Читать книгу Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVII, August 1852, Vol. V - Various - Страница 19

The Carmelite monks throughout Europe were every where greatly displeased at the publication of this account, which cut off at a single blow some two thousand years from the antiquity of their order, even supposing their pretensions to go no farther back than to the time of Elijah. A protracted and very bitter controversy arose. Volumes after volumes were published – the quarrel, as is usual with religious disputes, degenerating in character as it advanced, and growing continually more and more rancorous and bitter, until at last the Pope interposed and put an end to the dispute by a bull. The bull did not attempt to decide the question; it only silenced the combatants. Nothing more was to be said by any party, or under any pretext, on the origin of the institution of the Carmelites, but the whole subject was entirely interdicted. This bull, the issuing of which was a most excellent act on the part of his Holiness, proved an effectual remedy for the evil which it was intended to suppress. The dispute was suddenly terminated, and though the question was in form left undecided, it was settled in fact, for it has since been generally admitted that the story of John Phocas was true, and that Mt. Carmel, though inhabited by hermits and individual recluses long before, was not the seat of a regularly organized society of Monks until nearly twelve centuries after the Christian era.