundamental elements.
• Special vocation to the mystical life.
• Proper ideas on the mixed life.
• Comtemplation remains “the better part”.
• Special love of solitude.
• Practice of the Presence of God.
• Adoration and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.
• Chivalric ideal school.
• Harmonious middle course between infused and acquired comtemplation.
• Intimate relationship between the sensible, intellectual, and affective elements of contemplation.
• Decline and reforms.
• Mitigation of the Rule. Appeal for methodical prayer. Blessed John Soreth.
• Abstinence and the mitigation of the Rule.
• Establishment of the Carmelite nuns under the mitigated Rule.
• Affinity of the Carmelite School to Ruysbroeck and the Devotio Moderna.
• Strict observance under the mitigated Rule. Reform of Touraine and John of St. Samson. Aspiration.
• Two branches of the same trunk.

*Translation of the article "Carmes" in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, fasc. VII, col. 156-171.