The particular charism that gives rise to a Religious Order are closely intertwined. The Carmelites can trace their documented history back to the Formula of Life (c. 1206-14) that Albert, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, addressed to some Latin hermits on Mount Carmel and to their leader; Originally a group of hermit-brothers living under obedience to their chosen Prior, the group were formally recognised as a Religious Order of hermit-brother-friars when Pope Innocent IV approved an adapted version of Albert’s Formula of Life as the Carmelite Rule in 1247. The following centuries witnessed the gradual rise and slow demise of the so-called 'Elijan succession', the claim that being founded on a monastic basis by the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, the Order had a much earlier origin and a different identity than would have appeared to be the case during the middle years of the thirteenth century. The Elijan succession has had its critics and its supporters since it was first proposed and this book traces both its gradual emergence and its gradual decline following the advent of critical Hagiography from the late fifteenth century. As the Elijan succession grew to become the dominant tradition in the Order, the role of st Albert in the foundation of the Carmelites was first sidelined and then obscured. By the sixteenth-century even such a significant Carmelite figure as St Teresa of Avila makes no mention of Albert in any of her extant writings