| The Blessed Martyrs of Compiègne | |
| Birth Date: | 1715–1765 |
| Death Date: | 17 July 1794 |
| Martyred By: | The Committee of Public Safety of the National Convention of Revolutionary France |
| Feast Day: | 17 July |
| Venerated In: | Catholic Church (Carmelite Order) |
| Birth Place: | Various |
| Death Place: | Place du Trône Renversé (modern day Place de la Nation), Paris, France |
| Beatified Date: | 27 May 1906 |
| Beatified Place: | Saint Peter's Basilica, Kingdom of Italy |
| Beatified By: | Pope Pius X |
| Notable Members: |
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The Martyrs of Compiègne were the 16 members of the Carmel of Compiègne, France: 11 Discalced Carmelite nuns, three lay sisters, and two externs (or tertiaries). They were executed by the guillotine towards the end of the Reign of Terror, at what is now the Place de la Nation in Paris on 17 July 1794, and are venerated as beatified martyrs of the Catholic Church. Ten days after their execution, Maximilien Robespierre himself was executed, ending the Reign of Terror. Their story has inspired a novella, a motion picture, a television movie, and an opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites, written by French composer Francis Poulenc.
According to writer William Bush, the number of Christian martyrs greatly expanded in the early years of the French Revolution. Thousands of Christians were killed by the guillotine, as well as by mass deportations, drownings, imprisonments, shootings, mob violence, and "sheer butchery".[1] In 1790, the French Revolutionary government passed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which outlawed religious life.
The community of Carmelite sisters at Compiègne, a commune in northern France, 72 km north of Paris, was founded in 1641, a daughter house of the monastery in Amiens. The community grew rapidly, and "was renowned for its fervor and fidelity".[2] It was supported by the French court from its beginnings, until interrupted by the French Revolution, which was hostile towards religion and the Catholic Church. Shortly after Bastille Day, on 4 August 1790, government officials, with armed guards, interviewed each sister at their convent in Compiègne and forced them to choose between breaking their vows or risking further punishment. They all refused to abandon their lives of obedience, chastity, and poverty.[3] They were allowed to stay at the convent, becoming wards of the state, which entitled them to receive government pensions. The revolutionary government, at the end of 1791, required all clergy to swear a civic oath supporting the Civil Constitution or risk losing their pensions and becoming destitute. At Easter in 1792, the government plundered churches and interrupted services; it was the last Easter the sisters celebrated at Compiègne. Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, the convent's prioress, suggested to the community that they commit themselves to execution, and offer themselves as a sacrifice for France and for the French Church.[4] The prioress almost escaped execution when she returned to her family's home in Paris in order to care for her widowed mother who was ill. However, she returned to Compiègne four days before the execution. All of the sisters were arrested and executed four days later.[5]
In August 1792, the government ordered all women's monasteries closed; the seizure and removal of the Compiègne convent's furnishings occurred on 12 September, and the sisters were forced to leave the convent and re-enter the world on 14 September, the end of their cloistered community. Mother Teresa made arrangements for the 20 sisters living in the convent at the time to hide in the city in four separate apartments and find civilian clothes for them to wear, since the wearing of habits and religious apparel had been outlawed. They were dependent on the charity of friends, and "courageously continued to practice community prayer", despite the government's orders.
In 1794, after the Terror began, the government searched the sisters' apartments for two days; they found letters revealing their "crimes" against the Revolution, which included hostility to the Revolution, strong sympathies to the monarchy, and evidence that they continued to live as a community of consecrated Christian women.[6] They also found two letters written by "the unfortunate"[7] Mulot de la Ménardière to his cousin, Sister Euphrasia of the Immaculate Conception, containing unfavorable criticisms of the Revolution. Mulot was accused of helping them and of being a non-juring priest, even though he was married, and was arrested and imprisoned with the sisters.[8] On 22 June, the sisters and Mulot were arrested and locked up in the former convent of the Visitation, an improvised jail for political prisoners in Compiègne. On 10 July 1794, they were transferred to the Conciergerie Prison in Paris to await trial. The sisters recanted their civic oath while in prison.[9]
During their trial on 17 July 1794, in which they received no legal counsel, Sister Mary-Henrietta tried to force the prosecutor to define the word "fanatic", one of the charges against them. She pretended she did not know what the word meant, thus getting him to admit their fanaticism was due to their religion, which made them "criminals and annihilators of public freedom".[10] Mother Teresa claimed full responsibility for the charges of being counter-revolutionaries and religious fanatics, and defended and insisted on the others' innocence.[11] All 16 sisters, along with Mulot, were sentenced to death. At one point, while waiting for the transportation from the Conciergerie to the site of their executions, one of the nuns, Sister St. Louis, after consulting with Mother Teresa, bartered a fur wrap she owned for a cup of chocolate for the sisters to drink from to give them strength after not being able to eat anything all day.[12] There were 26 nights between their arrest and execution.[13]
On the night of 17 July 1794, the sisters were transported through the streets of Paris in an open cart, a journey that took two hours. During that time, they sang "hymns of praise," including the Miserere, the Salve Regina, the evening vespers, and the Compline. Other sources state that they sang a combination of the Office of the Dead, the vespers, the Compline, and other shorter texts.[14] Onlookers berated them, yelling insults and throwing things at them. While waiting to be executed, a sympathetic woman from the crowd offered the sisters water, but Sister Mary-Henrietta stopped one sister from accepting, insisting that it would break their unity and promising that they would drink when they were in heaven. A crowd gathered, as usual, at the Place du Trône Renversé (now called Place de la Nation), the site of the executions,[15] to watch, but the sisters showed no fear and forgave their guards. The final song the sisters sang was Psalm 116, Laudate Dominum. Sister Constance, a novice, the youngest of the group and the first to die, "spontaneously"[16] began the chant, but it was cut short by the guillotine blade. Each sister joined her and was silenced in the same way.
