Saint Albert of Jerusalem

Saint Albert of Jerusalem was an Italian canon regular, bishop of Vercelli, and then Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. To the hermits living on Mount Carmel he gave a formula of life that remains the rule of the Carmelite family to this day. He was murdered during a procession. The Church commemorates him on September 14.

He was born around the middle of the twelfth century in Emilia, most likely at Castel Gualtieri; the exact year of his birth is not known, and scholars disagree about the origins of his family. He entered the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross at Mortara near Pavia and in 1180 became prior there. In 1184 he became bishop of Bobbio, and the following year he was transferred to Vercelli, which he governed for twenty years.

The popes entrusted him with diplomatic missions. He conducted negotiations between Pope Clement III and the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and according to old accounts the emperor made him a prince of the Empire. He also reconciled feuding cities of northern Italy. He gained experience as a lawgiver: he took part in drawing up a rule for the Humiliati of Milan.

In 1205 Albert became Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Pope Innocent III also appointed him his legate in the Holy Land. He arrived there in 1206. Jerusalem was then in Muslim hands, so the patriarch resided at Acre, the ancient Ptolemais. There too he often acted as a mediator in disputes.

At that time a group of Latin-rite hermits was living by the spring on Mount Carmel. At their request Albert wrote for them a short formula of life, addressed to a brother designated by the letter B. and to the other hermits; later tradition named him Brocard. It is not known exactly when this happened; the Carmelites take the year 1207 by convention. The formula directs the brothers to choose a prior and promise him obedience, to keep chastity and to own nothing of their own, and each of them to stay in his cell, pondering the law of the Lord day and night and keeping watch in prayer. In 1226 Pope Honorius III ordered the hermits to observe it, and in 1247 Innocent IV mitigated some of its provisions and approved it as a rule. The mitigated rule allowed houses to be founded not only in solitary places, and the Carmelites became a mendicant order.

Albert died on September 14, 1214, at Acre, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. During the procession he was struck down with a blade by the Master of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, whom the patriarch had earlier rebuked and removed from office because of his scandalous life.

Albert himself was not a Carmelite, but it was the Carmelite Order that most faithfully kept his memory, and it calls him its lawgiver. The Carmelites formerly kept his feast on April 8, and today they keep it on September 17. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on September 14, the day of his death, as the bishop who gave a rule to the hermits of Mount Carmel.