The English Followers of Elijah, the latest gem from Carmelite historian Richard Copsey, mirrors the Latin title (Anglorum Heliades) of a work by another Carmelite historian, the sixteenth-century friar, John Bale (1495-1563). Writing in the 1530s, Bale set about producing a history of the English province, a text which he later supplemented with two catalogues of Carmelite saints, running first from Elijah to Berthold, and then from Brocard to Bale’s own time. Copsey’s endeavours are no less ambitious in scope; he recently produced the Biographical Register of Carmelites in England and Wales 1240-1540 (St Albert’s Press, 2020), a work which documents all the medieval Carmelites who appear in the historical record of the province during this period, nearly five thousand figures in total. This latest work, designed to be more accessible and less formal, takes forty-three of the most notable figures, presenting them with additional descriptive information and historical context, to set them in their time and place, or rather to bring them to life for us, the English Carmelites of the present day. The figures selected by Copsey span the life of the English province from its origin in 1242 to its suppression in 1538, thereby providing an overview of the province from its inception, through its flourishing in the fourteenth century, to the travails of the Reformation and its eventual suppression by the combined efforts of Cromwell and Henry VIII.
Within this history some striking points emerge. First the ability of Carmelites to gain (and retain) prominent positions in medieval society is remarkable. Our forty-two Carmelite friars (only one biography concerns a female) occupy important positions not only within the Order, but also across the wider church serving as bishops and papal legates, as well as chaplains and confessors to the nobility and even royalty; Thomas Netter preached the homily at the funeral mass of Henry V. Of course, these prominent roles ensure that the names of these Carmelites survive in various historical documents, a point which Copsey acknowledges on a number of occasions. It’s much harder to gain a view of the life of unremarkable Carmelites – especially the lay brothers and the women – whose humble, hidden lives leave little or no mark in the historical record. Nevertheless, Copsey provides enough background information to place his notables in their much broader context, thereby leaving the reader with the impression of being given a great deal of Carmelite history for free.
Another striking aspect of the featured biographies is the mobility of medieval Carmelites as they criss-crossed not just England but mainland Europe on their travels. Indeed, the book opens with an account of John Bale’s own extensive journeys through France and Italy as he filled his notebooks with historical material. At a more local level, the capacity of the Norwich distinction to supply a seemingly unending stream of significant Carmelites, is made even more surprising by the fact that Norwich comprised only five houses, compared with the ten of London and Oxford, and the fourteen of York. Medieval East Anglia proves to be nothing of a backwater, at least in the Carmelite world.
These striking features emerge effortlessly, without being unduly laboured by the author. The book is eminently enjoyable, almost un-put-down-able, as one fascinating character after another emerges from its pages. There are just a few grizzles. At times the tension between the scholarly and the accessible becomes apparent: some paragraphs seem unnecessarily clunky as Copsey explains some relatively basic feature of religious life for the more naïve reader; while the lengthy quotations from original texts can sometimes overburden the biographies and, while being a valuable resource for the scholarly reader, risk taxing the patience of anyone other than the historical enthusiast. A more alert copy editor would have eradicated the rash of extraneous commas which occasionally risk obscuring the meaning of the text, as well as other minor irritations which unnecessarily infuriate the more fanatical. More importantly, some kind of summary or synthesis after the final biography might have provided a useful closure to the text, while also bridging the gap to the eventual reestablishment of the province in the twentieth century. One of the great successes of the book is to convey the vitality of the medieval Carmelites in this country and this would have served to link them with the tradition as it is being lived and loved in England today. None of these minor quibbles should, however, detract from excellence of the text, nor deter anyone from taking it up as not only a fascinating history of our Order in Britain, but also as a reminder of the many captivating characters who have populated it before us.
