Saint Simon Stock

Simon Stock was an English Carmelite who lived in the thirteenth century, when the Carmelite hermits from Mount Carmel in the Holy Land were settling in Europe. Little is known for certain about his early life; a later legend says he lived as a hermit in the hollow trunk of a tree, which may explain the name "Stock." He is believed to have served as prior general of the order from around 1254, guiding it as it became a mendicant order of friars, like the Franciscans and Dominicans, and founding houses in university towns such as Cambridge, Oxford, Paris and Bologna.

Carmelite tradition holds that in a time of great trial for the order, Simon prayed to Mary, Flower of Carmel, and that she appeared to him holding the Brown Scapular as a sign of her protection. He died in Bordeaux, France, around 1265. Though never formally canonized, his cult was approved for the Carmelites and he is venerated as a saint.

Carmelites celebrate his feast on May 16, and many people are enrolled in the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on this day. His relics were returned in 1951 to Aylesford Priory in Kent, England, a Carmelite friary that is now a popular place of pilgrimage.