By Alcuin Schachenmayr, O.Cist.
Image: Sarah sofía at English Wikipedia
A truly global Catholic devotion, the Brown Scapular or Scapular of Mount Carmel, represents the habit of the Carmelites. Even if largely unknown in today’s secularized Europe, it is a common Catholic devotion the world over. Legend states that it started with a vision received in Cambridge. On July 16, 1251, Simon Stock, a Carmelite superior who founded a house of studies there, had a vision of the Virgin Mary. She presented him with the Brown Scapular, promising that the faithful who wore it and fulfilled the obligations associated with it would not “suffer the flames” of purgatory. Although most historians and Carmelites today consider Stock to have been a purely legendary figure, still he stands for a crucial period in Carmelite history: the movement of the order from the Holy Land to the West and the introduction of a supremely popular form of personal piety into Catholic tradition, the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
This devotional object is worn by millions of Catholics the world over, but is largely invisible in everyday life since it is worn directly on the skin and therefore concealed by the clothing worn over it. It is called a scapular, which almost all monks and nuns have as a matter of course. It is the cloth worn over their shoulders and reaches far beneath the knee on the front and back. Benedictines have black scapulars, Dominicans have white ones, and so on. The Carmelite habit is brown. Because a layman would look strange wearing such a garment over his secular clothing, the novel idea was to cut out two small pieces about the size of a large postage stamp and connect them by cords or ribbons. One part hangs at the level of your chest, and the other rests on your upper back. It is, then, a miniature religious habit with all the spiritual benefits promised by Mary in 1251. Furthermore, it symbolizes spiritual participation in the prayers of all living and dead Carmelites and allows millions who live in the world to participate in Mount Carmel’s particularly Marian piety.
There are many other scapulars out there, and in tropical climates many people wear medals instead of the cloth since medals hold up better to humidity. But the Brown Scapular is the one that went around the world, and the big Carmelite feast commemorating it on July 17 is the only one of its kind in the Roman liturgical calendar.
Most Catholics who wear the Brown Scapular are not officially consecrated as members of religious orders, but they seek to be associated with Carmelite spirituality and the graces given to religious who have consecrated themselves to Mary. Don’t forget that in Catholic ecclesiology, there is an economy of grace that allows us to participate in the fruit of all the good works of religious, be they prayers, meditations, Masses, fasting, or penances. In order to accentuate this aspect of consecration, the scapular should be donned the first time in the presence of a priest who blesses the cloth and then enrolls the layman in a scapular confraternity.
Medieval scapular piety was deeply connected with purgatory. In 1334, the pope issued the “Bulla Sabbatina,” which promised that Mary would descend into purgatory every Saturday (Sabbato) in order to free all those who were wearing scapulars from the flames. This vision took its cue from the Stock legend, in which Mary had allegedly told the English Carmelite that those wearing the scapular “Quicumque moriens hoc habitum induerit, non patietur ignem aeternum.” Cynics have called it a “Get out of Hell free” devotional, or “fire insurance for purgatory,” but there is no denying the deeper dimension of penance and mercy in the mystical body of Christ. The scapular is a constant reminder of divine judgment and eternal life. Very many popes (in all epochs since the 13th century) have been ardent defenders of the Brown Scapular, with St. John Paul II wearing it all of his life, starting in childhood.
Although numerous papal bulls confirm how popular the devotion to the scapular was in the Middle Ages, it is a supremely modern phenomenon, brought into full bloom through the Catholic Reform to save Marian devotions from Protestant neglect. It became a hugely popular subject in baroque and rococo art, with famous renditions of Stock receiving the brown cloth from Mary painted by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Alessandro Tiarini, to name just two examples. Where scapular confraternities became popular and wealthy – in cities like Venice and Milan – frescoes in their halls and churches showcased the subject. Simon Stock is often shown, as is St. Teresa of Avila, since she was so important for revitalizing the Carmelites in the 16th century. These paintings do not represent historical facts (Stock probably never lived, and Teresa lived in the wrong era), but the theological content of the scene is deeply significant. And since the scapular is a real object in everyday Carmelite life, it retains its supernatural power even if you don’t accept the Simon Stock legend as fact.
The scapular helps cultivate a spirituality of vesting or enrobement, an important theme in Mariology, especially since Mary is considered to have “clothed” Jesus with her own flesh. It is therefore no wonder that she often gives clothing to saintly monks and nuns in medieval hagiography. Especially reform orders like the Cistercians or the Dominicans have legends about the Mother of God descending upon their monasteries and giving them parts of the habit. Mary’s flesh had an immaculate quality all its own; she herself was taken into heaven at the end of her earthly life because – having never known sin – her body could not decay. “When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption,” writes St. Paul to the Corinthians, “and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.”