10 – 28 September 2019: the 2019 General Chapter of the Carmelite Order has begun.

General Chapters are the collegiate expression of the legislative and decision-making power of a religious order or institute: an assembly of religious from all over the world, who meet periodically, on an equal footing, to monitor the spiritual and material life of the institute and provide for its needs, to represent it from a legal point of view and to renew its highest institutional offices, through their election by the participants in the assembly. As far as the Carmelite Order is concerned, the oldest testimony of a General Chapter dates back to 1247: this information is derived from the bull with which, in that year, Pope Innocent IV updated and approved the Rule of Carmel (cf. Carmelite Dictionary, edited by E. Boaga, O. Carm., and L. Borriello, O.C.D., 2008).
Our archives hold the original acts of the general chapters from 1318 to 1968: they form a fundamental part of the Order's legal and administrative memory.
In the photo, the general chapter of 1318 (AGOC, II.C.O. III.1, ff. 11v-12r; parchment volume with leather cover).