The Stella Maris Monastery is a Catholic Christian monastery for Discalced Carmelite monks, located on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. The main church inside the Stella Maris Monastery is said to contain the Cave of Elijah, a grotto associated with the Biblical prophet Elijah. It is also known as the Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel for monks, to distinguish it from the nearby Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel for nuns, located higher up on Mount Carmel. History Crusader-period Carmelite beginnings In the 12th century, during the Kingdom of Jerusalem rule of the region, groups of religious hermits began to inhabit the caves of this area in imitation of Elijah the Prophet. In the early 13th century, their leader and prior (referred to in the rule only as 'Brother B', although sometimes claimed despite an absence of supporting evidence to be either Saint Brocard or Saint Bertold) asked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Albert Avogadro, to provide the group with a written rule of life, which he did. This was the originating act of the Order, who took the name 'Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel' or Carmelites. An oratory was dedicated to the Virgin Mary in her aspect of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, the latter part of which translates in Latin to Stella Maris. Within a few decades, when the capital of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Saint Jean d'Acre, fell in 1291 to the Mamluks, these monastic hermits were forced to leave the Holy Land. The Carmelite order spread throughout Europe, where, from 1238 onwards, the Order had begun to found houses -- at the end of Saint Louis' first crusade to the Holy Land in 1254, he had taken six Carmelites back to France with him. New locations (1631-1821) In 1631 the Discalced branch of the Order returned to the Holy Land, led by the Venerable Father Prosper. He had a small monastery constructed on the promontory at Mount Carmel, close to the lighthouse, and the friars lived there until 1761, when Zahir al-Umar, the then effectively independent ruler of Galilee, ordered them to vacate the site and demolish the monastery. The Order then moved to the present location, which is directly above the grotto where the prophet Elijah is said to have lived. Here they built a large church and monastery, first clearing the