Before their execution they knelt and chanted the "Veni Creator", as at a profession, after which they all renewed aloud their baptismal and religious vows. Sister Charlotte, who at 78 years of age was the oldest sister, walked with a crutch and was unable to stand up and get out of the cart because her hands were tied and the other sisters were unable to help her. Eventually a guard gathered her up in his arms and threw her on the street; she lay face down on the pavement stones, with no signs of life as the crowd protested against the guard's treatment of her. She stirred, lifted up her blood-smeared face, and warmly thanked the guard for not killing her, "thereby depriving her of her share in her community's glorious witness for Jesus Christ".[17] Sister Mary-Henrietta stood by her prioress until it was her turn to die, helping the 14 other sisters climb the scaffold steps before climbing them herself, and was the second-to-last to die. Mother Teresa died last.[15]
There are no surviving relics of the Martyrs of Compiègne because their heads and bodies were buried, along with 128 other victims executed that day, in a deep, 30-feet square sand-pit in the Picpus Cemetery.[15] Their burial site, located in the back of the cemetery, is marked with two large, gravel-covered quadrangles. The heads and torsos of the 1,306 people who were guillotined at the Place de la Nation between 13 June and 27 July 1794 are buried there. Their names, including the 16 Martyrs of Compiègne as well as Mulot de la Ménardière, are inscribed on marble plaques covering the walls of a nearby church, where prayer is offered continuously.[18] On the day the sisters were killed there were 24 other victims.[19]
The Martyrs of Compiègne were beatified on May 27, 1906.[20] They were the first martyrs of the French Revolution to be so recognized by the Holy See. Their feast day is 17 July.
On February 22, 2022, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Beauvais announced that Pope Francis had accepted the procedure of equipollent canonization for the Martyrs of Compiègne, by which they could be canonized as saints without recognition of a miracle attributed to their intercession.[21] [22]
Ten days after the Martyrs of Compiègne were executed, Maximilien Robespierre was executed, ending the Reign of Terror.[23] French Catholics of the time believed that the public executions of the nuns "helped bring about the end to the horrors of the revolution" and hastened the end of the Reign of Terror.[24]
Three of the sisters were away from the community at the time of the arrests and so were not executed along with the others. One of these, Marie de l'Incarnation (Françoise Geneviève Philippe), later wrote an account of the execution, History of the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne, which was published in 1836.[25] The story of the Martyrs of Compiègne has inspired a novella, an unproduced film, a play, and an opera. In 1931, German writer Gertrude von le Fort, a student of Ernst Troeltsch and a convert to Catholicism, drew on the History to write a novella, The Song at the Scaffold, told from the viewpoint of the fictional character Blanche de la Force, "a young aristocrat haunted by fear, who seeks peace in the convent".
French Dominican Raymond-Leopold Bruckberger and cinematographer Phillippe Agostini developed a film based on the novella, and in 1947, they persuaded Georges Bernanos to write the dialogue. The film was never produced, but the text written by Bernanos was staged as a play that premiered in 1951 in Zurich and ran for 300 performances the following year. Bernanos' text, due to Bruckberger's efforts, was used as the basis for the French film Le Dialogue des Carmélites, which was written and directed by Agostini and released in 1960.[26] James Travers and Willems Henri stated that the film, even with its cast and production values, "stood the test of time and deserves to be more widely known".[27] Travers and Henri also said that the film "more than does justice to Georges Bernanos' play and provides a thoughtful and emotionally involving reflection on the power and limits of faith". The cast was composed of well-known French actors: Pierre Brasseur, Jeanne Moreau, Madeline Renaud, Alida Valli, Georges Wilson, and Jean-Louis Barrault. In 1984, a version, directed by Pierre Cardinal, based upon Bernanos' dialogue, was produced for French television. The television version included more of Bernanos' dialogue than the 1960 film, and Anne Caudry, who was his granddaughter, was featured in it.
French composer Francis Poulenc was commissioned to write a ballet based on Bernanos' dialogue for La Scala and Casa Ricordi, but he wrote an opera instead, titled Dialogues of the Carmelites. As of 2019, the Metropolitan Opera had performed the opera 59 times, first in English, then in its original French, since its premiere in 1977, to sold-out audiences.
The Martyrs of Compiègne consisted of 11 nuns, three lay sisters, and two externs (or tertiaries).