A wandering ascetic
Little is known of the life of Simon Stock before 1247, but he may have been a native of Kent, England. Legend has it that the name "Stock" derives from his reputation that, beginning at age twelve, he lived as a hermit in the hollow tree trunk of an oak tree and practised fasting, living on herbs, roots and wild apples. He seems to have gone on pilgrimage (from England?) to the Holy Land, where he joined a group of pilgrims or Crusaders who at the end of the 12th century had  gathered and lived somewhat as hermits at the well of Elijah on Mount Carmel. Carmelite spirituality and art likes to evoke the ancient figure of Elijah and his struggle with the Canaanite gods of Baal.

Return to Europe
When the Saracens made it impossible for that group to stay there, they moved via Cyprus and Sicily to Europe and eventually to Aylesford, Kent, England. In 1254 Simon was elected their superior-general in London. In the moving process they transformed themselves into mendicant friars and founded houses especially in university towns like Oxford and Cambridge in England, Paris in France and Bologna in Italy. In 1271 the first Carmelites to arrive in Ireland built their first house at Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow by the River Barrow. They also founded houses in Spain.

The Carmelite scapular
The story that Our Lady appeared to Simon in Cambridge promising that whoever died wearing the brown Carmelite scapular - a garment over the shoulder-blades - would be saved was the occasion of great devotion.

Simon died at Bourdeaux in France. Never formally canonised, his feast was approved for the Carmelite Order in 1564. Simon's relics were brought from Bourdeaux, where he died, to his home at Aylesford in 1951. In art he is depicted as an old man in the Carmelite habit, or receiving the scapular from Our Lady.