In compiling The Ten Books on the Way of Life and Great Deeds of the Carmelites in the late fourteenth century, Felip Ribot, a friar from Catalonia, constructed a legendary history of his religious order that would dominate its spirituality for centuries.
The text, better known under the title The Book of the First Monks, was widely read across medieval Europe. It begins with the Carmelites' supposed foundation in the Holy Land by the Old Testament prophet Elijah, and traces the Order's adoption of Christianity and its international expansion. Highlighting the Carmelite's devotion to the Mother of God, their attentiveness to the Bible, and the Rule of Life by which they were guided, Ribot attempts to show his Order's antiquity, its privileged place within the Christian Church, and even its unique role in the history of salvation.
Held up as a spiritual masterpiece by the likes of Saint Teresa of Jesus (of Avila), and derided as a work of fantasy by rival religious orders, The Ten Books has attracted a surge of revived interest in recent years from historians and theologians. Carmelites and not-believers, scholars and the wider public.