ABSTRACT
A few years ago in 1997 when the Carmelite Institute in Rome held a seminar to study the Constitutions of the Order from the early surviving edition of 1281 up to the latest of 1995, the author was asked to prepare a paper on the formation of Carmelite students during this period. The Dominicans were the first of the mendicant Orders to establish an organized system of formation. In this they were fortunate because the Dominican rule, from the start, regarded each convent as being a school with its own doctor of theology and in which each friar was a lifelong student. The Dominicans, as usual, appear to have been the earliest to establish a general systematic pattern for the acceptance and training of young applicants. In view of the lack of any provincial records for England, the proportion of students who went to studia particularia is difficult to determine.
